Description: So, the FFA that decided the current holder of the vacant Contender's Belt was kind of a disaster; they had to do it twice! But now, at long last, one of the competitors from that match gets his chance at revenge against the girl who managed to win the title somehow. Can Tenma Kiryuu use this chance to take the title away from Flora Akahana? Would he, could he, beat up a girl? Would he, could he, on a TILT-A-WHIRL?! (Winner: Tenma)
Flora is not on the Tilt-a-Whirl.
The last thing she wants to be is dizzy before the fight actually starts up. She's nervous enough as is without puking up the lunch she barely managed to eat beforehand; she doesn't need to be /actually/ sick to her stomach as well as just feeling it.
She is right next to it, though, and appears to be checking the stringing of her bow/staff or whatever she calls it. It takes a fair bit of attention and both hands. She isn't /really/ watching for Tenma.
But would Tenma Kiryuu be awful enough to actually attack someone before the start of the match? That would be going to far, even for him; so the fact that Flora isn't currently watching for him doesn't play against her, at least not from that perspective.
Though it does allow Tenma to approach unnoticed.
"Hey, Stringbean," says the Gedo gang member, emerging from the crowd that's gathered to watch this rather... Unusually placed match. A Tilt-a-Whirl is not a common battleground, even around Southtown, and between that and the title - not as prestigious as some, but a title nonetheless - on the line, the fight has garnered its fair share of spectators. "Didja have fun with your belt while it lasted?"
Tenma seems pretty confident, of course. He pretty much always does, you know.
Flora is not wearing the belt, so maybe she's not /that/ confident. She wasn't sure if you were supposed to. It didn't come with an instruction manual.
She jumps only slightly when Tenma comes up and speaks to her, looking up with her bow freshly strung. "Don't call me 'Stringbean'," she says, although it lacks a lot of heat; she's not really up to yelling at him.
Flora steps up onto the Tilt-a-Whirl to avoid talking again, at least not yet. /She's/ ready, or more accurately, as ready as she will be.
At Flora's insistence that he not call her 'Stringbean', Tenma's eyebrows raise curiously. Of course, that just lets him know that the name bothers her, doesn't it? "Why don't you make me, then?" the Gedo swordsman wonders, pulling the cloth sheath off of his bokken and tucking into his pants pocket, and then biting into the flesh of his thumb, breaking the skin and drawing blood.
Soon, Tenma has gone through the familiar ritual to create the chi link between himself and his wooden blade; painting a stripe in his own blood down its length, and giving it a single sweep through the air to set it alight with that smoky blood-red aura. Then he, too, hops onto the Tilt-a-Whirl, and signals to the SNF crew that he's ready.
Then, the carnival ride lurches into motion. "C'mon, 'Champ'," Tenma says to Flora. "Let's see how you do one on one."
COMBATSYS: Tenma has started a fight here.
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Tenma 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Flora has joined the fight here.
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Tenma 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Flora
When the signal comes that they're ready, it starts to spin. Flora moves a little further on it to avoid being whirled off or stepping backwards accidentally in the first ten seconds, which would be a downer; she doesn't want to lose /that/ fast.
She doesn't bother to respond to Tenma. Time to fight, instead, even if that bloody aura is gross and she's not entirely convinced she's not going to fail in any case. Flora steps forward, lifting her staff up and around before coming in low, trying to yank Tenma off his feet with the hook of it. It's theoretically possible, at least, that she wins right away - if he falls off, anyway. Right?
COMBATSYS: Tenma blocks Flora's Hooking Sweep.
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Tenma 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Flora
That would appear to be a pretty big 'if'; when the hooking attempt comes at him, Tenma's leg IS caught, but he immediately drops low on his hooked leg, bringing his centre of gravity all the way to the floor and trying to ignore the constant motion of the Tilt-a-Whirl. Block out distractions, that's one of the points his father and his grandfather have constantly harped on in his training. Focus on what you're doing.
"Too slow," Tenma chides, suddenly sweeping his bokken in a wide arc; whether he manages to keep Flora's own weapon trapped or not, his intent is to catch her before she can get enough room to maneuver. Still, the slash is bound to miss the enormous Seijyun girl, leaving a trail of red in the air from whence erupts a crescent of blood and chi, a point-blank blast that might be almost as stomach churning as the ride itself!
COMBATSYS: Tenma successfully hits Flora with Dharmapala.
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Tenma 0/-------/-----==|=====--\-------\0 Flora
The slash misses, the wave does not, and that's /exactly/ what Tenma wanted. Flora's weapon stays where it is for a moment, and the disadvantage of being this big is that it sometimes takes you a moment to recover when you're pulled off-balance; there's a lot of balance to get back on.
She takes it almost point-blank and tenses to avoid falling over; she does stumble backwards, though, and decides that yes, that is an experience that she would rather /not/ feel in the future. Flora spits something out of her mouth and hopes that is not actually blood (it might just be her hair) while she steps forward again, bringing her staff down in a straight smash toward Tenma's side.
She doesn't talk again. There's no point; he'll just insult her, won't he? Or that's what she thinks.
COMBATSYS: Tenma interrupts Power Strike from Flora with Head Breaker.
- Power hit! -
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Tenma 0/-------/---====|=======\=------\1 Flora
Meanwhile, the Tilt-a-Whirl starts speeding up, and in the process starts to add more tilt to its whirl; the pods where passengers on the ride would /normally/ sit spin freely, partially obstructing the view of the two fighters as things happen. Crazy things. With footing shifting underfoot, it becomes increasingly apparent that this fight is going to get somewhat hairy... And truth be told, for all his attempts to attain a meditative focus, Tenma's feeling a little nauseous.
The fact that, under the circumstances, Flora doesn't fall over is a pretty impressive feat all on its own; but then, she keeps on attacking, which just shows more grit.
Just... Not quite ENOUGH grit.
Indeed, the smashing downward staff grazes against Tenma as he lunges /into/ the strike, reaching to grab Flora by the front of her shirt or gi top or whatever, and then smash his forehead into her face /hard/, leaping off of the floor in the process. The force behind the blow is certainly enough to knock away even the titanic schoolgirl, though luckily there's probably one of those Tilt-a-Whirl pods in the way of her getting knocked /off/.
For possibly the first time in her life, Flora is glad for those pods.
Flora actually lands on one of them, which tilts alarmingly as her full weight is introduced to it at a high velocity; she grabs onto it with one hand, still holding onto her bow tightly with her other. She seems content to sit there for a few moments, more dazed than anything else, before rolling off and down to her feet, woozily. At least she remembered to roll the right way.
Flora looks down at her slightly stretched-out gi top, thanks to Tenma grabbing it, and is glad she customarily wears a shirt under it; she tries to flatten it back down before actually drawing a bow, accounting for the spin, and firing. The first shot is very badly aimed, but she was just testing; the second is the one you need to watch out for.
COMBATSYS: Tenma endures Flora's Power Shot.
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Tenma 0/-------/--=====|=======\==-----\1 Flora
It's a good shot... Or at least it seems to be, because Tenma actually rushes in closer to Flora as she makes it, somehow managing to maintain a run despite the tilting and the whirling, which results in the Gedo swordsman getting hit cleanly with the girl's arrow. The only problem is, at least from Flora's likely perspective, that it doesn't really stop him.
"Hey, maybe you should move up from the Nerf arrows!" Tenma taunts, getting close enough to Flora to take another swing at her with his chi emanating bokken, a short diagonal slash, aimed upwards across the tall girl's torso. It's not particularly flashy or anything, but it could certainly prove to be somewhat on the painful side!
COMBATSYS: Tenma successfully hits Flora with Medium Strike.
- Power hit! -
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Tenma 0/-------/-======|=======\======-\1 Flora
Flora doesn't use Nerf arrows, really. Honest! We swear!
The short slash is enough to hit Flora, dizzy as she is, and send her stepping back - right off the edge. Or that was what almost happened; her free hand snapped out for the same pod she had used before, and she yanks herself back upright, ignoring the ache across her chest and stomach. What is she /doing/, she thinks, normally she does better than this... The sinking feeling she's getting is the feeling of failure. She doesn't like it.
Flora switches her grip back to both hands as she's upright, and, uncharacteristically, makes noise: a yell as she moves forward. She lurches forward, the awkward movement switching to a much smoother flurry of blows once she's (hopefully) suckered him in from the feint.
At this rate, though, she's not holding her breath.
COMBATSYS: Flora successfully hits Tenma with Hunting Mantis.
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Tenma 1/----===/=======|====---\-------\0 Flora
And, this time at least, the feint works; maybe it's because of the awkward motion on the Tilt-a-Whirl, or maybe it's more due to Flora's own skills, but Tenma moves to block the apparent initial strike... Which leaves him wide open for the rest of what happens, the repeated strikes driving him back, the end of the combination sending the Gedo swordsman skidding away, the motion turning into a barely controlled backwards tumble though he manages to catch himself from potentially falling off by jabbing his bokken point-first into the metal underfoot, a loud awful squeal accompanying the long gash that this tears in the metal and leaving him half-sitting at the base of one of the seating pods.
"Ha ha ha... That wasn't bad, Stringbean!" Tenma says, having apparently decided to /not/ honour her request to not call her that. And then, gripping his bokken with both hands, the weapon still point-down in the metal floor, he forces his bloody chi down, and radiating outwards... Until those blood dragons start to burst out of the Tilt-a-Whirl, bearing down on Flora. "...BUT THIS IS THE FINISH!!"
COMBATSYS: Tenma successfully hits Flora with Hell of Blood.
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Tenma 0/-------/----===|=======\===----\1 Flora
Once Tenma is knocked away, Flora immediately switches her grip, drawing arrows once again and firing them not forward, but up. Some of them duplicate en route. She has a pretty good idea of what's going to happen next.
She aborts the very last shot to jump, but doesn't get out of the way of the rising dragons; one of them strikes her and sends her flying, right off the Tilt-a-Whirl and onto the ground, where she rolls for quite some distance. Flora stops eventually, an instant before running into the crowd.
Abruptly, on the Tilt-A-Whirl, it begins to rain arrows. Some of them are physical. A few of them are those greenish ones that she uses when she's pressed and needs to duplicate them. They do tend to spread out a bit.
COMBATSYS: Flora can no longer fight.
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Tenma 0/-------/----===|
COMBATSYS: Tenma blocks Flora's Thousand Flight.
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Tenma 0/-------/---====|
Fact: This Tilt-a-Whirl has probably seen better days by now, the metal rent pretty badly in several places due to Tenma's antics, especially his blood dragons. The part where it starts raining arrows from the sky just makes it worse, plenty of them adding their own damage to what Tenma's already caused. As for himself, the Kiryuu heir uses the ancient martial technique of 'get behind cover, idiot', rolling himself into the Tilt-a-Whirl pod he'd been sitting against; it's not a perfect defense, as some of the arrows manage to get through the metal of the pod, but in the end...
...In the end, Tenma emerges, slanting his bokken against his shoulder and grinning from ear to ear, looking /extremely/ pleased with himself, if rather battered. "Like I said before," Tenma says, his voice carrying enough to be heard by Flora, over the roar of the crowd and the announcement of the decision. "Hope you enjoyed it while it lasted."
COMBATSYS: Tenma has ended the fight here.
Flora stays down, apparently unconcious. That last hit really hurt; her entire stomach and chest is going to be bruised to hell tomorrow.
She has managed to land just so and not break her bow, though. It must be a knack.
Log created on 17:52:59 07/31/2008 by Tenma, and last modified on 17:12:57 08/14/2008.