revenance_rpg | Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting

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Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting

Characters: All those who signed up for Struggle
Content: Struggle!
Location: Twilight Town, Sandlot
Time of Day: Morning
Warnings: It's a Struggle, so there's going to be at least some combat
Notes: The rules of Struggle are simple: Each player has 100 colored orbs attached to their gear (usually a vest and helmet). Knock off and gather your opponent's orbs while keeping your own. The person with the most orbs at the end of the time limit wins the round. Special powers (magic and such) are not allowed - the vanilla humans need a chance to win too. Have fun!

It's a bright sunny morning in Twilight Town - or would be if it had mornings to speak of - but that's not what has the town all abuzz. No, that would be the fact that today marks the start of the Struggle tournament. All are, of course, welcome to come, so the question is really a simple one: who out there is ready to Struggle?

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After the events of her last match, Aqua wasn't entirely certain she was ready to keep going. Oh, she knew that what had happened to Ven wasn't necessarily going to happen to anyone else, but that didn't mean she wasn't still concerned about what had happened. Still, she supposed there wasn't really much else she could do about it. She had a match, and it wasn't like she could ask Sora to wait until she was absolutely certain Ven would be alright. No, for now, she'd just have to put it out of her mind and focus on the match on hand.

"I'm ready."

Aqua actually could ask Sora to wait, though she probably couldn't be expected to know that. The question was how the tournament organizers would feel about it. Still, if she said she was ready, Sora wouldn't argue.

He considered employing the same strategy that York had used with Xion, though he supposed he might want to try to get an idea of how things might go first. With that in mind he took a ready stance. Opening with a normal straightforward attack seemed acceptable, especially when the response to it would tell him whether or not he should just try making sure he had more orbs and then running away. Thusly, his first move was a quick, diagonal swipe that would lead into a combo is he had that opportunity and was mostly aimed at knocking some orbs off the vest.

It wasn't the first time Aqua had been asked to fight while she was less than at her best, emotionally speaking. And this time, it was at least not a situation that was nearly as life or death as the last several times had been.

Not to say that she wasn't willing to give it her all. Just because it wasn't a fight that would have serious consequences didn't mean that it was something she could - or should - take less than seriously. As for Sora's firat strike, that is quite entirely expected. She's been in enough fights with Terra and Ven to know how this goes, and she raises her own key to block Sora's strike without even really needing to think about it. He'll need to try harder than that to knock a few orbs away.

Sora could understand not being at one's best when there was fighting to be done. Not that he knew that was the case for Aqua at the moment.

Sora was taking this seriously, though not so seriously that as to take the fun out of it. He wasn't quite expecting that strike to be successful, though he'd been ready to take advantage of it if it was. The question now, debated only slightly, was whether to fight more defensively or fight aggressively.

Well, it wasn't like an aggressive approach would have dire consequences if it didn't work out. At worst, he might end up scrambling to collect any orbs he lost. However, he wasn't stupid enough to try the exact same thing again. This time he started with a feint followed up with his regular three-hit combo, which was actually fairly aggressive but he doubted the foam bats would really do more than bruise, if even that.

An offensive approach probably was the best approach under the circumstances. Playing things defensively would certainly keep the loss of orbs to a minimum, but that didn't mean anything if you couldn't make up the loss somehow. Besides, as much as she was willing to let other people make the first attack, she had no intention of staying put long enough for Sora to get in another attack unimpeded.

This time, however, she didn't bring up her Keyblade to block. Instead, she quite literally cartwheeled out of the way of Sora's attack. If she was lucky, she'd be able to get in a few attacks once she made up to her feet again. And if not, she'd at least have gotten out of the way of Sora's attack, and that was a decent enough start if nothing else. She could figure out how best to take the advantage as she went, if she had to, and given how her last fight had gone, it was looking rather distinctly like she was going to need to.

Sora had lost a couple matches before he worked out that there was more too it than just smacking the orbs off your opponent. At least none of them had been a tournament. He didn't expect her to make it easy.

He also didn't expect her to dodge out the way with a cartwheel when there were certainly more practical ways to dodge. A hand spring or a flip made a little more sense. He wasn't quite surprised enough to let up, though. Pursuing when the opponent dodged was one way to get a hit or two in. Admittedly, it was also a good way to be in range when they retaliated, but it was a risk he could take. If he was quick enough, or lucky enough, he would have more orbs after this exchange and then just... do the undignified thing and run away. Of course he'd try to grab some of the dropped orbs too.

There was a small complicating factor in that he wasn't actually certain if he could outrun her, but he'd worry about that if it came up...

It might not have been the most practical way to get out the way, but Aqua had gotten used to it over any of a number of fights. Besides, if the point was to make oneself harder to hit, it was hard to deny that a cartwheel did a rather excellent job of getting all of the really important bits out of the way of an attack that might have otherwise been aimed at about chest-height.

Under the circumstances, she wasn't surprised that Sora didn't stop coming simply because she'd gotten out of the way. Fighting a person was nothing at all like fighting an Unversed, and for all that she came up swinging it wasn't quite enough to keep Sora from knocking a precious few orbs free while she was getting back up to her feet. True, it was unfortunate, but once she was back upright she did manage block Sora's attacks well enough to leave it at only those few. She wasn't going to let herself be taken out of the running so soon, that much was certain!

Finally! Or at least, it would have been a good thing that he'd finally knocked some orbs off but for the fact that he'd also lost some. Crap. Not that he hadn't known it was possibly, but obviously, his luck hadn't held.

Decisions, decisions. Go for the dropped orbs first or try to knock some more off. The split second in which the choice had to made was no help. Grumbling just a bit, Sora dashed off, scooping up as many orbs as he could get a hold of and then making a run for it. If he had enough orbs, he just needed to hold out until time was up. Hopefully. Or he might wind up looking like an idiot if Aqua could catch him easily...

Luck was a tricky thing at the best of times. Not that skill didn't come into things like this, but there was always for a lucky - or unlucky - shot. Or for things simply not going quite as planned.

Such was the case here. For all that Sora had a head start, and Aqua certainly wasn't as fast as Ven, she did have a decent amount of speed to her name. It came in handy too, given that she wasn't quite as defense-oriented as some people she could name. More importantly, it meant that Sora's plan wasn't really going to work as expected - it only took a moment before she managed to catch up with him, and this time Aqua wasted no time in coming in swinging.

Of course Sora's luck only held out when it truly counted. This was not a time when it truly counted...

The realization that his plan was bombing was met with a mixture of bemusement and... something else. Probably embarrassment. Most likely embarrassment. Collecting the orbs he'd lost already wasn't going to get him anywhere, and apparently neither was trying knock more off of her. He'd lost too many orbs by the time he realized he was pretty well screwed. He supposed he could try to even the score out a little bit to make the loss a little less embarrassing, if there was time.

Or not. He was closer to the edge of the ring than he thought and as he turned to try for knocking a few orbs off he overbalanced at the edge of the ring and fell off...

There was a moment of stunned silence, before Aqua to the edge of the ring to see of Sora was still alright. She wasn't going to complain (too much) about being handed a second win, but as far as winning streaks went, this was pretty much the strangest one she been privy to. It was also one that probably wasn't going to prepare her for any future matches, but she supposed she could be satisfied with having gotten this far. She could work more on actually winning next time there was something like this.

"Are you alright?"

By the time Aqua got to the edge to look over, Sora had sat himself up and was inspecting a scrape on his arm. The inspection was probably more for the sake of avoiding eye contact with anyone than for actually making sure he was okay. It really was very mild.

He didn't ignore the question at least, though he was obviously very embarrassed when he looked up to answer, "Y-yeah, I'm fine."

Whether this was better or worse than the self inflicted nut shot while skateboarding, he wasn't sure. It hadn't been as painful physically, but this time there were people there to see it in person. For all the tournaments he'd fought at Olympus, he'd never had this problem. Then again, the ring there only a couple inches off the ground and ring out in those tournaments meant squat.

For all that Aqua hadn't expected too many injuries to come from having fallen rather literally out of the ring, it was still nice to know that Sora was alright. Or at least, alright physically, even if he was more than a little embarrassed by situation. (Which was no surprise either. Aqua would likely been similarly embarrassed if she'd been in a similar position.)

Still, she could hardly unwind time, and might not have even if she'd been able to. An unlovely win was still a win. She'd just have to remember that what she was learning wasn't going to be a valid strategy in all of her matches. Possibly not even any of them but her streak of highly unorthodox wins had to end somewhere, and she wasn't about to complain too much when it finally did.

"Good," she answered, with a nod.

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Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting

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