Description: Matched up against each other out of the gate, two teens who joined the tournament and travelled to the big city clash in a maelstrom of fire and blood to pursue their dreams. With unrelenting fervour and plenty to prove, a tale of violence and vigilance ends with two stubborn souls crumpled in a ditch in this chilling PSA. (Winner: K')
Traveling from the outskirts into the heart of Sunshine City, one couldn't help but observe the street after street of run down, dilapidated buildings, broken windows, unmaintained roads, and unwelcome glares from those loitering around on the sidewalks and in the doorways to tired, old structures. It's unusual to find the heart of a city to be so much more welcoming than the outskirts, but in more ways than one, Sunshine proves to be an exception to expectations.
Instead of a seething heart of darkness, a core of crime nestled deep in its center, the inner areas of the city seem to be more like a last refuge against the crime that plagues it. The central plaza is well kept, people move around freely without open signs of fear, and business seem to be doing well, especially with the rise in visitors and tourism with the tournament event going on in town. Contrasted against the despair that hangs over the outskirts of the urban city, Inner Sunshine City is filled with a mood of cautious optimism, hope, and
The last thing one might expect to find in the heart of the large West Coast city is the Ryuzuiken dojo. The pagoda-style building seems like a transplant from across the seas and the courtyard-protected property looks to be well maintained. While the bustle of the commercial areas of the city might resonate with the hopeful heart of the people, the over-riding mode of the dragon-adorned dojo at this hour is one of tranquility. Even the audience spectating via the bleachers constructed outside the courtyard is respectfully quiet, their voices audible as a murmur that seems dampened in some way by the peaceful spirit of the dojo.
The hour is late, the clear sky above is ablaze with a golden-orange sunset. The sun will dip below the horizon before too long, but for now there is plenty of light by which to cast long shadows across the ground. The weather is cooling rapidly with the approaching evening though it wasn't terribly hot to begin with even during the day.
Hotaru waits on one side of the courtyard. Her space is shaded by a squat tree who's branches have been allowed to wander a bit too far between trimmings. With Spring fast approaching summer, its leaves, like most other trees in the area, have grown in thick and green. Waiting quietly, the girl contemplates the match ahead. One hand pressed against the trunk of the tree, she uses her other to pull her feet as far back behind her as she can, stretching her legs a little, eager to limber up a little after the long trip from Japan.
It had been a long time since she fought her upcoming opponent. When he said he was going to enter the tournament as well, she had no idea it meant that they would end up seeing each other in the first round like this. She wouldn't have it any other way. The last fight between them was a blurred memory she would almost want to forget if not for the important lessons taken from it. The match before that... well, she's come a long way since then. The Kenpo artist is dressed in her normal fighting attire - a Chinese styled blouse of dark brown with forest green sleeves and pants to match. Given K''s style of fighting, she decided she preferred something that didn't show scorch marks off so much.
Her stretching done, her hands fuss with the crimson ribbons keeping her pig-tails in place. The cooling air is refreshing and she's eager to enjoy it while it lasts. She knows full well once this match is underway, any revitalizing weather conditions will be replaced by a storm of fire and blood. The question on her mind is to ponder how long she can survive it?
It's an old refrain, that creeping seed of selfishness and corruption. It would be glacial, if it only advanced by decades instead of months, and really to be properly analogous it would also need to be /receding/ at an alarming rate, rather than encroaching on everything the good and innocent (and oblivious, damn) people of the world say they hold dear. Basically, if one came to K' for proper ice metaphor, they are going to be let down. Then again, it does rather tangentally connect to the state of said world, and the pursuits of men that the rogue prototype.. really does not care a great deal for. Admittedly, that is a pretty long list.
It would be quicker to make a list of people who K' -does- give a damn about, and nigh-instant to make one of the people the firebrand would /admit/ are on it. Some days, he would just write his own designation a hundred times just to be obstinant, or irritate whoever was dipshitted enough to press him about it. Anyone worth telling should already know, after all. At least, that's what he likes to project; it's nigh impossible to witness the plight in Sunshine and be totally unmoved. If we're being honest, it's all far more overwhelming than the tournament for the dauntless firebrand.
The creeping undertone of unholy malaise and dissonant intents crashing together in a catalyzed mass of unpredictable reactions rings quietly in his ears, the fires force-forged into his very genetic makeup simmering with awareness of the dangers and secrets the city possesses. More maddening still is the lack of logical insight that accompanies that telling tingle, that ever-shifting and eager energy - it remains simply a sense, telling K' that he should have purpose and direction, here, if only he could see what it should be; how to make that manifest. As it is, his fires are ample furnace to keep his surroundings lit, his spirit primed.. but they do little to illuminate the shadows that invariably flee the violent light within the rogue prototype.
It doesn't really help that elements of uncertainty are already part of what is fueling K''s wanderlust, now: putting the bioweapon into unfamiliar, sometimes uncomfortable terrain, and then adding outside threats outside his perception is a recipe that can't possibly go awry. It hasn't really made him the best of travelling companions, admittedly. K' returns glares on the outskirts readily; it took him about 4 hours in the city before he'd gotten into a brawl with the local gangs. It would not be the last.
Cuts and bruises aside, it actually seems to lift the firebrand's spirits in the aftermath, perhaps simply some small facet making perfect sense (as it always seems to be the same story); perhaps it's directing the violence to himself, alarmingly capable and unusually dashing lightning rod that he has proven to be. Just now, there's little sign that K' is anything but comfortable here, anything but certain. He's hard to spot to be sure, though, lost somewhere in the dense foliage and sprawling branches of Hotaru's shade tree. There's probably a metaphor to this, too, but his attention is absently focused downward, rather than inward, as he fiddles out of a pair of motorcycle gloves, rather than ruining ANOTHER pair.
The renegade's features are nigh-expressionless, perhaps vaguely pensive, as he watches Hotaru prepare in more traditional (and effective) fashion. One glove falls near the young woman, followed shortly by the other, which doesn't really land near it, implying that K' is indeed quite haphazard about it, perhaps distracted?!? ... perhaps not.
The prototype follows decisively more dramatically, *THWUMP*ing out of the tree to land hard on one knee, which seems to hit the ground more than the ground hits it. Shaded eyes rise to Hotaru as the appointed time approaches, and K' pulls himself back to his full, if slightly slouching height. Even once he joins the battleground proper, the Beast of Flame pays little heed to the crowd; if anything, he becomes /more/ intent on Hotaru. More clearly thoughtful, though what those thoughts may be are hidden well behind shades and a less-than-expressive half-smirk, which itself passes quickly.
Like her, K' would not have wished for a different matchup. He could have asked for this fight at any time, but well; he hasn't been super talkative since hitching onto Hotaru's ride back in Southtown. Plus, it makes the tournament showcase actually mean a damn, on several unspoken levels. It's not the first time he's fought her, not even the second.. but Hotaru Futaba -has- come a long way. He knew that even before he saw her fight Whip. K' is all the more certain, now, in the tangible calm before the storm. Blood and fire, indeed. Once, he sought to understand her path, and instead found his own suddenly redirected. The YFCC, faces other men might call friends more easily, if not more than. Another, it was his turn to impress upon Hotaru the darkness that dominated her vision.
Now what, K'? How far has the Beast of Flame also come, in this time? How much has changed, and what will they discover in the inevitably frenetic moments to come? Perhaps the question to be answered has not even been asked yet. There's a vague, curious nonchalance to the murmured words that are offered as K' takes one step closer to Hotaru, his own opening movement simple, his words precise and nigh-inaudible, perhaps even to her. "Am I in your way again?" It seems an absent musing, as he considers, finally breaking his attention to glance askance at the dojo's anachronistic frame, as brows knit momentarily.
It would be easy for Whip to signal her presence in the audience with loud hollaring and a general air of flamboyant support aided in part by the underlying and quite instinctive emotional response that she - as a self-perceived Real Girl (tm) - can't help but mount at the interplay between Hotaru Futaba and her commonly vitriolic, white-hot yet simultaneously brutally-detached brother. Where their own, meaningful interaction is compounded by a depth of harrowing experience, tempered by time and pain into something impossible to define with such simple or frivolous terms, overall the former assassin, trained by a shady cartel and genetically tampered to ultimately embody the perfect human weapon, could only adequately describe her feelings as:
*squee*
Which is why she stands amidst the respectful, nigh-silent crowd shuffling her patent leather boots and impatiently tugging at the hem of her disarmingly adorable powder blue ruffled top. She's dressed about as girlishly as she ever does, with that; though her legs are covered by a pair of suitably tomboyish Levi's rucked up around the top of said boots, which an (un?)charitable and distinctly uncouth person might brand 'fuck-mes'. Of course, no such individual is present in this particular group of people-- and it's driving the Ikari Amazon to extreme distraction, gnawing upon her lip and reaching up to wipe at her hair for about the fiftieth time. Her other hand is by her side through all this, clinging to a stump of wood...
Bound to which is a sign that she's made specially to come and view the match, thinking this would be the kind of upscale arena match that's packed out with drunken ne'erdowells and generally the modern equivalent of a gladiatorial games; much like her own match the night before. Incidentally, she's wearing some nasty bruising around her face, and her bottom lip is bloated; but it's hard to tell through the application of makeup, something that's also beautifully disguising the flush in her cheeks as she dances from foot to foot excitedly, watching K' and Hotaru exchange restrained pleasantries. Without thinking, she crosses two of her fingers about the hilt of the aforementioned sign, a smile threatening on her lips that she soon dismisses when she glances left and right and realizes everybody else is just /staring/ and /dour/. Oh god, it's almost too much.
Wait-- no, no, it is definitely too much.
"Woo! Give her a kiss!!"
Her voice rings out with the weakness of one who's trying not to be too blatant out of sheer embarassment, but as is always the case with such... well, it's sledgehammer-obvious, and has everyone on the bleachers looking the Ikari's way as she flushes all the more brightly and lowers her head with a giggle that can only be suppressed with the most unladylike snort imaginable, practically chewing her battered lip in half as she fights it, shoulders shaking and hair falling across her face. Believe it not, she's not even drunk.
No stranger to the tournament scene, Hotaru is long past the point of having to fight back pre-fight jitters. Her warming up is executed calmly, almost as if on auto-pilot. For events such as this, the preparation has already taken place long before arriving. It took place in the hours of grueling training, in the countless fights entered and survived, in the lessons learned by every miss-step, every failed block, and every miss-timed counter strike, fight after grueling fight. As experienced in these matters as the young Kenpo artist is, the time to fret about being ready or not for the match ahead has already run its course years before. Hence, the calm demeanor she demonstrates now is far from merely a mask to hide frazzled nerves.
The glove lands nearby and she glances up, eyes trained on the dark underside of the tree. She catches a trace outline of the young man, his form illuminated only a touch by the fiery ambience of the setting sun. It already looks like he's on fire and the match hasn't even started yet. She gives him a quiet smile, shifting her hands to tightening her left ribbon as the second glove drops. It's almost time. His deliberate fall is accompanied by a number of drifting leaves, shaken loose by branches that firmly spring back into their desired positions. Hotaru reflects on other times she has seen K' in combat and for that fleeting moment the falling leaves become embers before her eyes.
Azure eyes study the rogue weapon as he stands over her. He has always been a hard read - even for her. Unless angered... that is an emotion the young man has never disguised well. No, it's the other range of sentiments - if one were to believe he had any other attitude beyond quietly seething disdain - that can be difficult to discern from behind his ever-present shades. He would have no trouble seeing that wondering curiosity as the girl cants her head to the side a little, searching his face, wondering what thoughts occupy his mind right now. A second of quiet passes and the diminutive girl clasps her hands behind her back.
In one simple sentence, he brings back memories of their last fight. She wasn't herself then; sick, addled, angry. But her memories of that time remain sharp to this day. The mixed emotions are etched plainly in her expression - a poignant blend of regret and amusement - as she thinks back on when she last declared the NESTS prototype to be nothing more than an obstacle in her path. "It seems that way," she replies, rising up a little on her toes before planting her heels firmly against the ground again. "I warned you," their last conversation still fresh in her mind, her expression more readily melting into a smile, "That I wouldn't go easy on you here."
Even slouching, he has height on her, and Hotaru is forced to lift her face to keep focused on his hidden eyes. That there are spectators at all is forgotten, her concentration solely on the fire shaper standing before her. "Though I can't help but wonder, out of all the fighters in this event, for us to end up-"
A cry from the crowd derails her thought, Hotaru's eyes widening slightly, the girl turning toward the stands. The voice is recognized, even with how surprising the shout was. Her hands unclasp from behind her back, fingers of her right hand coming to a gentle rest against a slightly blushing cheek. "I-" She blinks, taking a step back to look up at K' - how is he reacting to the call?
Hotaru doesn't look long, however, instead, glancing around for anything else to occupy her attention. His discarded gloves become suddenly /very/ interesting to her as she takes a step back and dips to scoop each one off the ground in turn, "You dropped these," she murmurs sheepishly, stacking them on top of each other in her palm before taking another step back to place them carefully on the flat top of an old retaining wall. She pats them once before turning quickly back around, having recovered her composure by then.
Her eyes sparkle with amusement. Her voice is quiet, for his ears only, "I sure hope you said something to your sister... that it isn't /that/ obvious."
Freaking tournament scene. It's not something K' ever really warmed up to, fighting for sport. It's life and death, do or die, for as long as the firebrand really registers. He might have been a remarkable contender, in his life before NESTS, if the boy had been allowed to grow into a fighter of his own accord. Now, the entire thing is distasteful, glory turning to ash swiftly in his mouth, the charade's outer sheen burned clean away before his amber eyes, oft hidden or no. None of it leaves the Beast of Flame with a great deal of stomach for people who have the luxury of viewing it all as a game.
Maybe it's just the implication that the sentient and /decidedly/ opinionated weapon of mass destruction would then actually be a toy. No, no - if only things were so simple for K'. It's a misaligned focus, screwy priorities, or as he might shout into someone's face, /ridiculous bullshit/. "Yea." K' recalls, though the monosyllabic note isn't a massive help to delving the prototype's emotions and intentions, no. It's pretty noncommittal, all told. Less so is the softer, appendant "I remember." His own attention is held by hers, for a moment. He doesn't melt into smile, just meets Hotaru's eyes.
There are other merits to stepping into the ring without life and death on the line, though: paychecks to earn, people to study. Then there's Hotaru. "You're n.." it's not /inaccurate/ for Whip to immediately home in on the unusual subtleties in her normally brash and boisterous brother's approach to this bout, but from the sudden creasing of K''s brow, the harsh gritting of his teeth interrupting the interlude, it is /inopportune/ when she calls out. Glowing embers of amber /snap/ aside with a sharp twist of the bioweapon's neck, glaring nails at Whip for one moment as he... stands there, shoulder leaning one way, then back, as if he just thought better of charging into the stands to blacken her other eye; or developed an abrupt and distracting tic.
It's a quandary, but no one who didn't know K' would see the nature of those swiftly battling demons as they clash inside his head. The tension in his shoulders, in his black denim-clad legs, in the way motorcycle boots dig momentarily at the ground. You'd have to know him well to see more than that momentary agitation, that snap of anger; it's concealed quickly, and K' glances back to Hotaru, peering over the rims of his shades a moment before sliding them back into place. It's similarly seeking to remain unperturbed, outwardly, but there's a flash of... concern? Apology? Something, in those piercing orbs.
K' flips off the crowd, as a whole, because obviously EVERYONE out there now deserves it. "They don't break." The prototype retorts as Hotaru speaks, probably a bit more brusquely than he had intended. "What? Obvious?" Here, K' seems genuinely puzzled, for just a moment. "Look the audience /would/ make it beautifully twisted, but we should /really/ fight first." Aaaaand right back to flippancy. To everyone but Hotaru, and maybe dipshit Whip, it's typical K'. ... and likely to leave the spectators wondering just what Hotaru whispered to him!!
Every fighter in the tournament will have their own origin, each unique and personal to them in turn. Hotaru was begrudgingly trained by her father for years. But she wasn't a fighter until she was left on her own, the members of her family disappearing from her life one by one - taken by illiness or leaving for reasons never shared with her out loud. That was when her training found its purpose. She would prove she wasn't a burden, that she wasn't weak, that she could fight just like them.
It was later that she learned the other reason to fight, to push her training so hard, to seek out others who could further her skillset as the most important thing in the world. It was when she discovered that she could fight not just for herself but for the sake of others. By being strong, she could protect those who couldn't protect themselves. And thus her determination redoubled, the girl rising from a popular but only marginally successful low tier fighter into the world famous contender that she is now. Her drive has never waned over time, but its purpose has become far more refined and mature than when she started along the path that has ultimately brought her to this event.
Looking at K', she can only wonder at some of his origin. The way he fights is savage and free, bearing a certain dark aura of antipathy, for his opponent, for himself, for those grafted flames of his. She had felt it in their previous fights. Like her, he definitely knows how to fight for survival. But does he know how to fight for sport? Is there a difference in his world? For the Fire Branded, there seems to be no such thing as a 'Friendly Fight', even if she knows by now that there is a degree of seperation between the way he brawls and how he feels about those precious few he has chosen to allow into his life.
She can see that seperation even now, when he glares off toward the crowd following that one inopportune call. If it had been anyone OTHER than his sister, would he even still be standing here? Or would she be watching the trail of flames as he decided to 'personally' visit whoever else might brace such a remark? And when he peeks over the rims of his everpresent shades, she sees deeper still. It's rare that she gets a glimpse at his eyes directly. Maybe the sunglasses are to prevent just that; an extra barrier between him and everyone else.
"I know that," she retorts a touch defensively when he points out his gloves won't break. But it's when he slips back into that tone of voice most would associate with him that she looks the most surprised, her expression going from confusion, to giving him a /look/, to a faint smirk all in a matter of five or six seconds. He's right about one thing. However it came about, the tournament has brought the two of them together to fight. And she isn't about to miss that opportunity.
She backflips to land a few yards away, her feet kicking up small tufts of dust where she touches down. Her hands are raised, palms open, her Kenpo stance assumed. "You asked for it!" she calls out to him. The fight is on, starting now. She doesn't wait a moment longer, sprinting forward then, closing distance with a blitz of speed. She drops into a low, wound-up stance from a distance that seems too far to be a threat at first glance... but the girl's range can be a tricky thing to measure, for an instant later, she's sprung off the ground into a horizontal cartwheel kick, twisting her body over the ground, aiming to collide her feet with her opponent's chest.
She would land briefly, touching down on her left foot, but the momentum already built would carry her through as Hotaru springs into a second kick similiar to the first, with no less crushing force behind it. "HYA!" It's unlikely to pack the kind of punch needed to bowl someone like K' over, but if she pulls it off correctly, the second spin should take her past him, allowing her to touch back down and ground herself safely enough.
COMBATSYS: Hotaru has started a fight here.
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Hotaru 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: K' has joined the fight here.
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Hotaru 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 K'
COMBATSYS: K' interrupts Medium Kick from Hotaru with Medium Punch.
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Hotaru 0/-------/-----==|==-----\-------\0 K'
To lose, is often to die. To leave oneself vulnerable, on any front, cultivates positions from which one's enemies may attack, entrench, maneuver. Hotaru already knows that K' is smarter than he looks, but how often that helps him out, and how often it gets in the way.. remains arguable. What's less arguable is that it's kept the prototype alive, that it's kept him dangerous. All of them have reasons to fight, origins, scars and crosses borne to this eve, and beyond.. in a lot of ways, Hotaru Futaba is exactly like him. It's just the perspective that's changed, the devil's in those details, though.
There's a devil beyond even K''s knowledge, however, as while it's eminently fair to say that K' is not who most think he is, it's equally true that K' is not who K' thinks he is. His origins aren't what he remembers, what he's been led to believe; a tremendous lie at the center of his birth, and perhaps even the Beast of Flame's vendetta to this day. That the white-haired, Kusanagi-infused weapon is a clone of someone else, and that the genetically-altered Irishman who could have been is actually their deadliest - and perhaps only true success. ... at least, with that particular holy weapon. Going up against other NESTS 'failures' is not something even K' recommends to viewers at home.. particularly his opposite number.
In a sense, this makes Hotaru's lack of knowledge of his origin likely more accurate than if the prototype actually bothered to fill her in. At the least, she's safer. It's difficult to see concern for the girl's wellfare in the next few instants, however. The crimson shades almost seem to replace themselves over the firebrand's eyes as he sways into a ready 'stance' that's lazy by all but the most generous definitions, at least at a glance. He used to just not give a fuck, let himself go, count on adrenaline and the desire to destroy his opponent to carry him through. Sometimes, the Beast of Flame still does, if he doesn't watch himself.
K' /smirks/ as Hotaru gets defensive, then angry, in those instants leading up to knowing. He doesn't comment until they meet mid-attack, however. "You've always been smarter than you look." It's teasing, deceptively good natured, even. The downside is that it comes as he steps harshly and abruptly /into/ her wheeling ascent, her leg cracking harshly off clenched abdominals, rattling K''s cage both literally and metaphorically as he's subtly shifted to the side. It's as if he teleported there, the premature impact impressive, bruising, but notably less than the Kenpo disciple might have anticipated; the lunge brings him in closer to her knee than her feet, and opposing Hotaru's followthrough with a brutally efficient elbow.
Aggressive defense melts in vicious grace into its mirror image as K' lunges a second time, coming around counterclockwise on a deceptively strong, lithe leg as he meets Hotaru head on. In this case, metaphorically. It's K''s elbow that crashes squarely back into the girl's midsection, their violent embrace likely not /quite/ what his lascivious sister was going for, in the end. Though who knows, she's kind of a deviant. "I sure did. Sure you can handle it?" He doesn't bother half-whispering that part.
There's a bit of a wolfish grin as he staggers back deceptively lazily on booted feet, drawing a deep and steadying breath. It's not unlike the 'sport' of their first bout, in the end, though there's something.. steadier, about K', these days. Tempered, as they say, in unquenchable fire.
The intended landing doesn't get to happen, the spinning bird struck hard in the back, the force driving her down. Earlier in her training, such an unexpected strike would easily cause her to crash - but this time she's able to recover, albeit it just barely, snapping her hands down as well as the toes of her feet. She slides over the ground, momentum carrying her through another half spin before she comes to a stop facing toward K'. He already has her beat on height, so from her currently crouched posture, the young man literally towers over the smaller fighter.
From her angle, he stands between her and the setting sun, his form outlined by the gradually dimming, fiery orange horizon. Exhaling, Hotaru lifts her hands, her arms out at her sides, like wings. It won't be long now before the sky will go violet then dark, and the prominent source of light will be coming from the attacks exchanged by the two fighters, backed up only by a lone spotlight that has been mounted off to the side nearer to the pagoda itself, its beam directed somewhere toward the middle of the space set aside for the match, leaving the edges of it largely shrouded.
The pain in her back will pass. It was a good opening reminder that against K', she has to fight smart and leave as few openings as possible. If she didn't know him as well as she did by now, she would find his presence in combat unsettling, like facing a predator instead of a fellow athlete. But she knows him well enough not to be rattled by his technique - rather, it's an inspiration to do better, to improve, to be able to fight as effectively as he can.
Hotaru's face is aglow with enthusiasm, but her expression has become sobered, serious, focused on her opponent like a puzzle to be solved, in more ways than she can count right now. He can strike harder than her, his chi burns hotter, and he might be a touch faster than her as well. It's going to come down to precision of execution, she decides. "There will be no doubt about that." she replies. She's sizing him up. His posture seems so relaxed, but she knows how quickly he can spring into action.
Maybe she can use that to her advantage though. She tenses. And then she's airborn in a forward, graceful flip. Her arc seems to be taking her high, possibly up and over K', as if trying to get behind him... It might be simply to trick his guard, however, for the girl instead aims to plant her hands against his shoulders!
She would only need to secure that position for a moment, finding purchase there with her hands, before she would be able to flip down behind K', keeping her grip on his shoulders, aiming to plant her feet into his back and using all of her momentum to drop to the ground and pull K' clean off his feet and toss him over head! If executed as intended, it almost seems like a backward tomoe nage, and given the way the girl intends to become the fulcrum for the throw, it may prove difficult to defend against via simply bracing.
COMBATSYS: K' endures Hotaru's Ten Ranku-Tou.
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Hotaru 0/-------/----===|===----\-------\0 K'
Hot Beast on Bird action, it's what everyone came here to see. There's an edge to the rogue bioweapon's movements, his very stance; it's almost everpresent, particularly now, with the firebrand decisively on guard, cagey. There's more than one reason the Beast of Flame has survived this long, why he remains free. Of course, pursuing this tournament is likely to reveal just what kind of enemies the Kusanagi-branded pyrokinetic has who are still capable of striking at him. Whether or not K' has thought of that, well; one might be able to ask Maxima. If one can get it out of the hardened cyborg, at least. Operational security is a very real concern at Casa del K'.
It's something he and Hotaru have never really talked about, the aftermath, the lifestyle. Can anyone really leave it behind, once they really understand what's out there? When it hits -home-. In their cases, as deep as DNA, as mind and spirit altered, perhaps inarguably eternally. It's hardly the world's only extremism, there are even people who accuse the rogue prototype of it himself. They're not always wrong - he /is/ trying to wage a personal war on a criminal cartel. At least he has an evil twin he can blame most of the shit on, right? Evil XXXX twins, by this point.
What Hotaru examines with her sometimes too-seeing eyes K' discovers through pain and fire, the Kenpo crusader's heave a testament to her strength. They've both come a long way over the years since paths first crossed, and there's no mistaking the sheer /force/ with which the prototype impacts the ground. While she may not match the overcharged bioweapon's sheer fury, Hotaru's strength earns a slightly surprised grunt from K'.
One could be forgiven for missing it, however, because remember those multitude of replicants we mentioned? Yea. One of the most secretly successful is the 'original' of the project, designated Krizalid. What this nigh-perfect replica of the K-Prime unit demonstrates in combat, first and foremost, is a technologically amplified mastery of the wind itself. Most of K''s hurricane combusts on contact with the Kusanagi flames, the holy weapon co-opting the prototype's own incredible chi potential for its own (perhaps mystical?!?) ends, but the way the Beast of Flame moves, the way he strikes, it hearkens to that primal storm, a pangaea's last protest before consumption in equally primal, transformative flame.
As the hurtling K' impacts the ground, his shoulder touches first. He tucks his head, he avoids jarring his spine. It hurts like bloody hell nonetheless. The impact when he rolls to a crouch, refusing to tumble clear, is little gentler. Grass shudders in all directions, leaves whispering as several free themselves anew, and the air seems to gather in about the firebrand in an anticipatory gasp. It's as if loaded into a cannon, all that energy exploding internally, the fires repressed for the moment, perhaps, but no lack of sheer strength projected into the lunging impact.
K' loads his right arm again, this time launching a haymaker that may as well be a warhead as the air blasts in around Hotaru instants before K' threatens to take her head clean off. It's a deceptively brutal act - but then, it might be easier to count when that hasn't described K''s actions. It's easy to mistake it for malice, the fury with which a lunging, translocational right is followed by a reaving, undercutting left, but there's curiousity in the predatory violence. She says there's no doubt; is she /right/?
Her potential has surprised K' every /other/ time, and whatever his motivations, the Beast of Flame would discover whether that is true.. like so much in the renegade bioweapon's life, there are many complicated reasons why the answer to that question is important.. to more people than him. K' doesn't speak, doesn't comment, the pain already clear in his alarmingly durable frame a dull, familiar friend that urges him onward, ever onward.
COMBATSYS: Hotaru blocks K''s Fierce Punch.
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Hotaru 0/-------/--=====|===----\-------\0 K'
She uncoils, her back against the ground, her feet against his back, her hands on his shoulders, leveraging a surprising amount of force to fling K' overhead. And even as she sends him flying, Hotaru doesn't stop for an instant. Pushing off the ground with her hands, she follows through with the momentum created by her coordinationed motion, continuing into a roll then springing to her feet. The trajectory takes her into a landing with low splits, her feet catching in the dirt quickly, allowing her to slide to a stop in an instant. The recovery from her attack has brought her closer to K' than observers may think wise - especially in light of the momentum HE has generated out of his recovery.
But the Futaba Heiress is, like her brother and father before her, a melee striker. She may not be a master of Gato's short-ranged crushing palm strikes - her attacks normally require far more wind up and room to maneuver than her brother's - but she is no stranger to trading attacks in close range with tougher fighters either. She knows the power K' can pack behind his punches to be crushingly strong, but there is no room for fear in the girl's psyche, no cause to shirk the counter attack coming.
She's only just righting herself, sliding her feet closer together but keeping her stance wide, braced, when she feels it - a blast of chi-driven air heralding a potentially fight-deciding strike. Her arms get into position just in time, a cross-armed block for his fist to impact against. The force is enough to dislodge her from her position, her pig-tails blown backward, her sleeves ruffled by wind dislodged by pure driven, concussive force. She slides a little, her guard seemingly shattered, but not her wits. Thinking fast, the Kenpo artist twists to the side between swings, one foot bracing to try and hold her position, as his uppercutting arm follows through, only to glance off her shoulder rather than getting a clean hit at her chin.
It hurts, to be certain, and she'll be feeling a bruise beneath her sleeve for some time after this, but she doesn't break, her stance holding, her resolve a fiery counter part to K''s own mastery. She attacks again - his strike may have slowed her a little, but Hotaru seems determined to keep pressure on the flame wielder, knowing that giving him time to breath only lets him build his strength further.
It is into a familiar technique the girl springs, rocketing into a hop with aggressive force once again. A twist of her arms will unleash a windmilling strike that forms the foundation of so many of her style's techniques. The palm strikes are designed to batter against the living weapon's guard, hoping to find a gap in his careful defenses. She won't touch down completely following this attack, however, if given a chance. Instead, she'll kick out with her right foot, targeting K's center of mass, and try to backflip away from him!
COMBATSYS: Hotaru successfully hits K' with Enryuu Banda.
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Hotaru 0/-------/--=====|====---\-------\0 K'
She's one step ahead of him. This charitable girl they tried to turn into.. well, K' himself. Despite that, she's seemingly taken advice he himself has been unable to.. even if every time he thinks about it, an angry voice in his head demands that vengeance /is/ the only proper way to proceed. Idealism be damned, idealism is part of stopping those /monsters/. Monsters that want to do it all over, and over again - thousands of ridiculous times. Yet the /retarded/ little community center teaching little spoiled idiots to get in over their heads /has/ triumphed over monsters just as bad.. more than once. Hotaru herself, without his intervention.
Whether it speaks to K''s hubris or the need for some lessons to be learned over, and over, and over again, he never does quite learn, or remember, just how well the little prodigal -can- hold her own. Again he seeks to test her, to explore the limits of that undeniably versatile style she employs - and the strength she brings to bear with it. Again, it leads to the alarmingly attentive and adaptive heiress seizing a quick advantage over the fiery fighter.
Frame rattled from his initial, spurring impact, K' half-grins in a feral sort of way, jaw clenched as his launch meets Hotaru's ready guard. It's still there as her momentum forces his own unprepared response aside, and she steps in. Teeth grit through the repeated impacts, right up until she forces breath from his lungs, a swift staccato of audible, resounding cracks emenating from each swift palmstrike. The force of the throw, her quick defense against the bone-jarring impacts of his haymakers, the speed with which Hotaru responds in kind - none of it, in and of itself, is surprising to the prototype.
Not even when she rebounds off of him, seeking to reposition. The entire string urges him to push the issue further, however. Draws an arch of half-hidden brows, concealed behind crimson, dark-rimmed shades. Booted feet anchor him, and K' drops low, every muscle in his body coiling in the instant Hotaru backflips through the air, launching herself groundward. The prototype's eyes narrow /sharply/. He /explodes/. Rockets from zero to nuclear in under a quarter of a second. In the brilliant rays of the setting sun, fire burns with effortless intensity to suddenly alarming levels.
It all but pours from the infused firebrand, as he launches himself again, challenging Hotaru's safe landing zone with a leading motorcycle boot's heel. A heel that surges with coalescing flame, swirls of the stuff curling like volatile elementals in coursing tendrils along that leading limb, which seeks to hammer Hotaru into the air a second, unplanned time in a fiery trainwreck of a flying kick. The fires burn dark, myriad hues of autumn; orange, white, yellows. Heat like the sun.
COMBATSYS: Hotaru dodges K''s Second Shell.
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Hotaru 0/-------/--=====|====---\-------\0 K'
Seeing Hotaru in action, it's no wonder that some saw in the girl the opportunity to forge a weapon for their own means. To Marise, Hotaru was the potential protege she never had, and so she labored to teach her the ways of the Maou Satsujinken. To the criminally twisted minds feverishly working away at the combined labs of SIN and NESTS, she was one of many potential auto-piloted weapons unleashed back on the city. Were it not for the intervention of one of their most effective projects, the damage that would have precipitated from her rampage could have been quite severe. It might be amusing to consider that his timely presence was just one in countless opportunities to spoil their projects. The NESTS scientists probably don't find it so funny though.
In his current opponent, he'll find no slowing down. The girl is fast, capable of sustaining constant pressure without sacrificing her defenses significantly. She knows full well that clean strikes from the flame shaper will take her down quickly. Perhaps it is with a moment of forward thinking that she sought that window of distance. She had to know he would close it, launching forward with the same aggression and power that he has oft times demonstrated, but maybe it would buy her /just/ enough all the same.
The tactical intent of her positioning becomes clear when he moves. At first glance, it would appear that she is put at a disadvantage - already airborn, she was in no position to change trajectory should he pin point the precise point at which she would have to land. But her arc also gives her an advantage - a bird's eye view of his next move, the ability to see it from a high angle before she will find herself directly in the path of danger. She can't see the narrowing of his eyes from behind his shades, but she can see the determination in his features. The next microsecond was going to be intense no matter the outcome.
A halo of fire is left in his tracks, but it's the violent flame where she descends that she's most concerned with. Where she any less agile, even a miniscule less dexterous, her descent would have landed in disaster for herself, as the flame-burning foot sweeps up into the space she'd have to touch down. But the spry girl saw the attack an instant before it's launched; and familiarity with K''s techniques combining with reflex that borders on purely instinctive shows her the way out. Her feet never touch the ground - instead his rising limb provides her hazardous perch, the girl planting her feet against his shin then kicking off in an instant.
Even that brief brush with the sun reminded her full well of the intensity of his flames as she arcs right back through the air directly for K'. From the audience's view, the girl becomes a small silhouette against the vibrant horizon, small trails of flame following her path - thirsty flames that persist from her brief contact but never quite getting close enough to burn the girl properly. She twists her body into a spiral, her leg sweeping out hard, aiming a kick for the side of his head. Her feet might be clad in soft, comfortable shoes, but the impact behind that strike would hardly be considered gentle. It would be a fierce, opening strike, as she puts herself at risk in attempting to land directly in front of the firebrand.
If she manages, a second attack will snap out - both of her hands slamming forward, palms first, executing a close double-palm press. Without her low stance, her melee striking power isn't quite what it could be, but her nimbleness would easily rival some of the fastest fighters in the world this instant!
COMBATSYS: K' fails to interrupt Combo Attack from Hotaru with Eins Trigger EX.
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Hotaru 0/-------/---====|====---\-------\0 K'
There's more than the literal tendrils of chi-ignited flame that goes into the observation that Hotaru Futaba is on /fire/ tonight. It's spoken or thought by just about everyone interested in this fight: those watching now, and those who'll catch it through lucrative (and CORRUPT) mass media distribution. It's echoed in K''s own thoughts as the Kenpo-wielding weapon-and-philanthropist /floats/ gracefully, swiftly, smoothly and precisely away from his rocketing kick. It was a strike that the prototype expected to floor her, at least for a moment.
It's a counterstrike that's perfectly poised to lead into another one, meant to /blast/ her away, and K' doesn't hold that back, either. Hotaru had all but demanded an all-out fight, even if that weren't something the Beast of Flame wants to know, to understand; perhaps now more than ever, his own road all but demanding that the cagey rogue adapt, understand the alien species he's loose among. Not that Hotaru helps K' a great deal with /that/, directly. She's too damn unusual to be much use as a proxy for mankind. Then again, there are a handful of reasons K' remains set apart from nearly all of them, as well.
The renegade steps farther with each violent motion, before /his/ feet touch the ground, he's whipping about the other way, sweeping the flame.... in a brilliant, beautiful cascade of molten fury that twists about itself as the spinning kick cracks squarely into his /very/ hard head, and K' hurtles groundward. Then, outwards, Hotaru's hands sending the much larger youth hurtling end over end in a, let's be honest, pretty fucking comical fashion. He crashes in a harsh tumble once, twice, then leaps into a skid, boots digging long trenches in the lawn that would draw the envy of truck tires.
As the rogue bioweapon skids to a stop, his crimson shades fall free from his eyes. Before /they/ touch ground, a flame-snuffing hand winks out the smouldering char around him, and snatches the shades back to his eyes. "Heh." For an engine of ultimate destruction and transformation, the Beast of Flame manages a moment of amusement, nonetheless. Is he underestimating her, still? There's a narrowing of eyes as it's K''s turn to just /look/ at Hotaru.
She's poised, precise; totally in control. He can't attribute it to some insidious, hidden might this time; she's positioning herself better, anticipating him, perhaps even understanding what he's doing. For a moment, K' just kind of steps away from the skilled girl. It's a move easy to read as fear, hesitation; many in the small crowd conclude it, right away. Hotaru would see the reassessement's continuation, the surging core of molten, overwhelming volcanic heat that promises to erupt within the 'failed' template.
"Was it.. something I said?" Oh yea, he also pauses because /ouch/. He may be implacable, but even Terminators can be slowed down with enough effort and repeated impacts with hard objects lik Hotaru. Nonetheless, it's an impressive show for someone as chi sensitive as she is, even before the heat bubbles forth, before magma becomes explosive, certain death borne of a divine mandate; as the predator eyes her, subtly eager to re-engage, amber eyes /flashing/ with fire.
Hotaru pulls her hands back from her palm press, then retreats back another step, arms raised, the girl bouncing lightly on her toes. To those members of the vast majority that can merely spectate fights - who have never stepped foot in the arena of battle like these two have - it may seem that the girl is having an easy time of it thus far. After all, her opponent has only landed one clean hit against her so far. On the other hand, she's landed a few clean hits thus far and seems to be faring a little better than her taller opponent. That would be all casual observers would see; idle fans of fighting that enjoy their violence vicariously and draw conclusions without really knowing what it's like to be in the path of the attacks from either contender. Hotaru must be worlds ahead of that rude guy who flipped them all off collectively.
The bead of perspiration rolling down the Futaba heiress's cheek tells a different story. She's being pushed to her limits against K'. Every instant of time is occupied by her mind operating at light speed, all her senses are firing, paying acute attention to every slightest detail in K's movements and attacks. Every little step is executed by a combination of natural instinct, well honed training, and as with all such intense matches, a touch of luck. Her sharp, focused eyes remain on K' as he is forced back by her strike, the girl's expression focused and determined.
She doesn't give chase as he moves about the yard. She can see the repositioning for what it is - a slight change in the terms, controlling the battlefield, an invisible war for command over the arena being fought by the two even when they AREN'T exchanging attacks. She matches his shift in position with cautious steps of her own, her hands raised, her feet crossing over in front of each other, her path taking her slightly parallel to his own course, keeping the distance between them somewhat controlled.
It's easy to believe Hotaru to be completely lost within the spirit of the battle, oblivious to all things that aren't crucial to giving K' one hell of a fight, every step of the way. But when he speaks up, it becomes clear that is hardly the case. Her concentration allows room for moments of humorous observations.
She knows the statement for what it is. To everyone else, it might seem like he's playing off her successes thus far as an attempt to salvage wounded pride. But the quirk of a smile at her lips reveals she caught the compliment behind his distant remark. "Like you said, we really should fight /first/." she replies. She's in her groove, all pistons firing in perfect harmony, and she fully intends to stay there for as long as possible. She can read the eagerness in his eyes - that desire to exchange another series of strikes, the need to see this through, for both their sakes.
The sun sets at last and the courtyard becomes dark but for the solitary spotlight. Neither are even in its cone of illumination at the moment, but no one on staff is quite daring enough to be close enough to the fight to /point/ the thing either. Even without direct light, she can see the Beast of Flame; she can see beneath the surface level threat that he maintains with his usual nonchalance. She can see, no, rather, feel, that fight to survive, no matter the circumstances. And in that, they are kindred spirits. This may be a match for sport. The superficial stakes may be low - advancing through a charity-oriented tournament. But they will put everything on the line for it all the same. They owe each other that much.
When she moves to go back on the offense, it is swiftly, low to the ground, no longer taking to the air. Leaning forward with her charge, her shoulders are mere inches over the dirt as her feet move quickly over the dirt. From two yards out, Hotaru drops into a tumble, not shy about getting a little dirty in the act of performing her techniques. Coming out of the roll, she attacks from low to high, potentially swinging in from an angle most fighters don't train to defend from. Her left palm juts out, aiming for K''s sternum. Her shoulders would twist, her right palm slamming in with a followup strike before being drawn back.
Those were probing attacks, however, nothing more - not to say they won't sting in and of themselves. It's the third attack, however, the girl tightening up in her low stance, arms together, hands pressed against each other, palms open and forward... it doesn't look all that different from the stance adopted when masters of Ansatsuken channel the power for a Hadouken. And indeed, that same channeling is happening here, though not manifested in an outward way. Instead of a projection, it is her hands that slam forward, all of her strength, reinforced by inner-focused chi, poured into the strike. "HAAAH!" Should she connect, that would certainly be the most powerful strike K' has felt from her this fight!
COMBATSYS: K' Toughs Out Hotaru's Fierce Punch!
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Hotaru 0/-------/---====|=======\-------\0 K'
Luckily for K', he isn't nearly as stupid as he looks, either. He can tell the fight is taxing Hotaru, if not as brutally as it is him.. yet. K' can tell that every perfect move she makes to stay a step ahead is a moment away from disaster, from having her at his mercy; but she /is/ that instant ahead, outpacing him and maintaining a withering offense that, while it may not relieve K' of his feet the way some fighters might, is steadily and unrelentingly wearing down even the prototype flamewielder's enduring shell.
The last light on the horizon does little to dissipate the harsh glare of that singular spotlight as ambient light dissipates, and for his part... K' seeks to ignore it. He'll fight her in the dark, before he'll fight her in the heat and eye-scorching clarity of that overblown torch. Plus, it keeps the focus on the Beast of Flame's own remarkable light source; or its absence, as the case may be. The fire boils within him, begs to be brought to the fore, for another scorching shot at the agile and adaptive Futaba heiress.
Predatory instincts tell him the girl still has his number, that she's coming in hard, that she knows he'll have to escalate; K' realizes, she perhaps even anticipates /how/. Paranoia or insight, the Beast of Flame stubbornly, defiantly overloads impulses to reposition, or lash out to stop Hotaru's forceful assault. He /soaks it up/, breathes it in, tightens every muscle in his body, centers all that roiling magma into a mountainous, titanic force of nature. There's an audible, resilient, resounding *CRACK* with each firm palmstrike.
K' actually takes two steps in that time, one into each blow, the larger man crowding his 'opponent' almost eagerly, as if the wracking strikes, bone breaking to lesser men, or at lesser moments, were not as painful as they are. As if he were simply nigh invulnerable, in truth. It's backed up by the sheer proximity as K' refuses to relent, lunges /into/ that dual strike. His midsection visibly displaces backwards, so great is the force. The prototype is forced to bend, to bow before Hotaru as she hammers him over. His face smacks into her shoulder. There's about a tenth of a second where a freezeframe might look like K' is about to fall limp into her arms. They could, after all, finish fighting very quickly, at this rate..
Then his head /REARS/ sidewards, used as a forceful, bludgeoning flail in an attempt to cream the pigtailed warrioress across her face. As he presses in with a rising knee, meant to slam /her/ ribs backwards this time, and launch Hotaru harshly away from their dance.. for a brief moment. Silhouetted against nearby light, K' flanks his quarry in the darkness, strikes in intuitive, brutal simplicity. Rogue or no, for too long K' spent his life truly unhinged, a weapon indeed, his purpose corrupted most of all by unquenchable anger.
Of course, that isn't to say that K' is any /less/ angry tonight, per se; he just channels it /just/ so. This divine sword they grafted to his very soul is /his/ to wield, now. It'll never be the other way around, again.
COMBATSYS: K' successfully hits Hotaru with Medium Kick.
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Hotaru 1/-------/=======|=======\-------\1 K'
She senses his change in tactics as he steps into her first palm strike. The second does nothing to dislodge him from his course. Even as she winds up for the third, channeling a perfect coordinating between muscle power and chi, she can read his intent but not his precise plan. He intends to force his way through her attack, to get in close enough to strike no matter the cost. It isn't unexpected - in fact, it is the very nature of his bloody single-mindedness to do so - but that doesn't make it any less dangerous for both parties involved. If he were her enemy here; if she thought his intentions malevolent beyond matching and surpassing her in this fight, she... well, she's glad he's not an enemy. That's for those who roost with NESTS to concern themselves with.
Even still, there is that flash-point moment of decision, that choice between halting her attack and recoiling defensively or forging ahead in spite the menace of his flames in such dangerous proximity to herself. In the end, there is no choice in her mind - when she unleashes the third strike, it is as much a challenge of pure, channeled force, as much as it is a contest of focused, unrelenting willpower. She connects solidly and K' folds forward, seeming about to crumple. For a moment she thinks she's won.
It's only a moment. He's too tense. She needs to push him away fast. Already she is moving, her arms folding back against herself, her shoulder starting to twist out from under him, her feet busy with negotiating what promises to be a harrowing escape at best. But he's too fast. His head slams into the side of hers, the impact jarring, the girl seeing stars for a moment as she reels. She moves her arms between him and her, but she's too stunned to act and his knee plows through her guard, cracking the girl hard in the ribs. The featherweight goes flying off her feet, pulled away from the ground she seemed so rooted to moments prior.
That she recovers before crashing down is once again a reflection of reflex more than a conscious choice, her arms and legs snaping into action just in time for her to go sliding through the dirt. Her path takes her though the illumination cast by the spotlight for an instant before she comes to rest on the other side, leaving a plume of dust to rise up in her wake. A bleeding cut over her left eye marks the point of impact from K''s unorthodox attack. Her hand at rest over her side to gingerly test her ribs marks the second. She's panting then - a brief pause in their dangerous dance as she looks back toward K', his form visible only by the light his own power creates. At first the girl's expression might seem to be one of irritation - as if disappointed in herself at not winning that violent exchange. But it passes quickly as she contines to suck in her breath, her mouth curling into that soft smile she's known for.
She can see him standing there, just barely. Were it not for their history, she would think to be looking at a monster; some manner of hell beast unleashed on the world to consume all with endless fire. Many, were they to know his origins, would think just that - a scientific mistake, a weapon that should be put down for the good of all, a stray experiment wrought by the hubris of man that must, albeit tragically, be extinguished. But that isn't what the Kenpo artist sees. Her hand retracts from her side. She ignores the trickle of blood that seeps down, missing her eye. "You sure know how to treat a lady," she declares when her breaths allow, her grin persisting.
Then she's off again, straight back toward him. The viewing audience would see the girl's form pass through the cone of light from the spot light on her course straight back into the volcano awaiting her, leaning forward, her arms out at her sides like the wings of a falcon. She kicks off the ground, though she stays low, as if leaving it reluctantly just for a moment, before her body twists into her style's signature windmilling palm strikes.
Like before, she aims to plow into his guard with her onslaught. But were he to only defend against that attack, he would miss the technique's true threat. It's only when her feet touch down that she has the leverage needed to launch the second half of her attack. Like her last technique, her whole body is poured into the single handed slam, her palm thrust out, targeting his sternum with crushing force. Her left arm slams out in the opposite direction, providing enough counter balance to keep her from toppling herself over from the sheer focuses of the strike. Leg, troso, and arm muscles combine into that singular point of contact. Her last attack may have failed to dislodge him, but this one...? This one even a boulder would feel.
COMBATSYS: K' blocks Hotaru's Soushou Shin.
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Hotaru 0/-------/=======|=======\-------\1 K'
On top of every beat. Even when her head is reeling, when that sharp line of blood is drawn, when the lithe fighter is kicked away in a breath-deprived bundle, K' knows she's refocusing, reaching, pushing harder. He's looking for her limits, but Hotaru's already pushing those herself; striving past what skill or experience dictate to truly meet the prototype weapon in battle, to turn the tide against someone trying to expose and incinerate her envelope by riding that razor's edge willingly, from the word go. She warned him, more than once; K' was flippant about it, he wrote it off, how hard Hotaru intended to fight him. He came he to find something out, but she had come with something to /prove/.
It's a dramatic display for the obstinate firebrand, one more time. He's brought hurtling towards his own limits, muscles screaming bloody murder as he punishes himself further, refusing to give any more ground to the mobile and insightful, instinct-driven girl. She's plying him from one side of the yard to the other, and while her point may be eloquent in its unspoken execution, it's abundantly clear in the moments that K' strikes back anew in strokes that hearken back to the first brutal instants of battle that he can respect the redrawn terms of engagement. Respect them, and meet her in full stride.
Hotaru knows it, he can see it in her azure eyes, for the flash of contact possible in her breakneck renewal of hostilities. She doesn't give him time to pin down the angle of her whirling, blurring assault, guarding forearms barely staving off the initial strokes as K' shifts gears, driven back several sturdy steps. Abundant heat now ignites fully, the glow in his eyes intensifying, a fluctuating luminescence of ungodly hot fury in the same rich spectrum as the fires that roll off his fingertips, that coil like evershifting serpents up the Beast of Flame's arms. It's like he can't even hold it back, anymore.
A shockwave of flame and force erupts outwards in all directions, licking grass and leaves, scorching bark as K' skids clear of Hotaru's finishing stroke, coming up in a deceptively lazy stance, once more. His initial answer is just to mouth, "Fight first." back at Hotaru, drily. The momentary flippancy can't deny the perfect attention K' suddenly devotes to the fight, however. She already knows he can cross the distance between them in an instant... she's been all over his tricks so far; saw the trap he thought would end her, has him battered and backed off, thrown clear in the yard.
K''s stance is sturdier than one might suspect from its relaxed slouch, however. Breath is harder to come by with his body so bruised, his bones aching, his blood screaming; oh wait, that's just the roar of an inferno he's been gathering anew, nursing to overwhelming fervour. Sure, Hotaru may have backed him into one corner after another, but the hunter and man both agree, this time; that just means she's earned this, that it's time. Hotaru only /thinks/ she understands what the Kusanagi-infused conduit is capable of, after all.
"Fine." K' concedes, with faux disdain. There's even a deep, gruff huff of breath and a shake of his head, wild white mane resettling, and shifting toe air around him as his feet are subsumed with fire that does not burn... K'. It scorches outwards, leaving violent alien crop circles on the dojo lawn, "We'll flip for it." His sunglasses are whipped from his eyes, hurtling end over end in a flash across the space between the firebrand, and his determined, ever-surprising counterpart....
COMBATSYS: K' knocks away Hotaru with Chain Drive+.
+ Epic Hit! +
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Hotaru 1/-======/=======|==-----\-------\0 K'
The Kusanagi flames may be a holy weapon, but they were born, devised, forged and infused into a legacy for the purpose of slaying demons, for the incineration of those who would be gods. K' never asked for the power he was given, but he'll be damned if he won't use it. Hotaru hasn't had delusions of divine grandeur for... oh, at least a few years now, and the firebrand is well on his way to finding suitable and focused targets for his arson on a regular basis. This is what passes for real, hopeful progress in the world K' lives in; it's all about setting realistic goals! Hotaru stays one step ahead of K' a moment longer only for him to /leap/ up to meet her there, trailing oranges and whites like a comet burning up on re-entry.
At the impact point, as deceptive shades flip in, K' suddenly arrives as well. It's difficult for most to say when it happened, exactly, as if all that gathered power simply charged him down the line, as if displaced through time and space through sheer elemental fury. A pair of flaming trails are the only indication he crossed from one point to the other at all, a impacting like that aforementioned fallen fireball just off Hotaru's flank.. decidedly too close to comfort. Did we mention that his left elbow leads in a /brutal/ blow, clocking the decidedly better natured martial artist right in her skull. Yea, that'll wipe that optimistic smile off her face! ... once upon a time, this was actually K''s motive. More often than he'd like to admit, truth be told, over the years.
Coming out of NESTS' tender ministrations with an abundance of power and a decidedly feral nature, it was bound to go wrong more often than it went right. There weren't very many people who would stand there and tell him so, either; not ever. Strange, who some of them turned out to be. In Hotaru's case, the tiny girl refuses to fold past more abuse than most hardened old men cold handle.. and it continues, to this moment. As that elbow impacts, K''s right hand catches the rebounding sunglasses.
The shades are replaced over his eyes, and K' /explodes/ forward in a wave of flame. It's like being suddenly caught at the heart of an irate volcano, the convection alone incredible, as tendrils of fire burning deeper oranges to the outside.... and /white hot/ at the very core rip all about K', and /through/ Hotaru. Her decision to go char resistant with her wardrobe isn't likely to help a great deal, the molten, meteoric flow persisting as the firebrand /really/ cuts loose. It's impulsive, it's probably more than a little dangerous... but she's pushed this far, a hair's breadth to one side and she would already have him.
He repays it in blood, and fire, just as she foresaw. Fists, feet, knees: they strike her again, and again, scorching a blistered path of blackened earth as the earth's primal fire is wielded by perhaps its least likely errant ronin. Perhaps, somewhere, there's a plan even in the chaotic pulse of fire as those whipping, churning gouts of burning fire all swirl together and surge forwards, exploding in a spray of combusting energy that burns everything /except/ the pyrokinetic.. and rips through Hotaru perhaps more harshly than the entire series of uncounted kicks and reaving haymakers combined, at the point it falls.
Roland explodes.
It was impossible to miss as she chose to lunge in once more - the furnace burning just beneath the surface of her opponent. She saw it. She had an idea of the threat it represented. She could have backed off, surrendered ground, gone on the defensive. The thought never crosses her mind, however, plunging into the committed sequences of strikes, attempting to batter K' down a bit more. Retreat isn't on the menu.
Ultimately, there is nothing wrong with her technique. She executes it with well honed finesse, balancing crushing striking power while maintaining a sphere of control that leaves it almost impossible to find a window barrel through it preemptively. But she is fighting someone that is at least every bit her equal in defending against incoming attacks. He's been under attack all his life, it's only fitting. Even as her diminutive yet sturdy arm slams out with intent to barrel him over, she senses the thirst of those building flames, the shockwave of his potential blasting back her pig-tails and forcing her to squint. She's every bit aware of the battlefield as he is - and she knows, dangerously so, that she has backed him into a corner. Caging a survivor like him? It's the greatest risk she's taken thus far and she wouldn't trade the thrill of such danger for anything.
There is a pause then - there have been precious few this match - for them to both to prepare for the final twist of this dangerous dance. He speaks up while Hotaru breaths in, bracing herself, seperating her feet, lowering her stance, and lifting her hands to a position from which best to defend. There will be no escaping what is to come - storm-born speed will see to that. But she will try to weather it all the same. She doesn't know the meaning of quit. He gets a flicker of a grin at his words, but it might be mistaken for merely the shifting of shadow across her face. The twenty-five million Candle Power spotlight directed stoicly at the center of the courtyard has nothing on the brilliant conflagration taking place in and around K'.
He flicks his shades and it's go time. She knows the trick of it - she's seen his fights enough to figure it out - but knowing and warding against it are two different things. His own speed will render him nigh invisible. Such velocity is already tricky to defend against. But the finely honed senses of experienced martial artists can manage all the same. In the absense of other cues, their instintual nature can take over, guarding against the unstoppable, a feat easily considered supernatural by those who don't understand.
But the small flying distraction is another problem all together. It gives something for the eyes to fixate on, a focal point for attention. She knows they, in and of themselves are harmless, but she hasn't the practice against this exact sort of misdirection to avoid focusing on them all the same. A mouse staring at a pillbug while a mountain lion pounces from behind, Hotaru is unable to find the real threat even though every alarm bell in her head is ringing that he's right /there/.
The elbow strike is a clean hit. Hotaru reels, vision blinded by flashes of light as she struggles to steady herself. She's only just barely recovering when his eyes are once again covered. And then he tears into her with a frenzied combination too fast for spectator eyes to follow. He will notice her fighting back - she isn't a punching bag to strike against, and with each of his swings, she's moving to react with a sweep of her arm, a shift of her stance, a flick of her wrist or lift of her knee. Sometimes there is a flare of blue coating her hands, absorbing some of the fuel of his fire, but most of the times she's simply trying to defend to the best of her beleaguered capacity.
She catches his hand once, eyes focused on the limb, but his next kick smashes her out of the catch. There's just too many attacks and try as she might to stop them all, she is lost within a maelstrom of flames and painful strikes. The last few are completely unguarded, she's too dazed, too disoriented to keep up anymore. A final explosion sends the girl flying, a tumbling, flaming ball that skips along the grass. Fire flares up all over the place, sparked by his attacks or Hotaru's impacts with the ground. It looks like the aftermath of a plane wreck in the courtyard.
Hopefully no one is too picky about the lawn.
Within that burning hellscape, Hotaru pushes to her feet again. Bruised, bleeding, scorched, only her own aura is able to slowly extinguish the flames lingering on her figure. The forest green of her outfit has become indistinguishable from black She whirls around, her step unsteady, her mind racing. She can't actually see K' directly, but she knows where he is: at the heart of the flamestorm. That's where she's going.
If she can find him there, the technique she attempts is well rehearsed by now - the surge of brilliant, blue chi bright enough to be visible against the flames, the crushingly powerful flip kick to break through his guard...
COMBATSYS: Hotaru can no longer fight.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\ <
K' 0/-------/-----==|
COMBATSYS: Hotaru successfully hits K' with Ten-shou Ranki.
[ \\\\\ <
K' 0/-------/--=====|
The Kusanagi flames, so conjured forth through a maelstrom of grit and soul-searing pain - pain that Whip well remembers, pain she has struggled to ease and even felt herself, flesh spitting and popping as it burned - are an undeniably spectacular thing. The Ikari's earlier faux pas is well forgotten by the audience as the swaying momentum of this fight reaches a quite literal boiling point, as the Beast of Flame unleashes the full scope of his barely-contained savagery without preamble or seeming regret. While others are impressed, though, gaping and pointing, beginning to applaud even before Hotaru's incredibly tenacious, graceful response...
Whip frowns deeply, drawing a deep breath through the nose as he mouth pulls to a hard line. To deem her disapproving would be incorrect; she's not judging her potent brother for taking this fight so seriously, because it /is/ a fight - there's no point partaking of such without being willing to give it everything. She understands that too well, and knows that the Futaba girl does too. She's seen it with her own eyes, felt it in the ache and wear upon her own lithe frame; these two are the truest kinds of warriors. Hotaru perhaps even moreso than K', precisely because he's been tampered and fabricated, modified and manipulated.
The pretty young girl is a natural. This is her domain, and always was. Always will be.
However, whenever the Beast is genuinely unleashed, his self-imposed chains falling away to so much dust, Whip remembers the past. There was time he couldn't control this-- when going to such impossible limits would render him a raging, babbling creature of wanton destruction, little more than an animal indeed. The phantom pain creeping through her right forearm, setting ablaze the tender core of her palm, recalls the ever-burning fire that once sought to perpetually penetrate the stolen scion's gauntlet. She shared it with him, and for all they've been through... she would do it a thousand times over. But that makes it no less fearsome.
Watching the scene unfold, seeing Hotaru suddenly soar upward, Whip's own heart is thumping in her breast.
Biting down upon her lip, she says nothing, does not cry out or cajole. This battle has gone so far beyond that.
In the storm she finds him. Her vision may be too blurred, her head too addled by the beating she took, to see him outright or to think this through entirely, but that fighter's instinct sees her through. From admist the fire a fount of blue accompanies both fighters as Hotaru's crushing kick brings them into the air. Flame trails behind, drawn up by the sheer magnitude of forces at play here. From the side, it almost seems like the smaller warrior has borrowed some of K's everburning fuel for a fleeting moment.
The sky behind them is dark with only a sliver of violet in the horizon. She doesn't even know how hurt she is. She never stopped to think about it. She just picked a direction and ran, and a fraction of a second later, the two are airborn. It can't last forever. The Kenpo artist responsible for the launching flips forward. Her trajectory is certain, a falcon snatching its prey from the air, and just as suddenly as the two rose above the flames, they drop back down at a steep angle.
Another slide across the grass tears another groove into the burning lawn before the two come to a stop, Hotaru situated atop K', hands pressed atop each other right over the top of his sternum, a few inches below his throat. It is easy for their eyes to lock at this close proximity. Around them, a maelstrom of chi swells, a cataclysmic showing of elemental force and raw, surging energy, all of it answering to the spirit of the Futaba heiress. It would seem that while K' is able to cycle chi through him to generate those flames with far greater ease than the Kenpo artist can her azure counterpart, when she does tap into that abundant source of ambient power, the results are impressive in their own right.
Only in the midst of collecting pending chi bomb does she become aware of just how exhausted she is. An ache in her side might be a broken rib in spite her best defensive endeavors. Her head hurts. Her left sleeve is burned away and her flesh red at points from exposure to the culmination of NESTS's efforts in forging fire into flesh. Her right hair ribbon went missing, letting half her long black hair cascade against her shoulder and partially over her face. It may have been a long time ago, but the memory is fresh in her mind - he told that she had proven herself after their violent match. She had never forgotten. "You've done all right." Her voice manages to maintain that teasing tone in spite herself, the girl grinning faintly, hair whipped by an updraft in energy. But the look in her eyes suggest there is depth to her words beyond a gentle taunt.
Like a sigh finally released, Hotaru slouches forward, and all the pent up energy crashes back down, funneled through the young martial artist like an electrical conduit, blasting the entirety of the attack into K''s chest. A blastwave explodes out from around them, extinquishing lingering external flames, sending more tree leaves scattering. For her part, Hotaru sinks forward, eyes closed, the debt owed to the battle finally been paid.
It's un-fucking-believable. Even with the glove off, with the bloodline fires fully tapped and responding to /his/ command, rather than threatening to consume him with every flaring tongue, Hotaru nearly weathers it. While anything approaching a perfect defense may have been a shot in the dark even for a fighter as capable as she is, that she keeps her footing, her wits, rolls with as many of the unrelenting blows as she can... comes out of it halfway cognizent of her surroundings... overtop of the shades, K''s brows momentarily crest, as twisting plumes of molten chi ripple through the night air like trailing fireworks, that moment the first he's been /sure/ that Hotaru is going down for the count - as she's hurtling through the air, smouldering.
K' gasps superheated air, rights his own stance - as much as he ever does. There's a ragged cough, exertion and acrid smoke coupling with the convection and combustion to make the oxygen hard indeed to come by. The fires that flare up across the yard are intensely hot, they consume the foliage around them in an instant, most swiftly diminishing, the growing darkness clearer as holy fire dissipates. K' doesn't even keep any around for his own personal use, though it does indeed look like he's standing in an impact crater, now, rock, earth, and grass alike charred to crumbling ash, incinerated in a flash of absolute fury.
The unlikely conduit of that divine energy breathes a little better as flame withdraws within him in unearthly waves, a rippling of air the mark of its passing; along with the various flashfires that continue to burn, the blackened grounds and the battered girl. That she can hardly see him won't make K' any easier for Hotaru to /read/, his face already grimly intent, jaw set, gaze alternating between something somewhere off in the shadows, and on the recovering girl.
She is, his eyes don't deceive him, /actually standing up/. More, she's hurtling towards him with impressive speed despite blood and bruise and burn alike, setting herself on a renewed collision course for those last moments of the fight. There's a silent heave of K''s chest in chuckle, and the prototype doesn't even fight it. Doesn't move; it's his turn to weather it. He rolls with it clean on the chin, no guard to speak of as she flip-kicks him skyward, chi exploding around him in luminescent blue that replaces the brilliant fiery candles of moments before as Hotaru's leg cleaves off his chest and skull.
The rogue prototype tries to ride it out with ironclad will and defiance, but in the end, what he manages is little more than Hotaru in the face of his own assault moments earlier - he's mostly aware, prepared, as he's literally ridden deep into the unforgiving, harsh ground. Gravel buries itself in K''s back, ripping the /hell/ out of the black shirt he was wearing. There's another, hoarse cough as they skid to a stop, and he is indeed looking up at her; somewhere behind them, his shades lie broken to the side of the first meters of the Ryu Zui Ken dojo's new moat. His features are impassive, exhausted in turn, but the eyes that already meet hers carry a smile in their still-wolfish, molten gleam.
Then, she /really/ lets him have it. It's not like K' didn't know it was coming, the prototype doesn't even tense up, he's apparently comfortable enough battered beneath the more cultured weapon. That's a sensation that changes /sharply/ as that wellspring of chi sears through him, and for a moment K' howls, the cry of pain lost in the maelstrom of azure chi that steals the last of his own will to fight. Were he not already toppled on the ground with Hotaru, he would fall over near Hotaru.
As it is, aching but entirely conscious, drained as he may be of the majority of his strength, lying in a ditch that seems to also be vaguely K' shaped, the bioweapon eyes Hotaru above him with the same indiscernibly intent fervour that she missed instants earlier, in the dark. He doesn't immediately respond, verbally at least. On some level, K' is aware of the sudden mobilization of the bout's spartan emergency personnel. Who knew there'd be about five fires threatening to spread on all sides of the dojo yard, two injured fighters that appear to have just /exploded/, ample landscaping work, and a new suspect as to the identity of the fiery threat from Outer Sunshine for many to whisper about (or flee!) in the rocking conflagrations' aftermath.
The crowd is urged back, fire extinguishers fight back holy flame, and in that dark, fresh trench.. no one's sure if the fight is over. Even as K' does see her start to slouch forward, and abruptly responds. Arms lash upwards for her, a bit violently, but there's nothing so much forceful as firm in the motion that follows.. possibly largely because K' /is/ right behind Hotaru, pushed to his last, just wanting to lie down and sleep. Instead, she'd find herself rather abruptly drawn down into him decidedly proactively, perhaps even protectively, and in that shadowed crater, the Beast of Flame's final advance comes as fingers dig into Hotaru's back and neck, and the battered bioweapon lifts up, seeking for a lingering, fiery moment to do exactly what his dumb sister initially suggested, and kiss her, just as deeply and forcefully as he's able.
Impulsive, volatile, and born of a decided myriad of mixed emotions as adrenaline conflicts with agonized muscles, there's only elements of gentle but no shortage of overburning /fervent/ in the way he pursues her, for that moment. The fact that he's going to be tasting smoke and blood just seems to make it all the more urgent. In -that- moment the confusion, the chaos, the occupied and uncertain first responders in the gathering gloam are all boons utterly forgotten by the prototype, along with any particular urge or memory he had to actually /reply/ to Hotaru. She might have done alright, herself.
COMBATSYS: K' takes no action.
COMBATSYS: K' can no longer fight.
In the midst of such moments are souls tempered, steely resolve twisted over and over, folded unto itself until it gains an insurmountable strength that could be found nowhere else but in the very heart of battle... and more, passing through the eye of that storm to the moments where everything should fall apart; where the heart skips a beat, where breath catches and dies, where the spirit ebbs to the merest, purest whisper of one's self. Those precious few seconds shared between the two warriors are exactly that-- dearer than diamonds, more valuable than all the heaped gold in the world could ever be. For their audience, though?
"W-What's going on?" Her voice begins as a murmur, Whip unmindful of her solitude amidst the crowd of spectators, voicing her wonderment instinctively as her eyes narrow. Any attempt to peer through the scintillating haze of dissipating chi, through the smouldering lick of flame, through the heat and the smoke and the sudden, frantic spray of extinguishers is in sad vain. Which is why it takes about two point five seconds for the Ikari to decide she's missing something, and with the moment of concern long passed in the excitement, and in Hotaru's own incredible display, she's back to being the embarassing sister again.
A hand clamps down on the balding head of the middle-aged gentleman before her, and then the Ikari unceremoniously boosts herself up with a knee against his shoulderblades, her other arm held out for balance as she tries to get as high as she can to peer down through the curling smoke. This is well and good, but she's still holding that sign in her grip, which wavers and wobbles, flashing gaudy colour through the air. She knows she's missing /something/ dammit, but she just can't see, flailing about and squinting until her eyes water.
And then, there's a startled 'eep!' and the perfect genetically-modified assassin tumbles head over head (the second head isn't hers, obviously), people scattering and cursing as she topples from the bleachers to crash facefirst into the lawn. She does so with an undignified thump, with an accompanying loose clatter as her homemade sign bounces on its base and comes to a stop face-up, bearing its content for all to see.
Depicted is a tiny chibi K', drawn in what - to be fair to Whip - amounts to the standard of the average eight year old, with a matching Hotaru bearing the side-tail she wore for their SNF match. They're leaning toward each other in combat poses of a sort, flames burning around one of the Beast's hands and the kenpo-ka's arms raised with palms open, but binding them together in the background is a big, red, cartoony heart.
The unfiltered gifts of the earth have proven a fine counterpart to the Kusanagi flame...
But likely nobody finds that fact as /completely adorable/ as Whip does.
Log created on 23:25:33 06/19/2012 by K', and last modified on 11:16:32 06/23/2012.