Tournament Battle #2 Dante & Mora V.s Kuja & Iznan

[Dante]

The sun shone brightly onto the dusty stadium as Dante walked out of the lobby first. He wasn't much bothered by the light, he was just interested in the tournament. His cleaver reflected the light in a dim way, showing off its magnificence and size. He took a nice long breath of fresh arena air and began to walk to towards the center.

Pillars were scattered throughout the arena, giving a little bit of scenery other than light brown sand. People were cheering from the stands; apparently they were ready for a good fight and Dante promised to give them one. He waved his hand at everyone, cheers still as loud as ever. He reached for the cleaver and brought it out in a quick swing, standing in the battle stance he was taught.

He now waited for Mora and their opponents. He was facing the immature one. Perfect. Maybe he could straighten him up a little with a nice slash to the face.

[Rocket!]

"HOOPLA! HOOPLA!" shouted Mora as she ran from the coliseum lobby, hands in the air and gun beating back and forth across her hip.

"WOOO!" The crowd roared in response. Rabble rousing was something Mora did pretty darn well.

"HOOPLA!" she shouted again, a large grin plastered across her face.

The crowd continued to let itself be worked up by the seventeen-year-old as she weaved through the arena's pillars towards her partner for the match, Dante.

Now standing stage right, Dante and Mora stood waiting for their opponents. Mora went to give him a high five, but dropped it right after.

Now all that remained... was the opponents. In the mean time, Mora grabbed her hat and began to shake it fervently. Moments later, the hat was a rather small baseball cap. Shoving it onto her head, Mora's grin grew wider in anticipation for the coming battle.

[lysander]

Iznan yawned and stretched as he entered the arena, shoving his hands back in his jacket pockets as his half-open eyes scanned the crowds, even before he looked to see his opponents. "Fun fun. A nice rowdy bunch." He mumbled as he reached the 'ring', and sat down on the edge of it. If anything it looked like he was ready for a picnic. Not a fight. In all likelihood he was underestimating his opponents. He slowly withdrew a hand from one of his pockets, and began to examine his fingernails, before he looked over at the two standing up on one side of the arena. He lifted an eyebrow as if in surprise.

"Heeeey. It's the obnoxious one! What're you doing out here? You here to welcome my opponent, little guy?" He asked, a smile on his face, his tone of the utmost seriousness. He wasn't totally sure if Dante would understand the taunt, considering how low his intelligence seemed to be, but he figured he might as well make it anyway. A good joke is still a good joke, even if the target can't understand it. His eyes rolled over to the girl, then down to her ridiculously sized gun and he couldn't help but start laughing, though even if they asked he wouldn't tell either of them why.

[/blockquote]

[Frog]

Kuja entered the arena last, as he deemed to be gracious enough to do. After all, why enter first when then none of the other competitors would have the chance to be noticed by the audience after he'd stolen away all their eyes? Sure they were now doubtlessly forgotten with his presence and soon they wouldn't even have a presence anymore, but he loved them enough to give them at least that much for their coming sacrifice.

"Do take care of these fortunate souls for me, would you Iznan dear?" Kuja asked as he took a standing position at the edge of the ring next to Iznan's sitting form.

[lysander]

The Trickster looked up to Kuja from where he sat, and nodded slowly. "Sure thing." He mumbled as he shambled gracelessly to his feet. Reaching into one pocket he pulled out a toothpick and stuck it between his lips as something to hold his attention while he fought these whelps. He was actually kind of looking forward to going solo for at least a little while. It meant he'd get to test out the competition. "If you get the urge, feel free to jump in any time." He added with a shrug as he dug his hands back around in his jacket pockets.

"I'm gonna go easy on you for a little while. I think I could hold you both over without using any of my magic. What do you think?" His voice lilted playfully while he taunted the other pair. With a casual stroll he made way to the center of the ring, staring at both Mora and Dante with that same feral intelligence he'd exhibited for a moment when he'd first appeared. And yet again that look disappeared, replaced with easy confidence. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and this time each held four silver blades. Like daggers missing handles. He tossed them on the ground and looked forward to the two. "So are we gonna do this today, or what?"

[Dante]

"Don't underestimate me! It'll be the last thing you do!" Dante saw the knives, knowing that that could be a hazard, so, by jumping back at least a foot, he began the match. "Remain shrouded... in the shadows of your doubt!" Dante took his arm and brought it up in a quick flash, a giant pillar of darkness rising from underneath Mora. This was the thing they talked about before the match started. Their evil plans to win this tournament, they were going to come in handy.

Dante readied his cleaver, waiting for Mora to do her thing, but first! Dante held the cleaver outwards towards his left side and began to run in a circle around Iznan, hopefully making him confused on what exactly Dante was doing. He wanted him to think he was crazy. He wanted to see that pug smile and then wipe it off right after.

[Rocket!]

Mora heaved her gun up int oa better firing position as Dante's pillar of darkness rose her high into the air.

But first....

"GRAVIRA!" she shouted out, her finger pointing at Iznan.

Iznan now became a central focus of gravity. And because of his size, he was pulling in a pretty decent amount of force.

Enough, I'd say, to get some serious pull on the blades he just stuck into the ground and Kuja.

....well, and Dante. But with the centrifugal force thing he had going on, he wouldn't be stuck together like husband and wife the way Iznan and Kuja would be. Not to mention the big shiny blades.

Mora then went back to focusing on the gun. After briefly taking aim, she fired at the two foes' chests. A kill shot, both of them.

And the gravira made for nice, easy aiming.

[lysander]

"I don't know about that. To be honest, I think I'm overestimating you right now."

[/b]Iznan first watched Mora rise into the air from the plume of darkness, and then Dante circling him rapidly. Not bad teamwork. He wondered if they'd planned this out. He wondered if they thought they were going to win with one tactic. He wondered if they had a Plan B. He lifted a hand, scratching his just-got-out-of-bed hair, watching Dante like a pest he wasn't ready to hit just yet, following him from one peripheral to the other, until he was out of site, and for that brief moment when he couldn't see the cleaver wielding annoyance he'd look up to Mora. Only to see Mora pointing at him in a strange fashion.

There was suddenly a loud cracking noise beneath Iznan, and he looked down. The eight, finger-length blades clung to his shins, and spiderwebbing out from beneath his feet cracks in the stone tile of the ring formed. "Hmm..."[/color] His thoughts coalesced in one central statement as he became aware of his increased gravitational pull. The stone tile rocketed towards his newly, extremely dense body. It not only formed a condensed and uncomfortable shell of stone and dirt around his body to protect against any incoming attack, but it gave him an ingenious idea in the split second after the spell had been cast.

Wasting no time he began to spin in the opposite direction that Dante was running. This would do several things, most of which revolving around the balancing of centripetal and centrifugal force. Firstly, Kuja was allowed a few moments to see what was happening before he decided to react, but Dante was far too close to be allowed any time to save himself. As Iznan increased speed, Dante would be thrown off balance and carried into an orbit around Iznan's body. The centrifugal force would slowly throw the stones attached to his body into a great spinning shell, not too dissimilar from an asteroid belt. If Dante managed not to be hurt by the rocks hurdling around him, it would at least keep him busy enough to not try and attack Iznan himself. Another clever effect was a defensive tactic. The bullet sent at him would be caught by it's own forces and then become just another asteroid in orbit. Soon enough Iznan was spinning fast enough that his own gravity kept him going like a top.[/size][/blockquote]

[Frog]

Seeing that Kuja was literally on the edge of the arena as stated before before and Inazn was at the very center where he went to challenge the two alone, the Angel of death actually had quite a fair distance from the center of the Gravira spell that one of his opponents had cast. He had watched Dante run past between himself and his partner before the highest one in the battlefield had begun their offence. Apparently the Gravira strategy of the pair had hoped the two would stay close together and thus be immediately stuck, but such was the way of the best laid plans of mice and men.

The Mystic didn't even seem to feel the pull. ff he was aware of it then he certainly didn't act so. His arms remained crossed and his expression delightfully distant, as if he were watching a movie and these events were not actually happening around him.

Then the shots rang out, at which point Kuja did not appear to have any bullet holes in himself. The only thing that he did have was a momentary spark of red-tinted light which orbited his body as a crest, painting a circle in one instant and then vanishing just as quickly. Reflect had been guarding him this turn.

Poor Mora now had a couple of problems to deal with. For one, his own bullet was traveling right back at himself without having lost any speed or any time between changes in direction, meaning it was practically unnoticeable. The other was that the pull Kuja would have been feeling from Gravira was being reflected this entire time back at Mora, the source of the spell. This meant Mora was being drawn forcefully towards Kuja in this new nagle of vectors(While his own unreflected force coming out of Iznan continued to not affect him), but coming up that exact same path was his own bullet. The bullet was probably going to reach him faster than Mora actually getting pulled, but the pull was there and he was practically mid-air, which would severely hinder any sort of evasive actions they might take in the split-second before the projectile returned.

And Kuja continued to stand there, unperturbed by it all.

[Rocket!]

Buh-crack.

...huh. One second, Mora's got a bullet out to get Kuja, and the next it's right back in the gun. Weird. And worth noting. After briefly aiming, she shot the bullet back out at Kuja.

Seeing the mayhem Iznan was trying to get up to, Mora immediately dropped the Gravira spell without giving him the chance to put his plan into action. No pillars or pulling went into effect. She was also surprised about the tiles on the ground-- she hadn't noticed them.

Sighing, Mora couldn't help but wonder about what might've been... in all truthfulness, she'd been hoping to keep this next bit secret until the very end. But, grinning, she knew full well how much fun this next bit would be. Reaching around and grabbing the edge of her robe, Mora made a mental note to come up with more than five contingency plans next time around. Pulling the robe off and up into the air, she shouted to all in hearing range, "Let's make this a bit more interesting!"

The robe expanded in shape and size exponentially, easily becoming well over a foot or two thick and soon covering the arena entirely. The vast entrails of interwoven technologically based cloth now efficiently made for a tough material. It would be nigh on impossible to go through the material, unless you wanted to be there for the next few hours or something. Most people in the stands made booing sounds to express their unhappiness at being shrouded in darkness. Not only did it make eating popcorn hard, but they wouldn't be able to see the match!

The sun was now far from visible.

Drifting down, the now enormous robe completely concealed the arena. All of the contestants found themselves in pitch-black darkness, save for Mora. She'd had the foresight to make sure a sleeve landed down and around the pillar she was on. The other sleeve, she noted with no small amount of joy, was drooped over a pillar in the stands.

Convenient, eh?

After a brief mutter, she brought her gun down again and gave mister smart butt (read: Iznan) another shot. Of course, this one wasn't a body shot. (Though it was still a kill shot...)

[Dante]

Darkness? This was good. Dante controlled darkness, so doing this only helped him. His eyes quickly adjusted to the pitch black and he began to think. He had to think of another plan before something else went wrong. Pillars... Gravira... Shields... Bullets... That's when it hit Dante.

He brushed himself off after getting up from the ground and saw that all of the pillars were still intact, including his dark pillar. Dante made his way towards the first pillar to his right and after checking for any signs of weakness, he gave it a good slice and chopped it down, letting it land perfectly on one of the sides of the dark pillar. This would keep it up long enough for Dante to complete his plans, hopefully. Dante ran to yet another pillar, checking its status and then cutting it down, letting it land on the dark pillar.

[lysander]

[Through much deliberation, the course of action has been decided.]

Iznan stopped his own spinning abruptly as Gravira was suddenly wrenched from his body, standing in the center of the ring with his arms folded over his chest. "Awwww, did you get afraid I'd turn your poor little plan right back at you?" He taunted up at the sharpshooter on the shadow pillar in the corner of the ring. To be honest Iznan was frustrated that she hadn't let him do what he'd envisioned with her spell. "Interesting? So it's finally going to be more fun than clipping my toe nails?"

[/color] He asked in a very brusque manner.

He blew out a puff of soft air, flipping his glances between Mora, her fat cloak and it's descent, and Dante who was doing god knows what while the cloak fell downward. During the last few moments of visibility, before the cloak's edges draped over the arena and obscured all light from entering, creating a "pitch-black darkness", Iznan got himself oriented. He was standing in the absolute center of the ring. Four pillars in four corners. A pillar of shadow near one of the corners of the arena; Dante began his dash towards one of the the stone ones. Kuja still stood, quite happily, where he had planted when the fight began.

"Hmm..."[/color] He closed his eyes. They would be useless in this absolute darkness. No matter how honed a creature's eyes were, unless they were made of some sort of ethereal material, they needed at least a single photon to see a thing. Instead he began to rely upon his ears. The rapid footsteps across the arena tile could only be one person. Dante. There was first one slice, a grating sound, a crash, more footsteps, another slice, the same noises. It wasn't hard to figure out what they were doing. Now, the only question was how to react.

He could make an attempt to sneak up on Dante under the cover of darkness and slit his throat, but considering that Iznan himself couldn't see either, that was hardly a viable option. Then there was the possibility that he could break his promise of using magic. Though it pained him to admit they were worthy of seeing (or not-seeing, really) his Midas Strands in action, it came to him as the only option. Crouching down where he stood Iznan pressed his fingertips against the floor. He briefly thanked Mora for pulling away her Gravira. Otherwise he would've destroyed the tiles around him and this plan wouldn't plausible. A few cracks wouldn't hurt anything.

He made no noise, and created no light as he sat, hunched over the tile in the center of the ring. Not even the magical energy he was pouring into the solid surface of the ring could be felt by even the most accomplished of magicians. Certainly it took more energy than regular to plant so many seeds, so quickly, and from a distance, while accelerating their growth to full height. He planted fifty around each of the remaining two pillars, and around each of the remaining two pillars, fifty grew.

They made no noise in the darkness, nor did they create any sort of magical aura or mystical, otherworldly light. Without visibility there was no way to distinguish the strands from the darkness itself. Only one who could see without any amount of light would be able to tell that fifty, seven foot high, white strings were writhing around each pillar. And Iznan would know when Dante ran into one of them, and he would know which one, as well. Just like any good wizard worth his robe would know if one of his spells had been set off. He smiled gently to himself as the sound of bullets over head pounded the twofeet-thick cloak. He didn't know what Mora was thinking, but apparently she had the delusion to believe that not only could she shoot through a structure that it would take hours to cut through, but that she could see through the cloak as well. The notion was laughable, though he miraculously held back a chuckle.[/size][/blockquote]

[Frog]

Two bullets hit the arena's tiled floor around Kuja before the robe cut off all light but he didn't seem to pay them any heed. Trying to fire a new bullet with the last one wedged up in front of it apparently didn't do any good for Mora's aiming, though the complete lack of noted reaction to the force of a bullet slamming into her weapon's insides was more interesting than that. Supposedly those things were meant to hit pretty hard, but apparently the punch of her's was as weak as a kitten. That would certainly make taking the bullets without sustaining any lethal injury a lot easier in the future. Not that this Mystic intended to take any of them, of course.

Kuja gave no mind to the events going on, still watching with distant interest. The cloak coming down overhead didn't even warrant a glance upward from the man and deep in the darkness surrounded by the sounds of battle he was as placid as he'd been in full light.

[Dante]

Dante ran around and cut the next pillar... but then there was something holding his blade! What was it? Was it something that Kuja was using? Was he actually using the darkness to his advantage? This was no good at all. Dante tried to do the best he could to remove his blade, but nothing happened. He was afraied to touch his blade, wondering if it would affect him, but being helpless was no reason to back down

Dante needed to know what was holding his blade, so he did the one thing that would reveal everyones' hiding spot. He kept his left hand on the hilt while conducting with his right hand, thus summoning the two magical measures of darkness that illuminated the inside of the cloak. Then, without further stalling for time, he sent up a few notes of darkness which revealed what was holding his blade; Some type of silky ribbon! Wow... just wow. "This crap must be industrial silk, man. These things are everywhere!"

It was true, no matter where you looked, there were seven foot long strands of ribbon on each of the pillars. He shot a few notes to cut the ribbons holding his cleaver and then backed away. He looked to see Iznan sitting like an innocent puppy and then saw Kuja being lazy. Stupid idiots. He needed Mora's help more than ever now. His Melody had only a few more uses left in this battle before he would have to resort in hand to hand combat.

[Rocket!]

A voice lilted out from above the contestants...

"Guess who's gonna looooooose...."

Grinning like a madwoman, Mora gave the massive robe a good kick.

Half a second later, the massive robe was shrinking yet again... but not before having vastly increased the edges of the cloak beyond what might've normally been thought possible. These edges were now five times heavier and thicker than before.

Now then, back to the shrinking.

As the cloak began to shrink, the edges remained the same size and weight. The cloak, as a whole, didn't diminish in thickness or durability either. The cloak dragged along towards the pillar Mora stood on, leaving a distinct path behind it.

Let's hope the audience already left, eh? ...or found a way out, actually.

And so it was that the shrinking coat caught any stragglers in it's path and brought them all snug to the pillar of darkness Mora remained atop of, effectively catching all of the other contestants and maybe a few dawdlers.

With a smile stretched across her face, Mora jumped down to the now bright floor as the sleeve shrunk down (creating a lower roof for the occupants), all while bringing her shield up to cushion the blow from the jump.

Standing triumphantly, Mora examined her handiwork.

Looks like everyone's getting to know each other a little too well, eh?