Welcome to Gaia! ::

Judge: "You may begin when ready."

Harou walked into the arena. His new blade resting against his side. Sighing at the sight of Westly, he recalled his fight earlier. Great. . another match of hide and go seek. .

Shall we. . ?

Harou's eyes flickered a little. As their attention was drawn from Westly to the ground in front of him. "And what might that be?" He said plainly, looking back up at Westly. His hand resting lightly on the hilt of his sword.

. . . .


((I like your angle at approaching this fight.))

Harou drew his sword. Both kunai struck it's blade at somewhat of an angle and bounced off. One narrowly missing Harou's face.

His hair dangling in front of his face as he peered through with his left eye.

"Who are you to tell me what I can and can't do? How Sheena takes that information, is of her own accord." Harou's reverse kodachi blade glistening in the light. His blade then dropped to his side as he walked toward Westly casually.

"How about we start, huh? Lets fight. Man to man, yes?" He urged on, stopping a few feet from Westly.

Pity. . .

Harou's hair waved back and forth with the wind. "You assume I expected her to open up to me? Hmph. . .your research has failed you. ." Harou looked at these weird weapons.

. . .Looks like Westly plans on fighting me hand to hand, although, I don't think he'd avoid using his jutsu's completely. . .he's leaving himself at somewhat of a disadvantage. . although I don't know what tricks these things possess. I better be alert.

Harou's stance was wide. He held his reverse blade kodachi out in front of him. His left foot, slightly back, his knees bent.

". . .You can keep critiquing my love life all day, or you can just try and kick my a** with those miniature hula hoops. . but we both know what's going to happen in the end. You're going to lose." He said with a smile on his face.

(( D'aww, shucks. But I'm just getting started! ))

"You've learned nothing, Harou." Westly thumbed a barely visible engraving on the blade. It was a seal, much like the ones he used to store clouds of mist in his Mist Beads, and as the mist roiled out, it became apparent that it served the same purpose.

As Westly stepped back into the mist, he barely managed to stretch his fingers around the handles of his weapons to make the sign of the Ram.

"I never lose," said Sheena. Sheena's face, Sheena's voice, Sheena's clothes... Even the real purpose of the Wind and Fire Wheels became apparent: they were similar enough in size and shape to Sheena's war fans that they could serve as a focus for an illusion to do the rest.

"Running away. You're always running away. Coward! Say it to my face, if you mean it!"

Sheena rushed after him, flitting through the mist with incredible speed. His back was to her, but she swung low with the intent to hamstring him.

She muttered under her breath as she ran. It had been years since she'd last done this, and it showed. She'd grown so used to handseals that the Old Way made her skin crawl.

The thing was, Westly was not from around here. Not even close. Where he had grown up, the Chinese Zodiac was meaningless. Why the hell would they teach handseals in the Fey Courts where he'd spent his childhood?

The fact that the most experienced of ninjas could perform jutsu without handseals was proof of it: handseals were nothing more than a focus. Their meaning only existed in the mind of the user. Westly wasn't even close to being able to cast them aside... but there was, as always, a loophole.

Because the foci used to mold one's chakra only needed to have meaning to person using them, one could, in theory, make up a different set of handseals that did the same thing. Making the sign of the Bird by hooking one's thumbs together and spreading one's fingers like wings. If you believed that that was how the sign of the Bird was made, it would work for you. The other way probably wouldn't, but learning a second set of foci was less preposterously difficult than learning how to not use foci at all. It required a genius-level intellect, a very flexible concept of reality, and a truly incredible degree of chakra control. On all three counts, it was orders of magnitude beyond what a Genin should be able to manage...

...unless, say, the Genin in question had years of practice moving around millions upon millions of individual droplets of water suspended in air simultaneously and shape them into fantastic figures. Or could multitask between consciously controlling every single movement of said figure, and the illusion painted on top of it, and still have enough of his mind left over to fight effectively himself. Or could kill an illusion--not dispel; kill--because he had such absolute faith that a well-crafted illusion and reality were the same thing that if he stabbed a person that didn't objectively exist, they would still bleed.

No one really batted an eyelash at Westly most of the time because the end result of his jutsus seemed roughly in line with what a Genin should be able to do. The fact that he doubted anyone else in the village could even hope to muster the control and mindset necessary to perform Mist Summons no Jutsu was inconsequential, because the end result was still about as powerful as, say, exploding tennis balls, or turning invisible and speedy, or hurling a rotary saw blade made out of air at someone with enough power to decapitate them, or pulling a guitar out of thin air and playing a literal facemelter, or summoning a crapton of hummingbirds made out of lightning. Even this new trick he'd pulled from his distant past wasn't that major in the grand scheme of things: the Old Way kept his hands free, true, but it was louder and slower than handseals, which made it entirely less suitable for the speed and stealth for which ninjas were known. Otherwise, it did the exact same thing as something every Academy Student could already do.

And so, five paragraph-long asides aside...

Just as Harou was about to leave the mist, Sheena appeared in front of him, her weapons dropped on the ground to either side of her. She glared a 'How could you?' through eyes brimming with tears.

It was only an illusion--not even a Mist Summon; "Sheena" was still having too much trouble remembering the Old Way to do anything more than the simplest of the simple in her repertoire--but it should be enough to bring Harou to a screeching halt, or at least slow him enough for her to slash the tendons in his legs.

(( OOC: If any of this upsets a mod, I would be happy to discuss it. I've thought about this at great length, and I believe that what I'm doing is fair, and I'm willing to defend it.

...okay, what I'm doing to Harou's self-esteem isn't even REMOTELY fair, but I was talking about how the gorram elf can use gorram incantations for his gorram magic.

"Ninjutsu... Genjutsu... it's all just... Majutsu."
-Sasuke, way back at the very beginning of the Chuunin Tournament Arc, immediately prior to being kicked in the head repeatedly by Rock Lee, who was using none of the above. "Majutsu" is the Japanese word for "Magic". ))

If Harou was able to cut through Sheena without hesitation, then the psychological warfare wasn't going to be as effective as he had hoped. Dropping the disguise, Westly skidded to a halt. Or, more accurately, the ground stopped supporting his weight.

Quicksand?!? That sonnovabitch, he landed an attack! Now I don't get to do my little dance at the end and yell 'Flawless Victory'! What a jerk!

Westly sheathed his Wind and Fire Wheels--hooked them to his belt, really; they don't make sheaths for hafted frisbees covered in spikes--and made a single handseal. He aimed his hand at the roof of the arena, and a Dream Thread shot out, pulling him free. He landed in the specator stands.

"Two Interesting Facts," he said. "One, for some reason, everyone seems to forget that the Arena is an indoor stadium. I don't know how people can forget that they can't see the damn sun when they're fighting, but you know, whatever. And two... I've read every single version of the Arena fight rules ever printed. You know what's conspicuously absent? Ring Out rules."