Welcome to Gaia! ::

'Cause sometimes you feel tired,
feel weak, and when you feel weak, you feel like you wanna just give up.
But you gotta search within you, you gotta find that inner strength
and just pull that s**t out of you and get that motivation to not give up
and not be a quitter, no matter how bad you wanna just fall flat on your face and collapse.

The reverberations of the roaring crowd sent subtle vibrations through the warrior's chest to his core, momentarily shaking him free from whatever unseen reverie he had been going through. With a face marred only by a solitary scar beneath his left eye, the champion seemed entirely at peace with himself and his surroundings as he stood in the ring. He seemed almost ignorant of the referee's existence, as if the man simply weren't there.

Clad in riding leathers and denim, the long-haired, dark skinned Deitric hardly looked the part of a champion with his tomahawks, his bracers and greaves, but he had earned his way, one opponent at a time. The handle of his tomahawks were notched dozens of times to mark fallen foes, like a prisoner counting their final days on a cell wall.

The brave calmly stretched, acknowledging his opponent with a solemn nod as he grasped the top rope and leaned back, forcing the muscles in his back to stretch and flare out, pulling the leather jacket taut across his form. While his features barely changed, his body language spoke of muted humility; he obviously didn't hold himself in the same regard that Tenkai did, and it was somewhat odd to hear such things.

"Deitric Jocasta... why do you fight?"

Deitric paused and straightened up to his full height. His back was still to Tenkai, but his head tilted to the side for a moment to regard the monk with his stony, turquoise gaze as the tribesman seemed to ponder the question. Finally, he turned around and offered an unworried shrug.

"Because it is my place to fight," he responded, as if it were the only natural answer to such a question. He fought for the same reasons an animal fought - because it was the way of things, because it was his purpose. And like an animal, he could only succeed and grow - or die in the process. He would fight and claw his way higher until he failed, until he collapsed.

The referee retreated from the ring, and with a slight tilt of his head towards Tenkai, the tribesman began to walk forward, his hands calmly resting at his sides, each one brushing against the head of a tomahawk as if it were the handle of a pistoleer's gun. To say whether or not he would use them was a gamble - even in the face of a weapon, Deitric often relied on his own body to win the day.

If Deitric was in any philosophical quandary, his features didn't show it. The man held a surety about him that overshadowed every pound of muscle on his frame, or any ferocity he showed in battle. Not unlike a circling predator, in the face of combat he simply seemed to slide into a natural state of being. In a fight and out of it, he was of two different minds entirely.

Something other than the desire to fight burned in the whitening hues of the tribesman's eyes as the air around him seemed to roil angrily as if there were a storm brewing in the building. And that storm suddenly broke when the champion's gait abruptly quickened, hurling the brave forward.

Deitric kept his arms half raised, somewhere between a fighting guard and the position that had been so reminiscent of a quick-draw gunman's waiting hands. The black-haired warrior was an unorthodox fighter at best, shifting between solid and fluid guards and different attack approaches, as if whatever training he'd had over the years had melted into his identity and flowed like water, giving him the opportunity to attack at almost any moment.

For all intents and purposes, it didn't look as if he were going to attack - just as if he were going to barrel head-long into the monk, at least until the very last second. They'd be getting face to face sooner than later, with so little distance to cross. It was a common tactic of the tribesman, something that had unnerved a few previous opponents. Very few warriors throughout Gaia beyond the simple berserkers would throw themselves forward in a seemingly headlong charge, but Deitric Jocasta was one of them.

For what reasons, it was impossible to say - but he would be on the monk in a second or two, well within attack range of fist, tomahawk, sword or knife.

When Tenkai moved, Deitric moved. It was what he was hoping for - aiming for. More than enough times he had attacked first, but finding a way to force a reaction was almost always a strong start for the tribesman. And coming forward as if he were going to have a face to face with the opponent seemed to always open up some sort of reactionary measure in the other fighter, however slight it might be.

When Tenkai shifted to the brave's right, a subtle change occurred in his forward motion. It was almost impossible to notice - the conscious lifting of his rear foot, so that instead of continuing forward, both feet would land at roughly the same time and abruptly halt the Khasmin tribesman, knees bending to absorb the sudden force that came with such a quick cessation of forward momentum. Luckily, his charge had been somewhat of a faux-pas - not a full on sprint, but a measured surge.

The unseen power in Deitric's legs let the warrior momentarily coiled like a rearing snake, ready to strike. Raw, explosive, physical power was the champion's forte, and unlike many Gaians who abused their leg muscles (or lack thereof), Deitric's legs were every bit as strong as they should be, meaning when he bent his knees and pushed off, he could violently, swiftly cover quite a few feet in a flash of time that his size belied.

And that was what he did - seemingly ignorant or unwilling to immediately account for Tenkai's swift sword-work, he cut across the distance with hard push of his legs. Deitric didn't try to block the attack, or even slow it down. Instead, he raised his arm up, up, up - and out of the way.



And aimed to send the fist crashing right into the underside of the monk's chin in a viciously short upper-cut, twisting his upper body at the hips to throw as much torque and weight into it as possible, with enough force to make Ivan Drago second-guess himself. It didn't help that ontop of Deitric's considerably physical power, and explosive momentum, his knuckles were also capped with hard steel with a thin layer of cloth to hide the fact.

However, before his own attack could hit, Tenkai's would land first. Because he had aimed the tip at Deitric's arm, he was instead putting the full force right into the small of the champion's back and into his kidney. Something that was - padding of the hidden armor beneath his leather jacket aside - an altogether painful experience to remind the dusky skinned man that he was still alive. With any luck, a hair's breadth later he'd be reminding the swordsman of the same fact.

Perhaps some fighters underestimated the resolve in the long-haired tribesman, but Deitric was entirely unafraid of being struck, especially if it meant he got to hit his opponent back even harder than they hit him, to repay every stroke tenfold. Injury and pain were a part of combat as much as victory defeat, and Deitric had come to bear the burden of pain as stoically as he had bore everything else that had come of Gaia to him. In order to win, he had to be able to take everything he could give, and then give more until he was the only one standing.

Hell or high water, that was how Deitric played the game. Every risk for every reward.



[OOC note: Sprite isn't an accurate reference. It's just awesome that Kraun happened to put him in a remotely similar position.]

Deitric felt his right hand tear through the air where Tenkai's head had been moments, his index and middle knuckles managed to clip the monk's cheekbone in their upward ascent. Of the monk's counter, he couldn't see it at all - the blade was outside of his range of vision when it was un-drawn, and the monk's opponent would only see it if it were allowed to be fully drawn.

It would have been too far to say that the champion was unaware of his wound - being only human, he couldn't simply blot out the pain of having cold steel cutting past the leather of his jacket and biting into his skin, flesh and blood. Lightning bolts of pain lanced white-hot through the nerves of his sliced arm, but he couldn't stop his assault for a little shed blood. Not just because of some sense of determination - but because when he threw the uppercut, it wasn't the only punch he had planned. It was a one-two, and the two was on its way.

Without even pausing to flinch at the wound, Deitric's right arm pulled aside as his body twisted to his right, revealed the left arm that had been cocked and loaded, firing off as soon as the uppercut was finished. And it launched like a bullet across the scant couple of feet between the two men as the long-haired brave's whole body seemed to twist and contort to pour more than just physical power into the blow that was hurtling towards Tenkai's chest, just above one of the gargantuan beads of his bandoleer.

Physical power of someone his size aside, the clever tribesman had packed more than simple force into his fist.



Assuming the blow struck, there would be an audible, incredible crash of metaphysically enhanced power as the blow hammered into Tenkai's chest, if that was indeed where the blow landed. Little in the ways of electricity was being exchanged; the Khasmin man was burning pure power in return for the raw, physical equivalent - enough force to knock a man his own size several feet into the air and onto their back, and enough force to jam and dislocate the pinkie and ring finger of his left hand, leaving them permanently curled into a vague imitation of a fist.

Deitric played tit for tat, and if the idea of nearly breaking his own hand bothered him, he never showed it. Blood streamed down his arm in a slow, almost sluggish dribble. If his blow struck, it was likely that his arm would receive a second cut when his opponent was blew back from him, but given the thickness of the triceps, they would still function, albeit painfully as the slashes would tear a little with each flex and torsion.

The champion didn't seem to care though as the air around him cackled with unseen power that he had - hopefully - just given his opponent a taste of, leaving the dusky skinned warrior standing on his feet to eye the other man stoically. His eyes glowed visibly with the power that ran through his form, but he didn't show any outward signs of contemplation - indeed, conscious, willing thoughts had long since been swept away for "fight thought," the abstract, formless way that his mind operated when faced with fight or flight.

"..."

Deitric stood his ground calmly, letting his body sink into a relaxed position after the punch, as if the two men weren't even fighting. Almost idly, he forced his right elbow to bend to its fullest extension at his side while curling his wrist, feeling his triceps contract and tighten painfully where the edges of the wound stretched and sent out needles of pain in protest. It could have been worse, he decided; the arm was still usable.

The air that hung around the tribesman had the vaguely metallic scent of burnt ozone, but there was little flare to his powers, as if he were managing to keep it bottled up. Unlike most fighters, Deitric's source of power was wholly apart from him, but manifested itself through him all the same. It was - by his comprehension - limitless.

Like a drug addict, the only limits were those of his body, how far he could go before he began to pay in blood for the use of the supernatural energy. For that reason, he could draw up energy much quicker than most, with the drawback being that too much, too fast could quickly become too painful.

In the brave's estimation, however, it was well worth the risk, and he was doing it already. Drawing on his connection the the fountain of power, he was "drinking" from that wellspring of power much faster than usual, willing the energy into his physical form and doing his best to hold onto it without any "bleed-off" into the atmosphere around him. That alone sent a thousand pinpricks along the nerve-ways of his spine.

But to the monk in front of him, he was simply standing there, with his arms at his sides, the right sleeve of his jacket slick with blood around the cut that the katana had made. The champion's fingers moved across the metal ax-head of the tomahawk at his hip, and he drew it out with his left hand, staring with unblinking stoicism at his opponent. His features had barely changed since the start of the fight, having only momentarily screwed up in exertion with his punching. Whatever lurked behind his eyes was lost in the nearly white glow that emanated from them, rendering him that much more impossible to read or measure.

The tribesman inched his way back to the absolute center of the ring, the tomahawk hanging in his left hand at his waist almost lazily, waiting like a crocodile just under the water until it could snap out and crush something. His right hand however, remained empty and at his side - suggesting that perhaps it wasn't usable to some extent, or simply that he had other plans than using a weapon.

Whatever he was planning to do, he seemed at ease with the situation, despite the tension that played out in the crowd as the spectators roared in approval at the two fighters.

[Lololol, Gaia broke.]

Deitric continued to inch back, his left side forward with the tomahawk hanging loosely in his hand around his waist. His weapon had considerably shorter reach than Tenkai's - but that didn't worry him much, if at all. He wasn't planning on putting it to use yet, anyways. Instead, he was more intent on letting the monk come forward, covering the distance much faster than the tribesman was putting it between them.

Summoning up his will, Deitric forced the energy that was flooding into his body to follow his command. It was something he rarely did, and was unable to do with any real grace or finesse - a raw, unbidden power that he could capture and direct, but rarely control in the manner that he was releasing it.

When Tenkai moved just into his striking range - somewhat greater than Deitric's own - the tribesman swept his tomahawk up through the air, as if taking an active guard, the steel edge of the weapon glinting in the light of the arena, pointing distinctly at his opponent.

Not unlike a sorcerer's wand, some spectators might note in watching re-runs of the fight later on.

Bzzzzz-zzz-zzt~

With a flash of light, a lash of bright lightning shot forth from the weapon - or, more accurately, from the hand holding it, jumping across the few feet that separated the two warriors. It wasn't anywhere near as potent or fast as a normal lightning bolt, but it was certainly powerful in its own right, and faster than any swung sword or thrown javelin, jumping between the two warriors in a blink of an eye, aimed to catch the swordsman in the torso with a loud thunderclap resounding afterward.

The champion seemed to reel as if he had been struck, blood spurting from his nostrils as his vision blurred around the edges and a throbbing pain grew in intensity at the base of his skull, as if someone were applying a red-hot brand to the inside of his brain case. The tomahawk still wove in the air in front of him defensively, but if Tenkai had been caught flush by the surprise attack, it was likely that Deitric's defensive posturing was for naught.

Using his powers in such an abusive fashion had consequences for the user, and his arm felt as if someone had poured steaming hot water along it, feeling the skin beneath his leather jacket burn with an unquenchable heat that threatened to leave more than a slight burn. The brave intentionally tightened the flow of the otherwordly energy so that it trickled into him, instead of flooding. He could only forcefully utilize such a large portion of power once or twice in a fight - otherwise, he had to keep his build-up slower, which was only a safety measure, one not even guaranteed to keep him from harm.

However, it wasn't the tribesman who needed to worry about being hurt - whatever pain and disorientation he felt would have paled in comparison to what his opponent was feeling, if he ended up stepping into the lightning bolt while closing to striking distance with the tribesman.