Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting

[revenancemods]

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?

Comments

[wavesinherheart]

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!

[dork_of_keys]

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...

[wavesinherheart]

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.

[dork_of_keys]

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...

[wavesinherheart]

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?"

[dork_of_keys]

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.

[wavesinherheart]

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.