I'll Make A... Pixie Out Of You?

    Xander has contacted Uta over the chimlink for her to come meet him. Oddly enough it was inside the tower and also near a lake that had several floating flowers that lined in.

The Salamander was sitting on a rock near the lake, eating handful of berries as he waited for the little friend of his to show up. Their purpose here today? To get that training out of the way that he has meant to do!

And today, well, today seems like a good day to do it before the scouting team starts to move back out.

    Uta walks into the area, her staff tapping rhythmically on the path, her mouth rounded in a small 'oh' of wonder as she takes in all the beauty of the place. The salamander is finally spotted and she stops.

    A look of concentration.

    "This is it. My first actual sparring against another adventurer." Her concentration changes to determination. She nods once, and walks towards Xander. "Hi Xander!", she greets, cheerful, but someone as skilled as reading opponents as Xander might notice she's actually a bit tense at this.

    Xander spots Uta and smiles at her, before standing up on his feet. "Uta. Good to see you." He gives her a grin, before walking his way over to her. "Welcome to the first floor of the tower." He spreads out his hands, before they fall to his side. "Might be beautiful, but can just be as dangerous."

The Salamander's tail gently sways behind him. "I am going to send you a duel request. I want you to take this seriously and don't think of me as your friend, but your enemy, alright?"

Xander places his hands on his hips, "And besides a guy like you, hiding as a woman," There was a toothy grin. "Can only earn more points. By the way gotta ask," He tilts his head, "How is handling the extra weight?" It was hard to tell if he was being serious, kidding, or just trying to make sure Uta hates him for the fight.

    Seems like Uta is not pleased at the nagging. "What? I'm not hiding! I'm-" Index finger pointed accusingly at Xander, angry stare, which segues into a resigned, yet /angrier/ exactly because resigned stare. "Ok, fine I'm totally hiding as a woman, BECAUSE THE ALTERNATIVE IS MORE EMBARRASSING. And the whole thing about impressing the ladies I said was from when I still thought I got one of those ridiculously long-haired male avatars the ladies seem so fond of! OF COURSE I'm NOT earning extra points looking..." She gestures to herself. "...like /this/!" She actually takes a step or two towards Xander, and the accusing finger is raised. "AND WHAT IS THAT ABOUT EXTRA WEIGHT! Are you implying that this outfit makes me look fat? Let me be clear about it, I'm not mad because you're implying that this outfit makes me look fat, I'm mad because you're implying that implying that this outfit makes me look fat is supposed to make me mad!"

    Xander opens the menu, that smug smirk still on his face as Uta points her index finger at him. He goes through the menu's as she goes on, before he hovers his hand over a button. "... I am talking about the girth. I am talking about the pillows on the headboard." Then sends her the duel, before drawing out his sword and shield.

He twirls his blade, looking back at her with a devilish grin and his eyes almost seeming to glow. "I mean, give it a few more years and maybe you'll get some Hello Nurse thrown your way."

Uta goes red in the face, either for embarrassment or anger, but possibly both, and one more step is STOMPED towards, and that finger downright /jabs/ the accept buton (also closing the menu in the process), harder than she ever jabbed the air earlier. She snarls, "FOR YOUR OWN INFORMATION," segueing into a more neutral, "...the weirdest weight readjustment has actually been the wings," pointing at them with one thumb, only to resume her anger, "BUT THE REST HAS BEEN A CHALLENGE TOO, OK?!"

At the mention of Hello Nurse, she loses it, and gives her staff a surprisingly expert twirl, slides one foot back, lowering her stance, and points her weapon towards Xander, in a textbook martial arts position of readiness to combat. "Are we here to make comments about my avatar's looks, or to fight?" She asks, attempting to switch subjects, following that to a mumble, "...I really need to look into a mirror one of these days..."

    "I don't know. It /seems/ fun to make you get all red under the collar." Xander chides with a laugh as she accept the challenge. "And your just such a little /doll/!"

Xander suddenly switches tempo, where he goes from this jerk-like behavior to suddenly dead serious as he moves directly in. His sword turns burning red as runes light up on it. As fireballs form around the tip, he then swings his blade directly at Uta.

"First lesson!" He declares as the fireballs race toward her, "Never let an enemy get under your skin!"

    "I AM NOT MAD!", yells Uta, still crimson in the face, and that makes her lose one precious split second. Flames have barely time to graze her and dock some health from her bar, but she recovers quickly. Her front foot moves back, planted on the ground, punted in place, stance lowered even further. Her hands twirl her staff with uncanny skill, the whirpool of air working as a fan that diverts the crackling burst of flame all around her with a loud a wooshing sound. When the flame is over, she finishes the move by SLAMMING the tip of her staff on the ground, her intense stare fixed on Xander. "And now," her eyes narrow slightly, "it is time for you OH SNAP THERE'S A SECOND FLAM-"

    Woooosh, tonight's special is roasted Uta.

    Probably tastes like soggy crackers.

    She stands there, twitching, every single bit of her skin covered in red stippled dots to represent what is probably a third degree burn. She does seem to bear it with incredible dignity, if we exclude the quivering of her lower lip.

    "I... I'M STILL NOT MAD!", she yells again, and lunges to stab Xander with her staff, hands trembling with furor. While the attack might be easy to foresee for an experienced fighter, all that unbridled rage is gonna make it /hurt/ if it impacts...

    Xander smirks just a little as Uta yells at him, but he doesn't say too much really at this point. Instead he watches her come in. Soon as he brings her staff to stab him, he brings his shield around to block the strike and shove her back.

The Salamander then narrows his eyes as he goes to step in, before she can recover and attempts to strike for a weak point that might expose itself with a very quick move of his blade. "This is why you can't let anger get the better of you." He says to her. "Emotions have their place, but you can't let them mess up your awareness."

    Uta's shoved away, and a damage glow can be seen bursting out from her back as she falls to ground, fall which continues with her sliding on her wings. Eyes shut in pain, she re-opens them just in time to see Xander's blade coming for her. She starts to roll and raises her staff to block the blow, but she's too groggy, and it's too late: a long gash on her left side lets out a deep red light, and Uta a scream.

    The rest of the roll ends up in a tumble, but she manages to put enough distance between herself and Xander to be able to get up.
    Eyes scrunched and teeth gnashed in pain, she takes a second to steady her breathing.

    Control your emotions.

    Once her breathing resumes regularity, the breathing sholidifies into sound. A slow, solemn vocalized hymn, a simple 'ooooo' modulated to a melodious a cappella tune: one of the Hero's Songs. The slow up and downs, the breathing, the reverberations, the melody mostly in a major key with just the right amount of slip into minor at the right points make it go deep into one's soul, and seem to have a cleansing effect on her. Also, she is bathed in a swirling golden light as she does so.

    When the song is over, without waiting for an applause because, let's face it, nobody is going to give one unless one counts a sword to the face as an applause, she launches towards Xander, to, well, hit him on ther head with the blunt end of her staff.

    Regardless of how that goes, whether Xander manages to temporarily hit her stick away from her, or whether she'll willingly throw it in the air, twirling, now staffless, she'll continue seamlessly into a flurry of bare-handed attacks: punches, kicks, chops, twirling, dodging, parrying and leaping as necessary.

    Xander stands his ground as he watches Uta roll across the ground. His eyes narrow slightly, as he tries to judge her movements. Perhaps it as the melody she played or something else, but he was not ready for what was going to come!

When she brings down her weapon in a heavy slam, his Shield takes the brunt of it. It was enough to get him tos shift his footing. As he was trying to hold her back, his sword started to glow gold, new runes started to flare up around it.

    Xander continued to hold his ground, till her attacks at last broke his defense and she slammed him hard across the face, before nearly sending him rolling around. The Salamander though was quick to correct himself and not in her favor.

What Uta would find next was poisonous barbs attempt to snake out and grasp her, from where he plunged his sword in the ground after being knocked around. He draws his sword up once his attack goes through and grins a little. "Not bad!" She managed to get a good nick on his health.

"Thanks!", retorts Uta with a smirk. "I thought, if I have to be such a /doll/, well, I-"

    Her sentence is cut off by the vines grabbing at her ankles and pulling, making her fall face-first. That looked like it would have hurt /much/ more, but Uta is quick to place her hands strategically, and delivers a perfect martial artist's landing, as testified from the lack of glow coming from her front part as her hands slap onto the ground first. As far as her /ankles/ are concerned, though, alas, those do glow, especially due to the poison.

    One thing one cannot say about Uta, though, is that she is wasting time: while floored, she takes the time to recite a healing spell, which causes golden light particles to materialize and envelope her 'bleeding' gash, which eventually becomes fully covered by a golden dance of light particles. With a chime, the particles explode and dissipate, revealing a completely healed avatar undernetath.

    With perfect timing, Uta does a single push-up, but so strong it launches her in the air, so much she eventually pulls the vines taut, and begins describing an arc, a bit like a bola; with perfect timing, she snatches her staff in the air as the staff itself is in mid-fall, and Uta in mid-swing, proceeds with a seamless motion of her arm to swipe at the vines with the wings of her caduceus, produces a neat cut; once freed , she'll land a distance away... sadly as gracefully as a sack of potatoes, because her feet are still tied, but hey, people get to see a sack of potatoes light up and lose some HP. That's not something you see every day.

    Getting to her feet after dislodging the cut-off vines with the tip of her weapon, she steadies herself again, propping herself up with her staff, and wincing at the poison in her bloodstream (or what counts for it in this game), but takes the time to clear her voice.

    "As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted. I thought that if I have to be such a /doll/..."

    The wings of sweet, sweet Uta extend, and from them, tendrils of darkness, black and deep purple, start to emanate, radiating out and interwining into an ever-expanding bubble of chilling nighttime, while her dark hair, let to hang loose on her slightly-tilted-down face, partially hides her face. The temperature of the whole room drops a few degrees, and there an ominous aura becomes palpable. Her voice, suddenly with a glum edge to it, threatens, "...I thought I might as well be the murderous kind from horror movies," while her mouth extends into a ghostly grin.

    And BLAM! A movement, almost too swift to be seen, Uta's wings are swiped forward and down, her hands rotated and extended in a kung-fu move, and the ball of darkness shoots straight for Xander...

    Xander smirks gently, "Next lesson." He watches her move around. "Focus and don't give any quarter when you have the advantage!" While Uta's words are not lost on the Salamander, he rises up his shield and goes racing right for her.

His feet move across the ground quickly, that shield held in front of him and his sword kept to back, though at the ready, he never brings it forward.

    Instead as Uta goes to summon her dark attack and fires her dark energy blast, the Salamaner uses his shield to take the full force, and worse, he doesn't slow down.

His feet drag a little, but he continues to push on and push on he does, with a draconic-humanoid warcry, he gets close enough to her and then goes to swing his shield at her frame to knock her directly off her feet; And possibly away.

    Uta, now devoid of darkness, looks up, and seeing the incoming Xander, she rushes towards him, a martial artist's sharp, abrupt cry being let out as she SLAMS her staff, held horizontally in both hands, against Xander's shield, as a sort of bar.

    The difference in momentum makes it so that Xander's run continues through, /pushing/ Uta back, but her extraordinary sense of focus and balance keeps her standing, sliding, wincing a little because of the poison, sure, but not yielding. She stres determinedly at her enemy for the few moments the slide lasts, still using up that time to chant something that surrounds her with a glowing area (some sort of song meant to cure her from poison?), and as soon as the song is done, she tilts her staff to a different angle, so that she will slide /sideways/, to Xander's side. She'll attempt to use this precious split second to assess if Xander's exposing any particulary vulnerable spots from this angle, and jab him with her bare hand (if close enough) or the tip of her staff if such an opening becomes available...

    Xander watches her move off and continues to observe what Uta does. There was a wrinkle of his nose, a thought that crosses his mind. "You need to work on making yourself harder to read." He says softly, "But..."

The Salamander takes a step back and as runes flash under him as he takes a hard step back, twirling himself around and raises up his shield. Allowing Uta's attack to slam into a rocky barrier, before it explodes away, a piece of it clipping his own scaled cheek, as healing energies rush over him from a minor hand gesture as he keeps his sword at ready. "You are not doing to bad for yourself."

    Xander then does a quick step, he does a feint, before coming around and brings the blade directly to her neck, "... Now surrender, as this concludes our duel and your lesson for the day." His voice sounded serious.

Was he holding back? Uta may never know.

    Uta's staff freezes in mid-parry as cold, sherp steel (or whatever other material replaces it) touches her neck.

    She breathes deeply for a few times, the excitement and exhaustion of battle still pulsing through her veins. Her eyes roll slowly towards the blade.

    Yup, it's a blade.

    "...I surrender," says Uta, making sure that her eyes turn to look into Xander's before speaking. This time, her voice is firm and clear, sounding more like a proud royal instead of her usual terrified peasant.

    Xander nods softly and steps back. Allowing the menu to pop up for Uta that she /does/ surrender. The Salamander doesn't place his weapon away, nor his shield. His eyes stare directly at her.

They were cold, distant, waiting like a predator. Waiting to see if she really does surrender or if she is trying to pull a fast one on him. "If I was a PKer, there would be no surrender. If this was a real match, you might have been in trouble."

Forcefully, Xander tries to break his military face, trying to be like every other civilian out there. He tries to crack a smirk, a slight smile. "But you did good, better than I thought you would at least." He nods his head to her. "And-- it was a fun little spar."

Uta is not trying to pull a fast one, nope. In fact, as soon as the menu appears, she hurries to press the 'surrender' button.

    "...Thanks, you were just as good as I expected: 'far more than I can deal with'," says Uta, managing a smile. "Honestly? I'm surprised I've lasted this long myself. I thought I'd have be wiped off the face of Yamato in a couple of moves." She smirks back at Xander. An expected defeat, even if far less so, still has some of that bitter taste. "I guess that now it's Hello Nurse for me now until I beat you, huh?"

    Xander chuckles softly, now sheathing his weapon and shield, "I just said that shit to get under your skin." He admits, as some of his own damage is already healing. "Most civies-- urm-- people, don't have combat training. So, they let their emotions get the better of them."

Xander furrows his brows, "But even the best trained can lose it sometimes." He sighs softly and then gives her a little two finger salute, "Anyways! I'll catch ya later Uta, I need to get back to my main group for a mission later. Just stay safe, alright?" Then he goes to walk off.

    Uta tries to repeat the two-finger salute to the best of her ability, sighing with relief. "...see you later. And yes, I will stay safe."

    She gets up, and announces, "...I think I'll go off to a safe area to drown my sorrows in healing potions." she beams, all the bitterness dissipating in a puff of pride. "...SELF-PREPARED healing potions!" Yes. The world must know.