We're all gonna get in a fight! [EVENT: FITE NITE][Warning: Violence and Blood]

[smartass_captain]

People have been disappearing in the Nexus.

Going missing from work, from their homes, from the Plaza.

Locals are staying in their homes, shutting their doors. Even the more shut-in of Nexus goers will be able to tell that something is amiss around here. The Plaza is strangely sparse as far as foot traffic; many of the shops downtown are closing early.

Word is spreading in the Industrial District of an anomaly in the anti-violence field. Easy money for betting in cage fighting. Less easy money but larger amounts for competing in said cage matches. One on one, matches with and without weapons. Rounds go until someone surrenders, is knocked out, or dies. Who would set up such a thing? It's becoming very popular and many a coin is being generated. Are so many people really signing up for this?

Some are. Others are captured and drugged, thrown into the ring against their will with the ultimatum: Fight and get free, or die.

What do you do?

Are you looking to bet your wages? Sign up for a chance at riches? Are you one of the unwilling laying in a dark room?

Or.

Are you going to stand for this if not?

((Please view this OOC post to chat with other players before you jump into a fight! All fights must be agreed upon by participants ahead of time for severity of injuries. Outcomes can be agreed upon or will be decided by a coinflip by myself. Please do not come into this expecting to clean sweep someone without sustaining injuries unless you and your fight partner have agreed ahead of time that would be hilarious. If there are questins, concerns, or complaints PM me. TL:DR Have fun and don't be a dick!))

Comments

[drehnifusbahi]

He notes the reaction to the lightning, the way she's diving even before the spell is cast and immediately springs back up after the lightning has struck the ground. When she fires, he mutters the first word of Whirlwind Sprint again and dashes out of the line of fire.

No, she doesn't seem to want to close with him, and her aim did seem better than her swings when they sparred - but then, neither of them were in their proper bodies at the time; that's one hell of a handicap. Still, he isn't about to just run around the arena until she runs out of ammunition, either.

He summons up a spectral wolf -his familiar- which charges at Natasha with teeth bared. No atronachs, since he isn't sure the daedra would understand the concept of a nonlethal fight. The next spell after that isn't aimed at Natasha, but at the ground around her - a simple frost spell.

It's too warm in the arena for the ice to stay frozen for long, and as it melts it mixes with the packed earth of the arena floor and turns to thick mud.

[red_room]

First lightning, now wolves. One of the guns is re-holstered so she can grab hold of a baton strapped to her thigh. While it charges Natasha keeps firing on Vanyel and once it's within reach she swings the baton in a full arc, connecting with a crackle not unlike Vanyel's own lightning spell.

She leaps backward, balance thrown slightly from the suddenly soft ground beneath her footing. Rather than flipping onto the rock she'd taken refuge behind she only manages to put distance between herself and the wolf. She takes the bought time to fire once more at the Dragon Born before she has to contend with the wolf with another whallop form her shock baton.

Her attention is divided, but that wolf is going to get wrecked if it gets up again. If this fight is just going to be Vanyel summoning things at her, she's going to need to bring this to close quarters.

[drehnifusbahi]

He uses that Shout to dodge once more -Oakflesh or no, he's not about to stand there and let himself get shot- as the wolf goes on its final attack; the shocks have certainly slowed it down, but much like its master, it's a tenacious little bastard.

He'll coat more of the ground near her with that quickly-melting frost once he finds his feet again, and once his throat has recovered from the last shout, he turns his attention to that boulder. "Fus Ro Dah!"

Unrelenting Force would have moved it one way or another, but thanks to the mud it skids away more easily than it might have otherwise.

And then he's on the move again, pondering the wisdom of either conjuring up his familiar again once it's dispelled, or summoning an Atronach after all.

[red_room]

The shouting.

That's what's doing this. Natasha leaps up, getting on top of the boulder before it can crush her against the far wall and rides it while she reloads. She takes the opportunity while she's on solid footing to spring upwards, grabbing onto the top of the cage they're enclosed in with one hand and hanging while she unloads her fully laden pistol at Vanyel.

It's less about trying to hit him as it is getting him to move where she wants him. If he'll just get in range...Nat lets go and tosses a couple of small discs at the dragonborn's feet. He's in for a nasty shock of his own when they discharge if he's still there.

[drehnifusbahi]

He's got plenty of experience with dodging enemy archers - and while those pistols of hers fire far more quickly than any bow or crossbow, he figures the same principles apply. So he runs, weaving this way and that. He has no illusions he can outrun all her bullets, but so long as he has enough magicka to keep up Oakflesh he can take a few hits.

He sees those discs, and while he doesn't know what exactly they do, it isn't hard to guess it's something he'll want to avoid. So he dives away from them, and conjures up another version of the wolf from before, which appears to be made of flames. It runs toward the boulder, stopping a short distance away, and promptly explodes.

It's not a big enough explosion for Natasha to get caught in the actual blast, but she'll certainly feel the heatwave, and it might distract her long enough to let Vanyel pull off his next trick - a literal disappearing act.

[red_room]

He's fast.

Natasha's starting to enjoy this. It shows in the way her eyes brighten. The way she twists and flips when she lets go of the cage top. It's not that she isn't taking this seriously. No. No, not at all.

She has just realized that she needn't worry about Vanyel at all. The prospect of being able to fight at full tilt isn't one she's had recently between training new Avengers and her new charge here in the Nexus. Adrenaline courses through her veins and she runs for Vanyel.

The wolf she was set on ignoring but it isn't darting for her. It detonates on the boulder sending shrapnel of rock and debris in all directions. Natasha dodges the larger pieces, ducking and protecting her head as the shockwave and heat pass by.

Something's wrong.

Natasha's eyes snap back to the arena.

Vanyel isn't there. Nope. Nope not sticking around to have him magic the ground away or anything like that. She's heading for the far wall and scaling up the fencing a ways to see if he's hiding out in any of the other outcroppings littering the arena.

[drehnifusbahi]

In truth, so is Vanyel.

The vast majority of his fights are against enemies, where it's kill or be killed. And while he does spar with Lydia, he's never felt able to go all out like this during those sessions.

What he's actually done is cast a spell of invisibility and hunker down in the shadows of one of those outcroppings, mostly to allow himself a bit of recovery time. The problem with the Shouts is, he can't just use one after another after another without risking serious injury to his throat - the human body simply wasn't meant to channel the power of a dragon so easily.

So he lies in wait, and when she passes into range on her way to the far wall he pokes his head out, still unseen, just long enough to use another one. "Zun!" It's only the first word of Disarm, but hopefully it'll be enough to part her from at least one of those guns.

And with that done, he'll duck back down and scurry to another hiding spot while his invisibility spell is still holding.

Once settled into the new one, he slides his crossbow from his shoulder, loads an exploding bolt (of the Shock variety), and fires, not at her but at the fencing, intent on electrifying the metal and removing scaling it as an option, at least for the time being.

[red_room]

The force of the word slams into her as she runs by, ripping the pistol from her hands as though she were a child and not a trained and capable assassin holding it. She whirls around, grabbing for the gun but doesn't waste time chasing after it.

She still has one hand gun and several other items in her arsenal much more securely attached to her person than her guns are. Still, she's not even able to get one of the shots fired before a crackle and particularly unpleasant zzzap! forces Natasha to drop down again. Her other handgun clatters uselessly to the ground as she struggles to regain control of her spasming muscles.

By the time she gets to her feet again, she knows there's no time to go for her guns. Either of them. Time to change up tactics.

[drehnifusbahi]

It's time for him to change tactics as well. He's been leaning heavily on his magic, and his reserves of magicka are dwindling rapidly.

While she's down he lets go of the invisibility spell, but not Oakflesh quite yet; he does remember that she has more weapons in her arsenal than just the guns. Then he emerges from his hiding spot, rushing toward her. If they keep this to a ranged fight, he is eventually going to run out of magicka, and the utility of the crossbow bolts is limited since he doesn't actually want to kill her. So, close-quarters combat it is.

He fully expects that she's better than she seemed when they sparred, given that she's no longer operating with the handicap of being in the wrong body. Even if she is, though, he still has an advantage of reach and weight that can't be discounted.

[red_room]

Natasha drops to the ground under Vanyel's initial swing, swiveling around him just out of reach like the most agile of snakes between his feet. She moves with a liquid grace with no wasted actions.

Vanyel is absolutely correct. His weight advantage and armor means that Natasha can't take many of those blows. So the strategy becomes to dodge whatever she can. Luckily evade and counter is her preferred style of close quarters combat. She gets behind Vanyel and tucks her own leg around his to trip him up and use his weight against him.

Her hands shoot for any gap in his armor she can find, activating her shock clips again when she grabs at him.

[drehnifusbahi]

Divines, she's fast - but that's not entirely unexpected. When she trips him, he does indeed go down - but he uses the momentum to turn the fall into a roll, all the better to get clear of her follow-up lunge.

Then he turns, sweeping his leg out to try and catch her at the ankles. And as he does so, he lets slip another word in Dovahzul. "Fus!" That 'Unrelenting Force' is aimed squarely at Natasha this time, but using just the one word means this Shout isn't nearly as powerful as the one that sent the boulder careening into the far wall.

[red_room]

She might miss with her grab but she's already hopping over his counter sweep, one hand reaching for her batons when the shout slams into her. Being in midair means she has nothing to grab onto to stop herself from being thrown back several feet, landing on her side and skidding across the dirt for a ways after.

Everything is ringing and Natasha feels like someone was trying to reach into her head and shake her brain. Still, she twists her body and uses the last of the momentum to roll back onto her feet. She has to shut him up or she won't be able to get close enough to finish this.

A couple of knives are tossed Vanyel's way as a distraction while she closes the distance again.

[drehnifusbahi]

He dodges the knife that seems more likely to hit something vital - he doesn't honestly know how much longer he can keep up Oakflesh for, and he'd rather not take a dagger to the gut if it fails him at a critical moment.

He doesn't Shout again as she closes the distance, mostly because he can't at the moment, instead settling into a defensive stance, already planning to go for one of his swords if she draws one of the batons again.

[red_room]

They only serve to buy her time to close the gap without having magic flung her way. She has no way of knowing what Vanyels reserves or stamina are and no way of knowing what she should and shouldn't be wary of. Better to be cautious of everything.

She feels her legs burn slightly when she leaps into the air and twists to throw a kick at the dragonborn. His dodge makes her plant her hands on his shoulder and vault behind him so as not to leave herself completely open.

This isn't at all the longest fight she's been in but the strain is starting to get to her, too. She lands on her hands and flips out of the way, dancing around Vanyel as though they were doing a synchronized dance rather than a fight. She tries to grab for him again and gets nothing but air.

Eventually one of them is going to land a hit. Natasha can't keep up this level of dexterity and constant close combat for unlimited amounts of time. She feints on her next swing before closing the distance and shoving her hand up and trying to slam Vanyel square on the underside of his jaw.

[drehnifusbahi]

Magical exhaustion doesn't quite translate to physical exhaustion, thankfully - but it does bring with it a certain degree of mental fatigue. And that is slowing him down, if only a bit.

Still, he follows as she circles and darts around him, not willing to let her out of his sight for even a moment. He'd rather not give her the opportunity to do something... sneaky.

But he can't keep dodging forever, and he does still have just enough magicka to keep up Oakflesh - so when he realizes that first swing was a feint and sees that next blow aimed at his jaw...

He lets her get in close enough to land it -her hand will hit that spell-barrier first, which might just shatter under the impact- so that he, in turn, can aim a punch at her stomach.

[red_room]

Natasha isn't prepared for the magical shield to still be in effect. Her palm connects with something before it should be that shatters and sends a jolt down her arm, turning what should have been a knockout blow into a glancing push against his jaw.

She'd been certain of the attack. It's why she'd risked leaving herself open for that fraction of a second....long enough for Vanyel's fist to connect with her stomach and have her doubling over as she stumbles back.

Her glare is venomous when she gazes upward through her hair. She's sweating and pretty sure she's just earned herself at least one bruised rib. She has to keep moving, keep dodging, but the air had been forced out of her lungs with the blow and she's slowed by the need to breathe.

[drehnifusbahi]

No worse than her planned knock-out blow would have been for him, he's sure, but even so he has to master the urge to wince. He's been in enough fights and knows just enough battlefield medicine to know what sort of complications can arise from a simple fist to the stomach.

If they've no healers on staff, he'll certainly offer once the fight's over - well, and once he's had the chance to down a magicka potion or two. But for the moment, he takes advantage of the pause to try another sweep. If he can get her to ground...

He's recovered a little magicka already, but not enough to do anything useful with - which means no recasting Oakflesh. So if he can't end this soon, he'll have to fight a lot more defensively than he has been...

[red_room]

The sweep connects.

Natasha grabs for the Drgaonborn as she falls in a last ditch attempt to drag him down with her. If she connects he'll feel something connect with his chest armor and dig in, the tip just barely piercing skin on the other side. The added grip just helps Natasha pull him down.

Either way, she's hitting the ground on her side, knife in her hand if it's not in Vanyel's armor.

[drehnifusbahi]

He sees the swing -and the knife- coming, but he can't afford to dodge. Can't afford to give her that moment to get back on her feet, lest this fight drag out even longer. So he takes the hit, starts to go down with her.

And then, he summons up every dreg of magicka he's managed to recover and summons up his familiar one more time. The wolf tackles Natasha, and despite its ethereal appearance it isn't actually much lighter than a flesh-and-blood wolf of the same size would be.

That means the knife tears out of flesh and armor rather more violently than it went in, and he lets out a pained hiss, one hand reflexively covering the wound.

[red_room]

That.

Natasha was not expecting that. Her eyes go wide when the knife rips free and then she's solidly on her stomach struggling under the weight of Vanyel's wolf deliberately trying to keep her down.

She doesn't want to thrash--the wolf might latch onto her to try and keep her down if she does and Natasha isn't committed enough to winning this to deal with that. She also doesn't want to severely hurt Vanyel in a way that would be hard to recover from. The spy doesn't see a way for this fight to continue without doing potentially both of these things. And even then, she's not convinced she could even win.

Instead, Natasha raises her hand and calls out in a clear voice.

"The match is yours!" The crowd erupts in glee at the outcome, and already there's a succubus-maid strutting out to escort Vanyel off to be treated for his more major injuries. Natasha gets up once the wolf is off of her and gives Vanyel a nod before she turns and heads back to her own door. 'Good match' her gaze says. She'll catch up with him later to chat and trade pointers. He's taught her a lot.

[drehnifusbahi]

He lets the familiar vanish just a moment after she says it -he wouldn't have had enough magicka to keep it around for much longer anyhow- and lets himself be led off, giving her a nod in return before the doors shut behind him.

It was a good match, and he considers himself lucky to have scraped a win.