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Post by Event Admin on Jul 21, 2016 11:25:18 GMT
Contenders: Amara Reedman (RLR) vs. Solomon Moon(RLR)Arena:Half Forest, Half VolcanoRules: Each participant has 10 posts each to prove their skills as hunters, less if one participant has no way to escape a certain loss. Stats, HP totals, and MP totals do not exist. Dust is provided. The arena environments are not affected by Semblance. There will be no Godmodding, Metagaming, or Powerplaying, every action made must be reasonably justified. Participants have 24 hours from the time of their opponent's last post to post or themselves or face possible disqualification. DQ can be avoided by alerting either site's staff about a valid reason for one's absence. Final posts (the 10th post for each contender) must be an exit post that includes the bell that ends the match. The match MUST begin by tomorrow, July 22nd 2016. For every day the match doesn't start thereafter, both participants will lose one post each.Battle Start!
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Post by Amara Reedman on Jul 21, 2016 16:04:37 GMT
This was it…the Semifinals!
Amara was ecstatic, jumping back and forth as her eyes beamed at the monitor that cycled through participants. Her image was the first to stop. Her smile curled as the second whipped through image after image of the remaining contestants. When it stopped, she couldn’t help but jump for joy. This was the fight she had been waiting for. So long had she waited for the opportunity to clash with who was arguably the strongest student in Titan(Atlas) Academy - Solomon Moon! Cracking her knuckles, she shot a challenging glance to the boy as she trotted off to her end of the arena.
This was her chance to prove she was the strongest.
With Lacrimosa armed and ready to go, Amara prepared herself for the fight of her life. Part of her wondered what was going on in her opponent’s head. Was Solomon just some mindless drone there for a fight, or did this mean something to him too? Based on stories she had picked up in her travels, the latter was likely not the case. She was curious what would have to happen to turn someone down such a dark path. Of what she knew of Solomon’s family, they seemed like respectable and decent folks. So why, of all people, did their son turn in to such a monster?
None of that really mattered though, did it? At the end of the day, whatever got them there was pointless. It was about the now, about the fight. The only thing that mattered to either of them was the outcome, with both of them expecting a different one. Would Amara’s tribal background, wrought with violence and adversity, be enough to counter his military background? She liked to think so, but then again she had never challenged someone so infamous. Perhaps she would treasure this moment more than any in her lifetime, regardless of the outcome.
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Post by Solomon Moon on Jul 22, 2016 7:09:16 GMT
A shock passed through the arena, like a slumbering giant rolling over in a restless sleep, as a tremendous rumbling of what could have been a distant storm, quickly approaching, announced the rising of the environment into place. Sol had unpleasant memories of the crawling advance of a prolonged artillery shelling as the vibrations of the mass of machinery beneath his feet traveled up through his legs and into his chest. Whilst, the baying of the crowd, which had risen slowly since the revelation of his portrait on one of the massive screens above the Colosseum, before being taken up in earnest as he entered to battlefield, pressed down from all sides, and did not sound to dissimilar to that of men huddled in their trenches as mortars fell around them. A long tortured moan of antipathy came from a thousand throats. They hated him. They hated what he was, and what he represented, and they especially hated that he had made it this far. His first opponent having first surrendered and then, perhaps motivated by fear or shame, had knocked himself out by deliberately head-planting into a solid sheet of ice, while his second had lasted much longer, but had been driven onto the defensive early in the match up and never recovered, meant those that were familiar with Solomon's progression through the roster knew that he was hardly an underdog. Quite the opposite in fact, and perhaps that did not help the crowd like him either.
With ancestry that was nearly inseparable from the time of violence that had followed the fall of Mantle, a military background in the art of warfare, a master level proficiency with the sword, a prestigious title, access to the resources, tech, and manpower of a private army, and a well known and documented grudge against the White Fang, (and by extension Faunus in general according to some critics), in any form of fiction produced in three of the four kingdoms, Lord Captain Commander Solomon-Daton Moon would almost certainly have been the snidely mustache twirling villain that the plucky protagonist underdog must rise up against all odds to dethrone.
However, in the fourth kingdom, that being The Martial State of Atlas, Sol would have played the hero, a misunderstood, well-intentioned youth, thrust into a difficult seat of responsibility by the untimely death of his noble and heroic father, forced to find rise to the challenges of bringing order to a chaotic world, capable of such nobility, honor, and wisdom, so uncommonly seen by the average folk that many mistook it for blind madness or wrath, whilst forever toiling to live up to the prestige of his idol and patriarch's memory, torn perpetually between doing what must be done to win and upholding the bone deep ideals of his house. He would have served as a glowing example to the common caste of how even the mightiest must give up their dreams and bow towards the duty one and all owed to the glorious state which protected and sheltered them.
Heir Solomon Moon, the boy who had looked up to his father, had followed dutifully in the footsteps of his sire as any honorable son must, and had given himself fully into the service of his nation in pursuit of that directive, had died. Heir Solomon moon the boy had died, murdered by the White Fang when an officer in a white mask amputated his arm below the right shoulder with a blade that still glistened with the warm blood of Sol's beloved father. The last memory of that boy had been the agony of his grief, and the wrath for his loss, and his last thought as he closed his fingers around Yoshi Yamahatta's throat and forged his fury into a hammer of explosive force that turned the Faunus terrorist into pink mist from the adam's apple up, had been of his father begging him to open fire on the man holding him hostage.
And from that gruesome womb of blasted earth blackened by blood, littered with the viscera of dozens of nameless Fang soldiers, with the pulverized remains of his enemy clutched in broken fingers, was born The One-Eyed Dragon.
At least that was how the Atlesian media had told the story, how they had turned Sol and his father into martyrs, and while it was mostly true, despite the theatrics, it was only the martial culture of Atlas that truly appreciated the tragic nobility of the tale. Most other kingdoms saw the story as either a patently false fabrication of Atlesian propaganda, or as an example of two bigots getting what they deserved in a setting where the only real tragedy was the fate of the countless faceless soldiers littering the scene's background.
How did one make a monster? One might simply take a young man, only considered an adult through the ruthless metric of his clan's martial tradition and early indoctrination to military rank and file, at a time when others of his age might be learning to drive or experimenting with intimacy, and place a weapon in his hands and expose him to the horrors of armed conflict, before inflicting upon him the loss of the only stability in his life by the death of his idol and father, and in doing so grant him a vaguely defined foe which operates in secrecy and among the mundane population as well as the resources to persecute a self-serving crusade of vengeance against that very group. Combine all that with a man who feels ashamed of his weakness even when acknowledged by a noteworthy academy as one of it's strongest elite due to the crushing responsibility of his inherited station, and manifests a soul holding the power to reduce any common person to nothing but a spray of blood and vital organs, and one might find that they had quite competently created a monster.
The spectators certainly thought so, especially with how news coverage of the event had gone into explicit detail regarding the background of most of the contestants. Their constant booing made that fact clear, but that was only because they could not see the look in that brilliant golden sphere that sat solitary in the young man's visage. Hard men, soldiers, warriors, killers, met that gaze only reluctantly. It was not a look that seemed in any way to be human. It was cold, hard and sharp, like the point of a sword, and it was a joyless, merciless, and utterly alien as the infinite depths of the deepest oceans. He looked as if he could chew up a horseshoes and spit out nails with enough force to erect a gallows and still have enough lethal initiative to pick who might hang upon it. The levity, the joy, the youth, one found in the eyes of others Sol's age, were not simply absent, they seemed to died violently (in a way they had) and left behind only corpses and vague impressions to suggest that they had ever existed to begin with. In face that was lines and plains, as definite as those carved upon granite, marked by a perpetual suggestion of a scowl ever present upon a noble and angular brow, as well as the near frown that seemed to be the default shape of full dark lips, and framed by a jawed that was often clenched so tight that the muscles on his neck stood out, Sol's eye was by far the hardest of it all.
Currently that eye was staring, unblinking and unfocused at a point somewhere on the interlocked concrete blocks of the arena's center. The "thousand yard stare" was the kind of gaze only typically found in the eyes of hardened soldiers who had spent too long on the front lines, and upon that of a boy, not even old enough to be called a man in most kingdoms, it looked like it belonged, in such a way as to only highlight the mortal edge of violent experience and intent that was a persistent theme throughout all facets of his appearance, as well as the obscenity of how life had twisted a youth into such a cold and unfeeling creature who had in it's heart no room for anything but battle and bloodshed.
How did one make a monster? One might be hard pressed to do it any better that Solomon Moon.
He stood with his head, a regal ornament upon his statuesque physique, slightly bowed, as a shock of dark brown, nearly black shoulder length hair fell down to obscure the absence of his left eye, whilst the rest remained tied in a tight and functional tail towards the rear of his crown. He was not wearing any cloak or waist coat, being that his coat had been reduced to ashes during his previous encounter when he landed the finishing blow upon his opponent, and thus as he stood with hands clasped behind his back one could bare stark witness to the rippling muscle of his left arm, which looked more like it should belong to a horse or ox, or some other awesome beast, for how every individual rope and fiber of meat beneath his slightly tanned and brutally scarred flesh coiled around the framework of his bones like great constrictor snakes. Sol was not lean like most hunters, he was a powerhouse, an athlete of Olympian proportions, and even at ease, his arm was thicker than most men could manage while flexing. Across a barrel chest were the lacquered blue straps of a banded mail breastplate, which bore an ugly gouge below the left shoulder where his last foe had landed her only significant blow, which rose and fell with the calm rhythm of his controlled breathing. Upon his legs he wore a non descriptor set of cargo pants of a vaguely military style, the lower third of which were tucked into steel capped and immaculately polished jack boots that rose up the shins behind a pair of striking silver greaves that bore the emblem of his house, a stylized rendering of Remnant's moon, upon their mirrored faces.
His stance spoke of ease, with vaguely military suggestion, feet spread shoulder width apart, shoulders slouched, hands clasped behind his back, and yet there was the definite impression of danger that lingered about him like an only faintly visible fog, as if a shadow of death and destruction clung to him like a cloak. He looked as ready to kill in relaxed posture as most any other man might with steel bare and raised. There was something sinister and reptilian about his aspect, that unblinking eye, the unnerving inhuman gaze, and the way the bands of his armor resembled the belly of a serpent, all adding up to something that was immediately terrible and hazardous to the subconscious mind, like a snake in the grass that was just out of sight by obvious enough to all the other senses that one's brain began quivering in conniptions of anxiety. It seemed if at any moment how would draw his weapons, and all that quickly the fight would be over, like a cobra striking more quickly than the eye could track, leaving in it's wake only an agonizing and intoxicated demise.
Any who had seen his previous engagement would already be well familiar with those weapons.
Roar, an apt name for the prosthetic that attached to his right shoulder, given the awesome cacophony that denoted the weapon's deployment, though for most foes it was by the time they heard the ear splitting wail of the arm's weapon systems it was often too late. A black skeleton of a dust treated titanium alloy, wrapped in a network of blue dust infused and faintly transclucent artificial muscle which was then armored with overlapping plates of the type of ceramic composite typically found in ballistic armor vests, treated with red dust. One part mechanically enhanced limb, and two parts firearm, with a capitol "Fire". Capable of delivering crushing physical blows that could punch through the armor of any lesser Grimm, and could buckle even the armored plating of and Atlesian Paladin, through the use of focused jets at the palm, elbow and shoulder, each outfitted to work in tandem with the arm's actuators and control thrust via several complex apertures in each vent that could adjust focal point, spread, intensity, and oxygen/fuel content of the jets in real time, as well as being able to unleash a sustained jet of ignited fire dust for up to sixty seconds at a time, and alternatively an explosive projectile that detonated with force to rival military high-ordinance and inflict a six foot wide crater upon terrain with explosive force alone, never minding the resultant shock-wave and shrapnel, which in the case of the latter could be lethal up to a hundred feet away, Roar was a weapon designed to excel in mid range combat, with a heavy emphasis on stopping power and fire and forget measures to supplement accuracy. If the weapon had any weaknesses, they had not been apparent during any of his prior fights, in fact, following his most recent fight Sol had modified the fuel mixture to burn more slowly, resulting in a lower maximum temperature, but offering the ignited fuel the ability to cling to surfaces it was sprayed upon and continue burning. He would not tolerate someone leaping through his flamethrower with impunity two fights in a row.
Whisper, the twin designation for the sword and scabbard that hung at Sol's left his. The weapon component was a sword composed of a black dust tempered alloy that bore a single curved edge and spanned just shy of five feet from hilt to tip, a minimal rondel guard that was just enough to protect the fingers of the hand grasping the foot long hilt that ended in a tear drop shaped pommel that served to balance the weight of the inordinately long blade as well as provide a point for augmenting strikes made with the pommel itself. The scabbard component resembled a conventional lacquered sheath with a similar composition to Roar's hull. A vaguely translucent core of blue surrounded by overlapping plates of red, bore the figure of a stylized dragon climbing it's length, the mouth of the serpent supporting a trigger and ammunition clip that could detonate a red dust charge within the shell of the sheath and explosively eject the sword from it's vessel at velocities to rival large caliber ammunition. Even when sheathed, in Sol's hands the sword was still a potent weapon for threatening and parrying, and could be wielded as a short club by striking with the pommel, or potentially a tonfa through use of the magnetic clasp that could affix the sheath to the bracer Sol wore on his left wrist.
The final piece of his arsenal, one easily missed by most foes, was the bracer Sol wore on his left wrist. Simple by comparison to the others it was simply a scaled down bandoleer that held up to a dozen individual dust crystals for use with Sol's semblance, that could be activated remotely with aura, bearing a magnetic clasp that could lock Whisper's sheath in place. Currently the hopper contained twelve crystals, two purple, two blue, one yellow, one green, and six red.
The earth ceased rumbling, and Sol looked up to the arena, and right through the challenging leer of his enemy, his gaze instead flowing up into the bleachers and sweeping left and right as he walked towards his side of the ring, perhaps searching for at least one member of the crowd who wasn't heckling him.
He didn't find any, and so his gaze finally fell upon his foe, and his expression did not seem to change in the slightest, in fact it did not even seem to alter in such a way to even imply that he was looking at a person. All the same, there was something dark and terrible about his gaze, like the inhuman leer of a great taijitu, not hateful, not angry, perhaps not capable of either for now, and merely appraising it's prey. Sol knew something of Amara Reedman, but only in such a way as he was familiar with he mother, an outspoken pro-Faunus advocate, who served as a font of the type of incendiary rhetoric that often attracted people to joining the Fang, and that her father was notable for being a much publicized human supporter of the same. That didn't make her a half-breed in Sol's eye, though the thought of human's and Faunus whelping offspring did unsettle him due to the lack of understanding in how hereditary genetics were decided. She was simply another Faunus, albeit the spawn of the kind of activist that attracted and inspired insurgents like the Fang. He'd also gone through the trouble to observe Amara's prior engagements, and had a general understanding for her weapons and fighting style. The idea of having to face another agile, close to mid range opponent with fist mounted weapons was actually quite frustrating to Sol, as he knew he could look forward to another insufferable period of the girl dancing around his attacks while he kept her at bay with a superior choice of weapon and exploiting her deficit in reach, until finally the fool became over confident in her inferior capabilities and over extended herself. Furthermore, she was a bloody Faunus, and no matter how he conducted himself, this fight would inevitably fall into the narrative of a privileged human defeating an oppressed Faunus when it was reported by the biased left wing news media that was so popular in kingdoms outside Atlas.
Somehow it seemed appropriate that the two would face each other here, with the fiery hellscape of molten stone laid out behind Sol like a sulfurous boil that had finally burst, a landscape that was itself fiery and destruction just as much as the man who stood before it, while on the other side, framed by the lush vibrant foliage of a forest, her feral heritage suited by the harmonious splendor of life and nature that splayed out behind her.
But Sol did not see or realize any of that, all he saw in his mind's eye was the hundreds of ways he could break the bones of his enemy, the multitudes of flaws in her potential stances and her chose in equipment, as well as the disadvantages that he could exploit to beat her. He did not even see a person. He saw what no one wanted to admit was the truth of what lay beneath exteriors and titles and backgrounds, a truth known only to soldiers who had seen better men than themselves perish seemingly arbitrarily on the battlefield. He just saw meat.
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Post by Amara Reedman on Jul 22, 2016 17:49:30 GMT
With every moment that passed, the excitement building up in Amara’s chest grew more and more intense. She stared down her opponent, smiling confidently the entire time. Now that she had a chance to stand there and analyze her opponent, Amara was getting the sense that he may not be all he was hyped up to be. Seemed like a normal kid to her, with the obvious exception of the eye and arm. No matter - she was ready. Based on what she had seen from his matches in the earlier rounds, paired with reports from people that had fought him, Amara deduced that Solomon’s style was focused closely on mid-to-close range.
Excellent.
These types of battles were where Amara really seemed to shine. She was quick on her feet, always moving - more than enough to throw in Solomon’s direction. Where he had her trumped in overall firepower, she had him trumped in speed. The wilderness of Vacuo, the relentlessness of the desert sands, had shaped her into a warrior. That’s what this battle would be - warrior versus warrior. What separated them was privilege, but that had never stopped Amara from humbling an opponent before. She was ready to throw everything she had at him, and hopefully he was ready to do the same.
The arena selection completed its roulette, showing the images of a forest and a volcano. Awesome, awesome, awesome! Despite the fact that she hadn’t battled too much on the volcanoes in Mistral, they weren’t much different from the mountains. There were environmental hazards, for sure, but things like that never bothered Amara very much. The forests, however, she had considerably more experience in. She wasn’t the most familiar with Solomon’s background, but as far as she knew, she held an environmental advantage over the young man from the frigid north.
“Participants, take position!” Rang the announcers loud voice.
Amara skipped to the center of the arena, void of any environment, just off to the side of the forest. Once there, she threw her fists up in the air and went to work building up the crowd. Cheers and chants, clapping where neither of the latter existed. Few people booed Amara. Why? Because she was likable. Though she had a reputation for being an arrogant brat from time to time, she was still open-minded and friendly to the people around her. Charismatic, by all means. Her knack of empathy to all manner of people certainly helped, too. Once she had finished interacting with the spectators, she turned her attention back to Sol.
“I hope you’re ready for the fight of your life, Mr. Moon!” She said, winking at the young man. The announcers loud voice boomed over the arena once more, signifying the beginning of the battle. Amara wasted no time, dashing back into the forest as quickly as she could. If Amara wanted an advantage over Solomon, she was going to have to start early on in the fight. He wasn’t the type to dilly-dally like her previous opponents. No, instead, Solomon Moon was ruthless. He was a shark. A monster had she ever seen one. As with all Huntresses to be, though, Amara was trained to fight monsters.
This case would be no different. She would not lose.
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Post by Solomon Moon on Jul 23, 2016 4:27:31 GMT
The arrogance of his foe made Sol's eye twitch. Her broad grin, which failed to bridge the chasm of social divide between them,bordered on being insolent, and the way she danced around like a little girl at the fair was nothing short of pathetic and childish. It was patently obvious that she, much like the faunus from Sol's previous match, was not treating the situation with the severity that it deserved. She was treating Sol as if he were just another student, no different than any other "normal" boy, and if she truly believed that was the case, and if she could not see the way that his very posture radiated not just a sense of danger but that of immediate mortal peril, shrouded in the kind of darkness one only found in the most distant recess of a cannon's loaded barrel as the fuse smoldered down, whilst his eye reflected a glare that could have been at home upon the sharpest point of a sword, then she was almost certainly not paying attention. That either made her an idiot, a blind fool, or a creature of absolutely dumbfounding arrogance.
What had this creature of impure heritage accomplished that would give her the gall to meet those mismatched eyes with the golden gaze of one such as Solomon Moon? Sol had done research in preparation for this fight, though not specifically on the subject of Amara, he'd actually not known until the last moment who his opponent would be, but the roster had been sufficiently thinned to the point that he could memorize the backgrounds and performance records of all those still currently in the running, and what he'd found regarding Amara herself was hardly anything he would call impressive. She bore no titles, nor any significant victories or accomplishments on the field of battle, or at least none that were a matter of public record, and she conducted herself with the same sort of sickening wide-eyed idealism that seemed a persistent theme among the worthless roster of this year's tournament.
Sol on the other hand, while the workings of that calculating mind remained locked behind that scowling golden eye, could be deciphered, at least as far as his achievements went, with nothing but a scroll and a short query upon a CCTS search engine, and divorced of context that list often read less like the life of a single young man, and more like the history of a brutal decades spanning military campaign. Sol had personally lead much publicized skirmishes against insurgent elements operating in the Atlas periphery, and could boast a body count that rivaled a natural disaster. He was as close to a celebrity in Atlas as the pragmatic and functionality obsessed culture would allow, and commonly the subject of news pundits on both sides of the debate. He lead a private army, and was such a subject of fierce conflict that despite being one of the foremost warrior's Atlas had trained in recent memory, could not safely travel while unattended by a group of body guards and retainers. Whereas other contestants had arrived at this event by shuttle or airship, Sol had entered the spotlight while riding a bullhead, a flying gunship that served as flagship of the fleet that he could claim leadership over. He was a lord, not merely in title, but in stature and influence, who since arriving had been the catalyst in two full scale riots by mere virtue of his incendiary nature.
Simply put, this beaming child was to Sol, what an insect was to a mountain, not merely insignificant, but actually incapable of appreciating the daunting scope of the obstacle before her.
And as the announcer signaled the contestants to take their marks, the skipping chit sauntered closer like a blindfolded infant crawling towards a precipice, ignorant of danger, Sol felt contempt for the creature, much as he had for his previous enemy whose name he had already forgotten, and his smoldering expression adopted a distinctly more sour tone, as that lethal eye, devoid of canny resemblance to a natural human's, like a golden stone set in the chiselled grimace of a towering monument to some conqueror, traced her approach with such malice and offense as to imply that it meant to simply scour her away. He saw right through the facade that the unwashed peasant masses greedily slurped up like so much slop from the swine trough. Her "charisma", a pointless quality in a warrior, only made him resent her even more. Likeability made no difference to a sword, or a bullet, or a tooth, and the way the girl seemed to laud that useless quality only served to highlight her inexperience. Sol, however, was not some uneducated rag swaddled commoner, and her display was not endearing to him, in fact it felt a great deal like mockery, as if he were so little of a threat that she could afford to show-boat.
"I hope you’re ready for the fight of your life, Mr. Moon!"
Sol felt his blood boil at the disrespectful tone of her address, and he knew now that she must be deliberately mocking him. The way she emphasized her misuse of his appropriate title all but wrapped that fact in an obnoxious pink bow as it plopped out before him. Had he not been seething in his skin with outrage, he would have remarked at the fact that he somehow managed to keep his face from contorting into a mask of disgust as he replied, instead remaining cold and hard with a faint suggestion of contempt in the slight wrinkling of his broad nose.
"I highly doubt that you will be anything of the sort." He replied simply, his voice mirroring the bassy rumble of the mountain of grinding stone and molten metal that framed his back, as he glared down at the girl in a way that made every inch by which he towered over her seem like a mile, and it was clear that the response was not an insult, but an honest statement. He did not expect anything from this girl but a short and frustrating battle that would inevitably end with her broken at his feet.
He fell into his stance, angling his left side towards the girl to provide a narrow target, as his feet spread and his hips lowered until his knees were nearly bent at a ninety degree angle. To anyone familiar with his fighting style it would have many notable similarities with his typical "draw" stance, with a couple of notable modifications. Indeed, his choice in dust mixtures for his weapon was not the only thing he had adjusted based on his performance in previous bouts. He stood at a much more acute angle in his stance, meaning that his sword was separated from the girl by the width of his body, and while normally he would have gripped the weapon's scabbard with his left hand, his fingers instead hovered open just above the pommel, as if unsure whether to reach for the sheath or hilt, in a manner that was reminiscent of a gunslinger awaiting the fateful high noon toll of the clocktower, whilst his other hand, a gruesome claw that ended in fingertips barbed like black arrowheads, rose up beside his face in a half clenched talon that held suggestions of the esoteric Tiger style of ancient Mistalian schools. The posture would have sent a clear message to any observant fighter, as it seemed to focus all of the already physically powerful fighter into a much more compact package, whilst stabilizing his core and preparing his legs to act as a launch pad for a devastating assault, with that hideous false arm serving as the prominent instrument of destruction.
As the buzzer sounded and the match began in earnest, Sol wasted no time, and indeed his strike seemed to begin simultaneously along side the signal. Springing forward off of his left foot, as he lifted his right and reversed the orientation of his body at the same time that he unleashed a swift right cross with his clawed hand that seemed to make the air crackle with the force of it, towards the girls' core, picking that as a target due to how her choice in weapons would favor a wide stance and thus provide a broad target, before stomping down with his right foot at the anticipated moment of contact to end the sudden strike with himself once more firmly rooted in position. The spurs in his right boot bit into the slab of the arena, anchoring him.
If Amara had been counting on her speed to see her through this, she would instead find that Sol's incredible physique belied a serpentine swiftness, and the man did not seem to begin moving and instead one moment he was stationary and the next he was in a completely different position at the conclusion of his strike. He flowed from one form to the next, an eerie and predatory grace giving his motions equal parts the boneless suggestion of a snake and the brute strength of a tiger. The banded mail of his cuiras rippled, as the beneath the scarred flesh of his bare arm muscles like cords or iron did the same as he flowed ahead with the terrible and unstoppable suddenness of an explosive shockwave.
To say that a follow up strike came at the conclusion of his cross would have been inaccurate, because the attack did not actually end, instead, as Sol followed through with his punch, his weight flowed forward and centered above his right and now leading foot, as his body twisted to momentarily present his back to the girl for the barest fraction of a second as left foot launched into an ballistic arch which carried his entire body into a full revolution as his metal reinforced heel turned a crescent of air around him into a blurred field of bone shattering force. Much like the blow that had preceded it, the spinning back kick came with little if any warning and contained enough force that as it reached the peak of it's arch that the air unleashed an audible "snap" from the sheer power and speed of the motion. Meanwhile the spurs in the heel of his right boot gouge a pit in the slab as it tore up a chunk of masonry, and as his left foot fell it strike the ground hard enough to send vibrations rattling as far as the borders of the ring as well as send a network of ominous cracks crawling away from the point of impact, Sol raised his right hand, palm towards his foe and with a "whoosh" sound loud enough to make ears ring, he unleashed a jet of flame that reached all the way to the other side of the ring, three feet wide and leaving a trail of fire behind as it swept from one corner of the arena to the next, globules of ignited fire dust showering the concrete slab and continuing to burn in braided columns of pitch black smoke. Almost half of the ring was swallowed in an undulating zone of flame and smoke, as Sol tracked his opponent and tried to douse her in the shower of sticky burning fuel.
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Post by Amara Reedman on Jul 23, 2016 22:37:58 GMT
The harder she pushed herself, the harder Amara’s heart pounded in her ears. Everything was starting to get fuzzy, that’s how she would describe it. Fuzzy. The world outside this arena didn’t exist. To Amara, there was the battlefield. The dark and daunting volcanoes twisting with a lush and green forest. Memories of home, of training in the mountains, Memories where she learned to combat the elements, and to use them to her advantage. This was what Haven Academy had prepared her for, and her adversaries didn’t stand a chance because of that.
It was in this state of equilibrium that Amara tuned into the battle in similar ways to her prior fight. Adrenaline was now her fuel - she was ready to throw everything she had. She listened closely as her opponent left his starting position, time almost slowing to a stop as she waited for some sort of sign. As soon as she caught the sound of his metallic arm flexing, Amara dropped down to the floor and activated a round of her boot, pushing her out of range of her opponents attack. She didn’t hesitate from there, continuing her trek to the trees as his foot slammed into the ground.
She could only imagine how bad that stomp would have hurt. It was a little nerve-wracking, all things considered. ‘Don’t look back, don’t look back.’ She urged herself. Finally getting into the trees, Amara made her way to a small area of heavy foliage to formulate a plan. Now she knew he was capable at close range, so that was good. She also knew, through spectating his prior matches, that Solomon had range capabilities as well. Unfortunately, she wasn’t very familiar with the type, as her opponents had always been one or the other.
Nervously biting her thumbnail, Amara closed her eyes a she strained to put together a strategy. There had to be something she could do, some strategy to implement in this battle. In case she had been tailed, Amara kept her breath as quiet as possible. She was already in a predicament as it were, and there was no need to make her situation any more grim than it already looked. Then, like a small jolt of electricity, she had her plan. A giant grin stretched across her face, and she carefully peeked out of her shelter for a sign of her opponent.
Now, Amara Reedman, was ready to fight.
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Post by Solomon Moon on Jul 24, 2016 17:14:05 GMT
A wall of blistering heat bathed the front of Sol's body, as the dust treated enameled bands of his breastplate glowed slightly as the metal warred against the extreme temperatures and acted as a massive heat sink. The ring seemed to have been swallowed by an undulating sea of orange flame that belched pillars of smog upwards like demonic fingers, each eventually braiding itself together as they reached the dome overhead and formed a sooty black storm cloud. It was beautiful, how the light of the flames under-lit the towers of black soot, and how the world seemed to be more real with the addition of the dangerous sweltering warmth. It spoke to him, it's crackling voice whispering comforting words into his ears as its arms of heat embraced him, like the mother Sol had never known.
His attacks had missed of course, he'd predicted as much already, and had known that this fight would be a frustrating war of attrition. Reluctantly he closed his fist around the aperture set into it's palm, deactivating the fifteen foot long jet of flame with an audible click along with the muffled burbling of the aperture as his fingers smothered out the fuel that had collected there. He noted how some globs of burning material had fallen beyond the maximum range of his flamethrower, and after some consideration of the anomaly realized that the new mixture was less like a jet of fire and more like a burning stream from a hose, meaning that he could cast a bit further but lifting his firing arch, and while he could not in the moment, think of any way to make that an advantage, that did not mean that one would not become apparent to him later on. Overall he was satisfied with the modification, and how even the stone of the central ring continued to burn for what he hoped would be a couple minutes, hitting a target with that blast would be devastating, and part of him wondered if it was a needlessly cruel fate to inflict upon his current foe. Was her arrogance enough of a crime to warrant this kind of brutality? The answer was a difficult one, but the inevitable conclusion was that as long as he won without being disqualified, that was all that mattered, as it was not just his own pride riding on this fight, but that of his family, his business, and his beloved nation.
He was broken from his contemplation as he spotted the heels of his foe flaring to blazing life as she fled into the trees. It was a curious choice, one that he did not understand, and could only put it down to some sort of error on the girl's part. Surely she could not believe she would be safe from Roar's breath in a forest. It occurred to him that this might be the girl's preferred method of engagement, having seen her employ similar guerilla tactics in her previous fight against the masked faunus. Such methods would not work on him, fighting the White Fang had made him a grudging expert on combating guerilla warfare, and he did not even have to consider it to come to an answer. He would have the greatest advantage engaging the girl in the open, and failing that, an incredibly hostile environment, and if he could limit the fight to the concrete ring and the volcano, then he intended to do so.
Calmly, casually he walked towards the woods, picking a path through the burning ring, stepping carefully in area's not covered by burning fuel, as nonchalantly as one might stroll through the long grass. He stopped his advance as the treeline came within range, and with a matter of fact look in his golden eye, he raised his palm towards the canopy and unleashed a concentrated stream of burning fuel into the branches of the nearest tree, a large oak which could have been almost a century old, lining the center line of the arena. The lumber went up like dry tinder, as sticky globs of ignited fuel clung to the branches and trunk, and within moments the tree was engulfed like a blazing torch. Satisfied, Sol continued onto the next, and then the next, moving towards his left, away from where he'd seen Amara duck into the trees, down the border between environments and painting trees with a brush of living flame as he went. It would not be the first forest or fortification that he'd torched to press his enemy out into the open, and in fact he was so well known for employing the tactic that some foes would surrender rather than being driven back into places of flammable cover. He was efficient at it.
The light of the inferno cast Sol's features in grim relief, as the whipping and unsteady glow of the many fires threw sickly shifting shadows across the hard edges of his face, and gave his countenance a demonic and unsettling fluidity. The only one of his qualities that did not seem distorted by the play of light and shadow across his facade was his golden eye, which seemed to reflect and capture the glow of the flames, like a hollow jewel set into an uncanny and indifferent mask, swallowing the light around it as if it had none of it's own. That eye told of how he had done this before, of how he had inflicted horrific burning deaths upon living, thinking, and feeling men and women, and of how he no longer could tell the screams apart from the crackling of tortured blazing lumber.
The fire spread quickly, leapfrogging from one tree to the next, and as Sol reached the further extent of the western border of the division between volcano and woods and shut off his flamethrower, which had grown so warm that it was hissing with a constant jet of steam from between the armor plates and the vents at elbow and shoulder, the blazing line of trees had reached halfway from the center of the arena where he had started to the opposite end, spreading like a blazing cancer, whilst roving packs of individual wildfires sprang up beneath the burning trees as branches snapped and burst and flung sparks into their neighbors. Avenue of escape for anyone within the forest was quickly dwindling to nothing, the blaze spreading faster and faster as more and more trees caught fire, and the air itself began to rise to temperatures capable of singing the lungs and scalding the flesh.
Sol stood there, admiring his handiwork with light that seemed unable to touch his eye dancing across his face, never for a moment regretting the destruction of something beautiful that was the price of victory.
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Post by Amara Reedman on Jul 25, 2016 4:04:54 GMT
Breathing began to stagger as Amara patiently watched for a sign of her opponent. She expected the world of Solomon Moon, and was sure the young man would deliver. Not to assume these expectations were returned, however. Amara had heard about the kind of man Solomon Moon was. A vile, abusive sort - one who got kicks out of smacking around people that were weaker than him. While the world might have seen Solomon as a powerful warrior, what Amara saw before her was nothing more than a child with fancy toys. Like all spoiled brats, he would have to be humbled. He probably didn’t expect that it’d come from a woman, though.
Though she didn’t catch glimpse of Solomon as he approached, the sudden introduction of fire into the forest was enough to force her plans to move ahead earlier than initially planned. Leaping through the stream of flames that began tearing apart the forest, Amara dashed in the opposite direction Solomon had walked. No time to waste throwing her energy away in a counter-attack. Right now, she had to get out of the trees before she was cooked alive. Bursting through the treeline, Amara looked at the inferno before her attention shifted to the spectators, and eventually Solomon himself.
Grinning proudly, she went to work dusting the soot from her face and clothes. “Not bad there, Sol. Was some good thinkin’ on your part.” She said, stretching her arms behind her head. “Probably would have worked out a bit better had you not been…ya know, so predictable.” Raising Lacrimosa to her lips, she blew off the bit of ash that had settled on the weapon before taking stance to battle once again. The longer the fight went on, the more Amara found herself pumped up. All she needed was the right opening, the correct set of circumstances, before she stomped this kid into the dirt.
After all, it was the least he deserved, right?
“You know, kid, you should try to take it easy some time. Lighten up a bit, y’know?” She shouted across the arena. “Live your whole life all strung up, eventually the smallest bit of pressure is gonna make you snap. And boy, would a guy like you snapping ever be a treat.” Keeping her weapons ready, Amara inched forward, slowing cutting the distance between her and her opponent. She was ready for whatever he had to throw at her. Ready for wherever this battle would take her. Whether Amara Reedman found victory or defeat, none of that mattered. All that mattered was the now. All that mattered was that she was ready.
"Hope you're ready to lose, Solomon Moon."
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Post by Solomon Moon on Jul 26, 2016 3:12:55 GMT
Sol admired the fruits of his labor, watching with a haunted look of appreciation in the hollow recesses of his golden eye as the towering wall of flame utterly cut off a full half of the arena. He felt as if fire and himself suited each other, and he felt a kinship to that misunderstood force, often viewed as simply being destructive by those who misused it or were careless. Many people could not see fire as anything but what it destroyed. The could not see what it created, what it represented. To Solomon, fire was a glorious tool, a giver and taker of life, a source of light and shadow, of comfort and pain, a symbol of man's mastery over the environment and his ability to tame even the most wild and dangerous of forces. Fire to Sol was a shining example of knowledge, of mastery, and of power and passion, a ruthless, pitiless, engine of ruin that could swallow entire cities should it chose to. He knew of ancient legends told among the ancestors of the people would would become modern Atlesians, and how it was said that a weak god took pity on man and stole the flames from the realm of the gods and gave them to mankind, and with this new power the children of man were able to fight and overthrow the gods themselves, and it felt fitting to him that he should wield a similar power. He resented the world for the things it had taken from him. He resented how much of his life was out of his own control, and it satisfied a hole somewhere in his soul to rebel against creation by burning pieces of it to the ground.
The heat of the blaze was beginning to reach a fever pitch, and his forehead was already drenched in sweat, and the air was so hot that it was hard to breath. A few more moments standing within twenty feet of the forest, and his skin would start to blister. He had not activated his aura yet, he would need it for later, and that meant as far as the blaze was concerned, he was vulnerable to it's scouring scourges of warmth. He just wanted to watch it for a little longer, and he forced himself to endure that heat, to let the glorious radiance of it reach into his flesh. By the time Amara was clear of the inferno, much of the forest had been consumed, and the heat was so incredible that alone it was igniting trees before the flames could even reach them. The forest seemed to sing like a battlefield, as the crackling of flames and the intermittent booms of trunks and branches bursting under the pressure took on the semblance of automatic gunfire and ordinance.
He turned to regard the girl as she dashed free of the blaze. That golden eye of his looked very weary, almost aged, perhaps regretting on some small level what he had been forced to do, or perhaps wondering if the girl was worth the trouble. It was an expression that made clear that this creature had not felt anything nearing real joy in a very long time. There was an emptiness in that brilliant golden eye, a bleakness that seemed as frigid as a winter fjord beside the raging wildfire that rose up to his left, and the seething volcanic ruin that broiled to his right. He was a hard man, one who lit an entire forest ablaze to force one foe into the open, and it was not hard to imagine that he'd done just this sort of thing many times before.
It was not hard to guess what the girl thought of him. She thought him a butcher, a monster, and even as she crept closer, Sol could see the judgment in her mismatched eyes. Disgust, he disgusted her, though admirably she did not allow her unease to dampen her spirits, and she dusted herself off as if she were proud of having escaped his trap. Of course he hadn't expect the effortless torching of the woods to finish her off, but little did she suspect that a trap had already been sprung, and she had fallen in.
Her words were empty wind to him at first and he casually rested his hand on the pommel of his sheathed sword. She called him predictable, and he shrugged. The outcome of placing a pot of fireworks on the stove was predictable, but that didn't mean it wouldn't burn your house down. Though the words did serve to elucidate him of something. For whatever reason, Amara was making this personal, and her stake in this was a very private one, and Sol suspected that for her, motives were less simple than simply continuing to the next round. She seemed as if she were obligated to beat him, judging by the tone of her words and that vengeful look that she nearly glowed with. Reasons for her attitude were multitudinous of course. Perhaps she was a faunus sympathizer, or perhaps she considered herself a hero obligated by duty to defeat a villain such as himself, or perhaps she simply felt as if it were somehow just to pull down someone of a higher station simply for the crime of being born into greater privilege. It was likely a combination of the latter two, if Sol had to pick, being that he had no reason to suspect her of any deviant political leanings, and this was not a conclusion he was unaccustomed to. In fact it was so wearily common for up jumped peasants who joined the academies to suddenly think it was up to them to rid the world of evil, in spite of their ignorance and misconceptions of what was evil and what was simply unjust, or just imagined as was often the case.
These peons always behaved as if it were somehow Sol's fault that he was born into his station, as if he were not worthy of his advantages, as if he misused them, and this was often a symptom of their woeful ignorance on what it actually meant to be born into nobility. They saw it as Sol owning a fancy sword, but they did not see how while they had been still been playing tag with their friends, that sword had been forced into his hands and he'd been forced to practice the art of killing with it. The saw his access to the upper class and called it privilege without realizing that it was a long fall from such great heights and survival relied upon a constant vigilance and maneuvering that left no time for the formation of meaningful relationships. They did not see how had he had to work, they did not see the pressure and the strength that his role demanded of him, they did not see that while they were free to do as they wished, Sol was a prisoner in his own life.
He hadn't made a single meaningful choice about the course of his own life. The closest thing he had to friends were those that either relied upon the wages he paid them, or those he could bully into alliances. The closest things he had to possessions were his clothes, armor, and sword, while everything else was tied up in the family business. The closest thing he had to a family was a mother that he'd never known, and a father that had died a shameful death fighting in someone else's war. And he had killed so many people. More than anything else, the weight of that was the heaviest. How could anyone think that he got his kicks from battering about those that were weaker than him? How could any think he really enjoyed being known as a bloody butcher? How could they not see that he had no choice?
The asnwer to the last was obvious. It was not that they could not see that he had no choice, it was that they wouldn't. If they acknowledged that he, a man as powerful and influential as he was, were himself a victim of circumstance, then they would have to acknowledge their views of good and evil were a veil cast before the shifting shades of gray that were the truth. They could not admit to themselves the tragedy that was Solomon Moon, because doing so would be to admit that they themselves, as righteous and self assured with their head's full of blind eyes, were just a few hard choices away from being as much of a monster as the One-Eyed Dragon himself.
“You know, kid, you should try to take it easy some time. Lighten up a bit, y’know?” ... “Live your whole life all strung up, eventually the smallest bit of pressure is gonna make you snap. And boy, would a guy like you snapping ever be a treat.”
Unlike the previous, these words struck home. That was the sort of thing Sol's father would have said to him, and it twisted a knife in the young man's heart to hear it. There was much truth in those words, and despite the insolent tone, Sol could not claim that she didn't have a point.
Sol's life had been like a blacksmith's forge, a series of carefully controlled abuses and blows, and harsh conditions that had served the purpose of crafting him into a weapon. He had become hard. His heart had turned to stone, and his eye to polished glass, and he no longer balked at things that would have given others reason to hesitate. When he fought, he did so without remorse, pity, or mercy. He did not rest. He was perpetually either training, handling company affairs, leading missions, studying, and anything else to keep his edge honed, and even when sleep came he could not escape the nightmares. He was defined more by what he had lost than what he had accomplished. His eye, his arm, his father, his innocence, the absence of these things was more a part of his world than anything else. He'd become hard, harder than any man should be at seventeen, and when the strain inevitably became too great, he would not simply break, he would shatter into a fine dust. But what else was he to do? There was no going back from what he'd become. There was no going back from the things he had done, and the things he had lost along the way. Sol had long ago accepted that this was the way it must be.
"For one who knows so little, you speak with great wisdom." He replied, his dull rumble of a voice sounding almost sad, and his hollow eye looking very tired as his face sagged in a bit of a frown, "How quick you are to judge me, when you haven't the slightest idea of what it takes to be me. My life was not made for a lighter man, a softer man. While you played with your friends in the woods, I already knew the look that men get in their eyes when their soul leaves the body on the battlefield. When you were given a toy for your birthday, I was given a sword and a mission. When you are taking off your shoes at the end of the day, I am taking off this thing that is not my arm and I am cleaning out my scars. When your family was celebrating your place in this tournament, mine was already buried."
The heat had finally grown too intense, and Sol began loping away, left hand resting on Whisper's pommel, right hand covering his mouth to keep out the smog, as the arena began to fill with smoke.
"Hope you're ready to lose, Solomon Moon." Amara called after him.
Sol only shook his head as he drew in some air from the store of wind dust in his arm through the vent in his palm, smoke stinging his eyes and what had already made its way in beginning to burn his lungs as he fell into a sprint and vanished into the crags of the volcano. Rocky vents spewed sulfurous smoke into the air as he passed them, adding to the almost blinding grey haze that was falling from where the smoke of the burning forest was collecting against the hard-light dome around the arena.
"Foolish girl. You've already lost, you just don't realize it." He thought.
Let her cast barbed words at his back, soon there would be no air left to breath those empty words with.
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Post by Amara Reedman on Jul 26, 2016 16:24:11 GMT
Amara’s advance came to an abrupt halt once she realized Solomon was just kind of standing there. What was he expecting, exactly? Glancing around, she processed matters as quickly as possible while still paying attention to the words her opponent had to say. He went on a nice little triad, trying to denounce her opinions of him with explanations that meant little to her. As far as Amara was concerned, this man was a monster. If he wanted sympathy, he would have to get it from somewhere else. “My family celebrate my place here because my family is full of real warriors, Solomon. People who did nothing but sweat blood for their family, their friends, their people.” She sniped back.
“What did yours do? Right, profit off of warmongering and terror. Striking nothing but fear into the lives of Faunus and humans alike. The Moon Family is no group of heroes, Solomon. They’re renowned because people despise what they were. Perhaps if your father wasn’t so crooked, he’d still be alive - and here to watch me beat you.” She finished, smirking with satisfaction. “I know what it takes to be you, Solomon Moon. It takes a heartless man with no other goal than to terrorize the weak. Throw your strength against someone strong for once - let’s see how good you really are, if at all.”
It was at this point it all clicked. Solomon’s hand covering his face, the smoke filling the arena. He was probably hoping this would give him some sort of edge. How poorly mistaken he was. Despite what he may have thought, what he may have heard, Amity Colosseum was not a death trap. Ventilation systems in place would deal with the smoke smothering the battlefield before it ever became enough of a problem1. In spots where it was thick, a quick twirl of Wind Dust would make short work of any smog worth noting.
She remained in position, eyeballing her opponent for any signs of movement. If he attacked, she would be ready for a counter. If he retreated, she would trail - but still keep herself ready for a counterattack. The world of Remnant was full of monsters, and if Solomon wanted to be one, he would have to accept his position at the bottom of the pecking order. Creeps existed that gave Hunters a run for their money in ways that dwarfed this mediocre little tango in a floating arena. She was not worried about her opponent.
He was only a kid.
Both parts of Lacrimosa locked and loaded, Amara prepared for her opponent’s next moves. If he were smart, he’d make them count.
1: Staff confirmed.
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Post by Solomon Moon on Jul 27, 2016 0:05:19 GMT
Sol continued to climb the broken slopes of the magma weeping mount, as the girl cast her barbs at his back. If she was half so talented with those idiotic weapons of hers as she was with insults, she might have stood a whole fraction of a chance. Those words smacked of a private affront, a grudge that was more personal than that between bitter rivals or even what he was used to enduring from the masses. He tried to let the words roll off of him like water trying to cling to slick steel, but certain retorts stung like hooked burrs as they landed in his hide. What respect he had grudgingly afforded the wretch when she had made her uncharacteristically insightful observation regarding his serious nature, vanished like saliva as it was spat on an oven, and by that reasoning, he did not allow the spit to bother him as much as the mere fact that she was making the attempt to shame him. Each word just cemented in his mind how little the fool knew about him, how little she understood his motives. It was always interesting to the one eyed swordsman that those that lacked empathy for him were always so quick to point out that same flaw in himself, and he appreciated the irony of it, that sardonic appreciation often being as near to mirth as he came. How was his family fighting for his nation and his people any different than what Amara claimed her heretofore unnamed clan had done? How was her unilateral condemnation of the actions of his blood, their demonizing, their depiction as sub human and monstrous any different than the same bigotry she accused him of?
Of course he didn't say any of that. It was clear to him that the girl was beyond reasoning with, and any argument he could make would be dismissed out of hand. When she had warned him about being so hard, part of him had hoped she might have some wisdom, but like the hundreds of idealistic oafs that had challenged him before, for reasons that always seemed to come back to his heritage, Amara had some inane point to prove, and she was blind to the irony of it. She thought she could get under his skin by mocking his father, by calling him and his family monsters, by implying that he was weak, and that might have worked the first three of four dozen times Sol had heard them, but now they just blended together in his mind, becoming indistinct and familiar like a battle-cry, all of the original meaning lost through repetition. And she thought to call him predictable.
Sol scoffed. People like Amara were all the same, too blinded by their arrogance, and their self righteous outrage to see the truth.
People like Amara were at their cores a savage and violent bunch who stood on the ideas of greater men to feel tall for however long it took for the truly powerful to topple them back into the dirt where they belonged. There was no arguing with people like her, people like the fang, because they were brutes, and at the end of the day they only understood one thing.
"I'll be certain to test myself against a mighty foe if I ever find one." Sol called back to the girl, feigning levity and amusement in his voice, as he made his way up the final rise of one of the sloping shelves, towards a bench of stone that jutted past the rest, Amara still hot on his tail, "Imagine my disappointment to find you as my enemy. Beside that girl and her mech suit, and that hurricane of a faunus, you are quite garden variety. You had me hopeful for a moment back there, when you saw through my tempered exterior, but it is clear to me that your edge is just as dull as your words."
Amara had made a grave error in allowing him to reach the high ground unchallenged, just as she had made a grave error in allowing him to torch the woods. She was committing the cardinal sin of inexperienced tacticians by allowing her foe to chose the place of battle.
He crested the rise and fell into a low stance as he stomped down on a thirty foot wide shelf of baked obsidian and cooling magma that over hung the slope below by about ten feet, the spurs set into the heels of his heavy jack boots punching into the black and glassy surface and anchoring him in place as he crouched and laid his left hand upon the warm surface. His hand seemed to burn with red fire and blue smoke as his aura buffered the heat of the stone, and with his face set in concentration, brow beading with sweat from the heat in spite of the ice cold heat sink of his breastplate, he directed a burst of his semblance into the rocky shelf upon which he stood. A dull and muffled thump rippled through the bench of stone, but aside from a few stones that were disturbed by the discharge, nothing else happened. Sol gritted his teeth and collected his energies for another pulse, and reached into the stone with his aura before detonating a portion of his soul within the rock itself. The stone rumbled and large chunks of weakened material that had stubbornly clung to the underside of the shelf rattled free. A fissure split open, dividing what lay above the outcrop of rock from what lay below, and like a slash in living flesh it began to ooze a tide of glowing red magma from the rift as more and more of the shelf fell apart.
Sol's stomach seemed to try and escape through his mouth as the stone upon which he stood lurched sickeningly, and chunks fell away on either side of him as the entire shelf turned into a rock-slide beside an avalanche of molten magma that spurted down the mountain side like boiling blood. Sol gritted his teeth even further, the muscles of his powerful neck flexing painfully as he activated his aura and surrounded himself in a corona of crimson tongues that decayed away into writhing tendrils of midnight blue. Sol pressed his weight into the pad beneath his feet, and what remained of the shelf finally gave way as he lunged away from the tumbling slide of lava and debris, out into the open air, springing like a gazelle away from the collapsing cliff face, with nothing but seventy feet of empty air, and the occasional rock that bounced off of the slope as it fell, as well as his foe, to separate him from the foot of the mountain below.
Even in the air he did not lose that predatory and dangerous grace that gave him the sinuous appeal of a massive serpent, and he did not seem to fall as much as he did flow like the arching path of an arrow. He adopted an airborne variation of his draw stance, similar to that used during his former fight, but instead of curling around his sword, and laying his right hand upon the hilt as he grasped the sheath with his left, he kept his posture a bit more open, as he fell into a head first descent with his right hand raised like a claw between his enemy and his golden eye.
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Post by Amara Reedman on Jul 27, 2016 5:46:22 GMT
Staying light on her toes, Amara danced around cracks in the surface of the volcano portion of the arena. One wrong step, one wrong move, would spell disaster for either combatant. As she eyed Solomon making his way to the top of of a small cliff. She paid no mind to his words, instead leaving him to his own vices. Arrogance radiated off the young man like a foul odor, but this wasn’t going to distract her from her goal. Amara had experience in this kind of environment, something she was sure Solomon lacked. This was her element. This was her playing field. As far as she was concerned, Solomon Moon stood no chance.
Watching as her opponent placed his hand on the hot surface of the ground beneath him, Amara quickly swapped out the ammunition in her weapons. Once fully loaded and ready to go, she braced herself for what she assumed was an incoming attack. What came, instead, was a pulse that rattled the foundation of the arena. She kept her balance, unwavering in her resolve to stare her opponent down until he moved. A second pulse came from Sol’s hand, this time resulting in the crumbling of the earth beneath him. She ducked back as fast as she could, doing everything in her power to put distance between her and the slide.
Her opponent was not free of her attention, though. Solomon was now diving head first for her, his claw-like appendage reaching for her, intent on meeting its mark. Her blue eye locked on to his gold as she threw back her arms, dropping a few shells of ammunition as she prepared for a counterattack. Timing was everything. Timing was key. As the molten rock crept to her feet, Amara kicked off to the side - into her opponent's blind spot - to keep out of its way. The heat ignited beneath the weight of the magma, blowing a whole in the foundation of the rock, allowing a pool of lava to take its place. This was it - it was showtime. Solomon Moon had made a crucial mistake, one Amara was surprised to see come from the young man.
In exchange for a dramatic attack, he had given up his advantageous ground, and was now free-falling to a pit of molten rock. Foolish, all things considered. Amara wasn’t going to give him time to follow up. Her eyes glowing intensely, Amara activated her Semblance - Lacrimosa. Her choker began to glow, adding to the already immense speed she was able to achieve from her Semblance alone. Amara became a proverbial speed demon, using her boots to launch herself in the air. In the span of mere seconds since seeing Solomon Moon attempt to descend upon her, the tables had turned.
Launching herself diagonally, Amara positioned herself behind her opponent with enough distance to avoid being struck. Unless bestowed with godhood, the likelihood of her opponent reacting in time was a near impossibility. Throwing her fists in a blinding flurry, it took just over a second for Amara to pump out twenty-four explosions from her gauntlets, each one intent on pushing her foe into the pool of magma that awaited him below. The force of these small blasts pushed her up, ending her flurry with a kick to send her in the direction of the woods - or what remained of them.
Falling gracefully, Amara knelt down as she gasped for breath. Use of Lacrimosa was always intense, but the heat added to her exhaustion. No matter, though. It was clear, to her - and potentially to the spectators - that this battle had come to a climactic end. She waited with anticipation for a sign of her opponent, for a sign of Solomon Moon. Regardless of the outcome, Amara had the time of her life. Regardless of the outcome, she had proven herself more than capable against one of Atlas’s best. She was a warrior, now. Her mother and father would be proud.
She was proud.
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Post by Solomon Moon on Jul 28, 2016 1:18:25 GMT
This was the all or nothing moment for Sol. The chips were down, the hands dealt, and the dice loaded, and the next moments would determine the outcome of the fight. He'd spent an arduous period of the fight just maneuvering into a position where he could make this play and now it was in the hands of whatever antipathetic deity claimed dominion over this twisted world. Sol accepted that much of what happened next would be out of his own control, and he'd long ago come to peace with the fact that he had as much say in the outcome of his life as a bullet or cannonball did in their own existence. At the end of the day, in spite of hours of crippling training, of experience, and of battle and preparation, the only say he really had was when to pull the trigger. He was locked, loaded, and fired. But before all that, he had taken the time to control all the variables, to eliminate what he could and mitigate what he could not, and he had given the inevitable report all the best chances he could afford it, and that was what would make the difference.
He took a brief moment as he fell, to appreciate the stock of the fight so far, considering what he had learned.
The opening volley on his part had done it's job, and had probed the capabilities of his foe, denoting her speed as her most significant advantage.
She'd clearly meant to ambush him when she had fled into the trees, and it was obvious at the time, and even more so in the hindsight of what he had realized shortly before dropping a ridge on the girl, but Sol's torching of the wood had served more than to simply flush her out. It was a shame that the stadium's ventilation system was able to keep up with the billowing towers of smog, as it deprived Sol of a tool he would have made good use of in any other engagement given that he was perfectly equipped to endure the toxic environment, but again that had not been the purpose of it.
It was the heat of the flames that he had wanted, because sheathed as he was in dust treated steel, he could endure a hostile environment much longer than his unarmored foe, and while the urgency of that fact had never dawned upon Amara, if the fight had become more drawn out it easily could have been the deciding factor in his victory.
The "cordial" exchange that had taken place after had served to be quite illuminating as well, because while Amara had dismissed his words, which more than anything were just a method of keeping her talking, stalling and allowing the sweltering heat to wear down her reserves, Sol had been paying attention to what she had said and how she had said it. He'd taken her words and framed with them a better picture of how his enemy perceived him, and in doing so had added another formidable tool to his arsenal. Her dismissive tone of terming him as "Kid" and using his title only as a means of conveying her contempt had been the most elucidating, and they might as well have been clearly worded proclamations of her underestimating of him. Likewise her accusation of him being predictable made her sloppy, as she simply accepted his movements for what they appeared to be.
It made one think to ask, if she were so assured of her superiority, why did she tolerate Sol's stalling? Why had she deigned to stalk him like a great cat in the brush, when, given the example of her previous fight, she could effortlessly close the gap and pummel him into paste should she choose it? She hadn't even bothered to fire a shot at his back when he'd fled.
It was clear that she'd been waiting for him to make the first move, and while that had still served to inform his next move, it didn't answer why. Unless, it was the same reason that Sol had not started the fight with an overwhelming display of power, why Sol did not simply turn the area immediately surrounding himself into a massive explosion the moment that the fight began, as was perfectly within his ability to accomplish, because doing so would deplete his resources so thoroughly that he would be helpless if the assault failed.
Sol was a swordsman, and more than anything else, that was what defined his fighting style, given that he employed common techniques of swordplay that people often ignored when he performed them without a sword in his grasp. He was skilled at these fundamental methods of combat, to name a few, parrying as he had flushed Amara away from her attempted ambush, riposting as he had frequently in his previous fight when he twice reversed the flow of combat to keep his foe on her heels, goading as he had taunted Amara with ineffectual barbs and assaults to frustrate her into revealing more and more of her capabilities, engaging and disengaging as were self explanatory, and finally, and most applicable to the current circumstance, feinting.
There was a trick to a good feint, one could not devote too much effort to it, because a person who fell too easily into an act could find themselves performing it in earnest, but one could not be lazy either, because then the deception would be obvious. It was easiest to accomplish when one's enemy had a tragically low opinion of one's abilities, when they would easily accept the concept of one making an error, because this contempt blinded them to the potential for a greater purpose, and this applied to Amara perfectly. She saw Sol ascending to the high ground and immediately relinquishing his advantage as an error, without wondering what he might be able to gain with such an absurd and bizarre tactic, and that inability to be flexible in her conceptions, as was made clear by how she could not find even a sliver of sympathy for a man she'd never actually met, would be her downfall.
Sol had been warned before that a sword that was too rigid would shatter the moment it struck resistance, and it was for this reason that even the most formidable weapons, when viewed in flight would flex and deform to better tolerate the forces of their employment. Amara was this rigid sword, so set in her single-minded plan to lure Sol into making the first step, that she had no plan for when he figured it out. After all, it was a well known saying among generals that "Every one has a plan until the first shot is fired.", and after that, of those who lived through the opening salvo, it was those most capable of adapting that survived.
This of course begged the question of what Sol meant to accomplish. Why had he made such a strange decision, one that should be all but inconceivable to a man who was known as being a brutal and effective combatant as well as a gifted tactician?
Sol's eye met Amara's, with the cold, clinical antipathy present there seeming to stretch into empty infinity by contrast to the roaring corona of his aura that surrounded it. He grinned a smile that did not touch his eye, and it looked more like a mask than an actual expression of joy. Smiling, as if he and his enemy had come to an agreement in this game of vertical chicken, his right hand fell to find the hilt of his sword, just as Amara fired a volley of shells down the slope to propel herself upwards, and he curled up around the weapon, storing up the energy of his massive physique to endure the strain of his draw. Then it happened, the moment of truth arrived like a punch in the gut, as Amara's eyes shifted suddenly to a foreign hue and became a pair of golden streaks in the air.
Time seemed to grow still, as the world clarified before Sol like the reflection in still water once the ripples had passed. Senses enhanced by the power of his soul made manifest, he could make out every individual strand of hair that framed Amara's face, he could taste every individual spec of soot on his tongue, he could feel the sweat on his forearm steaming as it was splashed by grains of superheated sand cast off by the rockslide. The world seemed to realize in that moment, that single glorious moment as he felt a roar rising from his chest. He felt alive.
Sol pulled the trigger set into Whisper's sheath and his right arm let forth an ear splitting scream as a near blinding red glow sprung up between the shaped scales of ceramic blast plating that covered it. A discharge of explosive force shook their air with a deafening crack, as the dust charge in the sheath detonated and propelled the sword from it's vessel at that speed of a large caliber slug. Fingers of black steel clamped down tight around the hilt and a dozen tiny mechanisms interfaced the sword to the dust deployment system in his arm, while the force of the draw rippled up through the limb and into Sol's chest, the momentum of the unsheathing alone causing his entire body, untethered from the earth as it was, to flow into a spiral. Sol's arm straightened, delivering a devilish slash with the full force of the limb, with the fire of the detonated dust charge still trailing the spine of the blade as it spun was suddenly joined by wailing tails of blue flame as Roar fed a combination of wind and ignited fire dust through the weapon and out vents in the katana's spine. The use of his Hellfire Meteor in the previous fight had been a neutered version of the actual technique, given that at the time, Sol's arm had still been venting the heat of his previous reports, and thus Roar had not been able to lend it's payload to the spiraling assault, but in this fight, Sol had carefully withheld use of the true extent of the technique under the assumption that Amara had studied his previous fights as closely as he had hers, and had developed an incomplete grasp of his capabilities.
Where as before the speed of the slash had been enough to turn him into a cartwheeling engine of ruin, now, with the assistance of his artificial arm, Sol's form blurred just as much as Amaras as he unleashed a slash so swift that the blade seemed to surround his entire body at once. Using this newly revealed speed, Sol... Missed.
As he drew, and as the weapon system fired and Amara streaked by him like a golden eyed blur, Sol swung the weapon out towards his left, in the opposite direction that Amara had gone, and in doing so careened off course at the speed of a true to life comet at speeds close to mach 1. Surrounded in a sphere of spinning fire, and cutting through the air, end over end, cascading like a throwing knife in flight, Sol traversed vertically across the blasted cliff face, as Amara's tracking shots trailed behind, finding nothing but molten stone, the projectiles simply not having the speed to compete with the insane velocity of the One-Eyed Dragon's flight, and those that did track far enough ahead to strike home rendered unable to find Sol's form within the corona of sight obscuring blue flame that surrounded him.
As the foot of the mountain screamed up to meet him, Sol instinctively performed micro adjustments of his trajectory by manipulating the various vents that populated his arm, and diverted his spiraling flight to swoop upwards at the last moment, bleeding off the downward velocity of his soaring exodus with a last rising flourish as he angled the mouth of Whisper's scabbard into the spin before deactivating the vents of Roar's weapon system. He pulled the trigger of Whisper's scabbard multiple times in quick succession, emptying the clip and blunting the forces of his spin as well as defusing what he could of his velocity as he landed hard in on the uneven and rocky terrain.
For someone unaccustomed to the incredible G-forces of such a maneuver that would have been the end of the fight, but Sol had trained his body to withstand such forces with the aid of his aura, and he did not miss a beat. Sol fell into a roll on impact, exhausting the last of his blinding momentum, as he ejected the clip from Whisper's sheath and unfastened the vessel from his hip as he cast the sheath upwards, freeing his hand to reach into his belt and throw a fresh clip into the air after it. Then as he rounded on where Amara had landed, he raised his left hand, first catching the magnetic clasp on the sword's sheath with the bracer on his left wrist, and then the airborne clip with the empty chamber of the sheath. With a swift downward jerk, he jammed the magazine into the sheath's follower, at the same time that he cocked the system and ejected the last spent casing from the slide that ran parallel to the sheath itself, whilst he fell into a sprint towards Amara as she knelt in the earth.
This time there was no deception, no ploy. Amara was exhausted, an opening, and Sol was moving in for the kill.
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Post by Event Admin on Jul 31, 2016 20:55:46 GMT
After MUCH deliberation, it has been decided that Solomon has godmodded in his post. as such, we rule in favor of Amara, Amara Reedman moves on to Finals. Solomon Moon is still eligible for the Third Place prize.
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