Is it can be sparring time now plz? [Active]

[sparkplasma]

Characters: Ivan and Karst
Content: They get in a fight, although theoretically they're not trying to kill each other this time.
Setting: Jogo da Crianca fairgrounds
Time: Several days after the festival ends?
Warnings: None unless Karst constitutes a warning

Comments

[isaacmustdie]

It had taken ages for Karst to decide whether or not she wanted to bring her own weapon to the practice fight. On the one hand, she needed to get-- pardon the pun-- back into the swing of things, especially since she could all but smell the coming war; on the other, she had a pretty good suspicion that her partner would be weaponless. Finally, she had stowed the scythe under her bed at the inn and hung a sign on the door to ward off the maids who would doubtless be coming to clean it. If she had a weapon in hand, she might forget that she was no longer at Jupiter Lighthouse, that Ivan was no longer an enemy to be destroyed

[sparkplasma]

Ivan turned at the sound of her voice, mildly surprised, but then smiled and echoed her greeting with a wave of his hand (which was a little too quick to be totally calm). "Hello."

She looked... different, he noticed. Since the festival a few days before, when he'd last seen her, she'd gotten a new dress, although it was just as short as the old one. It obviously wasn't an effort to fit in - she'd have a hard time of that in any case - but for a moment he wondered if it was a way to make herself at home. Then, though, he booted the thought unceremoniously from his mind. Either way it wasn't really any of his business.

What was more of his business was the fact that she'd apparently come unarmed. "Uh.. did you bring your scythe?" he asked, feeling acutely self-conscious of the rod in his left hand. She hadn't been intending for them to fight with just Psynergy, had she? He'd never done that before.

[isaacmustdie]

The staff registered roughly an hour too late, and Karst could have kicked herself. Of course she'd never seen Ivan with a weapon before! She'd ambushed him the first time they'd met, he hadn't been expecting a fight then and hadn't had a staff on hand, and nobody had been allowed to take weapons into the festival.

Instead of kicking herself, though, she took it out on Ivan. "Well, you didn't have a weapon before, and you didn't say you had one, so I was just trying to be fair! Besides," she snapped, wreathing both hands in flames and throwing a Blast his way, "I don't need a weapon to defeat you!"

[sparkplasma]

It wouldn't really have been that big a deal, Ivan didn't think; he could just as easily put the staff aside for the duration. But she didn't ask him to, and he didn't get a chance to offer. The blast caught him completely off-guard, and he backpedaled frantically with a surprised yelp, the effort only narrowly saving him from taking it in the face. Instead, the explosion went off just barely to his side, knocking him flat.

"Are you serious?!" he shouted, trying to scramble back to his feet and bat at his right arm at the same time. If anyone had asked him, he wouldn't have been able to tell them what exactly he meant by that; but at the moment, he was more concerned with putting out the smoldering sleeve of his jacket than with either retaliating or making sense. (Anyway, of course she was. This was Karst.)

[isaacmustdie]

"Are you?!" Karst retorted, gathering her energy for another Blast while waiting for him to make some kind of move. This, now, this was something she knew. Rage, anger, the heat of stress, and the rush of the fight. The chance to burn off all her excess frustration in a controlled battle with a known opponent.

Winning and losing didn't matter. If she won, it simply confirmed what he'd told her earlier, that he wasn't a threat to her. If she lost, it simply confirmed her earlier paranoia about his abilities, and gave her a guide by which to measure her own. Either way, she would emerge from the fight with a better understanding of her powers.

That didn't mean she wouldn't fight to win.

[sparkplasma]

Now that the surprise had had a second to wear off, Ivan's face cinched with more apprehension than determination. She was perfectly serious, and he'd have to match it if he wanted to keep up, but... It wasn't as if he wasn't used to fighting, or even as if he'd never fought her in particular before, but he couldn't help fearing it would end the same way as it had last time.

Trying to ignore that idea, he quickly lashed back with a wide, cutting whirlwind that set his hair fluttering as it tore toward her across the grass. It wasn't by far his strongest effort, but he hadn't yet disconnected from the notion that sparring was supposed to be about not really injuring your partner.

[isaacmustdie]

Karst had forgotten how much she hated enemies who could use wind-based Psynergy, but she was very quickly reminded when the whirlwind nearly knocked her off her feet. Her next Psynergetic attack went wide as she focused more on recovering.

Ivan was still holding back. Why was he holding back? Sparring was supposed to be about getting better without killing people. Was there a way to startle him into using more of his power? She could take a direct hit. He of all people should know that she could take a beating if she had to; after all, he'd been the one to fight her before, and she'd bested him then.

A taunt, maybe. "No wonder you're afraid of Larxene, if that's the best you can do!" she laughed, throwing a stronger Mad Blast in his general direction-- it didn't matter if this one hit precisely, since the explosion was big enough that he'd be caught in it anyway.

[sparkplasma]

Though he didn't get a chance to respond, Karst's words registered and stung. Ivan had never been an easy person to provoke, but that same fear and weakness had been grating on his mind almost constantly for the better part of the last two weeks, and her mention of it was sufficient to bring it all right back into the foreground. He didn't have time to think about it, however.

Aware that he couldn't dodge this one, Ivan crossed his arms defensively over his face just before the explosion went off. It hit him square-on, and the next thing he knew he was flat on his back a good yard back from where he'd been standing.

That hurt! He gritted his teeth and pulled himself upright as quickly as he could, though more slowly than he would have intact. It wasn't disablingly bad, and he had had worse, but that didn't stop his body from hurting. And worse, he couldn't tell whether she was using her full strength. If she wasn't, he was doomed. If he'd just still had his Djinni - but he didn't, and it was suddenly dawning on him just how big of a

[isaacmustdie]

Karst screamed. She'd forgotten how much she hated Jupiter Psynergy! Maybe goading him into using his full strength hadn't been the wisest of ideas, but at least now she knew what he could do.

And it hurt. How could someone so puny (one mid-level technique sent him reeling?) use such a powerful attack? Either Ivan was faking the severity of his injury, or something was severely imbalanced.

Karst hoped that he wouldn't think he could fake her out, just because he could tell if she was faking. But there was only one way to be sure, and that was for her to increase the heat. A few more Mad Blasts, she thought, and then she would hit him with her strongest Firey Blast...

[sparkplasma]

Ivan grimaced at how little damage his attack had apparently done relative to hers. He'd forgotten just how much stamina she had, and remembering it left a sinking feeling in his gut that he tried, with only moderate success, to ignore. He really wasn't much of a match for her - at this rate she'd have him out of commission long before he could make a dent