Match of the Millennium

Description: All that matters is subsisting. Take any deal, wrong any person, run from any challenge as long as she gets to go on living. Ayame used to think that was enough until someone showed her that somethings are worth fighting for even if there isn't an immediate reward. Simply subsisting may not be the most important of worthy goals after all.

Alcatraz.

It's the middle of the night, most of the crews and crowds having packed up to go home. The SNF officials were in fact good to their public word--it was their intent to leave the two women in their cell overnight, possibly to send an interviewer in the morning for a brief cut of soundbytes to see if either of them had 'truly learned their lesson'. However, nobody actually expects them to still be there, truth was. After all. Most fighters have fists stronger than the bars that make up the metal and mortar prison.

But. One should not underestimate the strength of that steel.

A lone ember floats through the air..

He walks down the way as if through a graveyard, the gentle flow of white silk swathing his otherwise dark form. With even more sparse lighting, the stark differences in lighting over the halls of the grand jail lends a slight contrast blush to his movement. He comes just shy of glowing in the lonely night. His fingertips run the length of the wall, and only stop when they get to the engagement of one particular cell.

The key has been since long removed from the lock shutting the cell that the two defeated inhabit, presumably to be returned sometime in the morning. He feels it thoughtfully, quietly. A thin tool is inserted into the mechanism. Though more complex than residental locks, the process still takes only a moment. A seal on that tool flickers faintly as his hand moves away. There is a loud latching sound.

Then Ryouhara steps back, the cell door sliding open.

Where possible, simple machinery should be reasoned with, not forced.

Punched, pushed, thrown, and tossed about, some might consider Ayame's pride took a hit after such a fight like that. And perhaps if she gave half a damn about the crazy sanctioned fights she enlists for when money is thin, that would be the case. As it stands - she's going to get paid. She's going to get better. And then she's going to be back again some other weekend for another round of being hurled into cyclones of destructive force that officials keep throwing her at.

Usually, however, she doesn't wake up after her match in the discomfort of a jail cell. She comes to slowly, shaking her head as she brings her hand to the side of her head, shaking it slowly. Hissing as her fingers come to rest on a swelling bruise over her left cheekbone, the girl grunts, shuffling her feet, hands pressing down against the floor.

Her foot slides across the floor, disturbing a metal object. Long, round, thin, she knows what it is immediately as she gingerly crouches to retrieve it from off the floor before finally looking up with a quiet blink. "Well, this sure isn't the Taj Mahal," she grunts, using the six foot long titanium weapon for support, finally lowering her hand from the side of her face.

Idly dusting herself off, she glances up eventually to stare at the only other figure showing signs of movement at the moment, looking not particularly surprised to find him though there's no sign of recognition either. It's as if she's simply hiding her response entirely. Even her hands remain relaxed on her staff, "Night shift, huh? Rough gig," she finally speaks up with a grin, taking a step forward. She's not about to stay within the rather 'closed quarters' when an open door sits before her after all.

The rod is twisted, then snapped off at the end. The brutal act is swift, but it no less ensures that the lock will not function until Ryouhara attaches the end to the makeshift 'key' again.

The action might seem a little incomprehensible until Seishirou moves into the cell with Ayame, somewhat blocking her path out. His demeanor doesn't carry any particular grievance of aggression, but to consider the inventor a particularly polite person would be a fool mistake. Compared to his fighting, his step is agonizingly slow. The silks about him shift with his pitch, hands disappearing into his sleeves when his touch falls away from the cold prison steel.

His attention is not a particular thing, to tell a truth more focused on solving the lock a moment prior than the occupants of the cell. So it should be no great surprise that the first time he looks at Ayame closely is when she speaks to him. It causes him to look up quickly, bangs lifting to revealing sharply attentive eyes, inked through dark and demiblack. He doesn't so much look at Ayame moreso as stare right through her.

He radiates intent.

In that sort of situation, it seems almost a contradiction when Ryouhara suddenly gives Ayame a faint ghost of a smile. A thoughtful moment passes before Seishirou elects to say anything at all.

"You're the one who spent most of the night locked in the cell."

He turns to face Ayame's comrade, an exquisitely dressed woman reduced to little more than a smear, still unconscious on the ground. The victim of a spectacularly vicious smackdown from one of Seishirou's old teammates, ages upon ages ago. Studying her, he is silent for a slightly longer time, sharp eyes still carrying that 'force of intent' but no longer directly focused on Ayame. Eventually, he speaks again. "For having learned your lesson. Apparently." He laughs once, a light, harsh sound.

"It's an empty pretense, isn't it."

What he's talking about exactly, he doesn't specify.

There is more than enough room for Ayame to leave, if she wanted to move around him.

And all truth told, Seishirou likely wouldn't stop her.

She was content to leave - the cell, at least. Getting off the island proper might take further investigation. Someone must think it's real cute to expect her to Escape from Arcatraz a the last piece of this pesky SNF event, she's already contemplated just as Seishirou places himself in her path out of the cramped quarters. Stopping short, Ayame glances up at him, eyes blinking once, slowly, re-evaluating the nature of this new individual as if to re-evaluate possible threat levels.

That he isn't just some National Part night guard registers quickly. No, his background is something else entirely. She recoils a half-step defensively. Her life, as of late, has been rife with people who have had an axe to grind with her. She can never be sure when the next corner, alley, or stairwell will be shadowed by yet another on the seemingly infinite array of those who have a grudge against her. /Entirely/ not her fault, of course. But his focus isn't her and the thought fades quickly.

He notes her rather unpleasant accommodations, and Ayame's right hand comes up to rest against the back of her neck, her expression sheepish, maybe even a touch coy. "Well, I did until you came along and saved me..." She's trying to feel him out, her calculating mind probing, adjusting her posture, her mannerisms, constantly seeking for ways to manipulate or control. He looks toward Suzume and she does likewise. The young woman is her teammage, quite unexpectedly. It doesn't seem relevant at the moment.

Her arm drops to her side, her left hand still gripping the long pole of remarkable craftmanship. "The idea that you can reform someone by locking them behind bars for a while?" she asks in response to his observation, mouth quirking into a half grin, dropping the coy act for a different, nonchalant demeanor - like someone at ease, discussing philosophical matters over a cup of something bitter at a coffee shop. She shrugs a little, "I imagine the success rate is pretty low, yeah. Besides," she continues, nodding toward Suzume, "I don't think anyone would really know what to do with someone that's got their mind as made up as she does..."

Ryouhara is logically of a nondescript temperament regarding Ayame. He evinces no particular desire to harm Ayame, nothing revealed in his limp posture or his methodical gait. It's like he chooses every breath he takes with dogged, if lazy precision. To consider him physically is to conclude him a lax thing. But Seishirou has always been a creature of duality; were any of his family still alive, they would consider him a rabble-rouser, or a heretic.

You see, in spite of the spiritless way Seishirou acts and looks, his glance is anything but. He looks throguh people, and relentlessly evaluates them. He studies them, looking for weaknesses much in the same way Ayame does. But his is a thing only distantly related. He has that 'particular eye.' His body is lax because his mind will spare no energy for it but in the most grudging of circumstances. You see..

Seishirou looks at people as if he were taking them apart.

His eyes attracted only fleetingly, Ryouhara looks over Ayame quickly, his eyes snapping over the curve of her spine as she reaches back, flicking past the sheepish, exaggerated twitch of her lips, as if taking notes, as if he were doing basic arithmetic in his mind. Were she only to actually know who he is... the idea might occur to her that he actually might be doing so literally.

"Do you really think that?" Ryouhara asks darkly.

She could have been gone already, had Seishirou arrived only a few hours later. In the end, he seems unimpressed with her gratitude. Unimpressed, and faintly curious.

In what world does Ayame consider him a savior?

Whom, in any world, has ever considered Ryouhara a savior?

There is little pause in his moves and actions as his glance returns to the bloodied martyr who was destroyed and confined for her strength. "All around the world, people confine others, as if somehow denying someone liberty will teach them to obey their way of life."

"A way of life that is often just as false as the way of the so called criminal."

"That form of justice.. is just foolishness." Seishirou steps aside, further into the cell and seeming as pure incidence to allow Ayame a free run from the cell. But little about Ryouhara is ever that simple. She might realize, even as she gauges him, he gauges her. Measuring first her ability, her caution, then her curiosity. "In the end, you're right. You understand it. Most people don't know what to do with someone whose spirit is not so easily contained."

"But I do."

His eye flicks over the exquisitely crafted steel collapsing staff.

The pretense is sliced through like rice paper.

"So... are you going to run?"

Reading most people isn't complex and the girl does it without even having to consciously think about it. A history of habitually taking apart devices, analyzing personalities and motivations in order to manipulate them to her own selfish ends is not lost simply by the lack of firm memories by which she can put all these things in context.

Seishirou. If she were to hear his name and were she in full possession of her faculties, she would remember that name dropped by the pesky little girl that got in the way of one of her own missions in her time working for Blackjack. A name. Nothing more. Spoken with a certain element of zealot-like reverence. But he offers no name and she doesn't ask, merely watches, eying the way her attempts to provoke reactions seem to not push any buttons yet.

He calls her on her expression of gratitude, correctly identifying it for the faux, disarming remark it was meant to be. Her silence is her answer. No, of course she doesn't believe that. These cells are hardly the fortress they were once. The water damage over the years has weakened the bricks, left them soft, mushy. A fighter calibur individual could probably simply chip away at the moldy stone and walk into freedom with ease. The bars, rusted, decaying, also didn't threaten to contain the girls there indefinitely. The night in the cell was for show - as Seishirou identified it - for pretense. It would take something far more secure than this to hold either girl.

He continues to speak and as he does, she begins to decide him to be not a threat. The 'standing down' in arms can be seen in the way she twirls that staff once, then, applying pressure at a point literally invisible near the middle of the weapon, causes the polearm to collapse with a soft exale of hydraulics being relaxed. She's free to go now, the way open, as he moves closer to Suzume.

A soft grunt escapes her lips, "Heh." Her head is bowed, her left hand sliding that smaller bar into a pouch affixed to one of her multiple belts. "Run? Should I?" She turns then, taking a lazy step toward the open door, hand coming up to rest on the frame, flakes of rust falling to the damp floor. She stares out into the dark atrium in which she fought hours ago, eyes narrowing on something small nearby. Another couple steps forward are taken as she crouches, lifting a shiny butterfly knife from off the ground. A quick flick and twitch of her wrist and it's tucked away once more in its sheath. "No where to run to." she comments, eyes straying across the dark chamber.

"You do, huh." Ayame turns around suddenly, focusing back on the young man directly. "Know what to do with such spirits, that is... If they're free, why not leave them be? Who says anyone needs to do anything with them? Do you try to control them some other way? Contain them for your own purposes? Who the hell are you anyway?" Her hands go to her hips, head canted to the side slightly, mouth curled into a faint smirk.

She uses an array of weapons, and she collects them, standing down from the almost undetectable readied posture she'd taken only a moment prior, the catch in her staff causing the entire thing to pneumatically compress. The engineer appears unsurprised, as if he expected it to have that capacity or at the least, something similar. The seams in the titanium can almost be mistake to be invisible, but it's craftsmanship Ryouhara can appreciate for himself.

But still. One didn't need to be an engineer or any kind of analyst at all to determine the molded, crumbling state of that prison. At this rate, even a normal criminal could escape these cells with time and a spoon. Any one of the three here could manage the affair in an hour. If not minutes. If not seconds. Still, the thought seems to draw some primitive form of melancholy from the engineer, something he is disinclined to express in any other way than a light, wondering touch of the prison's wilting walls. There was a time in which that this building was considered the inescapable prison. The walls that surrounded them now as sure as iron. Now, only the natural defenses of Alcatraz hold any sway over those who would escape.

The weakness of age doesn't seem to disturb the boy's reverence in the slightest.

Reason over brute force when art is involved.

The younger lady is young and cocksure as she speaks to Seishirou, and judging from her solid record, it is with good reason. Yet 'sense' is something that still clings to her mind, told therein in her realization that a boat is necessary to leave this island. A boat, or something else.

Though it takes him a moment, he does pause, allowing her to continue. She questions him--curiosity led out in long lines that furrow that brow of Ryouhara's momentarily. He needs not analyze her in the slightest to tell her place.

His expression softens to an all too casual one.

Still, he frowns faintly.

"So noisy..."

He steps from Ayame, turning away.

Thinking over an adequate response, he decides..

Only one response is appropriate.

"Control? You can't control something that is free."

It lease then the question of.. what Seishirou even thinks to do with those free men and women. Of that--"And... if there is no place to run, are you of a mind to call yourself the same?" A simple question. Does Ayame consider herself free? The doomed clan's scion is intrigued to hear the answer.

"..No point. No point in knowing my name. I am the free will of history..."

He faces Ayame, with her girlish way and smirk.

"I am Ryouhara. That is the only name of importance."

She adjusts constantly, in small, subtle ways, trying to feel out what might provoke a response that she intends, what might reveal an angle by which he might be manipulated or cajoled. It's almost subconscious, she does it practically automatically with any she deals with; never on the level, as if having worn so many masks as if to have lost who she really is. If she thought he would be susceptible to feminine wiles, she would be flirting with the mysterious stranger, just to make twist or bend the way she wanted.

But no such cues have prompted her to pursue that direction any further, increasing the distance with which she treats him. He remains an unknown, an enigma, and for that he needs to be treated with proper caution. Her weapons retrieved, she speaks to him about the things on her mind. Perhaps she doesn't even care what his replies are. She's still trying to identify him, understand him, categorize him. He complains about the noise and she learns something else - he isn't a fan of small talk.

Turning away, he answers over his shoulder, providing the only response that makes any sense. To restrict someone makes them no longer free; they have been changed from what they once were. The sparkle in her brown eyes reflects the amusement she has at his very astute declaration. "Of course," she replies back, mouth hinting at a smirk she keeps just barely in check.

But he turns it back on her and one thin, dark eyebrow raises slightly. "Always." Her hand, now emptied of her asortment of tools, comes up to tap at the side of her head. "It's a state of mind, not of body. She," she continues, nodding toward the unconscious girl who so startled the men within the SNF match hours prior, "was no less free when he threw her in here and locked the door." She grins a little, faint showing a glimpse of her white teeth.

He withholds his name, leaving the girl to frown just a little. "I can't decide if you're simply presumptuous or you like fabricating an aura of mystery about you. Maybe it deludes some, makes them impressed, but it doesn't mean anything to me." She shakes her head, waving her hand dismissively. "I'll call you Will. Will Ryouhara, Of History."

She folds her arms over her chest, turning to the side just enough to lean her right shoulder against the wall as she watches him, "So, you clearly have nothing to do with Howard's people... and you're not with the prison. All indications are that you're not here for me." She glances toward Suzume, "You must be here for her then. Well, you should know, she and I are teammates." She pushes off the wall in one smooth motion, only to turn around and lean against the opposite wall, placing her at the now opened gate.

"She and I are teammates. And she didn't mention anything about someone coming to pick her up." She frowns slightly, exhaling softly, "So you better not touch her until she's cognizant enough to say it's all right," she mutters, brushing her fingernails against her blouse idly.

"...Well, aren't you sassy," he observes.

Smile lines wrinkle the corners of formerly sharp eyes. They are old things, softened by age but no less present, as if smiling came as easily to him as breathing. It is a simple thing, but for those few moments, Seishirou seems very much so the begrudgingly acceptant older brother, taking Ayame's concocted name in stride. Shyly, as if caught saying something silly. His somewhat sheepish smile defines a radiance of self-consciousness.

Fabricated?

"Like I said. No point."

"Just remember the name I give," he begs simply.

"The rest.... whatever conveniences you."

His words are plain in that respect. He is not so unobservant to believe Ayame's mind is of the type that makes itself up so easily, and it shows in the curious way he watches Ayame. Why his eyes don't stray from her for very long. He 'reads' her movements. A lazy kind of anxiety, perhaps spurred on by an instinctively curious nature, shows in the shift of her body as she moves from one wall to the bars of the gate. His eyes flick across the way following her, his smile long since evaporated in the wind. She astutely guesses his 'purpose' here and, briefly, he gives a sidelong glance.

There is no sound of his own breath.

He steps forward.

"Hou.." he vocalizes softly, in faint humor.

"Let's assume that you're correct."

The rustle of his silk is barely audible as he steps towards Ayame, fabric winding through the air in a dark contrast to his movement: subtle, honest steps advancing on Ayame slowly. She denies him openly. And that alone seems to stir him.

"That I am here to do with her as I will. You change facades quickly. Someone who shows interest, then disinterest. Anxiety, then calm. Someone who acts the fool, but whose hand was ready to deploy that toy of hers at an instant. You're too advanced to panic in the face of an unknown factor. So .." He says no more. His meaning is clear. What Seishirou points out simply--she is probing. He knows it. And for all of it, she still has no idea what he is capable of in one moment. In the next moment.

The meaning of that smile.

When he draws close to her.

"I'm curious."

His eyes narrow, deadly calm suffusing the Ryouhara ninja. ".. As to what facade 'teammate' belongs to. Will it change in the next moment, or will it persist, preparing you to deal with the meaning of that devotion?"

He is uncompromisingly warm, standing this close.

"Chuu," Ryouhara names the specific virtue. "The loyalty of men to their brothers, and women to their sisters. How far will that extend for you, free one..?"

"Easy enough," Ayame replies, grinning faintly as he expresses that emphasis on remembering the name. "Sure thing." she finishes, her right hand waving dismissively. It's some name. To him it's everything. To her it's simply another fact tucked away. Nothing to concern herself with. Yet.

Her words seem to have provoked a change in direction, however. His attention was drifting elsewhere, for a moment, as if his business with her had concluded as suddenly as it had begun. Now, though, he steps closer. She doesn't blink. Doesn't flinch. Simply stares back at him, her eyes meeting his now. He decides to play her game for the moment, to pursue her declarations, to challenge their hypothetical conclusions.

But with his challenge comes the analysis of her own behavior. Astute, accurate analysis at that. It reveals the level of intelligence she's dealing with. The young man is no fool, though she expected that from the beginning. He draws nearer and she tenses, just slightly. She's not as good at this as she was when fully armed with over a decade of knowledge and experience. She's figuring these things out on the fly more now. Not so easy. "Are you," she asks back when he quietly declares he's courious.

It's when he's this close that she finally breaks eye contact, averting her gaze to the side, just slightly, keeping him well within her peripheral vision. He calls to question the validity of her so-called devotion to the young woman and Ayame's lips tighten just a little. He forces her to think. She rarely thinks about her connections to others. They exist, surely, but only so long as they are helpful to her. Usually. If this were Mao Shihong they were discussing, the matter of her loyalty would be less tenuous, most definitely not fleeting. But of Suzume, she has only begun to get to know this particular teammate. And while she certainly creeps her out less than that French assassin... well...

"You're trying to figure out if I'm just bluffing. If I don't really care, or if I don't care very much." she decides after a moment of silence, her eyes sliding back over to him. "Enough to get hurt over, at least." A smile creeps over her lips - one of confidence, of stubbornness pushed, her chin lifting in order to stare into his face as she stands up, no longer leaning against the wall.

"I have to wonder why you would ask - if you're just curious, or if you're trying to resolve this just by talking." Her eyes narrow, grin fading. "But why bother? You can handle yourself. But having to fight over this might be inconvenient for you." Her arms go to resting against her sides, left hand conveniently close to the pouch at her side. "You don't want to tell me what you want with her, do you. Is it because I would make a bigger deal out of this if you did? Or do you just like to keep others playing guessing games... I wonder..."

Shaking her head, Ayame hmphs, "Feels like we're at an impasse. I want to know why you're here for her - what you intend. You don't want to explain yourself though, or, rather, don't like being challenged like that. Used to others kowtowing to your whims a bit too much, perhaps?"

"Nice observation."

Close as he is now, the shinobi has only the faintest detections of scent--a dizzying mix of burnt steel and cinnamon. An engineer -- a shinobi of his class -- does not emit powerfully any scent indicator normally. It is the obvious result of strenuous efforts to remain downwind, to erase his scent, his visage, his sound. To become something that is truly nondescript. But this closely, the situation changes. The temperature of the situation rises.

And she can see just how much of a fabrication Seishirou is.

The truth of him..

"...I am." He agrees quietly. The words come easily to him, so easily that Ayame would be able to detect that they simply no longer matter. That Seishirou.. has already made some sort of decision inside his head. His hands are effectively invisible, shrouded as they are underneath the wash of white silk that sheathes him, obscures action, makes it difficult to tell just how equipped Seishirou is. He is still, his sharp eyes low, watching Ayame closely, less so the hand that strays close to her bag as her expressions.

"But you're wrong. On two counts."

He shifts, continuing to observe her reactions quietly. She could tell even at this point he still watches her, watches to verify every claim in the things that she doesn't say, things that she doesn't care about. "The first has to do with reasoning. A teammate is a resource. Everyone will naturally defend a resource--to a reasonable extent. I have better ways of measuring that, as cowardice does not produce notable strength."

As he said. She is too advanced.

"Simply. I am not determining her value to you."

Placidly, he looks over Ayame one last time. The room seems to boil, despite his obvious indifference. From his words and the fact that he reveals the charade, he has already made some decision in his mind.

"I'm determining your value to her."

Seishirou has been considering what importance eliminating Ayame right here and now would have for his group and their constituents. Would investing such effort be bothersome to him? Yes. But that is immaterial for people like him, when they want something.

"And. The second is.. I'm entirely too accustomed to people challenging me."

A heartbeat. His haori reacts violently, silk bucking and coming just shy of knotting as it thrashes. The world seems to warp around Ryouhara. The bars glow. The stones bake. But Seishirou--seems not to react in the slightest, taking another measured step towards Ayame. It is a suffocating heat. Just being close to Seishirou is enough to bake the brain inside the skull. Yes, the air thickens and warps--from water in pipes and condensed on walls flash evaporating into vapor, distorting his image. It's less like breathing and more like drowning as thick bales of oxygen boil.

The heat seems to focus itself on Ayame's /head/.

"This is my jutsu," he explains quietly. "Shinrou Kiritsu. With it, I can control the temperature of an environment exactly to my whim. This is my method for removing the ability of 'concentration' from a potential opponent. Those strong enough to withstand it are more concerned with drowning than with whatever they were going to pull from that pouch at their hip. As you are only now recovering from your battle, this may be enough by itself--this jutsu of mine can suffocate the weak into compliance. If not, I will resort to other methods.."

He is trying to force her back into unconsciousness, to take her out of the equation without even laying a hand on her..

That detachment from what he says and what he does is a warning to one who picks apart behaviors like an equation needing to be solved. He's speaking to pass the time not to convey, not to ask. To correct, for the sake of correcting, but seeming to care little if it sinks into the stubborn girl's head or not. No, something else entirely is intended for /that/.

It sets her off, one narrow eyebrow raising slightly, fingers tightening, body tensing. She can't really tell what he's carrying with him. A cursory glance might not reveal much, but she knows a thing or two about concealing weapons and equipment. It doesn't give her any reason to lower her guard whatsoever. There is a subtle shift as he points out her error in thought, her assumptions made on only partial data or incomplete analysis.

"Oh?" she asks back, her own tone just slightly detatched, as if buying time or stalling, trying to read his next move, brown eyes searching his every shift, every twitch of muscle or sway of cloth for clues. "Just 'a resource'?" Ayame echoes back, her bemused smile returning, "Your words. 's more to it than that though. But you know." Her expression is fleeting, her tone losing a hint of its edge.

The temperature is rising. It doesn't seem right. The damp cell was cool when she awoke. She wonders, for a moment, if she is coming down with a fever. But that doesn't seem right. There's more to it than that. And she can feel it. Certain things remain forgotten. But that sense - that resonance of greater energy at work tips her off. It's him, not her.

"Isn't that for her to decide?" Ayame shoots back, her tone darker now. "Or is that how you handle your chosen 'free' ones? Determining these things for them?" she snaps. "You carried yourself like a despot - and reacted as predicted to a challenge to your absolute power. You feel it is yours to decide something as fundamental as the value of another person for someone other than yourself." The corner of her mouth curls up, but there's nothing friendly about that smile now. She speaks as one who has had the darkest, most cynical of suspicions of another confirmed.

His haori thrashes, driven by his force of will, his power to literally control the temperature around them, as he takesa nother step forward. Ayame grits her teeth, a soft hiss escaping her lips. It's unmistakeable now. He's attacking. Just... not directly. Her cheeks flush; the ends of her bangs curling just a little, subjected to the unnatural heat.

Calmly he explains what she is going through. His mastery over that warmth. It is frightfully hard to concentrate. Thinking about this enigma is rather difficult to do when having to actively /focus/ on breathing. Her mouth opens, taking in more air, her hand slipping from her side to rise up to her neck, eyes widening just a little.

In the end, she's forced to move, crouching slightly, legs tensing, before she kicks back, landing outside of the cell, feet sliding over the damp stone for an inch before coming to a stop. A gasp is her next declaration, before a deep breath is taken. "Nice trick," she manages two breaths later, eyes focused on him, arm lowering from her neck once distance allows her to breath again, perspiration rolling down her cheeks. "But you shouldn't give away all your secrets like that. Might find someone using them back on you someday."

She stands up straight, arms resting at her sides. "But you are right." she allows after a moment. "I did just get kicked, punched, slashed, slammed, and hurled around by people three times my size. I'm not stupid. I can't stop you. That was never on the table. Maybe if I was at my peak," she muses, trying to extrapolate the challenge she would be facing given his quite evident chi mastery. "So if your intent is to take her, then it makes no difference what I do." Her tone is pragmatic, neither ashamed at this admission nor frustrated by it. It's a statement of fact, her mind having already calculated the variables in play and determined the only possible outcome.

"I could attack you to try and prove my hypothetical devotion to my teammate, but that wouldn't earn me anything but more injuries or worse... I suppose there could be some intangibles on the table... but I can't calculate the value of those without knowing what they really are." She shakes her head, keeping her distance for now. "I could state the obvious - that if you harm her, those who also consider her teammates besides just myself, will do something about it. But you already know that too." Ayame shrugs, her expression passive now, her bluffs called, her pragmatic survival instinct forcing a very real retreat.

Ryouhara frowns sharply when Ayame points out that there's more to it than what he has already ordained, what he has already exhaustively catalogued in that encyclopedic mind of his. His sleeves ruffle in a breeze that doesn't exist, the air only stirring at his whim and nothing more. It still thrashes in the still air. In that 'crushing heat' he levels on Ayame, it is significant. That white coat of his is reacting with the energy he uses to demonstrate 'his meaning' to Ayame's mind.

"No," he states, "there is nothing more to it than that," he insists.

Rejecting the idea of teammates--relations--as anything carrying meaning to him specifically out of hand, Ryouhara steps forward only shortly after Ayame weakens, driven out of the cell by his force of will made tangible. He only barely makes an attempt to follow the young woman as she explosively retreats. He smiles faintly. "An excellent facade," he acknowledges. It isn't every day that someone can compete with Seishirou on his level of mentality. It is an even rarer day when they can win. She found something that would gain a reaction from him--that is, the suggestion that he cannot have something. That shift occured beyond his notice--beneath his notice.

It is troubling.

"... Be honest with yourself. Is that a conclusion you really believe?"

Holding her at arm's length with the melting force of Shinrou Kiritsu, that causes his heels to steam lightly as he strides across the stones, he still analyzes.

"As immutable as fate, a person who decides has already made their decision. Do you really think you can hold me responsible for unveiling that which should already exist? That would be hypocrisy."

The mood of Seishirou seems to change tempestually. He shakes his head, and turns away from Ayame, striding across the cell space to the still unconscious Nakatani. Despite the suffocating heat that radiates from even the soles of his shoes, the heat that fills the cell has always had a clear demarcation line--that is, surrounding the woman, lest he fry her body like an egg. Eyes half-lid, his voice expressing distaste clear and truthfully. "If you bother to truly think me a despot... then do so fully. Do not pay me tribute with your retreat."

One dark brown eye flashes yellow as he shoots a heated glance over his shoulder, over the collar of his haori.

"It's disgusting."

The walls begin to crack across the cell, exhaling steam. "Someone who is truly free. Someone who truly values their friends, their family. They wouldn't care in the slightest if they died to protect that. If they died to protect their life's meaning. She is not your meaning." His head dips low, bangs sheathing his eyes from view as he kneels before Suzume, carefully parcelling out the kunoichi's injuries in his mind, an engineer above all else. It takes genuine effort for the shinobi to act in this way, forcing the heat back from the wall of the cell and directing it outward as he brushes stray black strands of hair from her face.

"That person.. understands the nature of strength is sacrifice. If you don't have it, don't bother threatening me with your ability or the abilities of any other."

Ryouhara's train of thought seems almost trivially simple now. That's why he explained to her the nature of Shinrou Kiritsu. Exactly what he was doing. And what he was going to do after if it didn't work. Think it ego? He wanted her to know. To know the penalty for betraying him. To see if her connection was strong enough to force her onward regardless. He seems almost incensed that Ayame didn't attack him regardless. The ground perceptibly shivers as Ryouhara's hand touches it.

"I have many secrets. Secrets which will never taste daylight."

He looks up. As suddenly as the storm began, it ends.

The heat drains from the cell.

Cowardice does not produce notable strength.

"..The strength of my ideal.. isn't one of them."

"No? Interesting." Her eyes flash cool, reading exactly what his tone seems to suggest. "But still you find people that will follow you, it seems." She shrugs, the gesture a half hearted one, sticking to the postion she landed when springing from the cell itself, but shifting into standing up straighter, a bit more relaxed now that there's distance between them. "Charisma works wonders. On some."

He comments on her facade and she doesn't react, as if too focused on continuing to understand this so very intriguing individual. It's how she deals with everyone, slipping from one demeanor to another, trying to find just the right issue to provoke a reaction. It's no wonder she gets along with so few - that so few can tolerate her company, rarely being treated like people by the strawberry-blonde but merely personalities she had yet to crack.

He starts walking toward her and she is once again stiffens. He has demonstrated, on a small level, the power he can control. But perhaps that hasn't satisfied him. Her eyes slip to the side briefly as she ruminates on options, calculating odds, possible choices should he pursue hostilities. But then he asks a question again and her brown eyes, so soft and warm, or so cold and unfeeling, depending on who she is trying to manipulate at the moment, snap back to him quickly.

"It isn't a conclusion," she decides, "but merely part of a slowly building case. What can I say - you piqued my interest. You're not like others. Still..." He stops, shaking his head, and turns away, and Ayame blinks. Her intent was to keep a certain minimum distance from him. But as he strides back toward Suzume, she walks forward too, a couple of steps, before coming to a stop. She can /see/ the control being demonstrated. The way the field of heat molds to his will; the way he keeps it from touching the unconscious young woman. The demonstration is impressive.

"Tribute? You won't get any such thing from me," she retorts, frowning now, her tone taking on a hint of irritation, her eyes meeting his glance as he looks toward her. But then she falls quiet. For he speaks of the truly free, and her expression melts into silent neutrality. The air around him bends, waves of heat rising, distorting even the dim light of the moon-lit cage. Moisture in the rock, residue of decades of rain, rises as steam and Ayame pauses, no longer stepping forward, not willing to walk into the oven.

"You're not looking for people that are free." she declares after a moment. "You're looking for deluded fools!" She practically spits the words, sounding disgusted. "People who think dying for something makes them noble... that have deluded themselves into thinking it makes a DIFFERENCE. What does it matter when you are dead? A lifeless carcass. Depending on the life you lived, some might mourn for a little while. Others might cheer. But in the end, that's all that's left. No legacy, no..." she scowls, tearing her vision to the side, "Nothing at all. Sacrifice your life for another, and all you managed to do was fail. To make the great transition from living, breathing human being to a lifeless corpse. Anyone who is impressed by that folly... well, congratulations."

She glares back at Seishirou, eyes darting over Suzume briefly, before shifting back to him. "What good are secrets to a man who will gladly die for another - taking those secrets with him. Your ideal? If it's so important, why sacrifice yourself for it? Of you just die, it ends with you anyway!" She sounds annoyed, irritated, as if the very idea of sacrifice is offensive to her. Foreign. Repulsive. "Sacrifice isn't strength. It's /weakness/. It's giving up, because you can't think of a better way to solve something. Because you're too WEAK to. If you're strong... if you really are powerful... you don't need to throw your life away for your ideal." she growls, right hand raised, clenched at her side. "You simply make it happen because you are that unyielding..."

She glances toward Suzume again before lowering her eyes to the ground, "Perhaps I didn't know her as well as I thought. To think that you number her among those who would throw it all away - their existence, their life, their one chance to matter... for another." She hmphs, her hand unclenching, the girl folding her arms, her eyes coming to rest somewhere to the side, staring into the darkness of that hall of cages.

Ryouhara is mostly silent for quite some time. After all, he has already stated he cares little for Ayame's outlook, and has found her lack of resistance distasteful. It seems nothing to nothing, he will simply continue his careful analysis of the unconscious form before him.

But it would seem that something Ayame says..

.. catches his interest.

"You've got a lot to learn," Seishirou concludes.

There are levels to observance. Ryouhara checks the kunoichi over thuroughly. She, like Ayame, requires some level of medical attendance, but he'd have to actually break Ayame before she agreed to go along with him. That's not his role. However, he doesn't stop at that. There are certain measures the ninja can take--and even Ayame--to assure that they are not tampered with in the event of loss of consciousness. Traps that can be placed on the body and in the cell. These he can dismantle easily, if he can locate them.

"If you speak truth of your heart," and her conviction betrays her in that respect, "...your idea is interesting. But it means nothing, if you don't try it on for size. Unyielding is a word for people who bargain their life without fear. Don't dirty it with your childish tongue." Even the unyielding sacrifice for that strength.

"For someone who wants to succeed without sacrifice, you are doing a terrible job so far. Will you have your teammates sacrifice for you, then? Have they already?" Assuming there are ones she does care about at all. "I will not be dissuaded nor defeated by just more pointless words, you know."

With a gentle hand belying the rough intensity of his nature, he seems to have made his decision, scooping up the lighter frame of the woman into his care with a slight heft and cradling her head at his shoulder. He does so confidently, assuring for her safety, but offering little tenderness beyond that. Holding her in both arms, he turns, the abruptness of movement shifting fabrics on the wind in dual time. Though both his hands are occupied, it would be folly to consider him at all burdened by the weight of his colleague.

"Because.. you have it backwards." Though he has emphatically stated otherwise on many an occaision, there is a certain conviction in his eyes.

"The cost is mine to pay. No one else's."

He blinks, gathering chi to his eyes to vaporize the ninkou lenses that keep his eyes that dark, inocuous shade of brown, to reveal a dusky yellow iris underneath those contacts.

They've been bleached by a massive explosion of chi.

"I know that I am doomed. And that no one will mourn me."

He moves at once, and it's as if the wind carries him, the light weight of Suzume in his arms bearing him little impediment as he simply exceeds sight, his body flickering as he leaves the cell, deciding simply to let the ninkou he shattered inside the cell lock sit until he could move someone of more importance to a secured location. By the time he slows to a true walking pace, he has already passed Ayame, his footsteps now silenced as he walks away.

He walks as if he has always walked that way.

"That is what it means to be truly free."

It seems at first that he's just ignoring her. That bothers her a little. She's used to getting under the skin of others; holding their rapt attention, drawing them in and leaving them little time or attention to focus on anything but her words chosen for their ability to prick and prod. That she seems to get no reaction at all at first gnaws on her. Just a little.

But at last he pauses. Not in his study of Suzume. That seems to continue unabated. But he pauses in his complete indifference to anything Ayame had to say. She gets a reaction and thus falls quiet, as if a spoiled child having finally got what they wanted after complaining long and hard. She's glaring at him. Incensed a little, his ideas offensive to her on some level. That he would preach to her - the fool that would throw his life down for his ideals - unacceptable.

He calls her childish and Ayame scowls. But it's the words that come later that cut deep. Deep enough that her mouth opens, a soft exhale escaping. What of her teammates. What of /their/ sacrifice for her? She tears her gaze away, looking deep within the hall of cages. It isn't darkness she sees but an alleyway. Trapped by a living monster, a metal dart protruding from his eye. She remembers Saint, saving her own eye from certain destruction. And then Shihong, saving them both from a bitter fate.

"I... I never asked them to," she utters, her voice strangely pained. To think of what the Chinese woman did for her - if she only knew what she /would/ come to do for her in the days ahead, the price she would pay... She respects the woman she calls Mao. And yet she did the very thing she herself would not do - take so much pain for another. Her eyes flit back and forth before she whips her attention back to the Ryouhara just as he scoops Suzume into his arms, her mouth curling into a faint frown.

He blinks and in that moment his eyes change, revealing the yellow irises that look back at her now. It disarms her briefly as Ayame stands up straighter, a quiet gasp as he moves forward then beyond. She has to whip around to face his departing form as he carries her supposed teammate away. The girl grits her teeth. She pictures for a moment Shihong in the alley, taking a stand against the blood-frenzied beast, and her breath catches in her throat.

It's stupid. To do something like that. It makes no sense. It's guarenteed loss for uncertain gains. It could be fatal. It could bring about an unnecessary demise and cut short a life that held so much more potential than that. She swallows. She glares. Unusually angry, surprisingly frustrated, she starts to stride after him. Her steps come slowly at first. "This is stupid." she whispers to herself by her third step. "Insane." Sometimes you have to be insane.

Her pace quickens. He covered so much ground, carrying the woman as if she weighed nothing. She has to close the gap. Is this how Shihong felt when she stepped into the path of the train? Ayame wonders as she takes another step. Did she consider the irrational sacrifice she was making?!

"You can't just take her away." she declares, this time with conviction in her voice. "She's /my/ teammate!" The sound of the hydraulic hiss of her signiture staff re-extending to its full six foot length serves as the prelude to her attempting to put a stop to the walk of a doomed man. It comes as a sweep - aiming for shins - as the girl spins the long weapon low, sparks igniting in the dark hall as the end of it scrapes over a dry patch of stone, her whole body turning with the motion so that she can bring it to back to bear quickly, leaving almost no opening if possible. "How can being free include resigning yourself to help others?!" she exclaims, defying his explanation. "Freedom is having no ties. No obligations. No one to slow you down!!"

COMBATSYS: Seishirou has started a fight here.

[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  <
Seishirou        0/-------/-------|

COMBATSYS: Ayame has joined the fight here.

[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  //////////////////////////////]
Ayame            0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0        Seishirou
COMBATSYS: Seishirou blocks Ayame's Medium Strike.

Hearing gentle footfalls minding after him as he moves, he doesn't need to face her to tell her mind at this point. She doesn't mean to follow him home, obviously. That in itself is interest to Ryouhara's discernment. After all, isn't someone who speaks with such conviction someone who would not be swayed by a word or two?

Noblest of men are the craven who find a voice.

Golden eyes narrow sharply as Ryouhara glances to a side, seeming briefly a shade of annoyed with the prospect of love and courtesy. Given not even a taste of that chill expression, the gesture would seem purely ornamental, until a sharper intellect would shed light to the reasoning: for perhaps once, she may have his ear.

The favor of his glance itself is fine and cold, like a razor.

But soft lips move in softer voce.

"The greatest expression of a spirit that is free is in what they choose to sacrifice for themselves."

From there, one can see clearly the print of the Ryouhara clan--that interminable seal--printed cleanly across the back of his silken jacket. The meaning of that seal has varied from one clan leader to another over the generations of the lineage. To Ikou, it meant hope. To Hiretsu, it meant perseverance. To Suiin, it meant family. To Arinori, legacy. To Seishirou--it means...

It means...

Come at him with meaning, and he is obliged to respond.

After all. This is all for the proof of legitimacy.

To determine the worth of Ayame to her teammate.

Regardless, his first priority is the charge and responsibility of the woman he carries--her weight shifts imperceptibly in his care. The dark cradle he measures out for this of his is threatened and so it sways gently away from Ayame, fluid. He knows if her meaning is pure, she will not attack him in a fashion that jeopardizes her comrade.

But that assurance does not hold meter with him.

Vertiginous is his movement--the silks of his and her's thrown into a whirl. With care, he raises a foot against Ayame's six foot length of metal as she brings it down against him, and a bell tolls as he catches the blow with comensurate force from the steel huard protecting his instep, and undoubtedly other areas of his leg beneath the white leg bindings he wears.

It's not that easy, for someone like Ayame.

"So, if they have already sacrificed for you--"

He rolls the staff against his step--deriding the force used.

"--they pay your cost for you--"

He leans into his turn, his other sole leaving the ground.

"While you whine, describing selfishness as freedom!!"

His other instep guard arcs up in a flashing crescent, Ryouhara holds fast the woman to him, accelerating with broad faced steel at point. To wit, the focus of that gold eye is Ayame's skull.

He accelerates yet still, and the silken lotus blooms.

COMBATSYS: Ayame blocks Seishirou's Light Kick.

[  \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  ///////////////////////////// ]
Ayame            0/-------/------=|=------\-------\0        Seishirou

The ring of metal echoes along the hall, warning of her of the guard present on his shin that prevented the strike from connecting as cleanly as she would have liked. However, her motions are fluid and her control over that long weapon so smooth that it rivals the grace of a talented dancer. He controls the staff for a moment; the polearm victim to its momentum as he drives it with the way he moves his foot. Such simple yet effective defense does not go missed by the teenaged weapon user, and she is able to read the momentum of his response readily.

In the shadow of the poorly lit hallway, the staff seems almost black - occasionally lit by shafts of infrequent moonlight, glinting in the darkness. Its motion is as if alive, an extention of herself, as she corrects her own footing. What was aggressive becomes defensive, the weapon whipping up so fast the air around her gives way audibly, snapping into position just in time to brace. The sole of her shoe slams against stone just before metallic vibrations ring out again, his leg stopped by the upper end of the weapon, propped as it is by her arm as she struggles against the force the Ryouhara brings to bear.

The strawberry-blonde grits her teeth, arm trembling, before she skips back a step, sweeping the weapon out in front of her as she goes as if to defy any attempt to pursue her before her once again touch the ground, claiming traction after a short slide. The vibrations in the staff diminish rapidly as from behind it a pair of brown eyes glare back at Seishirou with intensity.

"Don't talk about them. You don't KNOW them," she snaps back. If only she knew. "You have no right!" Her right hand releases the weapon, leaving it to twirl one time around, deftly held by her left as she clenches a fist. Shaking her head, she starts to twirl the staff at her side, stiring up a whirlwind of aged dust in the process.

She searches him. Holding Suzume as he is, the areas of opportune striking are reduced. But there's no where Ayame can't target with her staff if she has the mind to do so. "If someone pays-... if someone sacrifices for me, it's not my problem." Her expression hardens, her words a forced whisper, spoken for herself perhaps. "That's what lets me be free. I don't have to repay anything. I never asked for anything anyway... I just take it. No one. Nothing. Controls. Me!" She has to convince someone of this. Maybe she should start with herself.

"Don't talk down to me!" Her foot slams down by the time the words escape her lips, already darting forward again. The clearance is limited, the ceiling, in shambles, giving her precious little space in which to move. But she leaps all the same, pushing one end of her staff into the ground, using it as a vault as she slips up into the air, pressing herself up against the ceiling as she seeks to slide right in over Seishirou, drawing her weapon up after her, her right foot snapping down, aiming to drive her toe into the back of his skull where his head meets his neck.

The entire sequence aims to place her behind him, back down on her feet, facing him, her beloved polearm between her and the Ryouhara heir.

COMBATSYS: Seishirou dodges Ayame's Light Kick.

[  \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  ///////////////////////////// ]
Ayame            0/-------/------=|=------\-------\0        Seishirou

Musashi referred to it as the grip of four hands.

While holding the unconscious kunoichi to him, Seishirou has comparitively little use of his hands--which is potentially a crippling factor in consideration of his ninjutsu. While Nakatani is in relatively little danger with moves of his caliber, keeping his eyes on Ayame is largely the key to that. Contributory to that is the other factor; he's currently holding Ayame's teammate. And if Ayame wants her back in one piece, she won't be too enthused to cut loose, even if she has the full usage of her methods against him.

Thus, the grip of four hands.

The acceleration of the lotus whirl is sealed by Ayame's planted twilight stave, his leg rocking the steel quickly to a pained grit of the teeth by Ryouhara. He doesn't overextend himself--his leg snaps back quickly. Commitment drawn, the motion arrests his momentum and leaving only inertia to rustle his cloak of white, the boy landing hard on the failing masonry, absorbing shock into his spine.

"Che."

Her head barely dips in his care.

"I know enough." He shifts back and away from the whirl of her staff, a brutal dance as idle calculations occupy the shinobi's mind. Because of the angles of attack here, the most likely attack vectors.. "You take what you want, and give only what you desire in return..." his ear is sharp enough to pluck the whisper meant for her from the rush of wind. "Someone like that toying with words like despot...hmph."

"...do you even know who you are anymore?"

The reason why Ryouhara is unfelled is this: You can't talk to someone who doesn't exist. To believe a lie, belief is required. But someone like Ryouhara has no belief. He knows. For someone who lives lies and breathes night, that is all that is necessary for his meaning to aspire in this age.

She moves like a dancer, and Seishirou moves as if stepping on the wind. She flips over him, and he moves back. Though in most situations, he had a chance against her high flying kick, this situation is a little more difficult. But.. he still has an advantage.

Not all of his ninjutsu have gestural components.

Enzantou, the kodachi sheathed at the back of his hip unseals. A glowing kanji crackles on the stacked guard of that blade, a fluid seal visible around it.

KATON: Kagensana - Asura.

Then, a curtain of black fire--though hot, oddly more solid than searing--blocks Ayame's boot in a blast of heat and force. A glowing network in the pattern of that seal knits the wave together, a cursive made of light knitting the fire into solidarity. The fire takes shape quickly--first of ancient Japanese armor, then a grinning creature inside it. A hooked nose and rictus grin can be seen in the molten entity. A specialized matrix made to guard Ryouhara's interests. A warrior forged of ideals. In the shape of tengu.

Seishirou doesn't even move.

"It's not gonna be that easy," the boy murmurs darkly.

"If your freedom is true to you..."

Standing on geta made of ash, the 'creature' guards his back. A katana of pure heat and light reveals itself from a sheathe of fire at the tengu's hip. Ayame lands. The yamabushi leans forward, hot embers embers curling from its smouldering form.

"...Prove it."

And then the creature surges forward.

It flicks out its blade, wicked edge flashing out to lay Ayame open.

It is not of steel. But that edge will cut just as surely.

Judgment.

COMBATSYS: Ayame reflects Katon - Kagensana EX from Seishirou with Midsummer Fantasy.

[   \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  ///////////////////////////// ]
Ayame            0/-------/------=|=------\-------\0        Seishirou

COMBATSYS: Ayame has left the fight here.

[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  <
Seishirou        0/-------/------=|

COMBATSYS: Seishirou has ended the fight here.


Her foot slips through the air, only to collide against a surface as transient as spark itself. That she struck neither air nor the back of his head is clear, but it takes landing and whirling back around, a swish of long hair and skirt, to figure out what it was. She touched fire, she realizes, one eye narrowing. She should've known. The heat he made manifest in the prison cell... it seems to be his native element.

Sharp eyes can see the matrixed network, the pattern that runs throughout it. It is no oridinary chi manifestation - the usual shapeless flame, free flowing water, or crackling electricity. It's fire but controlled, a paradox before her very eyes. But what started as a defensive curtain becomes another foe in the same amount of time it takes her to identify it.

It takes her even a split second longer to follow his question: who is she? But for the proximity to such intense heat, her cheeks might have paled. She doesn't know. She can't remember. She has but bits and clues, pieces gleaned from her investigation but missing the whole. Like assembling a puzzle without knowing the final image ahead of time, the task has been tedious. She has discovered that she was never a decent person, however. That anyone has sacrificed for her at all speaks to a strange human quality to overlook the simple question of merit. The simple fact is that she /hasn't/ earned that help. Of that she's certain. "I don't pretend to be something that I'm not." she replies, her tone level, her focus on his energy. "I know my nature. It is enough!"

A tengu given form emerges from the swath of fire. The sight of it almost catches her off guard. She doesn't remember seeing anything like it before. A long nosed visage looks back at her. But the girl has one thing working for her, even in this situation: her ability to dissect nearly any attack even as it's being thrown her way. A quick, calculating mind and a prodigy's eye for quick evaluations ends up saving her from the flame-bladed slash meant to cut sharply into her flesh.

The blade crashes against a rose colored barrier; a hemisphere in shape, made manifest a few inches in front of her forward facing right palm. Its surface is covered with modern runes, carved in dark crimson. Equations, mathmatical in nature. Vectors, angles, form the patterned border, a visible display of her constantly calculating mind. Its strength is sufficient to hold for a moment.

Knowledge.

It's evidenced, that strain on her part to keep the chi in place, fighting against that sharp edge. A drop of perspiration rolls down her cheek, brown eyes focusing as the tip of the edge starts to part through the translucent barrier. "I may not be able to stop you..." Her math tells her that it's impossible. But is everything in life that certain? Or can numbers lie? "But I won't be so easily dismissed!"

With the exclaim comes a surge of strength, her right hand pressing forward, the barrier holding the tengu at bay exploding outward at last into a concave shape, exploding into the very flame entity itself, taking with it a portion of its energy as it burts back toward the Ryouhara's back. The almost pink colored energy falls apart early, leaving drifting flakes of energy in its passing. But it might be enough to push a portion of that fire back into its master after all.

COMBATSYS: Seishirou blocks Ayame's Reflected Katon - Kagensana EX.

[   \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  ///////////////////////////   ]
Ayame            0/-------/-----==|=------\-------\0        Seishirou

A rictus grin seems not to shift in the slightest when its steaming blade clashes against the rose shield of equation and calculi interjecting the two fighters. With each side deploying their own energy defenses in the struggle, the calculations are relatively simple at that point. It primarily concerns force from that point onward. The tengu leans against the barrier, throwing weight composed purely of momentum and will against the barrier, its blade shivering against the shield that suddenly holds it firm. Though the creation seems real, it is still a thing forged of dreams; it cannot see the matrices and numerals scrawled on the surface of the barrier; it cannot comprehend what they mean, not truly.

But the mind of the last of the genius clan Ryouhara can, easily.

Glancing over a shoulder, the young man watches, narrow eyes sharp and cold despite the dance of light that brings the dull gold out in his eyes. The blade of the tengu begins to pierce through.

"You believe it is enough. Human beings define their reality based on what they believe."

The shield breaks through the tengu, warping its matrix beyond the point of viability. While the kahyou created by Kagensana would retain shape against even the most resilent guard, being struck directly is a different story, especially in this manner. With the shield's blast outward, the tengu is dissolved into a wave of force and fire careening towards the young shinobi.

"As always.."

He moves as if he is accustomed to flying.

He lands not away from the wave of fire but, whirling, directly against it. Heat and light burns the soles of his feet and rips through his leggings, but he twists against it, quashing the energy wave flat into the earth, enduring slices that even claim through to his satchel, spilling iron balls on the ground. --No, that's not right. In the rolling battalion, the shinobi twirls towards Ayame, his feet dragging long spirals against the earth, glowing red.

"We continue to strive, to /improve/--"

They're not simply loose ingots.

"All in the same, it's only a child's game unless--"

When did he get that close?

His leg whips out to one side and up, holding his charge tight to him lest her silks be forfeit to his heat and fire. Ninkou... chikuzou--

"--we PROVE IT!" he repeats, his voice dripping savage vehemence.

ZAN.

He carries the apex of the fire thrown at him and stokes it with force of his own. After all, the matrix that was disrupted, no matter how catastrophically so, is still his own to control. And now, the shinobi makes use of one of a certain NESTS experiment's favorites. Sending his leg high into the air from a standing position accompanied by an arcing wave of fire, if Ayame doesn't move he will rocket the blade across her. But his boot is the least of her worries. His leg will never touch her.

But she will be cut open by his attack nonetheless.

The fire drains away from the molten hot iron--now smelted into steel alloy--blade as it stands in the open air. Forged in an instant, the steel arc will drive into the ground rapidly cooling, searing itself into the ground to root there. Using what was less an attack and more a Ryouhara forging technique, Seishirou aimed in that moment to cut Ayame open by melting ingots into a monument blade. If that move finds an opening on her, her blood will drain across the rippled steel, pooling across the spine and cooling it rapidly, forming a tell-tale hamon line to contrast the already razor-sharpened edge.

COMBATSYS: Ayame interrupts Calculated Tactics from Seishirou with Harvest's Reaper.

[       \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  ////////////////////          ]
Ayame            0/-------/-======|=====--\-------\0        Seishirou

She sends a portion of that fire back to its maker, drifting flakes of rose colored energy lingering as the flame rushes on. But the man will not be defeated by his own will made into force. It works for Ayame. It buys her a split second to think. To put that dangerous, calculating mind to use. He pushes her thinking to its limits, his every move a whirlwind of activity, bringing plans to fruition, creating multiple vectors by which he can attack. And she has to account for each and every one of them...

The dark hall is alive with fire and chi, the sound of bearings rolling out onto the ground. An accident? Or another plan of attack that she needs to factor in? Her right hand snaps out, fingers extended, before she draws it back. Those lingering flakes of chi whip back in around her, draw by unseen currents of her own remarkable chi precision. The whirlwind ends with the chi infusing her staff, changing from rose colored to the shade of newly shed blood, churning as if liquid, but flaring at the ends of the weapon as if fire. Quickly the girl spins the staff into a copter blade of titanium and chi at her left side, leaning back slightly, tensing, bracing, readying herself.

She can hear him easily over the commotion at her side, his words spoken clearly, no louder than they need to be at first. "Reality doesn't get defined. It simply is," she replies, her hair whipped up by the embers of her burning, crimson chi. The flames at the tips of that violently spinning staff begin to blur, stretching out, leaving a trail, taking on the form of scythe blades formed of energy.

"No one's definition matters but the one, single truth. All we can do is try to get as close to it as possible and not fall by the wayside along the way..." He moves so fast, even carrying Suzume, it barely seems to slow him down. He moves toward her, but so too does the cacophony of tumbling metal. She tries to guess his next move - like a chess player hoping to see twelve rounds ahead, casting permutations and predictions... Divining the future - it's not just for seers.

"We have to improve," she hisses, whipping her weapon even faster, to the point that it becomes almost a crimson discus of light. "Or the world will eat us alive. That's how it works." He hugs Suzume to him and kicks up, his foot bringing with it the forger's fire in a wide swath of blistering heat.

"Doesn't mean it isn't a game though... most people just can't stomach the rules... too bloody for them, too harsh!" At last she figures it out. He's /making/ a weapon. She can grab hold of nearly any object and go toe to toe with many of the best weapon users in the world. But before her eyes, he literally forges a blade from that iron. She can see it a second before it manifests, the form that the iron will take. She can counter it if she's fast enough. She needn't bleed.

Her left knee bends, the girl preparing to preempt the strike. Preparing to tear into Seishirou with all that amassed energy and velocity. About to lunge, intending to disrupt the formation of the blade just in time, she stops herself at the last second. Suzume! She has to correct for the young woman he carries or she'll cut into her as well!

The adjustment to her attack vector to avoid harming the other girl comes in an instant, but it comes with a price. The teenaged menace tears to Seishirou's side, unaware of the motions of that blade in its final, formitive moments. It's her staff that she whips down, going for the back of his ankle with the next spin of her staff, having noticed the armor protecting the front of his shins. The intent is to slow him down a notch - to menace his balance, to threaten his super human speed.

That only serves as the opening, however, as Ayame skips into a 180 degree spin, such that she's facing Seishirou's back again, so careful of the cargo he refuses to release. The blur of her staff moves from down to high, attempting to carve along his back in a verticle line, attempting to cut through that seal with the blade of chi extended out behind the end of her staff. The momentum carries her up into the air as she hefts the staff up over her head, holding it with both hands like an executioner positioning an axe.

She drops it swiftly, moving the weapon in for one final, crushing, sharp blow toward the Ryouhara's upper back, the impact accompanied by a shower of crimson sparks that rain down against the hallway's stone floor. The entire combination is meant to destroy his balance, to force his fall, to force him to release Suzume. Of course - he has proven to be a remarkably difficult man to force.

The featherweight bounces back off the point of impact, landing in a crouch behind Seishirou, right hand planted against the floor. Her staff glimmers at her left side, held by one hand at an angle. The lingering energy that remains cools, collecting toward the bottom like a fluid that begins to drip from off the end of the staff; the drops vanishing before they reach the ground.

A soft cry escapes her lips as she becomes aware of something, and her right hand draws up to press against her side. A grevious slash through her blouse and the flesh beneath bleeds, dripping to the stone. Unlike her fading chi, this blood is quite real. Gritting her teeth, she glares toward the cooling steel, at her blood visible on its surface. Biting back the burning pain in her wounded side, trying to ignore the blood seeping through her fingers. This was the price of her hesitation. The cost of worrying about another. Even for a fraction. She's not sure she likes that tradeoff.

"But not you. No... you don't mind the bloodiness of the game. It's not too harsh for you. You just don't like the board. That's why you speak of defining things. You want to redefine the playing field." The derision in her voice is gone, her tone a pained neutral, struggling against the odds her mind tell her she should run from. The last of her staff's energy fades, the crimson hued shadows fading with it, smoke rising up from either end.

She was adapting to his technique slowly.

It was, in a fashion, expected. Most men and women fight like they talk, and Ayame was little different--a domineering intellect behind a veil of multiple facades, each carefully chosen to each person, to each situation, a shifting and adapting thing. To comprehend it is like grasping an eel; a thing every bit as difficult as it implies.

There are certain of us up to the challenge.

"Exactly that," Ryouhara clips, his voice a low hum and scarcely more.

"The reality of the present is an immutable crystal..."

His leg curls against Suzume, her yielding form supported at his knee for only an instant, his momentum dying off. He turns a shoulder; the fireproof Byakuren Hagoromo is more than enough proof from the pelting slag of cast off iron, gobs of molten metal turned away from his white silks as if they were made of angel's hair as opposed to earthly materials. After all. A rat of the forge such as him would have little less than absolute proof against the fires of his own creation.

The blade arcs into the air, glinting with finish even as Ayame redirects her aim around it, to avoid endangering the woman he took as his own. Dull gold eyes flit quickly. She is fast. Isn't she? He can cut her in half like a guillotine if she comes directly to him, if he is fast enough. IF she is is not fast enough. A question of speed then--

"But..."

His blade finds purchase in her as a result, her blood the price Ryouhara takes for her concern. His dull golden eyes lazily track the young one as she flicks around him, his foot dropping, but before it even falls to the earth beneath it, she is already behind him, her staff shaving the ground as it slaps solidly into his achilles tendon, causing the shinobi's eyes to widen--a centimeter or two tells tales of wonders. It would not be enough on its own, he could twist, redirect using his other leg. But that wasn't it, hardly. As he goes down, Ayame's attacks slice his haori open from collar to tail, his back laid open like a fish, angry steam boiling from the wound as if a crevasse. Struck solidly, his blood sprays Alcatraz' lonely floor. He falls. It would seem... for an instant.. the shinobi has no option.

.....Satisfying.

One cradling arm slides from underneath Suzume's knees.

Imbued senbon pierce the rocks above at 28 angles.

Glints of wire barely visible to the eye shine as weight is transferred to each of those 28 angles in sequence.

The boy's hair shrouds his eyes, a dour, empty expression vividly defining his face. No smug twist of the lip, no heat in his cheek. No countenance at all. He suspends freely in the air at an almost impossible physics-defiyng angle, toppled by Ayame's attack but yet not hitting ground, for the web of lines released from his sleeve and held in one hand.

His other occupies itself with the kunoichi in his care, suspended just at the waist.

Though strands of it stray here and there, her hair never touches the earth.

Not as long as Ryouhara means what he says.

"... We seek to prove the things that we believe in every day. To make our truth... something real."

He doesn't look up.

"Is your truth... 'real'?"

She's currently behind him, her weapon poised and at the ready, and he would be lucky to get his feet underneath him in time as long as he carried Suzume with him. It was his own sacrifice. But... he is more accustomed to this thing than Ayame is, the concept of others a special virginity Ayame had not tasted.

He doesn't look up. He doesn't move.

His 'seal' is cut in half at his back, replaced by blood. Blood that trickles to the ground and into grooves set there in the stone, from the sheer speed of the passage of two fighters. Into a circle scorched into the ground. A circle that glows. A pattern awakens within it. That seal has not been cut. Ryouhara did more than release those iron balls in that swift rotating movement only moments prior. As if God's Judgment itself, it is centered dead around's Ayame crouching form. The heat, the force in it is tangible, a leashed tiger. It glows, angry.

She could try and outspeed his release mnemonic.

To attack him again while he is assumedly weak.

But would whatever that plan is be enough?

The shinobi gently lays Nakatani against the stone, now warm with his heat and his blood.

He's disturbed her rest enough..

"Reality itself changes if you believe in a truth hard enough. If you sacrifice enough," Ryouhara mentions simply, his arm twists against the cables, forcing his body to a stand. "But the burden of proof of change will always be ours." He addresses his blood and pain only with the faintest of displeased expressions.

He's seen exactly what he desires.

"Do you find that strange?"

COMBATSYS: Seishirou calculates his next move.

[       \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  ////////////////////          ]
Ayame            0/-------/--=====|=====--\-------\0        Seishirou

From the moment this exchange started, she hadn't stopped moving until right now. Now she's paid the price of blood to this little get together and she's forced to really weigh her committment level. She never takes her eyes off the Ryouhara. She tried to drop him, to force him to fall, to release the young woman and put his hands to use at last. Not that she wants /him/ to start using his hands against her. She isn't looking for greater challenge here. She's got enough of that out of him already.

But if he puts Suzume down, /she/ can go all out. She can set aside those pesky concerns or reservations, those last second corrections necessary to keep from tearing into the other girl with her array of weapons, bladed or otherwise. But the moment she lays eyes on him, it isn't a fallen man but one who, in the fleeting instants before he would have crashed to the floor, managed to spare himself that ignoble landing. She makes out the wires in the flickering glow of crimson as her staff dims.

The sight is breathtaking - the careful way he keeps even Suzume's hair from touching the dusty stone floor as the two levitate mere feet off the ground. Were she not bleeding, and were they not deep within a retired prison, it might even pass as some type of edgy performance art. The sight of it makes her pause, eyes closing in one slow blink before opening to gaze upon the embers left by the forge of his will.

Her eyes snap back to him as he speaks up. No time for talk, she's going to strike! But right before she moves, that circle flares to life, with her at the focus of it. Freezing, her eyes trace over the scorched seal before glancing back to him. This... just got even more interesting. Can she unravel it fast enough? Could she span the distance and strike before he can release that energy? The smirk that slowly spans her narrow lips conveys that she realizes just how trapped she is; how swiftly he concealed the making of this setup in his previous assault. Clever - of all the vectors she had considered, this was not one of them.

"It's as real as it can be," she answers back. There is time for talking after all. Time to plan. "Built upon my experiences just as it goes for everyone else-" She hesitates, her voice catching, her reply leading her to actuallly regard something he said earlier with newfound context. "That's why you have to prove it... and you want others to prove their reality... That's the only way to know the truth... the only way to find it. It can't be claimed by fiat; it can only be arrived at via method... Heh." She shakes her head, eyes blinking closed as she weighs her next move. She accused him of wanting to redefine the playing field and, well, damnit, he went and did just that.

"Now that I see it, I don't find it so strange. In finding that truth, you make yourself free... in one sense." She's quiet a moment, eyes opening again, studying the seal, studying the Ryouhara scion. "But try this out for size. Even if you do study this truth with such intensity... even if you do manage to decipher it and ascertain every facet of it, in the end it won't matter." She shakes her head, her left hand reaching over to her right arm to brush idly at the black and red cloth that covers the length of that arm softly.

"There will always be others that, while living on in their ignorance to this truth... who don't even think about it... who don't even /care/ about it..." Her eyes twitch slightly, her left hand adjusting its grip on her staff, swallowing. She's going to brave it. He should be able to tell. Cornered, but not defeated, trapped, but not having despaired, she's going to see if she can make it past his seal. That's all there is to it, consequences be damned.

"And yet, even though they won't know what you know, they'll still be more powerful, more wealthy, more famous. They're playing a different game than you, perhaps, but in this world, their game is the one that matters. Your efforts..." She springs out of her crouch into a direct dash toward Seishirou, willing to put her speed to the test, willing to try against the odds. This time.

There is no sign of chi, no evidence of what she's trying to do. Only her staff tightly gripped by one hand, her right hand remaining empty and clenched. "...will mean..." She sweeps in, stepping into a spin to the left from a few yards out. She's going to bring her staff around to bear, going to have it lead the way, have it be her defense and her offense, just like she always has. "Nothing."

But as she completes the turn, her staff is gone, replaced with that half-foot long tube that it collapses into as Ayame's left hand will fly by harmlessly. Attempts to counter that staff that is no longer there will prove fruitless. Her right arm is where the danger is as she steps in closer, coming out of that spin, and slams her right hand forward. "Does that seem right to you!?" The sound of metal sliding against metal is the clue of a weapon hidden beneath that arm-concealing cloth. From the folds of the armwrap a thin, two foot long sword shoots out. A hidden blade. One she rarely falls back upon, but there all the time just in case. The hall is aglow with a flash of white as the narrow, sharp tipped blade becomes charged with chi that dances like electricity across its surface.

As she comes out of her flurry of motion, it is her intent for all that momentum to end in a single, clean stab and accompanying jolt of chi. To slash him as he did to her. To make him know that she will not be trapped. To know that she cannot be contained. This is how she has chosen to live. This is her freedom.

COMBATSYS: Seishirou interrupts Dream Crushing from Ayame with Ryuuouin EX.

[               \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  //////////////////            ]
Ayame            1/------=/=======|=======\=------\1        Seishirou

The boy comes to his feet as Ayame's soft voice reaches his ears. The weight and canter of her voice is one of experience. Born from seeing things on the streets that no one ever really should. Ryouhara could understand that. Experience was a method of discerning truth just like any other. What we declare may or may not agree with what we observe, but what we see and what we experience is the cloest thing to 'the truth' that humans will ever attain.

The time passes in still sanctity as Ryouhara disconnects the multiplex winder that kept him standing straight, abandoning the idea of holding Nakatani through the entire conflict. Though he was more capable of protecting her with the array of deadly jutsu at his call with proximity, the situation had become simpler. More accurately, there was no longer any need for the facade.

He stands, back to Ayame, for some time.

She was within his Ryuuouin assassination seal. A jutsu he devised naturally at the age of 18, meant to pierce through the aura of the body and rupture the vital organs with a devastating explosion. The seal Ayame stood in was a variant developed later, an area explosion seal for direct conflict. As long as Seishirou made the circle, he could create the marix and begin filling the area with chi. THe point it began to glow is its terminal point--that is, the point at which it is ready to detonate.

Though he is turned away from her, it would have been folly for anyone to believe he weren't sensitive to her every movement. Within that 'field of influence,' Seishirou's sensory abilities were not to be discounted.

"Yes," he acknowledges simply. Though he is known by many names; shinobi, terrorist, asshole, the engineer in him, ration and calculating, still drives him. "The only way to determine the path closest to truth is through proof."

He listens quietly, his chin dipping below the standing and banded collar of his sliced haori. IT is a precursor to the boy simply sliding his arms out of the silken thing and casting it to a side. It reveals the wiry frame of the shinobi, concealed only by the thick cling of dark black wool that serves as his undershirt, tight sleeves stretching over knuckles. He minds the fire in the young girl's voice as she tests him with the scenario he's been faced with all of his life. He doesn't need to look to tell her intentions. He knows what he would do.

He smirks.

"...Yeah."

Ayame makes her move.

And when she does, it's to the sound of Ryouhara's personal conflagration being unleashed. The explosion is enough to send huge rents into the stone for meters beyond the original blast point, the shock and force giving a preeternatural speed to Ayame's movement against him.

"...hh."

A dark blur, the boy whirls on Ayame as a wolf. Only one instant is given for him to assess the receding shape of her staff, and mechanist's expertise roils as storm in his head, determining the operation of the staff and intent--discarding it as the immediate threat. Only that instant given is needed. His hand whips forward--

--Fingertips insinuate themselves around the shocking bite that blade, razor edge slicing his flesh even as his blood is drawn sizzling from heat on the steel--his heat. He continues the full bodied motion, whipping around to take Ayame counterclockwise. It favors what was once his left hand side. Or rather, the side he left Suzume on. A movement that fast is not born of calculation. It is born of instinct. And something bred on that level to snatch Ayame's blade away beyond thought from his charge is something that... surprises even him.

If he truly can catch her by the wrist, he will whip her away and on into the spine of the freshly forged blade that rooted itself in earth. The thing will shudder with the impact, but it is rooted firmly. It will not buckle. His ability is beyond that.

Holding her by only one arm, he will continue.

"The world will always be filled with fools," he breathes.

"...But if your truth is strong enough..."

The proximity is brief. Hand disengaging, he'll release her.

"...The fool's game won't matter for long."

He steps, turning away... to walk. Leaving Ayame with Nakatani.

"Tell that woman..." he mentions quietly, casting one last glance in the kunoichi's direction, "...that I ask that you be observed. That you be protected. If you can bleed for your teammate, then you know sacrifice. But if you forget that around her...even once."

He frowns.

"I'll kill you."

COMBATSYS: Ayame has left the fight here.

[            \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  <
Seishirou        1/-------/=======|

A lot of what the girl had said to Seishirou was voiced with the intent to manipulate, provoke, distract. Almost all of it, in fact. But not now. Stall for time? Yes. But the words she uttered were among the first things she had sincerely meant in a long time. She understood, at last, his need to prove, to combine evidence and testimonies in search of the truth. It was the only way. There existed no other.

But in discovering that she maintained the truth of her version of the world. The truth that the basest of human vices were all one needed to rise to power, wealth, and influence. Steal from the weak, embezzle from the carelessly rich. The means didn't matter, only the end. Those were the rules the successful played by, and you either bought into it or you got left in the gutter. The scenario she paints - that unfair world where truth is irrelevant - is spoken from her cynical, bitter experiences, is how she truly thinks, how she truly has carried out her unhappy existence. Free, but miserable all the same.

He sheds his bloodied, torn haori, revealing that taut, weathered form, but she barely notices. She's made her mind up. She's pictured her horizontal trajectory, silently calculating the distances in play and the speeds necessary based on the expected reaction time of her target. And then she throws caution to the wind and makes her move, rolls her dice, takes her chance.

Everything is picture perfect but for the explosion that detonates the instant she flinches. Had she not already spiraled into her airborn spin she would have been tossed rather uncerimoniously past Seishirou all together, for her feet would not be on the ground to give her the necessary friction. Eyes widen as she comes out of her world spinning twirl, unleashing that crackling precision crafted blade - the first weapon since her staff she had been able to carve just right to channel her precise, intense chi.

His fingers grasp that blade, allowing its razor fine edges to slash his flesh and draw his heated blood. Attached to her arm as it is, the girl has no choice but to move with him, dizzied by the speed, feet tripping over each other in a vain attempt to regain some semblence of control. She almost recovers. The chi that seared her system was powerful, but the defense the young chi savant possesses against such things is not to be taken lightly, her internal aura shifting to asuage a degree of the explosive attack. She's even starting to account for his grip on her blade, her left hand snapping over, reaching for the release that would let it slide out of its harness and leave her free to move again.

But his grip shifts to her wrist before the Ryouhara chi engineer whips the girl away and into the sword with bone rattling force, forcing a pained gasp as air escapes from her punished lungs. She would fall immediately but for his hold, her other arm hanging at her side, her feet not particularly grounded as the stunned girl tries to regain her faculties. The world is full of fools, he says, but their came won't matter for long upon one conditions - the strength of her truth. And then he releases and she sinks to the floor, free hand catching her to prop her up.

"The world is broken," she whispers, her voice barely audible. "It rewards the fools that don't deserve what it offers." She glances up, her eyes focused on Seishirou's back. "You don't reap what you sow... do you?" Her back burns, the thin black cloth that serves as her blouse thrashed in places, blood seeping through. She hadn't been fast enough to escape the seal. That it didn't tear her back wide open merely a testiment to her reflex-like speed of countering attacks that get through even her defensive barriers. "Can it even be changed? How can simply knowing the truth be its own reward? There must be something more..." Her voice fades out into a soft exhale.

Ayame speaks to his back. The haori is gone, but she can still see the seal it bore. The teenager is silent as he speaks of Suzume at her side, a glance cast over his shoulder toward the young woman and she does likewise, his command recorded forever by her perfect memory, with its accompanying consequence for failure. Serious business - bleeding for teammates. Sacrifice. One hand lifts to brush her tousled, dirty hair back over her shoulder. "I know." comes the answer. There's no question what he would do were she to betray the girl.

She lifts her right arm, clenching her fingers closed for a moment, and the blade once hidden becomes so once again, retracting back into its harness beneath the cloth with the sound of slowly compressing springs. She shifts into a seated position, her breath slowly returning to normal, continuing to stare after the lone Ryouhara heir.

Her left hand idly twirls that collapsed staff in her fingers, an intense, thoughtful expression on her face. "I was a scientist once." she speaks, her tone different, clearer yet no less serious. "An inventor of weapons." She pushes the collapsed titanium staff up into the air in a lazy arc, catching it as the light weight weapon drops back down again into her palm. "I could be one again." Her feet shift underneath of her. "If I had a lab."

She falls quiet then. For the want of a nail, a kingdom was lost. The violent sounds of the previous minutes are gone now, leaving only the silence of the retired island prison. Waves outside can be heard, along with the call of a night gull, but otherwise little disturbs this battleground. She looks away from him, eyes straying over the scorched crevices left where his seal detonated.

Rills appear just beyond the shredded edge of the boy's tattered wool overshirt, obscured by the blood drawn. Fanged ink scribed in long meandering lines and seared into the flesh. The source of Shinrou Kiritsu lay in script and seal just beyond Ayame's stroke, lain deep by that searing blade of chi composed only a moment prior.

"... Still so noisy," he complains quietly.

The mechanism for his righting sways free once disconnected from the harnesses underneath his shirt. As it sways past, it seems to remind him. A raised arm extends out, touching the winder gently.

Ninkou Kaitai.

The thing literally melts as if Ryouhara's touch were made of spreading acid, first the wound cord in the spools fusing together underneath the heat, the device falling free of its suspension cable, less clattering against the ground more as 'splashing'. The swaying wire, free now, smokes as fire crawls up their lengths individually, vaporizing them somewhere overhead. A matter of prudence, after all.

"..Nothing."

For some reason, he steps past, sparing the haori he discarded the same fate.

At some distance methodically chosen to likely be within a certain time radius of transit, he stills. That other hand of his knits into a tight fist.

"Nothing you need to do."

Blood and smoke leach from between his fingers in equal quantity. The blood is from the razor kiss of that blade, slicing open his hand. But the smoke.. is something else entirely. When the ninja opens his hand again, the bleeding is staunched, his wound literally seared shut with that same heat that left the mechanism on the ground as a pile of ruined slag.

"I'm strong. And the world will recognize this truth of mine."

It seems for a moment he is prepared to leave there, done with words for a time, but thought strays his wandering mind just for so long. Almost as an afterthought, he looks back, the silver chain about his neck glinting with the movement. In one last flash of dull gold, his eyes command that view and the attention it prescribes. "At the lake along the river near Gedo, there is a nearby Shinto Jinja. Ring the black bell eight times."

He chuckles darkly, eyes lidding.

The air seems to cool around him.

"You do like pushing your luck.."

In an eyeblink, the boy goes from standing still to simply gone. He moves in absolute silence, the only evidence of his passage being the twisting smoke in the wind, still subject to churned air currents.

COMBATSYS: Seishirou has ended the fight here.

Log created on 00:11:20 10/22/2008 by Seishirou, and last modified on 00:27:55 01/17/2009.