Description: The devious criminal schemes of devious criminal schemer Seishirou Ryouhara were bound to attract attention sooner or later... But who would've thought it would draw in Kyo Kusanagi, of all people? Will brilliant tactics defeat overwhelming power? Can knowledge of ninja memes counteract actual ninjas? Did Kyo ever get his sandwich? /Find out inside/.
Smoke curls into the air, the night sky and its newly born black clouds lit from below by the bellowing fires of a break-in at a corporate facility downtown.
Everywhere inside the building, bodies are collected. From the night receptionist behind a desk cut in half with a three meter long blade-scar to the gathered guards with their belts split and their radios melted into worthless slag in their hands, it looks like the entire collection of personnel working the night shift here has been dispatched in mere moments. Every single one still breathes, but there is no shortage of blood. Every computer screen and surveillance monitor still active in the blaze has faded to a flickering splash of a peculiar three leaf emblem.
An emblem on the back of a white haori drifting in the night breeze.
Ryouhara stands on the roof of the building. Wiping a blade free of crimson, he nods to a dark form at his side, who is carrying a black case. "Take it to the shrine at that place," he orders the shinobi. "Until we can make use of it, it will be safe there." There is no response. There doesn't need to be one. The ninja sheathes the blade at his back, turning away. "I'm going back inside."
It's funny what happenstance and unwillingly canny perceptive abilities can cause.
After all, it's not like Kyo Kusanagi goes out /looking/ for trouble, most of the time. Usually, it just manages to find him, or he stumbles upon it accidentally while trying to do something completely different, and the situation nevertheless leaves him no option but to actually do something about it. It's this sort of thing that caused him to save all those people from the hospital during the Siege of Southtown, the event that made him the city's most unwillingly popular hero.
It makes him so mad, sometimes he wishes he could somehow cause another hospital to drop on Krizalid.
So, somebody's corporate offices got broken into; big whoop! That sort of thing is hardly Kyo's problem, especially when he's fixed on his goal of getting one of those KFC sandwiches where the bun is made out of chicken, holy shit.
No, the problem is that, by dint of his superior genetics and all around awesomeness, he actually spotted a ninja in defiance of all conventional logic.
So, instead of getting his chicken/bacon/chicken sandwich thingy, the World Warrior champion and one time King of Fighters finds himself drawn into the building. He looks confused when he sees the wierd logo on the monitors and screens. He looks mildly bewildered when he sees injured but still living personnel lying everywhere, clearly the victims of thorough but non-murderous ninjaing. As Kyo has a certain appreciation for the dramatic, he knows there's nowhere to go but up.
...Which would be why, as Ryouhara turns away from his minion and presumably towards the door to head back into the building, the door is /kicked/ open, hinges breaking as the damn thing falls flat onto the rooftop. And standing there, silhouetted in the doorway, is Kyo goddamn Kusanagi.
"Wait a minute," says Kyo. "That guy lied, this isn't the bathroom!"
The shinobi at Seishirou's back disappears with nary a glimmer and even less than sound itself; his co-conspirator might as well had been nothing but a ghost. That was the type of person he commonly selected to be a member of his guard. Better heard than seen, better nothing at all than heard. He doesn't even bother to look back. There's nothing more to talk to.
He had infected the building's intranet with a particular kind of virus; the sort of thing Riko dabbled in more than he, truth told, but as a ninkougakusha in this sort of destestible world, knowing your way around electronics was on occaision a useful skill to meter.
At the end of it, the people here were just peons, useful only for their information, their technology. At a glance, he could tell there was no one here worth sharing his ideal with. So he put them from his way. Does he mean to leave them to die in a spreading blaze? It was all to his preference. As time passed, Ryouhara found himself becoming increasingly better at it.
Determining fate with a glance, that is.
Seishirou makes his way for the roof access door with the aplomb of a sightseer on a cool spring morning, in no particular hurry to do much of anything at all. At least, so it seems until the ninja stops abruptly, his silken sleeves swaying slowly to a standstill. He pauses thoughtfully, blinking once. And then a door clears the space in front of his face by centimeters, shifting his bangs.
"...."
Sharp eyes peer under the cut of the boy's brow as he faces the heir. "....Kusanagi." His recognition is instant, before a dark white-edged grin creeps across the youth's face. One hand opens, sliding from a sleeve. "If you're looking for the bathroom..."
Seishirou points behind him, over the edge of the building.
There's a considering look from Kyo, his attention briefly following the direction Seishirou points. Kyo rubs his chin. "Off the /roof/? I dunno, that can't be safe, I mean, what if it's a wet one?" He shakes his head a little bit, and then he shrugs. "Anyway, if this isn't the can, what's a big ol' turd like you doing up here?"
Leaning forward a little as he moves, Kyo takes a pair of steps out of the doorway, his hands tucked into his pockets. "So what's the dilly yo, Ryouhara?" Kyo wonders, head tilted slightly to one side, brow arched. "Got tired of Sir Chinsalot and his big gay cheerleading squad having all the fun, and so you decided to take up comic book supervillainy yourself? I thought you ninjas spent all your time rocking out and killing pirates."
Kyo's look is one of bone-deep disappointment, at this point, and he heaves a long-suffering sigh.
"So, look, obviously you already stole the blueprints to the nude bomb or whatever, so why don't you get lost and all those chumps downstairs can have a fun story to tell their grandkids someday." Does he really think Seishirou would kill all those people, like some kind of... Ninja assassin?!
Probably. Ryouhara was always kind of a creepy little bastard.
Even someone as stone-faced as Ryouhara has to snicker at that one. Chinsalot.
"I'm pleased," Ryouhara starts, his hand sliding back into the depths of his sleeve as it drops to his hip. They are quite large, and completely obscure his hands when slack at his sides. "That you'd refer to me as a supervillain, that is."
After all, that Seishirou even reached as high as he did--beating Krizalid in the King of Fighter's tournament and fighting the real thing--was a feat for someone of his limited ability at the time. Luckily limitations are a concept beyond him now.
The ninja takes a step to the side, his eyes curiously looking Kyo up and down. He takes the manner of a pacing lynx, looking over a distant threat. "I'll let the villain crack slide," he decides, seeming to take a new tack after looking over Kyo just a bit. "Someone like you isn't equipped to understand the things I teach. But that doesn't matter to you, does it? I'm going to ask; let me pass. Those I've taken down are of no use to my new world." He looks up over the bridge of his nose, scion to scion. "Let me pass. Or.."
He seems to already know the answer. The sheath at his back decompresses as the blade at his back clicks open from its confinement of its own volition. Steam curls from the aperture, and it doesn't take an observational genius to see that the fingertips of Seishirou's left hand ghost the fringes of his sleeve. He takes a step forward, quietly hostile. He doesn't bother to finish the threat. Instead, he takes a different tack.
"...You'll have to forgive me, I left my guitar in my other hagoromo. The only thing you'll be hearing is the blood filling your ears after I shatter your temples."
"That's weird, all my teachers in school used to say that, too," Kyo says, mock thoughtfully, on the subject of his being ill equipped to understand the things Ryouhara teaches. "The supervillain part, too," he adds, because of course he does.
Naturally, someone of Kyo's legacy and caliber is fully aware of the subdued menace being radiated by Seishirou... He can't /help/ but notice it, his expression not even flickering, his eyes hardly seeming to move, even as they pick up subtle things; the shinobi's posture, the way he moves, spiritually as well as physically. The fancy self-unsheathing sword certainly doesn't go unnoticed, either, a slow smirk crossing Kyo's face at Seishirou's whole demeanor.
"See, there you go, Ryouhara, it's that sort of thing, the whole 'my new world' kinda talk that does it. You might as well just put an a big steel mask and refer to yourself in the third person all the time." Kyo pauses, glancing off to the side for a moment. "And... I dunno, make enemies with a stretchy science guy."
Look, it was a decent analogy for a few seconds there.
Looking suitably intimidated by Seishirou's threat - i.e., not at all - Kyo spreads his hands. "Big talk is just big talk, Victor Von Douche," the Kusanagi heir says, sounding amused. "Come on, what's the difference between you and Vega, really?"
Ryouhara blinks.
"Stretchy science guy," he repeats, flatly.
The reference seems utterly lost on the young man, as if he couldn't have been bothered to pick up a single comic book in the entirety of his life. Humor that doesn't involve Vega's chin seems to spatter against the distinct warping effect of blistering heat that seems to be growing against the ninja and evaporate like so much boiling water. Tough crowd.
Still eyeing Kyo with the kind of deadly repose one expects from an unfeeling cobra, it's easy to spot his disposition change when Kyo compares him to Vega. You can almost see his heartbeat change in his eyes. Though he makes not a move towards Kyo, the shinobi riles, and it takes time for him to compose himself.
"For one," Seishirou begins to respond politely...
"Vega can't handle a blade half as well as me."
Then Seishirou tries to step on Kyo's throat.
Don't be mistaken. Seishirou doesn't operate that simply. When the shinobi moves, he is a white streak, audible only for the ringing hiss of steel as it exits his sheathe, a flash in the night as Seishirou flips the weapon fale in his hand and tries to take Kyo's arm off at the shoulder. But when the ninja moves, he moves as a pulse of sheer speed, and the heat around him is distracting, choking. Being close to the ninja is impossible for the weak to bear, and it's suddenly clear what melted those radios.
Kyo is strong enough that it won't be a problem.
But it might distract him long enough for him not to notice that Seishirou doesn't intend to cut him at all.
The ninja rolls full-on into the motion but purposefully misses, his blade dropping low, just as he shoots out a leg like a gunshot, trying to catch Kyo in the throat and drive him across the ground in a deep windpipe-crushing slide that churns a trail of fire in its wake.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou has started a fight here.
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Seishirou 0/-------/------=|
COMBATSYS: Kyo has joined the fight here.
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Kyo 0/-------/-------|=------\-------\0 Seishirou
COMBATSYS: Seishirou successfully hits Kyo with Shunshin Ghost.
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Kyo 0/-------/------=|===----\-------\0 Seishirou
See, this is how people go wrong. They miss out on having a proper childhood because they're too busy training in the forest how to fight like, eight hundred guys in pajamas while armed only with nunchucks, and they turn around and try to remake the world in their own image after they grow up. Which is almost as bad as teaming up with Rock Howard at one point, am I right or am I right?
Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.
Truthfully, Kyo was expecting the sword attack, proving that Seishirou Ryouhara, if nothing else, is pretty solid on the whole misdirection part of being a ninja. Kyo is pretty adaptable, however, so when it becomes clear that Ryouhara is using ninja trickery, the Kusanagi heir's posture and position shift, and he tries to intercept that kick with his arm. Which, he does, but underestimating Seishirou's momentum, he ends up getting his arm kicked into his neck, which isn't especially comfortable, the rest of the ninja's inertia pushing him backwards, uncontrolled. The trail of fire, then, washes over Kyo Kusanagi.
"Well, somebody's on the roids," Kyo says, picking himself back up as he regards Seishirou. "Maybe that's why you're so cranky."
Kyo, at this point, doesn't bother to feint. Instead, he just brings the unbridled speed and precision of a fighting genius of his caliber to bear; he crosses the distance between himself and Seishirou in a blink, in half a heartbeat, and as he moves he's already swinging his right fist at the side of the ninja's head, flickering Kusanagi flame trailing behind the motion of his arm, fiery power summoned forth with contemptuous ease. At the point of impact, any impact at all, those flames erupt into a small explosion, and then Kyo /keeps moving/, stepping in to deliver a second fiery punch with his left hand, and then again to bring his right fist up in a thunderous, explosive uppercut punctuated with a third burst of holy fire on the underside of Seishirou's jaw.
"Too bad your flames are just /pathetic/!!" Kyo calls as he strikes.
He's just that way, you know how it is.
COMBATSYS: Kyo successfully hits Seishirou with Aragami.
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Kyo 0/-------/----===|=======\-------\0 Seishirou
Crippling...
Seishirou hisses as he skids with Kyo across the ground in the haze of his transition, leaving the crack of seared air and the scent of charred flesh in his wake. At some point he tenses, his haunches bracing on Kusanagi's arm just long enough for the shinobi to flip free of the bobsled. Kyo's insults notwithstanding, the shinobi is watching him.
Ryouhara has a peculiar way of fighting.
There is the sense that even at the speeds at which they are accustomed to moving, there are few details Ryouhara misses. Very arachnid in his movements, he measures Kyo, making rough calculations about the man's abilities. He notes that Kyo sees through his subterfuge, capable of moving almost as fast as him. More unnervingly, Kyo can respond with crippling force.
Seishirou's blade whips into the way as the scion taunts, his explosive fists slamming into the ninja's body the moment he alights from his retreating backflip, sending stars into the young tactician's vision, sending him stumbling, and finally knockin him back, his body twisting as he breakfalls onto the ground, going to his knees almost immediately. He breathes hard, his bangs hanging in front of his eyes, attempting to regain momentum, his face dim. He can only barely manage words.
"Don't tell me about my flames.... with those sloth-like moves of yours."
Tit for tat? Ryouhara is already behind Kyo, standing. Though blood pours freely past his lip and down his neck, the weakened Ryouhara was simply a decoy to obfuscate his exit. But with the real Seishirou--his blade is already sheathed? He seems to be waiting.
For the copy he placed behind Kyo to impale itself on twelve seperate steel spears, its back blooming as it becomes an instant pincushion, trying to kill Kyo the moment his attention is drawn from it. The steel itself is illusory, the sheen forged of pure heat and light.
The pain of their lance, however, will not be.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou successfully hits Kyo with Kawarimi Suicide.
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Kyo 0/-------/---====|=======\-------\1 Seishirou
Well, in defense of Seishirou's sass, Kyo does seem to be having some trouble effectively guarding against the ninja's attacks. Stupid /shadow warriors/.
Indeed, Kyo's attention wanders from Ryouhara to Ryouhara, initially uncertain which one is the real one, and that creates a critical opening; the exploding substitute strikes the Kusanagi heir with its 'illusory' weapons, and Kyo grits his teeth to keep from crying out in pain. It's certainly... Something.
"Heh..." laughs Kyo, breathing more deeply than he was before, a touch raggedly. "Plenty of tricks from you huh, Stage Magician." Kyo backs up a bit, consideringly. He might have to take Seishirou a bit more seriously than he has been, which is a bit on the annoying side.
Still, he knows how to vent his irritation.
Raising his right hand, Kyo sets it on fire, straight up. The flames burn brilliant orange-crimson, casting a shifting but strong light on the rooftop, but that's not the point of the flames; the point is that they are a /focus/, allowing Kyo to draw on his reserves, to tap the vast, ancient power of the Kusanagi bloodline, the might of generations upon generations of his ancestors.
And from Kyo radiates a /feeling/. A sense of menace, of creeping pressure, as /something/ seems to grow ever closer, just out of sight. Something enormous and terrible.
COMBATSYS: Kyo gathers his will.
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Kyo 1/-------/=======|=======\-------\1 Seishirou
Only the slight shift in his stance as Kyo is skewered betrays his interest. Placidly, the shinobi takes note of and witness to the eternal fire encapsulated in that man's hand. Seishirou can feel the air becoming cramped around him as ancient power begins to build. It is nothing less than the providence of time herself, waking from her slumber to turn a lazy eye on the heir to Kusanagi's strength.
"That technique again..." His eyes narrow. Though a frown cross his face, he doesn't seem surprised. Seishirou is familiar with the heights of the Kusanagi strength. A brawler type with the strength of fate encapsulated in his fist.
"Hmph." Seishirou steps forward, heedless of the fire in Kusanagi's hand. From the way he regards Kusanagi and the force crackling in the air as his own native heat interacts with the ancient power drawn to bear, one could dare to say he isn't afraid. No. For him.. it's almost as if he expects to be cut in half on this burning building. He expects to be cut in half. And survive.
"A bloodline that has been blessed by history," Seishirou observes solemnly. "To simply possess strength by virtue of good blood. I wouldn't know anything about that. But I've noticed a trend. When someone has been fed such an easy existence," the shinobi all but seethes, stepping towards Kyo at a methodical pace, "It becomes a simple thing for them to become weak. Fat, and bloated with the sense of their own superiority."
"This next exchange will decide it," Seishirou guesses, unsealing a chain at his side. "Kusanagi. Don't disappoint me." Another step forward, and the shinobi is gone, in a flicker of motion and the crack of the cement beneath his heel. Tracking his movement is hard--but the muted rattling of thirty feet of glowing hot steel chain whipping through the air is another story.
If Kyo can catch up with Ryouhara's movements, he'll discover that the ninja has shot straight off the roof of the building, and is currently running down the side. And, somewhat more distressingly, the length of chain aims to loop around Kyo's neck and take the scion with him. It's a long way down, but once his steel bites into skin, the heat of the glowing chain will bind it in place. In this case, Seishirou's not trying to drag Kyo off the roof. That's merely a side effect.
He's trying to set him on fire and carve his body through every floor of the building on the way down.
COMBATSYS: Kyo blocks Seishirou's Shunshin Reaper.
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Kyo 1/-----==/=======|====---\-------\0 Seishirou
"Yeah, I guess you've got a point," Kyo allows, still gathering tremendous power. "You wouldn't know anything about having talent."
Seishirou vanishes; Kyo can tell where he's going, less because he can follow the movement visually - even for Kyo, that's an indistinct blur, but at least he sees /something/ - than because he can feel it, feel the displaced energy of the world. There are other people who are more sensitive to this sort of thing than he is... But Kyo Kusanagi has nevertheless refined his senses beyond what a normal person would conceive of.
Indeed, for all the natural ability and superior genetics of the Kusanagi and related clans... As NESTS learned to their detriment, there's more to the power of the Kusanagi than simple genetics and the quasi-mystical ability to create blessed flame. Their traditions are almost as old as Japan. Their training is more brutal than most people can imagine. Though that might just be because of Saishu, he is pretty much a lunatic.
So.
The steel chain certainly doesn't escape Kyo's notice, and rather than get caught by the neck, Kyo instead catches the chain, glowing with heat or not. The strange material of the Kusanagi gloves shields him somewhat, but he can still feel the searing heat. He doesn't catch on fire, though. And he doesn't move.
The chain stops, dead.
The next thing Kyo does is pretty straightforward, but sometimes you don't really need to get fancy. With his grip on the chain, he hauls and swings, to yank Seishirou back up onto the roof.
You know, the hard way.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou dodges Kyo's Strong Throw.
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Kyo 1/-----==/=======|====---\-------\0 Seishirou
The chain goes tight, and Seishirou's plans are pretty much put to a shining halt by Kyo's puritan strategy. Sometimes that's just the way it is; sometimes natural talent accounts for quite a bit. No matter how fast Ryouhara can move, no matter how many calculations he can do in a second, there is no accounting for the moment of feeling of which Kusanagi seems instinctively capable of. The shinobi's arm almost dislocates in his socket as the sudden stretch in the chain forces him into a collision with the side of the building, the impact shaking the foundations of the building.
Dimly, the shinobi cracks his eyes, before he's yanked up into the air. Abruptly, his body slides off of the crumped face, brick mortared in a long agonizing streak of the shinobi's own blood. The chain--Kyo would be able to tell it has ccript on every link if he were to pay attention to it--goes cool fairly quickly in Kyo's grip, and swinging Seishirou's light body around is, without the shinobi's momentum backing it, honestly no great task. Only barely conscious, the ninja whips into the air like a ragdoll. He reaches his apex...
.. And then the chain goes tight.
Suddenly spinning down the chain and eating up the slack as if hiding a powered winch in his robes, the shinobi kites straight down towards Kyo, his haori spreading as if to land at his feet. Well. Crash at his feet. And then explode bodily, force enough to cave in that entire section of roof material, a kamikaze attack from what Kyo actually pulled up--another copy of the ninja, spawned at the exact moment Kyo lost sight of the ninja. The window where Seishirou cut through and entered the building on the top floor is quite evident.
"Natural talent...?"
Seishirou--the real one, presumably--seems to float as he leaps up through the newly-made hole in the roof, his haori gathering around him as he lands slowly, amidst the curtains of fire and smoke from his false body's detonation. "Highly overrated," Seishirou notes.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou successfully hits Kyo with Kawarimi Crisis.
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Kyo 1/---====/=======|=------\-------\0 Seishirou
Tonight, Kyo seems rather unfortunately vulnerable to tricksy ninja... Uh... tricks. Feeling pretty good about himself for turning Seishirou's little chain technique around on the ninja, he's caught quite offguard when the shinobi comes crashing down like that, and a moment too late he realises that something is very definitively wrong; he tries to shield himself from the ensuing explosion, but big explosions are hard to block, and so what can be seen shortly thereafter is Kyo on the edge the caved-in section of the roof, looking rather worse for the wear.
His mouth cracks in a smile, though.
"Probably asked for that one," Kyo admits, rolling his neck with a quiet gristly crack as he gets his footing again, putting himself opposite the apparently real Seishirou Ryouhara. "I think it's time I stopped playing around, though," he adds, giving the roof a brief glance. When Seishirou destroys a building, he really goes for it, huh?
Kyo does what anyone would do in this situation, and catches on fire.
The fiery might of the Kusanagi clan /envelops/ him, his whole form limned in orange-crimson flame, with threads of power rising off of his body like heat waves; his right hand upraised, the flames burn brightest there, raging in his palm like a tiny sun. There's maybe a quarter of a second of warning before Kyo /moves/, closing with Seishirou at breakneck speed, bringing his arm across his body before sweeping it out, and unleashing all that power, setting it free to do its work. A massive wave of the sacred Ever Burning Flames of the Kusanagi rages out, fires burning hotter than those Ryouhara has created in, around and on the building, and these flames have a goal, singular and focused: They're coming for Seishirou Ryouhara. They might be too much to handle.
"/BURN/!"
COMBATSYS: Seishirou dodges Kyo's Orochinagi+.
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Kyo 0/-------/------=|=------\-------\0 Seishirou
"Is it as I said..."
He stands slowly. Slabs of concrete and steel, now glowing molten, was forged into a shield, lashed together by coils of the chain Seishirou himself took control of in the last moment, the shinobi's blade still trailing steam and planted in the earth just before the shield that cut down the blast wave. He looks through dull eyes at the world around him, as if achieving realization slowly.
Orochinagi, the technique that wiped the floor the Seishirou the first time has laid waste to a large area of the already-ruined building around him, the side effect of diverting the heat of an Ever Burning Flame across and around him. Ryouhara is nigh hip deep in it, but he is unharmed. And unfooled; such an attack would have put him down on the spot.
As expected.
"I only expected this to go that far..." Seishirou admits ruefully, as the chain shatters to pieces. Kasai was one of his favored ninkou; for it to be destroyed wholesale.. "But testing you to this limit--and surpassing it--is a surprise to me. I'm disappointed, Kusanagi." He glares. "This new world of mine won't permit you to stay in it--" he reaches a hand over his left eye, and smoke bleeds from his hooded eyelid. Seishirou breathes hard, but he doesn't give up. "--if you begin to falter, even for an instant!"
Seishirou snaps his hand out, one of his eyes growing a fanged personnage--his eye, ringed in gold, boils as he invokes the eye lens ninkou--and a wolf born of pure black fire leaps from his eyesocket. She is a snarling and dire beast, with teeth fashioned of embers, claws made of bubbling pitch and a howl of pure heat, sliding to the space between the two. It doesn't see so much as she tracks Kyo by apparent scent alone, cutting through the smoke and leaping the chasms like nothing, flying for the scion's throat.
In the background, the shinobi wheezes hard, his body heaving as he stifles the urge to vomit. Though he hasn't sustained much damage from Kyo, he's starting to fade fast. Regardless, he drives the scion. "If you can't match it, then you should just disappear!!" he spits venomously.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou successfully hits Kyo with Kagensana.
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Kyo 0/-------/----===|==-----\-------\0 Seishirou
Frankly, Seishirou isn't the only one who's disappointed.
Privately, Kyo wonders what the hell is wrong with him. Is he distracted because he really wanted that bacon sandwich with the chicken instead of bread? Is he being affected by the phases of the moon? Somewhere, are Iori and K' giggling at a sleepover while they mess with a Kyo Kusanagi voodoo doll in between giving each other makeovers and having a pillow fight?
Because if there's anything Kyo knows for sure, it's that he hasn't gotten any less objectively awesome... And Seishirou might have been eating his wheaties, but while the shinobi's attacks have largely stymied Kyo's defenses, it's not like they've been individually that /powerful/. Not inconsequential, certainly, but nothing he'd expect from someone who had him so thoroughly on the ropes. Still, it's wearing him down even if it isn't the sort of thunderous titanic assault he's used to.
Naturally, then, Kyo comes to the conclusion that, as unlikely as it may seem... He is doing something wrong.
It's all about Kyo Kusanagi, you know.
The crazy wolf technology leaps at him, and Kyo tries to avoid it; the net result being that he takes the blow on the shoulder rather than the neck, cutting through his jacket. Great. Also, ow.
"Well, your new world sucks just as bad as your old one," Kyo says, never one to stop talking trash longer than he absolutely has to. Gritting his teeth, the World Warrior charges the shinobi of revolution, aiming to slam an elbow right into Ryouhara's sternum.
If he manages that, Kyo's other arm snaps out, grabbing the ninja by the neck and lifting him off the ground... Before unleashing /still more/ raging orange-crimson fire, a massive explosion fit to send Seishirou flying bodily away.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou fails to counter Koto Moon Positive from Kyo with Prime Tactics.
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Kyo 0/-------/--=====|======-\-------\0 Seishirou
The wolf tears at Kyo's shoulder, ripping clothes from him before being thrown off roughly, the animal landing hard at the edge of the building, prowling anxiously. One could be very easily given the impression it's snarling fro mthe way it grinds as it paces a short circuit back and forth. It doesn't seem to be like other shaped projectiles; though even now energy cracks across its surface as it destabilizes slowly, the creature produced by his Kagensana jutsu seems to be based off the same ability he was using to make copies earlier; they are more than shaped projectiles but fully defined actors within a certain field of influence around the shinobi. Unfortunately, it seems that Ryouhara is losing his ability to keep creating them.
He steps forward as Kyo rushes him, his eyes sliding shut briefly as he takes out his Neck Cutting Knife, a large curved blade concealed just underneath the satchel at his hip.
"Mm," the shinobi vocalizes softly.
"If you're going to bother to say anything, don't waste my time with meaningless drivel!!"
Ryouhara meets Kusanagi in the middle with the blade, trying to undo Kyo right there with what one would imagine to be a mercifully quick stab, but the scion manages to get the upper hand in the lightning-fast exchange; simply put, Ryouhara's reached his limit. He is currently attempting to focus on the Kyo-shaped blur. Therein lies the reasoning for the pawn he keeps leashed at the side of the roof, pacing and grinding. He's using her tracking ability, somehow, to augment his weak vision and moves. But that edge... doesn't hold up.
The steel collarpiece ringing his neck being ripped open by the blast Kyo pumped into his body, blood sprays the dusty brick, and this time it seems to actually be the ninja's as he strikse ground with an oddly soft motion and ..fails to explode. But when he gets to his knees, the shinobi chuckles hard. "...looks like you're starting to fight me," he admits, struggling to get to his feet despite the crippling fatigue. And when he stands, he stands with all of the sanguine regality of someone who has expected this end. One hand slides from a sleve to clamp over the other slowly. ".. but it's not over yet," he warns.
The truth is, Kyo knows that things were a little dodgy in there. Something could've gone really bad if Seishirou had managed to pull off what he wanted. Of course, this is Kyo Kusanagi... So it's not like he's going to admit something like that, ever.
Instead, he just smirks.
One might wonder if Kyo was just biding his time, letting Seishirou build up momentum and maybe some false hope that he could more thoroughly crush once the shinobi had exhausted himself and the time was ripe; that does seem like the sort of horrible thing Kyo's non-fans would ascribe to the Kusanagi heir, and his tendency to not really let on what he's actually thinking might lend credence to the possibility... But in truth?
In truth, Seishirou has pressed Kyo further than Kyo would really prefer. Maybe he's actually going to have to, ugh, practice harder. It's not a situation calculated to moderate the Kusanagi heir's temper.
"Actually," Kyo says, in response to Seishirou. "It is."
Stepping in, Kyo's entire body follows through in a single right hand punch aimed at the side of Seishirou's head, the impact likely to be pretty powerful... Especially when you consider the trailing Kusanagi flames, which once again will erupt at the point of impact, if there is one.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou fails to interrupt Dokugami EX from Kyo with Kaitaijutsu.
[ \\\\\\\\ < > ]
Kyo 0/-------/=======|=======\-------\1 Seishirou
COMBATSYS: Seishirou can no longer fight.
[ \\\\\\\\ <
Kyo 0/-------/=======|
The shinobi inclines his head slightly.
In truth, he's only sustained two blows from the Kusanagi heir, and they were both crippling, doing vast internal damage. The whites of his haori were habitually tarnished with the soot of the pyre and his own blood, but Ryouhara seems to mind very little. There was an obvious disparity in strength; it didn't take an observational genius of the engineer's caliber to see it. But it's hard to fool those who deal in deceit; the weight of that young man's insight weighs heavily on Kyo's shoulders.
Ryouhara takes a light breath. "Heh."
He could be agreeing with Kyo..
The next instant is the last; Kyo flies in like a thunderbolt given feet. Seishirou's own move is deceptively fast, taking up a handful of silk and drawing his voluminous sleeve up to his opposite elbow. His hand whips out, an indistinct blur of flesh that brings his fingers to touch Kyo's neck ever slightly--but his movements are flagging. He seems to halt mid-strike.
And then Ryouhara is punched headfirst clear through the roof access, a lazily twirling knot of silk and steel shattering the bricks into so much scorched dust. For a moment, it seems as if he let himself be hit. There is no cry of pain, no shriek of impact. For a moment, it's very easy to believe the shinobi had replaced himself again, and that the sky is about to rain no end of steel and the shinobi's ire.
But no such attack comes. And eventually, when the shinobi stands, it's amidst the wreckage, his form indistinct amidst the bales of smoke and boiling vapor crawling into the air. He is slow, his movements as calculated as every breath he takes at this point. His voice is unnaturally even, even after taking that kind of hit. For someone like him, force of will is breath. "Not bad...this current world still has some worthwhile people in it yet. I still have use for you... but you should go back to school. You're getting a little lazy in your old age."
At that moment there is a loud grinding behind Kyo, and the wolf pacing the roof leaps on Seishirou, tearing his throat out viciously. Tearing the shinobi to bloodied shreds is the work of only a few moments, the shredded whites and reds and blacks of his haori mingling with the wolf until only black fire remains. Birds carved from it flock away from the gory inferno, the only thing apparently left of the shinobi.
It's hard to tell if he really meant to kill anyone at all.
But if he did, why didn't he just do so on his way up?
Log created on 19:21:41 12/11/2009 by Kyo, and last modified on 15:50:20 12/20/2009.