Description: The Bright Sun Circus holds an exhibition match between their star juggler and Aranha, hoping his acrobatic fighting style, his use of parkour, and his notoreity as a fighter can draw a bigger crowd! If only the announcer could get things right...
"AND TONIGHT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN... WE HAVE A VERY SPECIAL TREAT FOR YOU!"
The big top tent has seen many, many years of use, but it's rare for it to be anywhere near as populated as it is right now. Even darkened thusly, it's impossible to ignore the sheer -volume- of people in this now-crowded big-top, between the crystal wands, the cheap knockoff lightsabers, and other light-up doodads waved about by the tiny tots in attendance. Small towns don't attract the crowds, and the larger cities just have so many other attractions to draw away the younger residents. Circuses are just behind the times -- or so it was explained to tonight's guest star.
"YOU MAY KNOW HER AS THE TWIRLING FIREBALL... THE DIABOLO EL DIABLO... BUT TONIGHT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN... YOU MAY KNOW HER AS THE BRIGHT SUN CIRCUS' DEFENDING CHAMPION... HO NO KAAAAAAAAAA"
Michael Buffer, this ringleader isn't, but the effect on the crowd is nonetheless impressive. Cheers roar out, even threatening to drown out the ringleader's amplified voice, as a spotlight ignites, racing towards one ring of the big top.
The young woman found there is wearing a dark, midnight blue bodysuit, with a red flame pattern across one shoulder, deep purple flames across the other. She throws both hands high in the air, waving cheerfully first to one side, then the other. With a quick hop, she launches forward into a running triple cartwheel, after which she springs forward to land in a tai chi chuan stance, one arm and foot stretched forward, the other arm and leg bent back.
Once the spotlight catches up with the rapid motion, it becomes obvious she's holding two aluminum rods in either hand.
Beat.
And then four red balls seem to drop onto her from above. ... They're not balls, though, they're the star performer's diabolo, and the young prodigy loosens her stance just enough to catch them on a string suspended between the two rods, twirling them about into a circular orbit.
The applause was loud before, but they must have been holding back.
The announcer takes a deep breath as he waits for the applause to die down before he announces the opponent.
"HER OPPONENT WILL BE... ONE OF THE MOST FORMOST PRACTITIONERS OF CAPOEIRA... RUNNER UP IN THE INAUGURAL SEASON OF THE NEO DEVELOPMENT PROJECT. YOU MAY KNOW HIM AS 'THE TRICKY TRACEUR' OR 'THE DANCING SPIDER.' HE IS ARAAAAAAANHAAAAA!"
This announcement brings incredibly loud cheering that takes a bit of time for it to die down
The circus staff move into postion sliding various low altitude versions of the circus apparatus into place, things like trapeze sets, and a tight rope, ladders, and platforms. While it gives Aranha some environment to play with, there's enough open area for Honoka not be interfered with.
The young African American takes off the button down shirt and tosses it into the audience before taking his place in the ring.
He regards the juggler with a smile and nod. "Are you ready?"
He takes a moment to kneel down, touch the ground then he goes into a swaying dance as he waits for the fight to begin.
COMBATSYS: Honoka has started a fight here.
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Honoka 0/-------/-======|
COMBATSYS: Aranha has joined the fight here.
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Honoka 0/-------/-======|======-\-------\0 Aranha
Small-town crowds can get pretty crazy. Even if the stands aren't jam-packed to capacity, they often make up for it with volume. This... is crazy in a -different- way, Honoka decides. She normally carries on a pretty steady demeanor under the big top, but it's hard for her to keep up the confident smile when she's actually very, -very- humbled by all the attention right now! Cheeks flushed pink, she bows her head to Aranha in approval. She'd had met the fighter only briefly, and only in passing, circus crew handling the majority of the pre-fight arrangements, so this is really the first chance she's gotten to look him in the eye.
"AND TONIGHT... THEY WILL FIGHT... TO THE /DEATH!/"
Honoka absolutely loses her cool, mouth agape as she drops to her knees, diabolo clattering to the arena floor unheeded. She shakes her head repeatedly, while a circus clown bounds up to the ringleader, practically knocking him over before gesticulating wildly in the negative.
"OH! MY APOLOGIES, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I MUST APOLOGIZE FOR THE MISINFORMATION! THIS IS AN EXHIBITION MATCH BETWEEN TWO RISING STARS -- AND MAY THE BEST FIGHTER WIN!"
Honoka bounds to her feet again, collecting the diabolo and shuffling them back into a wide orbit.
"FIGHTERS READY?!"
Once the ringleader finishes, she stretches the diabolo string taut, then slackens, then repeats, launching two of her round projectiles into the air. This gives her the opportunity to flash the ringleader an overexaggerated "HMPH!"
At which point the ringleader just thrusts his finger at the ring.
"FIGHT!"
And Honoka twirls into motion with a flourish, not unlike Mai Shiranui's flaming roundhouse kick, catching the falling diabolo into her whirling orbit and launching them towards Aranha at high speed. "HYAAAAAA!"
COMBATSYS: Aranha dodges Honoka's Weakened Large Thrown Object.
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Honoka 0/-------/-======|======-\-------\0 Aranha
To the death? That was not in the contract that Aranha had signed. And from the glare he was giving the announcer, he was clearly not amused. Nor was he amused by the rising star thing as was given away by a slight twitch. Other than the slight lapse in his emotional display control, he seems relatively serene. At least until she twirls around sending the diabolo in his general direction.
His body suddenly turns to the side allowing the flying objects to pass by him just narrowly before he goes into a round off into a back handspring to eat up the distance between them.
His foot barely touches the ground from the acrobatic display before he whips his foot around in a roundhouse with blue chi engulfing his foot, leaping up to follow up with a jumping roundhouse as his foot continues to glow blue before using the momentum to turn his his back to her just an instant before the foot swings up and over carrying him into a back flip kick that drives a final blue chi enhanced kick down upon the juggler's head. He wants to see how she deals with pressure.
COMBATSYS: Aranha successfully hits Honoka with Aggressive Dance.
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Honoka 1/-------/=======|=======\==-----\1 Aranha
Normally, Honoka handles pressure just fine! But that's because she's used to improvisation on a performance level, not a taking-hits-from-complete-strangers level. As Aranha is working on his approach, Honoka shifts back to a defensive stance, keeping the palm of her leading hand stretched out towards Aranha, her trailing hand still waving its wand about to keep her two diabolo spinning in anticipation.
And when he closes in, again, she bounces the two diabolo into the air, preparing them for her next move. Tucking her wands against her forearms, she braces herself, all set to throw her shoulder into him as if to roll past his impact, but her aim is off -- meaning the blue chi sears into her back, causing the diaboloist to double over. Mouth agape, she's left unprepared for the two followups, which send her faceplanting into the arena floor.
She doesn't stay there long, though, placing her hands on the floor and pushing off at an odd angle, half-pushing, half-rolling back to a crouch. She lunges sideways, back to where she had been standing, neatly snaring her two airborne diabolo in mid-air before continuing the sideways whirl to send them crashing into the parkour practitioner.
COMBATSYS: Aranha blocks Honoka's Orbital Bombardment.
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Honoka 1/------=/=======|=======\==-----\1 Aranha
The capoeirista/traceur kick combo is fast and high pressure. The problem is when he does it he walks the tight rope of vulnerability to overzealousness. It takes himself a bit of time to recover from his own attack. By the time he does, the circus perform is already on her feet and poised to attack.
He doesn't have time to bob, weave, or dive for cover. He turns his shoulder in an attempt of self preservation as he gets whacked by her weapon of choice and spinning with it and moving to the side. It is the difference between someone who is used to delivering hits to another person and someone who isn't. The difference between someone who has fought in life or death situations and someone who hasn't been tempered by desperate combat.
The Dancing Spider goes into a cartwheel-like mostion towards Honoka's flank and clasps her mid-section and twists as he performs a scissor takedown to bring her down on her back then slipping a leg free to deliver a knee down on her face.
COMBATSYS: Honoka blocks Aranha's Kick Combo.
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Honoka 1/------=/=======|=======\==-----\1 Aranha
Honoka's still smarting from that kick to the head, so she's grateful she hasn't lost all sense of balance from it. Her head is ringing, but she can still hear the audience's oohs and ahhs as she recovers and delivers her own rebuttal to the Dancing Spider.
A snap of her wrist brings her diabolo back to her, as she hops backwards to a safer distance. Juggling the diabolo in a tight circle, she curls her lips into a slight smile. Okay, she's a bit more prepared for the second volley of attacks. She snatches her diabolo out of the air with her left hand, inverting her wands against her forearm once more. Holding her diabolo off to one side, she thrusts her reinforced forearm into the scissor kick, wands absorbing the brunt of the impact as she manages to roll into the momentum. She may not be as good of a fighter, but she's danced plenty of dances under the big top before! She tumbles with the motion, landing with her hand on the ground.
With a sudden motion, she thrusts her palm upwards -- though it's not at Aranha, but rather to the net suspended overhead. And she's not just gesturing to the crowd -- though they do cheer for it -- she's flinging one of her wands at the net. Snapping her diabolo cord around the ladder thusly, she tugs sharply on her cord, launching herself into a somersault as she flies up to the ladder. Vaulting up the last two steps, she tosses her diabolo into the air again, the spotlights casting a faint purple glow onto her as she tosses a broad grin back at Aranha. "Heard you liked climbing," she notes, tricking the diabolo around in an impressive display.
COMBATSYS: Honoka enters a meditative state.
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Honoka 1/----===/=======|=======\==-----\1 Aranha
"Indeed."
It's a short response as he admires the fancy diabolo play. He then watches her flip into the air and then he looks upwards at the net. Pondering if it's a trap, and wondering if he wanted to go into anyway to see what she was truly capable of.
His lips curl into a playful grin as he shouts to her, "Are you saying you want to take this to the air?"
Aranha goes into a dash vaulting over a clown car, kicks off a platform, bounds off of the ladder which in turn propels him towards the trapeze. After a few swings, he flies into the air before descending feet first at the juggler.
COMBATSYS: Aranha successfully hits Honoka with Sky's the Limit.
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Honoka 1/---====/=======|=======\==-----\1 Aranha
Honoka bounces lightly upon the net, using the opportunity for an unusual effect that makes her diabolo grind upon the same fixed space in air, despite the swaying motion. Upon hearing the applause, she bobs her head towards Aranha, who by this point has vaulted onto the net. Her bobbing wasn't just for dramatic effect, though -- in fact, she had every intent of using the sway of the net to vault backwards. Aranha's fighting skills place him outside of the window she'd predicted him to be within, though; her underestimation costs the young woman her balance, though, and even as she flies backwards, it's... not half as graceful as she'd expected. Spotlights track the young woman's motions as she bounces into the net, diabolos flying off in two different directions.
Still, Honoka recovers quickly enough, though, handspringing back to her feet. With one wide sweep of her diabolo wands, she snatches the diabolo out of midair and back under her control. "Air is nice! But no tightrope tonight, sadly."
With one glance spared upward, she suddenly rolls back down to the net, shoulder-first, using the net's springiness to send her flying up, up, up into the air...
... So far that the spotlight operator gets confused and is completely unsure where to aim next. So, figuring this is a fight, she's bound to attack Aranha, so he aims it at Aranha. Amateurs!
The guess is half-right, at least, as the spotlight's present long enough to see a blur of red motion, as the diabolos streak down like meteors falling onto Aranha, as she slings them back and forth for a series of successive strikes!
COMBATSYS: Honoka successfully hits Aranha with Meteor Shower.
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Honoka 1/------=/=======|=======\==-----\1 Aranha
%Aranha has fought on moving platforms, on nets, on narrow surfaces. He's traversed crumbling buildings, he's has expeirence fighting on unsteady ground. That isn't to say that he can't make mistakes because of unsteady ground. It just puts him a bit ahead of the game than the average person.
In this case a mistake happens due to the high velocity and rebound off of her causing him to land just a little off balance.
The diabolos stream downwards sending the capoeirista into a stumble and he falls down causing the net to shake and bounce.
After a couple of bounces he's back to his feet and even quicker than that he goes up into a one handed handstand and spins splaying his legs wide open to slap her in the face a couple times before going back to his feet. but the bounciness of the net make the spin a bit awkward and unbalanced.
COMBATSYS: Aranha successfully hits Honoka with Weakened Inverted Tornado.
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Honoka 1/------=/=======|=======\====---\1 Aranha
One hand hits the net first, followed shortly thereafter by Honoka's toes. Springing backwards like a cat, she brings the diabolos aloft, landing in a low stance. One arm over the diabolos, one arm beneath, she spins them horizontally in an excalibur maneuver, using it to get a cheer from the audience, and in another sense, brace herself after all those dizzying spins.
Flashing Aranha a quick grin, she seems more than ready to take on the unsteady capoeirista: she brings the orbit of the diabolo over his head and is all set to pirouette out of the way. It would've worked, too, if she were on steadier ground and he weren't shaking the net all over the place. One more step of the dance she has to learn, after all.
Smacked about in the face thusly, she staggers backwards, but manages to recover some balance with a quick hop, rubbing her cheek as the spin of the diabolos allows her a moment. Another leap places her on the more stable edge of the net, allowing her to bring her diabolo lower. She lets one wand slip out of her hands into an excalibur genocide -- a lash aimed at wrapping around Aranha's legs right as he starts to land with the aim of unsteadying him just one more time! "Hyaaaa!"
COMBATSYS: Aranha parries Honoka's Solar Eclipse!
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Honoka 0/-------/=======|=======\=====--\1 Aranha
Aranha has barely enough presence of mind to keep his legs apart. The lash catches only one foot just as it lands and she pulls the leg and he goes with the pull a little too much. He bodily flies past Honoka towards the support poles for the for the net.
He catches the poleand swings around it. The spin sends him flying at high speed and back at Honoka with blue glowing palms extended to grab the juggler. If he should grab ahold of her, he'll send a burst of blue chi into her shoulders before folding up to shove Honoka away with his feet as he flips away back towards the support pole.
COMBATSYS: Honoka fails to reflect Hunting Season EX from Aranha with Around the World.
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Honoka 0/-------/---====|=======\=======\1 Aranha
Success! ... Or so it seems at first anyway. Honaka's eyes widen a bit once she realizes she's got Aranha snared, but her pleased expression falls once she realizes he's using the momentum she's imparted against her. She starts to pull her cord back around to snag the airborne diabolos out of the sky, but that's when she realizes the cord is still wrapped around Aranha's leg.
And so it was that Honoka was caught unaware, tugging lightly at her corde, turning with a nervous glance back just in time to find Aranha kicking at her shoulder, chi flaring blue, and then propelling her to the to the 'pit' in the middle of the net. Her diabolos hit the net not long afterwards, gravity causing them to roll down towards their trapped master.
Honoka doesn't seem to make any immediate grab for them yet though. Breathing belabored, the fingers of one hand grip the paracord net, while the other hand hangs limply by her side.
She's shaking, in fact. And so is her voice, barely audible over the din of the crowd: "I don't see why you can't use the same techniques everyone else does..."
He hangs on the support pole. Waiting as he watches what his opponent is doing. "I don't use the same techniques as everyone else because capoeira is considered an odd duck among the martial arts community. Not as common as other martial arts and what I didn't learn from my teacher, I learned as necessity to survive."
He lowers himself down and slowly moves towards her. Ginga is forgone since the net constantly shifting would force him to use more stamina than he'd like.
"I learned to use the environment before it was used on me. It is my weapon and my escape route."
He doesn't attack for some reason. Instead he offers a hand to her. "If this fight were to end now, there's no shame in how well you performed. You did a good job. If you wish to continue, I would have no problem with it either. Your choice."
COMBATSYS: Aranha decides that discretion is the better part of valor.
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Honoka 0/-------/---====|=======\=======\1 Aranha
When Aranha had begun to speak, Honoka's eyes weren't even focused upon him. The purple accent light glistens off her shoulders and hair, casting an eerie shade upon her pale skin. Pupils dilated, she squints, strains to hear his voice. Afterimages of Aranha's blue chi still reside in her field of vision, like bolts of lightning lingering in the sky, the din of the audience roaring like distant thunderclouds.
And the more she listens, the more she realizes... those aren't the words that come next. He's supposed to say something else...
Wracked by confusion, Honoka raises up to her full height. Pupils contract, and she looks down at the diabolo wands in her right hand. "I..." she stammers, pulling the wands up to look at them for a moment.
Her two diabolos tap her on the foot, pulled into place by her displacement upon the net.
She looks up slowly at Aranha's offered, no longer as confused; now, impassive.
"I'm okay," she states, fixated on Aranha's hand more than anything else. "I'm... okay." she repeats, taking his hand. Taking a deep breath, she nods slowly, her good cheer returning in degrees. "I yield to you. This has been quite an honor, thank you for the fight."
The audience, having fallen silent to hear her words, bursts into polite, restrained applause.
COMBATSYS: Honoka takes no action.
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Honoka 0/-------/---====|=======\=======\1 Aranha
COMBATSYS: Honoka has left the fight here.
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Aranha 1/=======/=======|
COMBATSYS: Aranha has ended the fight here.
Log created on 18:25:59 08/19/2014 by Honoka, and last modified on 22:57:20 08/19/2014.