Description: Minefields in Africa are no match for the power the Raging Buffalo, Mike Bison, brings to the battlefield... though Frei proves he's got enough power of his own to make the boxer think twice. (Winner: M.Bison)
Many SNF remote venues often attract lots of local visitors as an audience. However, in this particular instance not even the SNF crew are 100% sure they want to be here. One part is certainly that it looks... forbidding. Although not quite as bad as the rolling, featureless dunes of the Sahara expanses to the south, this north African minefield in southeastern Morocco is in the rocky expanse at the edge of the desert. Other than dull tan sand and dirt everywhere, and some short, hardy shrubs, there is nothing here at all, for miles.
Nothing visible, anyway.
The camera crew is set up on road-like tracks through the field... the only places that are sure to be free of anti-personnel mines left over from the wars that have gone by in this part of the world. The scrubland where the fight's taking place? Not so lucky; though old, there are still live explosives out there, waiting for one unwary step. Somewhat amusingly, in one part near the track, a small red-painted sign has nothing but a white skull and crossbones on it to mark the field... and in the distance, a very old small touring bus sits, blackened and burnt out from unluckily driving over a mine.
Deciding not to tempt fate, Frei is standing with the crew at the moment, looking out over the field with a pensive expression, and not just because of the mines. What is he doing here? The calm, jovial, friendly fighter, not only fighting what is undoubtedly his opposite number in terms of personality, but for an SNF championship belt? It's a decidedly un-Frei-like move, one even he is wondering about somewhat.
But he is here, and he's going to see it through. If nothing else, it'll be a good test of how far he's come. Sipping from a bottle of water, he chats amicably with members of the crew who recognize him from a reasonably long fighting career, waiting for Bison to show up... and hiding his anxiety.
It would be surprising--to say the least--to find a great number of spectators out here. For one, it's remote, it's hot and the scenery leaves a lot to be desired. Scrub, brush, dried out crusts of salty earth. The pallid, scrapped-out native buildings of a village in the distance. Not much else.
Oh yeah, and it's a goddamn minefield. A MINEFIELD. Has it been cleared? Well, pockmarks across the land suggest that at least some of the mines have been detonated... but perhaps not all of them. It is this 'arena' that has been chosen for this championship fight, and well, it couldn't suit Bison better.
Except he doesn't really think so. "GOD _DAMN_ it's hot," he complains, pouring a bottle of water over his head. "F**K, man, this better be worth it. I hope you guys lined up someone real good. Or I'm gonna come back an' take it out on you. Motherf**k, I mean, yeah I'm black but I'm from the U.S. of A, not this goddamned place..." Ah, typical Bison. With a grunt, he gets up out of his chair, and stalks out onto the field, once Frei shows. His booted feet kicking up clouds of dust he walks out, out, out then turns towards Frei. "GET YO' ASS OUT HERE!!!!" he bellows. Why, it sounds almost friendly. For Bison.
COMBATSYS: M.Bison has started a fight here.
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M.Bison 0/-------/-------|
His bottle of water is halfway to Frei's mouth for a sip when he hears... well, all of that. He blinks a few times, glancing at the SNF crew, who just give him nervous looks or, in one case, entirely avert their eyes. Despite himself, he can't help but chuckle and then finally take that sip of water before handing the bottle off to the crew with a little wave. In an uncharacteristically nasty move for Frei, he grins at them and says, solemnly, "We who are about to die, salute," before walking off. A few of them blanch a little at that.
Getting to the edge of the minefield, he observes Bison in all his glory, but doesn't quite step onto the minefield just yet. Of course, that first step onto the marked scrubland is both literal and metaphorical. One is entry; the other is 'yes you really are about to risk your life to win an SNF title belt, and we're not just talking about the mines, here'.
He takes a deep breath, and then steps on.
He's not instantly blown to hell, which Frei's exhaled breath clearly says is a good sign. Taking a few more unexploded steps, he nods at Bison. "My ass is indeed here, as is the remainder," he jokes, doing a quick rotation with his arm and then dropping into stance. "Let's make it interesting for the crowd, I guess... well, and not end up like the cows in 'Top Secret'." Quoting cinema?! You've probably already lost him. "And I know it's going to take everything I have to keep up." In keeping with that, Frei doesn't attack; instead, he closes his eyes for just a second and *focuses*, before opening them again... and radiating out from his body is a quick, harmless burst of air, the only outward show that he's done anything at all. "Ready."
COMBATSYS: Frei has joined the fight here.
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Frei 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 M.Bison
COMBATSYS: Frei gathers his will.
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Frei 0/-------/---====|-------\-------\0 M.Bison
Quoting cinema is lost on Bison, honestly. He doesn't remember ANIMAL HOUSE, much less Top Secret. And he already looks angry, his muscles flexing and swelling with anger that is being converted into strength. Frei's banter falls flat; not that Bison doesn't understand the individual words, but... well. He doesn't give a damn about 'the audience'. "You came here to take my belt, huh?" Well, maybe Frei can take the damn thing; Bison considers for a moment--just a moment--and lunges, driving forward on his legs, those strong muscles there propelling him.
As he lunges forward, his right hand cocks back, then drops down to his waist; his left kept up, the punch is pretty obvious, coming, but then, anyone who knows anything about Bison knows that he's a boxer and... well, even for a boxer, his repertoire of punches is fairly limited; he certainly goes for power over technique, though his actual punching technique is pretty good regardless.
In any case, Frei now has a hard right straight pistoning towards his face, aimed for not his body, as it might seem--at the last moment, Bison drops low, pistoning the fist out towards Frei's legs.
COMBATSYS: Frei endures M.Bison's Dash Straight.
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Frei 1/------=/=======|==-----\-------\0 M.Bison
"I don't know I *specifically* came here just for that," Frei admits, as much to himself as to Bison and the watching audience. He does note Bison's appearance of anger, yet somehow the monk doesn't get the feeling that the boxer is angry AT anything. He's just... angry. That in and of itself interests him, since he is not a total fool and did some research on the man before he made the title challenge. He really does seem to have aggression issues, but it helps to know that he doesn't need to take it personally. If anything, Bison would be shouting equally angry stuff regardless of who was in front of him, Frei surmises. "But it's on my to-do list."
And then the Raging Buffalo is lunging right at him. Evading probably isn't smart, but Frei is a top-notch defensive fighter. He might be able to deflect that punch, minimize the damage. Yet at the last second, aided by Bison's surprise turn toward his legs, the monk decides to weather the storm and see just how hard this boxer can hit.
PROTIP: Really damn hard.
The blow slams into Frei's hip, sending him spiralling backwards and almost head-over-heels. However, at the last second he catches himself in a handstand, and then pushes himself off the ground with that one hand, back *toward* Bison... and the boxer may note that the sage's hand is glowing a rich, deep blue... right before Frei's flip rights him back in Bison's grille, and a towering column of water chi suddenly explodes up from the ground before disappearing in a spray of mist.
COMBATSYS: M.Bison blocks Frei's Reiki.
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Frei 1/-----==/=======|===----\-------\0 M.Bison
It certainly LOOKS scary. Bison's punch... no one sane tries to use it to their advantage. But Frei does... taking that impact and trying to use it to surprise Bison and take the boxer by surprise. It kind of works. But Bison isn't -that- unattuned to the ... okay, okay, yeah he is. He just recognizes that glow in Frei's hand. Energy. Bison -hates- that shit. Partially it's jealousy--he never learned how to do that, and he likely never will--but mostly it's because they HURT.
So Bison covers--and... and well... he's not wrecked by it. Is Frei trying to 'take it easy'? That would be a mistake. Bison is soaked, though, with water chi, and that actually... feels kind of good.
Maybe it's in thanks for a moment of relief from the African heat that he doesn't just try to punch Frei's face off--instead firing a pair of jabs for Frei's midsection, from his left hand.
COMBATSYS: M.Bison successfully hits Frei with Medium Punch.
- Power hit! -
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Frei 1/-======/=======|===----\-------\0 M.Bison
So, we know the boxer hits like a freight train. Sadly, Frei's attempt to use the moment of surprise against Bison doesn't work 100% as intended. Still, it was a good object lesson for him in terms of how to work his defense for the remainder of the fight. To wit: Do Not Get Hit Like That Again. Pursuant to that, when that pair of punches comes for his stomach, he attempts to get his palm in front of blow to soften it. It's ALSO likely because he's still a little disoriented from that last attack that he misjudges -- perhaps because of the size of the gloves Bison wears -- and gets socked in the stomach, stumbling back and to his left a few steps.
Onto a mine.
The explosion is actually less fantastic than it seems like it should be. Frei doesn't have a fuel tank to suddenly go up in flames, after all. But there IS a really nasty burst of sand and dust everywhere, completely obscuring the victim from sight. Thankfully there's no chain reaction of explosions or anything like that, so Bison is safe. Frei, though...
When the dust settles, the monk is only just pulling himself to his feet. Shirt and jeans are scored with narrow rips from shrapnel, and a cut bleeds on his forehead, but for someone who just took a punch from Mike Bison and then got exploded by a landmine, he looks surprisingly okay.
"That... is not an experience I'd like to repeat," he says, too loud. Why? "My ears are still ringing..." But he's not out of the fight, not yet. Holding out his hand, he gathers yet more energy... a cluster of orbs of pearly white luminescence that swirl there, before launching out at Bison. The orbs don't try to strike him, however; they lance into the ground around him. That's the only warning Bison has to get out of the way or defend himself... because with a sweep of the hand up, clenching his open palm into a fist, those orbs erupt from the ground as a series of pillars of pure white light.
COMBATSYS: M.Bison endures Frei's Hokuto Rekkoudan.
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Frei 0/-------/-======|=======\-------\0 M.Bison
Orbs of light. ORBS OF LIGHT. THERE ARE THREE ORBS. Actually, there might be more; Bison doesn't know. The surge of chi is unmistakable and it jst gets him angry--so he's already lunging forward even as his world explodes into white energy, searing him. When he comes out of the blocks he's roaring--one might say screaming but his voice is a little too low-pitched for that, really.
Roaring, and, yes, preparing to PUNCH. But he isn't aiming one single punch, or even a couple punches--he's lunging for Frei to PUMMEL him. His fists fly, working through a combination he learned when he first started fighting.
Two left jabs open the combination, followed by a right straight punch to the stomach, and finally... finally, a pair of hook punches, left-right, to finish. Bison doesn't usually throw big punch combinations--but sometimes he likes to do it.
COMBATSYS: Frei blocks M.Bison's Fierce Punch.
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Frei 1/-------/=======|=======\-------\0 M.Bison
For someone who just got exploded, Frei's actually doing pretty well, all things considered. He kind of expected Bison to rage at him, pissed beyond belief, after that attack, and so he's ready on the defensive. He can't completely negate the force of that combination, but he can blunt it; each blow meets an open palm or raised forearm instead of softer, more vulnerable targets. The aggregate still hurts... even defending against Bison's attacks is about as bad as an actual, unmitigated blow from a less experienced fighter. But, it keeps Frei in the game a little while longer.
He can already feel his strength fading, but Frei seems determined not to let this go until he absolutely cannot move anymore. Thus he snaps out a hand, hopefully before Bison can completely get out of Frei's space, and seeks to clamp it around the boxer's wrist. If he can get that grip, he plants his foot, uses all the leverage he can apply, and *spins*, twirling the boxer around him in a horizontal arc before letting go, a pulse of wind chi exploding from his palm even as he does so to speed Bison's journey. Into a mine, perhaps.
COMBATSYS: M.Bison fails to interrupt Charged Throw from Frei with Turn Punch.
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Frei 1/------=/=======|=======\-------\1 M.Bison
Bison actually has a plan. He'll let Frei get that grip--and then punch him in the FACEMEATS. But he didn't account for that burst of wind. Surprised, Bison make sa great face, big thick lips showing a big O as his punch literally whiffs by inches, just before he's accelerated away, tumbling over the ground several times.
Well, good god damn. He shouldn't've missed that one. Bison tumbles a few times, landing face-first, then he rises. His dark eyes burn with anger, as they always do, and he narrows his eyes at Frei. Damn :)-faces. He wants to punch 'em. PUNCH 'EM ALL. NO ONE DESERVES TO SMILE.
Oh man. When the :) are purged, Frei's going to be the first to go. Now what?! When Bison's sudden lunging counterattack whiffs, and his throw technique goes off without a hitch, the monk breathes out a far too obvious sigh of great relief. It's not necessarily that Frei prefers to fight at a distance, though he's well-armed for a projectile battle if that's what comes to him. But there is something about being in close proximity to Mike Bison that leaves him feeling unsettled.
It's probably all that punching.
Squinting a bit, Frei weighs his options. He could rush back in, or he could take the time to do something fancy and perhaps set himself up for a better position. Interestingly enough, he chooses the latter. What does he do? He... closes his eyes. It's a perfect opportunity if Bison wants to rush in and deck him right there, but what Frei is ACTUALLY doing is reading the chi of the ground beneath him. After all, chi is the 'energy of the world'. Roots of the scrub plants and all sorts of other things...
...there.
Hoping that it's close enough to Bison to actually do some damage, Frei finds, of all things, an undetonated mine. Exerting a tiny bit of pressure with a burst of chi (which is easy, hitting an unmoving and unresisting object), he blows it up.
From the outside, it must look fantastically Fist of the North Star.
COMBATSYS: M.Bison interrupts Large Thrown Object from Frei with Gigaton Blow.
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Frei 2/<<<<<<</<<<<<<<|-------\-------\0 M.Bison
Frei may be the first to go... RIGHT NOW. Bison is already close to his enrage timer--by the time Frei gets ready to explode that mine, Bison is -charging-. Fortunately for Frei, the mine -is- in front of Bison. Unfortunately for Frei, it barely scrapes the back of Bison's legs because the man is moving. Moving fast. It's like, if he were a raid boss, he woulda just turned red and hulked out... but he's already hulked out, so he's just charging in.
"YOU PUNK! YOU'RE ALREADY DEAD!" shouts the boxer, and then he's past the explosion and an antipersonnel mine of his own is going off, right into Frei's face. An antipersonnel mine known as the Gigaton Blow--one stupendous, hellacious punch, a punch that literally rips the air around his fist before it impacts. If he punched a tank with this kind of punch, the ringing sound it would produce would force a gaggle of Catholic schoolgirls to materialize out of thin air.
Frei, however, isn't made of metal--nor is he so heavy as to be weighted to the Earth nearly immovably. This probably will keep him alive.
The recap of this fight is going to be interesting, for sure. Camera zooming in on that moment of abject surprise in Frei's wide green eyes, pupils down to practical non-existence, right before Bison's punch -- excuse me, Punch, capital P -- impacts his stomach. And Frei might be durable, but he's not made of metal, and to be honest he doesn't even weight all that much. Combined with him having very little left in terms of ability to stand on his feet, and the effect is rather like a leaf in a tornado: he goes FLYING.
Against all logic, he lands on the mine-cleared track. Thank God for small favors.
It's a good long while before he can actually bring himself up, and when he does it's in a crouch at first, with... of all things... a smile on his face. "Not... yet," he adds, before bringing his hand up to his mouth and coughing. When he brings his hand away, he notices that what he's coughing is blood. An auburn eyebrow goes up, and he adds: "...close. But not yet."
He's unsteady on his feet, but he's also determined to make a good showing of this. Bison showed him what is undoubtedly his strongest attack... so Frei will respond in kind. His hands are held out, palm up... in one he gathers that same pearly white energy as before, while the other is purple-limned black. Bringing his hands up, he collapses the two, and the energy spreads out around his body in a blazing aura of white and black, the force of it actually lifting him a few inches from the ground.
"I know a little about... death and rebirth, actually..." he says with a faint grin... before launching himself at Bison. He skims across the ground, not touching it, propelled by the aura of chi like an arrow from a bow... though slowed by fatigue and injury. When he gets close to Bison again he stops, spins, and extends his hands... and that white and black energy pours outward in a massive burst, looking to envelop the boxer entirely.
Of course, afterwards Frei breathes, and then slumps to the ground, unconscious (but alive). Unless Bison's got other ideas, anyway...
COMBATSYS: Frei can no longer fight.
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M.Bison 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: M.Bison dodges Frei's Samsara.
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M.Bison 0/-------/-------|
Bison quirks an eyebrow as Frei rises. Man's tougher than he seems, for sure. And that lightness of body certainly aided him in surviving a technique that has, literally, felled elephants. That he then has the power to perform a complicated technique... mmm. Vega has not, traditionally, been interested in chi users except as minions, but perhaps this one bears watching. He'll get one of his girls to file a report. For now, well... sheeeeeit.
Bison ain't dumb. Once Frei makes his intentions clear--when he stops in front of Bison--Bison turns. And he RUNS. Yeah, he's a power guy, but he can put on bursts of speed, as he does right now--those bursts of energy lapping at his heels before he gets clear. Frei slumps, and Bison turns towards the officials. He looks drained of his anger, for now, though he's still curt.
"Aight. We done. Get me the HELL out of here, I want three women and some booze." And he stalks off, his title successfully defended... for now.
Log created on 14:24:27 07/13/2008 by M.Bison, and last modified on 15:16:17 07/21/2008.