paixaorpg | Is it can be sparring time now plz? [Active]

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Is it can be sparring time now plz? [Active]

Characters: Ivan and Karst
Content: They get in a fight, although theoretically they're not trying to kill each other this time.
Setting: Jogo da Crianca fairgrounds
Time: Several days after the festival ends?
Warnings: None unless Karst constitutes a warning

In the wake of the festival, the fairgrounds felt more like a park when Ivan arrived. The tents and temporary fencing had gone, and whatever garbage had been cleaned up, although the Ferris wheel was still standing and the taken-down materials still hadn't quite been cleared off, as if the festival organizers hadn't yet figured out what to do with it all. Otherwise, the field of fake grass was wide open and empty, which would serve his and Karst's purposes nicely.

He'd, naturally, been very surprised at her offer to spar with him, but he'd accepted it without a great deal of hesitation. They really weren't enemies, after all, and this was a good chance to prove it. Nevertheless, part of him still wondered whether this was really such a good idea - it was no secret that he didn't like fighting, and there was no doubt in his mind that Karst was better at it than he was, which his present lack of Djinni only aggravated.

But... it was something. If the journals were telling the truth, then Larxene had either forgotten about him or decided he was too pathetic to be worth her time, and either way it was the best news he'd heard since he'd first arrived here. Thanks to the way he was dressed, he was already close to blending into the scenery here; but if his name was disappearing, too, then he was well on his way back to total anonymity, and that could very much work to his and his friends' advantage.

That idea had emboldened him a bit, which was the primary reason he'd been all right with coming to the fairgrounds alone. The fact that he hadn't told anyone else where he was going, though, was mostly the product of a wish not to bother them. He was fairly sure he'd missed something that was going on between Laharl and Flonne, but at any rate he was pretty sure he could get back to them before he was missed.

A cursory glance around the grounds told him he'd arrived before Karst, anyway. That was fine; he had no problem with waiting for her. In the meantime, he occupied himself by swinging his arms in a circular motion a bit, just to loosen up his shoulders.

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It had taken ages for Karst to decide whether or not she wanted to bring her own weapon to the practice fight. On the one hand, she needed to get-- pardon the pun-- back into the swing of things, especially since she could all but smell the coming war; on the other, she had a pretty good suspicion that her partner would be weaponless. Finally, she had stowed the scythe under her bed at the inn and hung a sign on the door to ward off the maids who would doubtless be coming to clean it. If she had a weapon in hand, she might forget that she was no longer at Jupiter Lighthouse, that Ivan was no longer an enemy to be destroyed.

Clothing was also an issue, since after her shopping trip with Marona she had multiple outfits for the first time since ... dying? Coming here? Whatever it was. She'd ultimately selected a simple short black dress, with her usual gloves and boots. Unlike Ivan, she would be recognized as a foreigner no matter what, so she didn't bother trying to dress like the locals.

Nerves were a different matter altogether. Ivan was one of those who'd killed her sister. He'd almost gotten the best of her in their fight at Jupiter Lighthouse, and he'd survived a battle she hadn't intended him to. Then, in Paixao, he'd fought with Larxene, who from the sound of things was as far above Karst's own power as she was above a non-Adept, and he'd survived that battle, too. Despite her efforts to convince herself otherwise, Ivan was an enemy, and a powerful one, too. Was fighting with him, even for practice, the wisest of things for her to be doing?

We're allies, now, she told herself for the seventeenth time today (she'd counted). We are allied, more or less, against the Organization, because they are a greater threat than... I don't know! I don't- She stopped walking, forced her rising panic and anger into a semblance of control, and then resumed. It doesn't matter. I need the practice. I need the practice...

There was the wheel from the festival, and there, looking for all the world like just another Paixaoan, was Ivan. Karst suppressed her frustration to the best of her abilities and wandered over.

"Hello." Stupid! she told herself. But what am I supposed to say to him!?

Ivan turned at the sound of her voice, mildly surprised, but then smiled and echoed her greeting with a wave of his hand (which was a little too quick to be totally calm). "Hello."

She looked... different, he noticed. Since the festival a few days before, when he'd last seen her, she'd gotten a new dress, although it was just as short as the old one. It obviously wasn't an effort to fit in - she'd have a hard time of that in any case - but for a moment he wondered if it was a way to make herself at home. Then, though, he booted the thought unceremoniously from his mind. Either way it wasn't really any of his business.

What was more of his business was the fact that she'd apparently come unarmed. "Uh.. did you bring your scythe?" he asked, feeling acutely self-conscious of the rod in his left hand. She hadn't been intending for them to fight with just Psynergy, had she? He'd never done that before.

The staff registered roughly an hour too late, and Karst could have kicked herself. Of course she'd never seen Ivan with a weapon before! She'd ambushed him the first time they'd met, he hadn't been expecting a fight then and hadn't had a staff on hand, and nobody had been allowed to take weapons into the festival.

Instead of kicking herself, though, she took it out on Ivan. "Well, you didn't have a weapon before, and you didn't say you had one, so I was just trying to be fair! Besides," she snapped, wreathing both hands in flames and throwing a Blast his way, "I don't need a weapon to defeat you!"

It wouldn't really have been that big a deal, Ivan didn't think; he could just as easily put the staff aside for the duration. But she didn't ask him to, and he didn't get a chance to offer. The blast caught him completely off-guard, and he backpedaled frantically with a surprised yelp, the effort only narrowly saving him from taking it in the face. Instead, the explosion went off just barely to his side, knocking him flat.

"Are you serious?!" he shouted, trying to scramble back to his feet and bat at his right arm at the same time. If anyone had asked him, he wouldn't have been able to tell them what exactly he meant by that; but at the moment, he was more concerned with putting out the smoldering sleeve of his jacket than with either retaliating or making sense. (Anyway, of course she was. This was Karst.)

"Are you?!" Karst retorted, gathering her energy for another Blast while waiting for him to make some kind of move. This, now, this was something she knew. Rage, anger, the heat of stress, and the rush of the fight. The chance to burn off all her excess frustration in a controlled battle with a known opponent.

Winning and losing didn't matter. If she won, it simply confirmed what he'd told her earlier, that he wasn't a threat to her. If she lost, it simply confirmed her earlier paranoia about his abilities, and gave her a guide by which to measure her own. Either way, she would emerge from the fight with a better understanding of her powers.

That didn't mean she wouldn't fight to win.

Now that the surprise had had a second to wear off, Ivan's face cinched with more apprehension than determination. She was perfectly serious, and he'd have to match it if he wanted to keep up, but... It wasn't as if he wasn't used to fighting, or even as if he'd never fought her in particular before, but he couldn't help fearing it would end the same way as it had last time.

Trying to ignore that idea, he quickly lashed back with a wide, cutting whirlwind that set his hair fluttering as it tore toward her across the grass. It wasn't by far his strongest effort, but he hadn't yet disconnected from the notion that sparring was supposed to be about not really injuring your partner.

Karst had forgotten how much she hated enemies who could use wind-based Psynergy, but she was very quickly reminded when the whirlwind nearly knocked her off her feet. Her next Psynergetic attack went wide as she focused more on recovering.

Ivan was still holding back. Why was he holding back? Sparring was supposed to be about getting better without killing people. Was there a way to startle him into using more of his power? She could take a direct hit. He of all people should know that she could take a beating if she had to; after all, he'd been the one to fight her before, and she'd bested him then.

A taunt, maybe. "No wonder you're afraid of Larxene, if that's the best you can do!" she laughed, throwing a stronger Mad Blast in his general direction-- it didn't matter if this one hit precisely, since the explosion was big enough that he'd be caught in it anyway.

Though he didn't get a chance to respond, Karst's words registered and stung. Ivan had never been an easy person to provoke, but that same fear and weakness had been grating on his mind almost constantly for the better part of the last two weeks, and her mention of it was sufficient to bring it all right back into the foreground. He didn't have time to think about it, however.

Aware that he couldn't dodge this one, Ivan crossed his arms defensively over his face just before the explosion went off. It hit him square-on, and the next thing he knew he was flat on his back a good yard back from where he'd been standing.

That hurt! He gritted his teeth and pulled himself upright as quickly as he could, though more slowly than he would have intact. It wasn't disablingly bad, and he had had worse, but that didn't stop his body from hurting. And worse, he couldn't tell whether she was using her full strength. If she wasn't, he was doomed. If he'd just still had his Djinni - but he didn't, and it was suddenly dawning on him just how big of a problem that was.

He couldn't hold back, not now. She'd burn him to a crisp either way, but it was worthless if he didn't at least fight back. Fear and pain overwhelmed his misgivings long enough for him to snap his hands forward and unleash about seven successive bolts of white-hot plasma on Karst and the general area in which she was standing. That approached the best he could do.

Karst screamed. She'd forgotten how much she hated Jupiter Psynergy! Maybe goading him into using his full strength hadn't been the wisest of ideas, but at least now she knew what he could do.

And it hurt. How could someone so puny (one mid-level technique sent him reeling?) use such a powerful attack? Either Ivan was faking the severity of his injury, or something was severely imbalanced.

Karst hoped that he wouldn't think he could fake her out, just because he could tell if she was faking. But there was only one way to be sure, and that was for her to increase the heat. A few more Mad Blasts, she thought, and then she would hit him with her strongest Firey Blast...

Ivan grimaced at how little damage his attack had apparently done relative to hers. He'd forgotten just how much stamina she had, and remembering it left a sinking feeling in his gut that he tried, with only moderate success, to ignore. He really wasn't much of a match for her - at this rate she'd have him out of commission long before he could make a dent.

Quickly switching back to the defensive, Ivan cast a Psynergetic ward around himself, in the hopes that would defuse the worst of her attack. He'd barely finished it when Karst's next blast struck him. The ward didn't stop anything, by a long shot, but this time it was a little more bearable, and rather than knocking him off his feet this time it just sent him stumbling backwards. Unfortunately, he failed to notice the collapsed fair tent behind him, which nicely finished the job by tripping him. He recovered and rolled off it just as fast as he'd fallen, adrenaline keeping him in motion, but with his attention on Karst he didn't notice what his fall had stirred.

Immediately a smallish purple shape had darted out from under the tent in almost the opposite direction. But the Jupiter Djinn stopped only a few yards back, and waited in the air a little longer before setting itself down on the grass, regarding the two of them curiously.

More than anything, Karst wished she hadn't been so foolish as to leave her scythe at the inn. From the way Ivan was stumbling about, she could finish him (she wasn't supposed to finish him, she had to reminded herself, they were only sparring) with Psynergy alone, but she was already starting to get the dizzy feeling that she'd overextended herself on her first fight in a long time. Ivan on the other hand seemed to have a lot of Psynergy left. If anything, she'd have to hit hard and fast, and that would mean increasing the strength of her Firey Blast technique-

The flicker of purple movement, however, in this city of gold, caught the Fire Clan girl's eye. Had to be something of Ivan's... and it was, one of those little winged spirits that increased his power.

Of course. Ivan lost his own power when those little things weren't supporting him. She had a technique specifically to exhaust them for that very reason, nevermind that she hadn't used it yet this battle. If he was missing one, that would very well explain his strange weakness.

"Dropped something," she informed him curtly, nodding her head in the creature's direction, resting her hands on her knees so he could see she wasn't trying to cast something when his back was turned (this was, after all, only a friendly sparring match, right?).

It took a few seconds for Ivan's brain to register what Karst had said. "Huh?" She wasn't trying to trick him or something, was she? But she'd already been soundly thrashing him already, so there wasn't any need for that... besides, she didn't seem to be bluffing. Once he was reasonably sure of that, he hazarded a glance at his feet, and, finding nothing there, the area just around him, and then behind him, where the Djinn-

"Oh!" he exclaimed, and, forgetting the fight altogether, headed quickly over to retrieve it. At his approach, though, the Djinn let out a surprised squeak and zipped in the opposite direction; startled, Ivan jumped and broke into a stumbling run after it. "No, no, wait, wait, wait!!"

It didn't stop until it reached the unmoving Ferris wheel, hopped deftly up the spokes, and sat firmly down on the topmost car, thirty or forty feet off the ground. Ivan skidded to a halt at its base, staring intently up at it. Well great, now what?

Karst laughed out loud when Ivan's Djinn fled from him, and even more so when it scaled the huge wheel to get away from him. Weren't those things supposed to be his friends? "Well," she teased lightly, "aren't its friends with you? Can't you get it down that way?"

Or maybe she could spook it down with a well-placed Nova, or knock the supports out from under that wheel, or any number of things. Obviously Ivan should be solving his own problems, but if he really was that puny, that he needed her help for something...

Ivan involuntarily flinched a little at her reaction. He'd never needed (or particularly wanted) to tell her what had happened, for that exact reason, but there was no point hiding it now. "No, I can't," he admitted, reluctantly enough that he didn't try to make eye contact. "I - they were all missing when I got here. I thought they'd gotten left in Weyard..."

His mind raced. If one of them was here, did that mean the other eight were out there, too, wandering around the city somewhere? Had anybody else run into them? No one had mentioned anything about it... For some reason that left a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He tried to ignore it and focus on the task at hand. The wheel had been rotating the last time he'd been here, he remembered, and that seemed like the easiest way to bring the top car down to earth, but how did you turn it on? Hazarding to take his eyes off the Djinn for the moment, he moved in on the base of the wheel, looking for a switch.

"All missing?" That more than explained Ivan's strange weakness to Karst; he was lacking in the allies that gave him his strength. "I didn't know I was facing a weakened enem-- opponent," she sputtered indignantly, correcting herself in the middle of the word "enemy" and trying to hide her embarrassment that she'd failed to notice something so obvious. "Maybe we should have a rematch once you've found them again?"

She would have her scythe for the rematch, she decided then and there. She'd felt oddly naked without a weapon in her hands, and she was badly out of practice with her Psynergy alone. What little power she had left now she tried to discreetly manifest as a Healing Aura; Ivan would need all the strength he could get to go after those winged spirits of his, wouldn't he?

Or not? Karst's first reaction would have been to go after the little thing herself: scale the wheel, or just torch it until the creature came down on its own. Ivan's response, judging by the way he was sizing up the wheel, was to use the device itself to bring down the car the spirit was perched on. A different approach, but probably more effective and less likely to cause collateral damage.

The mention of a rematch made Ivan grimace, although fortunately he still had his back to her. Today's match had done a good job of reminding him why he disliked fighting so much, and he wasn't too eager to be reminded again. "Well, uh - we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, right?" he suggested with an uneasy sort of laugh.

He'd barely returned to what he was doing when her Psynergy startled him again, but this time it wasn't an attack. In all honesty, he hadn't remotely expected that she would heal him. He looked over his shoulder to her as if about to say something, but then nodded awkwardly instead and turned back. Even though his instinct was to thank her, he wasn't sure how, or whether she'd want him to.

Just then, he noticed a short podium with a prominent lever sitting on the other side of the platform. "That must be it," he said, mostly to himself, and crossed the gap to it via the lowest car.

The lever stuck at first, and Ivan had to put a fair amount of his weight into it before it jerked halfway down. But it worked; the big wheel groaned woodenly and shuddered to life. "Yes!" he exclaimed, and rushed to the end of the platform where the descending cars returned to the station.

Up top, however, the Djinn quickly noticed it was no longer on the topmost car, and fluttered back up to the new topmost car, and so on, as the wheel continued to turn.

Karst's laugh from earlier resurfaced. "No, it's not that easy after all," she mocked lightly. On the other hand... As the cars on one side were going down, the cars on the other side were going up.

It was simple, then, to jump onto one of the lower cars, ducking her head quickly so it didn't get knocked off by the car above it. The wheel turned, the cars moved, the little creature moved, and one Fire Clan girl rose steadily toward the Djinni's sanctuary... balancing was surprisingly tricky, as the car swayed with her weight, but it was only a minute or two before she was within sight of the spirit.

"Surprise."

Unable to see the top of the wheel from where he was, Ivan didn't understand what Karst was doing at first. But by the time he'd stopped dithering to himself and decided to ask, he realized that the Djinn actually wasn't coming down, and the next logical step was to go up after it, after all. Her position looked kind of precarious, though, and he (probably belatedly) called, "Be careful," after her. He wasn't sure whether it would try to defend itself once she caught up.

Fortunately, it didn't. As a matter of fact, it didn't appear to have noticed her at all, and continued its predictable jumping pattern until it was on the car just ahead of hers, where it just... stopped, and sat down right where it was. It didn't seem to have any intention of attacking, but it didn't seem about to come within her reach, either.

Now was a good time to curse. Karst had some choice words to offer, under her breath and hopefully out of range of Ivan's mind-reading powers. Maybe if she tried to climb along the supports and scaffolding and-!

No, bad idea! The car started swinging when she moved, and the Fire Clan girl found herself awkwardly clinging for dear life. The fall would be nothing-- she'd taken far worse without difficulty-- but the embarrassment of falling on her face in front of ~~not an enemy~~ a tentative ally? That was something she didn't want to do.

Instead, she steadied herself and watched the creature on the car just ahead. Obviously Ivan didn't want to damage the wheel; maybe the citizens would come after them if they did. Unfortunately, she didn't have anything in the way of Psynergy that would let her knock it off without causing some property damage, and trying to attack outright was out of the question due to the instability of her position and lack of a weapon (stupid! she scolded herself for what might have been the tenth time that day).

"So... any more bright ideas? This one... didn't quite go as well as I'd hoped."

Maybe, as a last-ditch effort, she could abandon her pride and attempt to jump onto the Djinni's car, though she risked falling. If she was having this much trouble keeping her balance... No, it would just move again.

Ivan watched nervously as best he could - the car was really shaking, was she okay up there? When she asked for ideas, it took him a while to come up with one. Shouldn't he be doing something, too? Maybe to go and... no, that wouldn't work. But what...?

Just then, he remembered; the wheel was still rotating. And it wasn't long before he could see the Djinn itself again, just sitting contentedly where it was, apparently oblivious to the fact its car was descending. "Just - that's good!" he called back to Karst. "Can you stay there a minute?"

He hurried back to the incoming side of the platform and waited, keeping very still. He'd have to move fast if this was going to work. When the offending car finally came within range, he jumped up to the car's side railing, reaching over the roof with both arms. Fortunately, it was enough, and the Djinn was in his grasp before it knew what was happening. "I got it!" he exclaimed -

- an instant before he lost his balance and fell flat on his back on the platform. But he kept a firm hold on the Djinn, which no longer seemed interested in resisting, anyway.

He got it. "Good for you," Karst replied, keeping her face and voice as neutral as possible so Ivan would never know whether she was being sarcastic or not.

Karst's dismount from the turning wheel wasn't much more graceful than Ivan's capture of that creature, but she managed not to fall down, and he probably wasn't looking in her direction right now anyway. After balancing on the moving car for so long, the solid platform seemed a little wobbly to her, but the Fire Clan girl stayed still until her head stopped spinning, then walked over to the lever Ivan had used earlier and stopped the wheel. It wouldn't do any good to leave that turning.

Now that she thought about it, the entire city of Paixao wasn't unlike the Lighthouses. Puzzles to solve, strange technology and traps, enemies much more troublesome than mere monsters, and most importantly no Agatio around to simply smash a path through things (a brutal method, but an effective one)...

It had been a mistake to let herself get so relaxed and out of shape here in the first place! She would have to train harder than ever to make up for the time she'd spent goofing off.

Helping Ivan seek out his allies would be a good starting point. "I don't suppose the others would be around here, too, would they?" If, once he'd recovered them all, he didn't want to take up her earlier offer of a rematch, she remembered seeing some people looking for sparring partners in the journals...

While Karst was shutting off the Ferris wheel, Ivan pushed himself upright, grinning broadly and looking over the Djinn at about arm's length. It didn't appear any worse for the wear, and in fact seemed kind of happy to see him, now that it finally recognized who he was.

"I hope so," he replied, getting back to his feet. Individually, no one Djinn significantly amplified his power, but all nine together really added up, and if one had made it into the city, the chance of the others being here was... well, they almost had to be, didn't they?

But first things first. Ivan closed his eyes and let go of the Djinn, which glowed violet before disappearing into the air around him. The whirlwind that followed was brief and slight, but when it finished, the only thing that looked at all ruffled by it was his hair.

That done, he looked back to Karst. "I'd better get looking for them right away," he said. She'd already helped him out a lot with this one, and he didn't want to force her to help him searching for all the other eight if she didn't want to, especially without anything to go on.

A second later, though, he added, "Thank you."

Karst tried her best not to look uncomfortable, and though she didn't realize it at the time, failed miserably. "It was... nothing. Our match today showed me a few things that I'd been worried about."

She didn't mention that she would probably be looking out for them anyway, just to have something useful to do while she tried to figure out how to train herself back to what she should have been all along.

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Is it can be sparring time now plz? [Active]

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