I put a shield upon you, I didn't mean to hurt you--

[dragonvariation]

Who: Ra's al Ghul and you~
When: Mostly after sirens on Sunday night - but also one Saturday thread, and open for threads for the rest of the week.
Where: In the Darkness across the city
Summary: Ra's goes out to investigate the Darkness for himself--with a special interest in the people who go out to fight it.
Warnings: Violence and monster guts

Comments

[kingofrooks]

It was almost amateurish, on both sides. Bruce tensed immediately at hearing the dogs, at seeing them out of the corner of his eyes. Immediately, he ducked downwards, slamming his hand against the floor- not a moment sooner, because that was when the dogs decided to strike, all three of them leaping at him, their mouths open and teeth gleaming in the meager light. Bruce hissed out a breath, moving into the alleyway. He knew he could just use his shadows and snap the dogs' throat by appearing behind him.

He didn't.

Instead, he threw a simple bomb - one of the new ones he made, based upon the sunlamp he had made Clark, once. Sunlight exploded when it touched the floor, and the dogs howled - sharp, piercing wails, and Bruce immediately ran forward, fearless. One hand gripped onto a dog's throat and slammed it into a wall, cutting off a wail midway- at the same time, he noticed that the thing was already half-fading away. Only half, because when the light from the bomb disappeared, it snapped right back into living.

With three of Bruce's fingers trapped within its flesh. Bruce hissed quietly, and ripped his hand out, pulling the dog's spine out along with his hand. He was going to smell of rotting Darkness for the rest of the night- but that wasn't important, because the two other dogs he had neglected were leaping upon him again.

Turning, he threw the corpse of a dog straight at one of them, the one closer to him. Its jaw snapped around its fellow Darkness creature, busying itself with the fading flesh while Bruce went after the second dog. He had a batarang in his hand, using it like a dagger. The dog leaped upon him and Bruce threw himself almost literally to the side, a foot against the wall. Another step on the wall and he somersaulted down until he hit the ground on his back, sliding- the movements fast enough to throw him right underneath the dog as it leapt towards where he was just a second ago. Bruce reached up, grabbed onto a throat, and shoved the batarang right through it.

Two down, one more to go. Then the bigger fish, on the rooftop.

The last dog was angered by its disappearing prey, and Bruce looked at it for a long moment. He didn't move, waiting, waiting... and as it attacked him, teeth gleaming, he grabbed the batarang on the floor, left behind after the second dog's death, and shoved it right into the open maw of the dog. Then, he pulled it out, spinning away- leaving a trail of Darkness-blood behind even as he shot a grapple gun up to the roof. The batarang went back to his pocket, and he kicked off, spun, and landed on the roof.

"For something you despise, you used it readily enough as a weapon."

[dragonvariation]

Ra's found the rooftop easily, though the noises from the street below would no doubt attract others to join them. He waited, observed, with both warmth and apprehension, knowing that Bruce could fight the Darkness easily by now and wanting to observe him in practice. He was much better than the man he knew; experience went behind his actions now, and there were no tells, no mistakes. It was fluid, like water, even though at times it still seemed as though he had a lot to learn about the medium he fought with.

It all happened in less than seven seconds, and then Bruce was beside him again, his attention back on him. Ra's only smiled, turning to face him.

"I needed a demonstration," he offered, softly. "If I wanted to kill you, we both know I wouldn't leave it to chance."

There was an explosion then, a dense, cutting smoke, enough to cover either an escape or an attack. It was the latter that came, Ra's turning his hand up so that his wrist, with all the force and staggered strength of his arm behind it, snapped up through the smoke toward Bruce's face. It wasn't the only attack; whether it failed or worked, Ra's swung with his elbow too, kept moving around to push his right side underneath Bruce's chest and jabbed violently forward to knock the wind out of him or force him to stagged back.

There was no time to think about attack of defense, it just was.

[kingofrooks]

A demonstration. Of course. Bruce's lips twisted into a frown even as the explosion came, and he had to throw himself back immediately, avoiding that wrist, that hand. But he didn't expect Ra's second move, and he felt his lungs throw up all of his air. But he didn't breathe in immediately, instead braving the dizziness in his head as he threw himself to the ground, away from the smoke, and rolled to the side.

Only when there wasn't any smoke in front of him that he took a shallow breath. Then another, while his hands groped in his belt for the rebreather, finally snapping it over his nose and mouth. He couldn't take a chance that the gas was a poison or a sedative of any sort - he had already underestimated this man enough.

At the same time, he stood up, and switched the night vision function of his cowl's lenses on. The smoke wasn't exactly smoke - it emitted no heat, so Bruce could see Ra's figure immediately, a beacon amongst the Darkness- and he was already darting forward. Moving down, sweeping his leg out to take out Ra's balance, while at the same time his hand shooting up to smash him straight in the solar plexus.

Whichever landed would land him in the advantage.

[dragonvariation]

Advantage was such a flighty thing.

Ra’s saw both moves at once, the smoke shifting around him, settling quickly. It wasn’t a heavy diversion-just a show for people who were too slow to do anything but stand there and blind stupidly as the bad guy got away. In this case it was a decided advantage. So, then, he had a choice. The knockout blow that would certainly take him down, stun him for a few moments, perhaps even fracture a bone if he didn’t guard it properly, or the legsweep that meant to take him down, perhaps slam his head against the pavement.

The latter was again the obvious choice, though Ra’s wasn’t big on crashing to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

Instead he hit it like a street dancer, whirled around and curled his right leg around both of Bruce’s, hooked his right elbow into the ground and threw his weight and Bruce’s both toward the ground.

The idea was not to humiliate either of them, and it was clear that they were on close playing ground-no, the idea was only to make Bruce understand that if he intended to win against him it would not be here, hand to hand like children fighting in the street, it would be an intellectual victory.

Batman beat his villains into submission-he would not find Ra’s such a soft target. That was the only lesson that mattered here.

[kingofrooks]

No matter the lesson that Ra's was trying to teach, the one Bruce learned was something entirely different. He learned that this man was used to hand-to-hand combat; learned that he was faster than the Ra's al Ghul he knew, sharp-eyed and sharper-minded without the slowness that advanced age and immortality brought. There was no arrogance in him, not about this. Another human warrior, perfectly deadly in his knowledge of death.

Bruce gritted his teeth as his hips and back landed against the floor of the roof. He managed to keep his head from crashing down at the same time through sheer effort - his neck was going to be sore for quite some time. At the same time, he's reaching out, bunching the cloth of Ra's collar around his fist and pulling him even closer, until the noseguard of his cowl almost touched against the other man's lips.

Then- a single second. He threw Ra's off him as much as possible, aiming to toss him to the side like a sack of potatoes. At the same time, he drew his legs up, jumping upwards, using the momentum of that movement to step away at the same time that he throws a smoke bomb. A trick for a trick, though he didn't expect Ra's to fall for that. No- the purpose of that was entirely different.

To give him an avenue for derision and scorn. And in that one moment, a distraction for Bruce to take advantage of.

He was already rushing forward, a hand for Ra's throat to slam him against the wall.

[dragonvariation]

Perhaps another man would have smiled as he found himself face to face with the bat, tempting fate itseld. Instead Ra's exhaled so that the breath couldn't be knocked out of him when he was thrown aside. He rolled, finding his feet again on the floor.

Ra's didn't have any gadgetry to protect him from the gas, but he didn't believe that Bruce would knock him out--why would he? There was nothing to gain. No, he was confident that an attack would come through the smoke, and he dropped his hand, the wave-bladed Arab knife slipping into his palm, turned up so that he wouldn't stab himself or Bruce accidentally. As if.

Bruce came straight for his throat, shoving him hard against the wall two steps further back. He grunted - the shock of the impact went through him - aware that he'd been slammed just a little too hard against the wall. His head spun, but he had time to recover. The knife was where he meant it to be, slid so that the flat of the blade was against Bruce's thigh, his other hand up, wrapped boldly around the wrist of the hand that held his throat. That was a distraction.

He pushed the blade in - not enough to cut through the fabric, but enough to draw Bruce's attention to it - and closed his eyes, just for a moment. Breathing wasn't easy, but he could hold his breath for long enough, and he'd exhaled out of his own will.

"You'll have to get up earlier than that to get the jump on me, Bruce."

[kingofrooks]

It wasn't something entirely unexpected, that knife against his thigh- yet Bruce could not help the tiny intake of breath, as loud as a gasp between two men like them. But it was something involuntary, an automatic male reaction to having a damn knife pressed against his groin.

But his hands were already moving. Ra's had a knife on one side of the groin guard, so Bruce used the other leg to slam against his chest, steadying himself easily enough. His hands shifted as well, one reaching down to grab against the wrist of the hand holding the knife, the other twisting against the hand at his throat. He knew that the latter was a mere distraction - he barely felt the grip through the armour of the cowl - but he wasn't going to let Ra's have such an overt advantage over him.

One was enough.

"You'll have to use newer tricks for that to work," he said, and his voice was sharp enough to cleave through the air. Focusing around him rather than just on Ra's for a moment, he could hear it again- the softest flap of wings. An Icarus Winged was coming.

"I assume that you have heard the legends of Prometheus, Ra's al Ghul," his lips twisted, and the smile wasn't pleasant. "The eagle is coming."

And with that pronouncement, he took a gamble that his instincts screamed at. He twisted at the wrist at his neck, pulling it away from him, then threw himself backwards, directly away from the knife until his back hit the ground and rolled away, a hand slamming against the concrete. At the same time, he could hear it-

The shrill cry of an Icarus Winged that had spotted a prey, and was already diving in. Bruce refused to use his shadows to let him escape, instead moving back, swift like an eel through water, to watch.