Sachihiro

Rigs attacks, I close my eyes and actually open myself to my awareness fully, I ‘’see’’ everything within the circle, everything. I ‘’see’’ the vibrations on the ground as he takes his re-enforced steps, I ‘’see’’ the aura enhancing and protecting him, I ‘’see’’ the flow of his mana as he again activates whatever movement skill used to get the advantage before, I see the language of his body as though his every intention is broadcasted to me. He is quick, very quick, but I am quicker.

I take a step back and weave left, weave right, another step back bending forward and twisting around the re-enforced attacks of his arms and legs missing me by centimetres. I ‘see’ and feel the air displaced by the passage of his strikes, I know the fighting style he is using. With another step back I’m almost at the edge of the circle before enhancing my legs as I bunch and flip while spinning over him.

He ducks and rolls so I don’t actually get to do the move I was planning, as he comes up I’m landing and he launching at me with his aura re-enforced momentum. I lift a knee as I clad to enhance myself and he crashes into me with his superior weight but ends up with his breath expelling out his lungs against my unmoved form. Gravity. They forget the versatility of chakra and my pool is deep, very deep.

Parable. I activating a chakra movement skill and with gentle ease end up locking my fingers into his dark short hair and pulling down harshly from behind him. He follows the movement twisting away but ends up meeting my uprising knee with the back of his head, up he goes saved from a concussion by the aura still clad around him but as he twists a re-enforced roundhouse smacks solidly on the side of his body launching him to the right. He doesn’t resist the new direction of his momentum using it the roll and duck again activating the deceptive movement skill of his but this time to retreat, I follow him.

My steps are light on the grass as I move with not a blade of grass compressed all the way down as I rush towards my opponent on silent feet. My right arm is at my side kept there by my still working muscles and aura my left arm held forward with fingers splayed as though about to grapple. There is no retreat in his eyes, no fear, no Rage either just resolve. I will test it.

My leg sweeps high cutting through the air with the momentum of a swinging club, he ducks under it. Wham! He is smacked on the side of the head by its reverse just as he comes up and is about to counter. The is much less force in the reverse, not much torque but it serves its purpose disrupting his counter and keeping him on the back foot. Long-step. I am in his guard with an enhanced strike to the throat, its a perfect strike that would have crushed most people's tracheas, I follow through with a jab to the chest and upper-cut that has has blood arching beautifully as his head reflectively came down, breath wheezing from his mouth. It’s a solid strike I feel reverberate down my whole arm, right at the bridge of his nose. It blinds him a split second.

Phthartic. I release on my front kick aimed right at his gut but I meet a resistance that pushes me buck as he activates a repulsive shielding ability. I do a back flit using the momentum of the repulsive force to retreat almost 10m landing lightly catching a breath, calming the torrent of miss-expelled chakra burning through my meridians painfully. It’s a sweet pain like healing acid on an open wound, you know its good for you yet there is that tickling pain that flirts of later pleasure though it fucken’ burns.

He air punches a few times, his aura dangerously cutting the air around him as I open my eyes and watch. Though I can get through his defence with my superior movement skill and better technique it seems I haven’t done much damage due to his superior Awakened physic and extrasensory abilities.

We both take a stance again assessing each other anew with this escalated level of things. He moves I move and we meet in the middle in another furious exchange of blows, he clips me on my injured shoulder and I punish his legs with low kicks releasing a phthartic with almost every strike just so I do more damage. Unlike before our strikes are muffled now as my aura clashes with his instead of the pervasive smacking sounds that dramaticised each solid strike landed on naked unclad flesh. I use clever movement and speed to keep him defending not letting even the few strikes that hit me have much momentum or power behind them.

I punish him with my every strike, my chakra release of phthartic having an accumulative effect as bruises start forming all over his body. He tries another grab but with gravity and a phthartic, re-enforce aura clad forehead to the face he stumbles back with blood oozing freely from his now crooked nose. He fixes it without flinching with a echoing crackle, wiping the blood on his forearm he takes another stance still keeping eye contact with all confidence that he will win, I grin and move forward. With parable my movements confuse him and I again crash into his repulsive shielding but this time he follows my retreat. Almost had him at a sweet sport there and he knows it.

We play cat and mouse, me punishing him every opening I create weaving in and out of his strikes depleting my chakra on his body. Rigdis is no slouch though and as any Barbarian that has Awakened in the path of the warrior his body is nimble and resilient but even so the bruises and contusions pile up though they don’t slow him down.

We are on each other punching, ducking, scratching, pulling, pushing, biting and keeping each other at arm’s length kicking, weaving, weaving around, using aura and physical movement skills trying to do as much damage to each other as quickly as possible. I stay nimble, ‘seeing’ most of his attacks coming in his body as he makes them without even opening my eyes as my awareness gives me 3 dimensional awareness of all around me. Focused within the 20m circle as I am I see every muscle twitch every micro change in stance, every direction his eyes follow as he tries his utmost to physically overpower me.

He gets a few good licks in as well even with my microseconds of forewarning, just because I see it coming doesn’t always mean I can avoid it, but I mostly choose what hits to take and which to avoid. Even with only three working limbs though I utterly disassemble him in the course of 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, time goes on as we move all over the flat moist grass within the challenge circle. Sweat heaving breathing and the muffled thumps of our bodies competing in punishing each other the main sensory inputs on my mundane primary senses as with eyes closed I no longer perceive chakra and aura abilities as membranes of colour.

Minor fractures pile up all over his body as I use phthartic after phthartic, the destructing power of the ninjutsu release taxing specifically on my root chakra but also wearing him down like an axe wears down a kawala tree. With my varied styles of fighting and extensive hand to hand training after induction into the Conclave Civitas Compound I devastate him, delivering crunching punch after crunching punch, debilitating kicking after debilitating kick, elbow, knee, chop, backhand all over his body as I use my superior training to my full advantage. Movement abilities commultative of years of yoga, aikido and samurai sword forms without even showing him everything in my style arsenal.

It’s at around 30 minutes of constant stamina draining mentally exhausting hyper activity that I get in a combination of kicks on his inner thighs that opens him up nicely, setting him up with a bent knee thigh forward before I deliver a devastating knee that smashes on his clad upper thigh with a snap, phthartic, he goes down but even as he does a re-enforced spinning back kick to the chest has him flying out of the circle even before the discomfort of the broken leg fully registers on his mind.

He twists as he lands trying to position himself for the next attack but finds himself crumbling back onto the ground with people rushing to him as he is out of the circle and clearly having lost the fight. Niki is on him a moment later, trying to keep him down and see to his injuries, Mira is there standing protectively between me and him a moment later, her face a collage of conflicting emotions. Others flock to him as I take a breath, calming myself down slowly as sounds from outside the circle start taking priority again and I hear the comments around me, our eyes are still on each other even as the world intrudes on the intimacy of our fight, he smiles and I lose sight of him.

I look around, the cool night air taking some of the heat from my swollen muscles still eager for more, its only the first rug so there is plenty of fighting still to be done but I notice by the ambience of some of the audience that even though I’ve won the is a victory for Rigs here tonight as well.