Description: In a tale of sword versus soul, only one can emerge victorius. (Winner: Tenma)
Fact: Corpse Flowers are gross.
You can call them whatever you want, but the point is that they smell like something left to rot in the sun for a few days, and there's a whole bunch of them... A whole garden full of the damn things. Which begs an important question. Why, oh why, would anyone WANT to have a whole garden of flowers, however petty they might look, that smell like a charnel house?
This is, primarily, what Tenma Kiryuu is thinking about right now.
"Ugh," mutters the reigning Contender's Belt holder, that selfsame belt having been handed off to an SNF official moments before. Tenma's bokken is already radiating its aura of bloody red energy, and the expression on the tall, lean teenager's face is anything but pleased at his current surroundings. This cinches it, of course... He's just going to have to get things over with quickly, before he starts puking his lunch up.
Come to think of it, he shouldn't have eaten those two double cheeseburgers before he came out here.
Zach walks into the chosen fighting venue. He immediately feels lucky that he simply /cannot/ bring himself to eat anything before a fight. He frowns, before looking across the way to Tenma. The Gedo youth looks ready to go, right here, right now.
That's okay by Zach, who settles into his slightly bouncy take on Terry's usual stance as he nods to the respirator-wearing referee.
The truth of the matter is that Tenma is pretty much always ready to fight; he wouldn't do so well at his school if he weren't. The Gedo Gang member, doing his level best to keep some kind of meditative focus to avoid being distracted by the awful-smelling flowers all around them, turns his attention towards Zach. "Heh... You sure 'bout this, Fanboy?" he wonders, the various references of Zach's to Terry Bogard's style not lost on him. "Considerin' I whupped your ass pretty bad the last few times."
But hey, maybe the third time's the charm, right?
With the signal to begin from the referee, Tenma takes a single, crab-walking step forward, and swings his bokken down off of his shoulder. Of course, he's too far away to hit Zach with his blade, but that's not the point; as red energy trails behind the bokken, a crescent of blood and chi is born, tearing through the air towards the shorter man. "Eat THIS!!"
COMBATSYS: Zach fails to slow Dharmapala from Tenma with Warning Shot.
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Tenma 0/-------/-----==|=====--\-------\0 Zach
"You know what they say," Zach taunts. He gets a lungful of that horrific scent, and immediately wishes he had just kept his mouth shut. Tenma's attack comes rolling in, and he shuffle-steps back to prepare himself for a moment as he brings up both hands.
They are holding a blob of psychic energy the size of a dodgeball, which Zach promptly shoves at the incoming crescent. The shot sails wide as the red blast slams into Zach, forcing the young man back several feet and shredding his shirt. None of Zach's blood is spilled, yet. He's been taking a lot of chi-based abuse of lately. Maybe he's getting used to it.
Still, even without any of Zach's blood being spilled... The psion is now bloody, thanks to the effects of Tenma's rather, er, unusual chi. "Sure do. Repeatin' the same thing over an' over again an' expectin' different results... Ain't that called 'bein' crazy'?" Still, Tenma gives a rueful shake of his head as Zach manages to stay on his feet, if nothing else.
Trying to avoid taking any deep breaths, the Gedo swordsman suddenly rushes forward at Zach, trying to catch the older fighter while he's still properly recovering; the bokken is swung behind Tenma's back, and rather than striking with it, he lashes out with his free hand. Calculated precise strikes are aimed at vital points on Zach's torso, aiming to disrupt the flow of energy through the smaller fighter's body, as Tenma tries to herd him back, forcing him into a disadvantageous position...
COMBATSYS: Zach blocks Tenma's Flow Breaker.
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Tenma 0/-------/-----==|=======\-------\0 Zach
Zach flows with the movement, stopping the strikes with palms and forearms coated in that purple headache-inducing energy he wields. He shakes his hands loose with a slight grin as he regards Tenma. "I'll just have to try harder the next time," he says.
Zach dashes back in, firing off a quick knee to the taller man's midsection before following up with a double-palmed burst of psychic power aimed at Tenma's chest!
COMBATSYS: Tenma blocks Zach's Medium Kick.
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Tenma 0/-------/---====|=======\-------\0 Zach
"Yeah, we'll see," says Tenma, dubiously. The knee doesn't strike home, instead getting smacked aside by Tenma's hand, sending a stinging slap against his palm and up his arm... But the energy is more vexing. It leaves the Kiryuu 'demon hunter' with little choice but to swing bis bokken back in front, intercepting the bust... Much of the purple energy is deflected by the wooden blade and the dark red chi around it, but enough still bleeds through to cause problems.
With a grunt, Tenma lunges forward, shifting his balance and twisting around, swinging what was previously his back leg up in a stomping kick aimed right at Zach's throat!
Well, he IS from Gedo, you know. It's not really a nice school.
COMBATSYS: Zach fails to interrupt Random Strike from Tenma with Third Stance.
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Tenma 0/-------/---====|=======\-------\1 Zach
Zach ducks a little bit, spinning ip a great deal more of that energy of his, causing it to spiral down his arm and into a waiting hand. His plan is pretty simple, really. He plans to do his take on Terry Bogard's Power Dunk, and dish out more pain that he is getting.
That was the plan, and we know how those go. Zach's exhuberance is no match for Tenma's experience in this case. Glen misses the timing completely, and takes the boot to the throat. He crashes to the floor, gasping for rancid air. This has been a pretty rough fight; Tenma's strengths run right to Zach's weaknesses. That was part of the reason Zach wanted the match, really.
Letting out a slow sigh, looking dubiously down at the fallen Zach, Tenma ends up coughing. Ugh, ugh! These flowers are so freakin' nasty! "Man, the only thing that stinks worse than these damn flowers are your skills," the Guardian King taunts, spitting on the floor off to one side to try to get the taste out of his mouth. Blech! Truth be told, though, Tenma's starting to feel a bit bad... It almost feels like he's picking on someone who can't stick up for themselves.
Of course, intellectually, he KNOWS Zach can hit hard, but at the moment...
"So, you gonna get back up, or are you just gonna lie there an' quit?" Tenma wonders, backing up a bit to give Zach space, holding his bokken in front of himself, stance careful. "Either way's fine with me, Fanboy. Just make your choice before I make it for ya!"
COMBATSYS: Tenma focuses on his next action.
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Tenma 0/-------/---====|=======\-------\1 Zach
Zach flops onto his back, looking up at Tenma. He thinks back to his Neo League debut against Hotaru. This... is not all that dissimilar. Most of the fight involved Hotaru smacking Zach around.
Zach made good, though. He grins faintly. Then he lights up like a large sun lamp. If sun lamps were purple. He flings his palms upward, aimed right at Tenma's torso. The blast, however, is pretty wide. Some of the plants suffer catastrophic damage in the process!
COMBATSYS: Tenma endures Zach's Burst Stream.
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Tenma 1/------=/=======|-------\-------\0 Zach
Sometimes, you just aren't left with a whole lot of options; Zach's attack is rather enormous, and probably difficult to deal with. There's always the chance, of course, that Tenma could avoid it entirely, or deflect it, or somehow raise some defense... But there's a rather large likelihood of failure, and he'd be leaving himself wide open afterwards. So, there's only one thing to be done about it. As the massive blast of Psycho Power descends on him, something happens.
Tenma grins, from ear to ear.
The purple beam engulfs the Guardian King entirely, obscuring him inside the blast as he doesn't just stand his ground... He pushes forward /through/ it, keeping himself going through sheer stubbornness, getting himself closer, positioning himself to take advantage of the lag after such an enormous attack...
And when the beam fades, Tenma is much closer to Zach than he was before.
He's also embedded his bokken in the ground.
Cracks spiderweb out around the bokken, widening as gouts of blood begin to erupt out of them. These gouts soon turn into dragons formed of blood and chi, forms that race along the seared ground, tearing it apart in their quest to converge on Zach, to engulf him in a raging assault of bloody chi. "DISAPPEAR!!"
COMBATSYS: Tenma successfully hits Zach with Hell of Blood.
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Tenma 0/-------/------=|=======\==-----\1 Zach
Zach's eyes go wide as he twists to the side to attempt to regain his feet. No time to move. Zach throws his palms forward again, getting ready to take a large gamble on a suggestion he has been trying to make use of. He sucks in a deep breath, attempts to summon up more of his energy...
...and gags on the stench of the plants. His coughs re cut off pretty suddenly as the blood-chi tears into him. When the dust clears, Zach is lying in a crater from the blast and covered in blood. A vast majority of it is his own, and he does not seem to be getting up.
COMBATSYS: Zach takes no action.
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Tenma 0/-------/------=|
COMBATSYS: Zach can no longer fight.
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Tenma 0/-------/------=|
As the smoke clears, and Zach is left, possibly unconscious in the aftermath of that rather gory assault, it's obvious who the winner is. Pulling his bokken free from the damaged ground, Tenma rises to his feet, coughing and gagging a bit after he rather unwisely takes a deep, steadying breath. Wiping his mouth with the back of one hand, Tenma looks down at the fallen psion with an unreadable expression, before he shrugs his shoulders and turns to the nearest camera, raising his fist in triumph.
Soon, the wisely masked SNF official comes up and returns the Contender's Belt to the Guardian King, which Tenma then raises for another clear view of the camera, looking extraordinarily pleased with himself, even as he's led out of the gardens... And the medical team comes in to get poor Zach out.
COMBATSYS: Tenma has ended the fight here.
Log created on 13:33:09 08/09/2008 by Zach, and last modified on 17:18:56 08/14/2008.