Duel:Reginae v Shishi, Round 3, 2019 Hero of Freedom Championship
Duelists: Reginae v Shishi
Duel: Traditional 3 rounds with final defense, 15 minute posting limit.
Stakes: Auto-hit to the winner.
Judges: Brennia, Karasu, and Magik
Larket Sheriff's Office
The stone interior of this building is relatively bare, with the exception of wanted posters detailing criminals wanted in Larket, and a list of outlaws, who are no longer allowed in Larket. A desk sits against the eastern wall, with the Sheriff's papers and tools set out upon it in an orderly manner. One uncomfortable-looking chair waits behind the desk, with two like seats in front of it, facing it. Deputies flank the door, standing at attention, while a heavy door behind the desk leads to a holding cell behind.
Environmental Challenge
The Larket Academy of Magick and the Sheriff’s Office (Macon’s old office, through which he gained political notoriety) have put together a unique arena that draws on recent Larket history. All furniture has been cleared out of the main room and three of the four walls are invisible so that spectators can see the duel inside the office from their bleachers outside the three walls. The invisible walls still remain physically present and behave like magically fortified glass. On the one remaining wall there are three wanted posters depicting three of Larket’s most notorious criminals of recent memory. 1) Kelovath Khamsin, still-at-large, wanted for poisoning the residents of Larket and assassinating a priest of Cyris. 2) Muzo, still-at-large, wanted for abducting and torturing Rachelle Laurette Fournier as part of his sick experiments on witches. 3) Valrae Baines-Older, dead, burned at the pyre for acts of terrorism against Larket. When a duelist touches a poster, he or she will be granted a single-use new power that must be used immediately, or else they lose the power. Touch Kelovath and you will receive the power to poison your opponent with the Fermin plague. The undead are not immune to this plague’s effects. Touch Muzo and you will receive the power to lacerate your opponent with surgical cuts that criss-cross their abdomen with a single touch. Touch Valrae and you immediately wield two green witch’s fire balls in your fists. If a poster is not touched for more than 10 seconds by either duelist, a translucent avatar of the criminal (like a hologram) will appear. The hologram will perform their attack on both duelists. If the Valrae poster goes more than 10 seconds without being touched, and hologram-Valrae will throw a green fireball at both duelists at the same time. Kelovath thrust his plague at both duelists. Muzo will unleash his flurry of lacerations both duelists. (These attacks are not autohits, but the avatars themselves cannot be harmed.)
Optional Introduction
Josleen :: Headmaster Percival of the Larket Academy of Magick informed Queen Josleen of his plan for tonight's duel. Josleen instantly loved the idea from a political point of view, but emotionally speaking, one element of the arena struck her on a deeply personal level. She did not let that on. She knew she would be attending tonight's duel. It's another Shishi duel. Prince Guillem won't miss those. She arrives early with her son who is dressed like Shishi and had an illusionist change his eye color to 'accursed red.'
Shishi arrives at the sheriff's office not fully recovered from his previous Champion bout. His right forearm, shattered by the tail of a gargantuan dragon a couple of weeks ago, is wrapped up in a way that restricts the range of motion from the base of his palm to just before his elbow. Luckily for the southpaw, this is not his dominant arm, but it will probably prove to be a nuisance nonetheless. A pair of wins has earned has earned him a growing Larketian cheering section, but there are still just as many holdouts present that would like nothing more than to see the Frostmawian Champion fall in The Hard City’s tournament…
Reginae finds the use of this large, stone room as odd. The last enclosure, the chapel, had been a sizable enough space to rumble in but here would be close quarters and limited mobility. It’d damage her advantage of speed if she didn’t stay on her toes. She looks no different than the duels before; a lithe humanoid woman with braided back, two daggers on her hips, and one gold studded black vambrace on her left arm. Nagas are not particularly beloved but plenty are here to see one in person for the first time. The rumor was that Reginae was a naga but she hadn’t shown any other form in the battles just yet, so people continued to attend in the hopes she’d brandish her race to win. She looks about, studying the crowd and her opposition with gratitude that he isn’t hiding in a tree.
Duel
Shishi , listening to the description of those criminal powers and the consequences for not using them looks a bit confused about what his best strategy might be to utilize this wicked twist to the fight. The proverbial bell is rung and the battle begins and Shishi, having made up his mind about which power is best, darts towards the poster of Valrae with the enhanced speed of a vampire. He runs parallel to the wall and just grazes the witch’s depiction with a pair of fingers while not losing a bit of momentum. His hands ignite in sickly green flame as he lunges straight for Reginae now. His rigid right arm extends and the green sphere flies forth looking to explode with its evil fire just as it reaches the disguised naga. He holds onto the second fireball in his left hand for when he closes the distance to melee range with the queen of snakes, it is only when he is close enough that he sends a vicious, incendiary left hook towards her chin, ready to catch both himself and the illusionist in the blast...
Reginae doesn’t particularly love that her boyfriend is sketched up on a wanted poster. Worse still his image is being used in the duel! It distracts her long enough for Shishi to get ahead start towards the posters before bouncing back with Valrae themed weaponry. The first fireball does explode while she kicks back to put distance between the competitors. The witch fire singeing the tips of her white hair and leaving a sickening smell in it’s wake. It bites small, superficial holes in her shirt. The second catches her off guard while she’s in motion, landing solidly in the side of her neck and knocking her off balance. The vambrace resonates with a loud ‘chink’ on the ground as she flips onto her back on the floor, skin red where the punch landed. Once the fire burns out, she extends her fingers towards the vampire. Those fingers launch out, snaking through the air and morphing into ropes intent on dragging him down into the floor, tossing him away so she can brush one of the posters. Loyalty makes the split second decision to dip around to trace her fingers across the depiction of the naga before The Frostmaw Champion has a chance to pin her down.
Shishi shakes his left hand after connecting with his fiery punch, his own knuckles red from collateral damage heat. He means to continue his onslaught of the naga after he connects with his first volley of attacks, so he ends up running headlong into the ropes that find his legs and torso, tripping him up and indeed tying him to the floor just as his oceanic blue eyes go through their accursed color change and the dancing shadows cast by the residual flames from Valrae’s magic have life breathed into them. Reginae makes her move and collects ‘Muzo’s power’ while the flickering darkness all around the office comes alive and starts creeping towards the tethered assassin. Slowly but surely the shadows take the form of dozens of black mice and rats that begin their work of chewing through the ties that bind the vampire to the ground. Just as the so called Blue Demon rises up from the floor the evil image of Kelovath appears in front of the paladin’s wanted poster and, as promised, sends a black bolt of energy towards both Reginae and Shishi, carrying ‘the fermin plague’. It connects with the assassin and he immediately doubles over, coughing up blood, which is particularly bad news for a vampire, as he can feel his strength being drained by the instantaneously applied symptoms of the plague that ravaged Larket some years ago…
Reginae leaves her hand extended to allow the ropes to continue their word. She reaches frantically for Muzo’s poster to both absorb the power and avoid the summon. Shishi’s rats work away at the ropes and as they break, Reginae pulls back her left hand and spins to brush the paper once more before launching in Shishi’s direction. Kelovath, unknown to her, steps forward to bless them with Larket’s glorious plague. Her forward momentum stutters, leaving her to block the majority of the plague bolt. Split shards of magic continue to leech into the burned welt on the side of her neck until it sours with pus and bruising. She retches forward, palming the floor to stabilize and wasting Muzo’s gift on the ground. Dizzy and sweating from the shards of sickness that snuck past her guard, Reginae wills her humanoid legs to fuse together and retake the form of her glorious white scaled tail. In the hopes of avoiding more tripping incidents and using the massive thing as a weapon. She twists her torso, snapping her tail like a whip in the air, the tip barbed with poisonous spikes aimed at Shishi’s bloody face.
Shishi does his best to look up while contending with this sickness, allowing him to see Reginae topple over while feeling the same effects. The magic that makes up Muzo’s signature move erupts against the ground, splitting the stone much as it would have the vampire’s chest had the naga queen managed to palm him instead of the floor. It would seem ten seconds have passed again, as Valrae’s ghost appears before her poster and unleashes a pair of fireballs at the fighters. Reginae transforms and whips her massive tail around at the assassin. He ducks to the side, but can’t avoid the impact thanks to the lethargy brought on by the plague. His left shoulder is slammed and a sickening pop tells the tale of a nasty dislocation, the injury confirmed by how the vampire holds his left arm limply as he struggles to his feet again. The combatants are close and fire and shadow both descend on them. Darkness coalesces at Shishi’s right hand and elongates into the top end of a snake, black fangs reaching out to dive into Reginae’s face just as the two balls of green flame burst in the close confines of the office…
As if things weren’t hard enough fighting in the office, these unruly posters added chaos to the minimal space they already had to operate in. Reginae’s tail lands with a satisfying sound, the weight of it remains on Shishi as she struggles to pay attention to the newly arrived Valrae. The ‘deceased’ witch throws another round of fireballs at them. Reginae shakes her head, trying to clear her senses, when one of Valrae’s fireballs hits her square in the back of the head. Both hands lift to nurse the burn with an elongated hiss of annoyance. When she rounds to dispel the phantom, sure that Shishi will need another minute to escape the hefty weight of that muscular tail, Valrae vanishes only to be replaced by Muzo. “No-” She whispers, just as the air is cut with lacerations. The magic splits open the ever-growing, pus filled boil on her neck, and the force of the explosion whips her attention back to the vampire. The shadow snake is met, head on, by a snap of her trembling fingers that produce a flare like sphere that explodes in harmless light, with the intention of blinding him, the snake, or dissolving the shadow completely. Blood and acidic pus streams down the side of her neck and arm, chipping away at the formerly clean metal of the vambrace on her arm. She didn’t even have a chance to use her daggers. Panting, she winds her tail back in and dislocates her jaw with painful but swift effort. Rows of jagged teeth and a wildly flicking forked tongue play second fiddle to the real threat. Acid jettisons from the glands beneath her tongue, sizzling green and hissing in true naga form. The acid is shot in the direction Shi had last been in before the blinding flare disoriented the scene.
Shishi hadn’t even noticed the barbs on the tail that slammed into him, but he does notice the blood that stains the shoulder of his white shirt red when he finally gets that snake limb off of himself. Who knows if vampires can be affected by the poison on those spiked tail accessories, but he’s going numb all along that battered left side. Maybe it’s just from the pain, but there’s no time to dissect this sensation as a ball of green flame erupts at his side, igniting his shirt and moving him about a foot sideways from the blast. It is utter chaos in here as the blinding flash of light seems to evaporate his conjured shadow snake just before its teeth can find purchase on its humanoid counterpart’s face. The disgraced scientist Muzo’s hologram attack comes next in this cascade of pain and The Blue Demon’s chest is sliced open, through cloth, at the location of perhaps his only still functioning organ as a vampire, the heart. He literally is holding himself together with his partially bandaged right hand as Reginae’s acid sprays out from the focal point of where the illuminating magic had been before. Shadows, recovering from the flash spring into action, though they are fractions of a second late. They solidify in the air between Shishi and Reginae like a black mist, catching drops and drips of the acid and sending it falling harmlessly to the ground, but only managing to snag about half of it, as the other half splatters against Shishi’s face and torso, eating through clothes and flesh before that shadowy mist moves to envelop the assassin and wick away the caustic spittle that made it through… This office is a mess right now...
Winner: Reginae
Auto-hit Stake
Reginae jostles her jaw back in place as the phantom outlaws vanish from the scene, leaving only chaos in their wake. Between that added surprise and the confined space, the naga isn’t sure they were actually fighting each other. She wipes acid off her swollen lips, watching the darkness surround the vampire and remove the acid she’d sent in his direction. They both look a right mess. She slithers slowly up to the Titan’s champion and lightly punches his intact shoulder before offering her hand to shake his. Final blow. “You’re a godsdamned maniac.” She laughs. Clearly it’s a compliment.
Shishi offers a shadowy fist bump instead of a shake and promptly crumples to the ground, burnt and broken and gross with acid.
Josleen :: Prince Guillem face plants and planks on the bleacher as he grieves the death of an idol.