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"Well, lets get this show on the road."

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His heart beating a mile an hour, his feet pounding hard into the floor with each step and body alight in flames of the hue from which he derived his name, Gold flew into the arena from the eastern entrance. He speed into the stadium with such suddenness, speed and over-awing brightness that for a good moment or two he was naught but a blur, a golden swash of color rising out of the east like a second sun. It was never seen before occurrence that rightly shocked the rowdy crowd into silence as a mix of fear and wonder overtook them. Yet dazzed as they may have been for a moment, the competitor who had just entered would not leave them that way for long.

For as abruptly as he had charged in, Gold released the flames that blanketed his body, revealing the man underneath for all to see. As always, or rather until the traitorous clone Silver was found, tried and executed, he wore naught but a copy and mockery of the wardrobe that the silver-haired firespitter wore. Meaning that his legs were adorned is a pair of ripped straight black jeans, with a black sleeveless tee and Nikes to match. As well his silver studs hung from his ears and a green jacket rested on his shoulders, the color best to combat the clone's fiery red covering. However his wardrobe did differ from his mortal enemy in some respects, such as the pair of metal-platted black gloves and several small pointy accessories hidden on his person.

After giving a brief pause to let the audience understand just what was going on, that the "second sun" was not a heavenly body at all but simply a competitor coming for battle, he raised his left air into the air and pointed at no one in particular.

"SSSIIIILLLLLVVVVVVAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!! I'm coming for ya!!!!"

Sadly as loud as he yelled, even he could not hear himself for the audience had roared with him and the overpowering sound of that many voices screaming approval had swallowed his words whole.

The crowd he had riled up began to calm down a bit as his opponent was announced, giving them a brief moment respite to massage their throats before they began roaring once more for the second contender. Yasuo's fairly bland entrance may not have summoned as much volume from the audience but that shortcoming was made up by his large following of fangirls and fanboys who were clogging the stadium with their knockoff versions of the ninja's attire.

Now Gold wasn't one to join on the chants for his opponent's victory, since such an act is always seen as mocking even when given in good taste. He also just wasn't ready to support his own defeat, but regardless he still liked to be a good sport. Confidence he might have in spades but that didn't mean he had to also be cocky or super aggressive, unlike some of the people he had the 'privilege' of fighting against. So while the audience was raising their voices and slapping their fake kunais together, he simply stood in the center of the arena and extended his right hand in anticipation of a pre-match shake.

All because he would liked to have no hard feeling between him and his opponent and simply get off to the start of nice, civil, and gentlemanly battle. He really would have, if only Yasou had kept his damn mouth shut.



For those 10 simple words, set a chain reaction in motion that was in no way conductive to civility, courtesy or anything else remotely gentlemanly.

It started with a twitch in his left eyebrow, where the little tuff of golden hair began to spasm up and down. Then his veins became a little more prominent on his forehead. Next his body began to glow slightly, not the bright blinding warm light that had accompanied his entrance, but a much less vibrant hue, a darker hue as if someone had little a flame underneath him him. And that flame that was rapidly simmering to a boil.

Quite a drastic change for a simple 10 word greeting, but in reality it wasn't really how long or lame Yasou's attempt at s**t talking was but rather what he said. He use two little words which were apart of a long list which included phrases like "clone", "copy", "fake" and....

"KNOCK OFF!?!?!? WHO THE HELL ARE YOU CALLING A KNOCKOFF!!!!!!!"

You see, Gold didn't like to referred to an inferior form of life or any sort of replacement/recreation of the experiment known as Silver Alexander. The reasoning behind this had nothing to do with the negative stigma that came with such terminology but rather the fact that he felt such words were wrongfully applied to him. In his mind he was not the copy, he was not the clone, he was not the failure. Rather it was a failed clone of his greatness named Silver Alexander who had escaped the lab and had to be brought back in for examination, interrogation and termination. Anyone who didn't believe his version of "the truth" was an ignorant yokel and needed to be put down. Anyone....like Yasuo.

On subject like these, subjects that got his skin crawling and his blood boiling it was hard for Gold to show restraint. It was hard for him to show compassion, or manners or any of that other good stuff he came here planning to impart onto his opponent as it was the man's due. So there was not going to be any chance of a handshake, or any chance of friendly banter. There was only going to be barely controlled rage, flowing out of Gold in the form of the blindingly bright flames as he began stomping towards where Yasuo and his gourd of water were standing.

No charging yet, he simply began taking heavy, meaningful steps towards his opponent as his temperature began to slowly escalate causing each and every progressive step to let a little more wisp of smoke rise up in his wake.

However enraged he might be, Gold was not an animal and thus he still had the ability to think and contemplate and examine what was going on around him. His anger only meant that his thoughts, contemplations and examinations all involved ways to turn the man before him into a lump of cooked flesh.



"No need to tell me twice, you ignorant lout!"

While he was deciding whether to roast, deep fry or slow cook his opponent, he saw the man begin some sort of ritual. For what he could not quite tell but he could only assume that the man wasn't twirling his fingers together simply for the audiences amusement. He didn't have long to wait for as his foe did his finger dance, water began to fly out of the gourd and into the air, swirling and maneuvering like a watery cobra. Seemed his opponent was some kinda water charmer, meaning the battle before he was going to be no easy picnic. Perfect. That meant that he would be boiling his opponent into a stew instead of frying him on the grill, it took a bit longer to do but ultimately gave you better results.


As this was happening, Gold had simply carried on as before. He continued to slowly plod towards his opponent, his body beginning to glow brighter and brighter as his temperature rose before the energy consolidated itself. The glow that had been covering his body, receded across his flesh all of it flowing back into two main focal points, his arms. So instead of shining in glory like the Messiah come again, his two arms simply blazed like the sun each a supporting thick column of golden fire from his knuckles to half way up his shoulder. Once the allocation of energy of was complete, his hands rose from his sides and up to chest level.

Yet still he did not attack, still his did not charge, instead simply coming closer and closer to his opponent until the other man acted or he reached striking range. Until that time, he kept his anger in check and simply waited for the right moment to let his rage loose.

"Ah, the ol' river dance trick," Gold thought or would have thought had he ever faced a water manipulator before and caused him quite a bit of anxiety. He had been expecting the man to throw an attack at him either from the front or either side, and thus had instinctive responses to such situation. He it had never occurred to him to that his opponent might go for an indirect hit, one which sought to softening him up for further hits instead of going for an actual damaging blow. It wasn't as if such tactics were new to him but rather he didn't expect them out of a man so lost in his ignorance that he confused the genuine article for a fake. Not to mention the fact that he'd never come across this specific variant of what he would think of as a "sweep," or anything like it. You see, for all his confidence in both his abilities and his identity, he was relatively new fighter after all, without much real experience in the real fighting world. Sure he had been trained to combat a whole barrage of situations but there was a big difference between training and the real world. In the real world things didn't follow any sort of set schedule or regiments and events or tactics sometimes caught you by surprise.

Not so surprised to simply stand there and let the raging water take him away, but he was surprised enough not to simple hop above the stream when the opportunity first presented himself but rather once he took a moment to recover. In that recovered moment, a great amount of backwards force and momentum had been imparted to him such that instead of rising above and beyond of the rushing rapid, he found himself leaping backwards such that it was inevitable that he would fly right back into the stream of gushing water. Only this time he'd be laying down instead of standing up and thus he'd be unable to resist the flow of water and be carried along until the current abated.

Fortunately he wasn't stunned this whole time, he'd just been taken aback for a moment. So he was quite able to maneuver himself out of such dangerous circumstances, taking advantage of his unique abilities to save himself from thrown even farther out of melee range. As he found himself leaping in the opposite direction of where he actually wanted to go, he swung both his arms out quickly so that both pointed back and down as if he were Luffy preparing for a 'Gum Gum no Bazooka'. Then before he flew to far back or down, he released the energy surrounding his arms in a dual burst of flaming energy as he brought his knee up in front of him.




The two flaming material fist shapes emissions of energy would shoot off at a quick space impact into the steam of water behind him and the combination of both heat and cold would cause an eruption of steam from the point of contact. Steam which would be rapidly expanding from the eruption site, shoving Gold forward towards his opponent with his knee protruding before him. It wasn't quite a push but it wasn't as if he need one in the first place, the mere fact that he had released what equated to two mini rocket launchers of flame would provide enough recoil to send him hurtling back in the right direction. The added boost the steam provided was just the icing on the cake, and the sugar in said icing was the decreased visibility the team also added to their playing field.

So instead of finding his opponent said back towards one of the walls of the arena, Yasuo would be given a shock of his own to find his foe not only not sailing into the distance but right up in his grill. Gold had been propelled at his foe like a bullet of a gun, closing the few feet between them in what could only be called a rapid rising knee of doom. Just where was this knee headed? Straight for his opponent's dancing fingers, the ones that seemed to be aiding him in his water manipulation, and the vulnerable chest behind them.

((I was waiting until we were both online to ask a question but I decided you had waited long enough for a post and to simply ask about it later if my concern ever becomes relevant.))

For the moment Gold was no longer man, but a force of nature, a golden haired bullet that had been fired at its kunai-wielding target with no way of stopping or recalling the shot. He may have a lot of speed and power behind him but he could no longer control his course of action or his positioning, in the same way that one could not change your target after firing a gun or curve a bullet. So even as he saw Yasuo preparing for a what could only be a haymaker of all haymakers, with his fist enclosing in a light green bubble of energy and all, he could do nothing to maneuver out of the way. However that did not mean that he would roll over and die, Gold was too resourceful and competent for that.

He'd simply reply to an attack by hand with a hand attack of his own, utilizing both his his arms in tandem. As previously stated, in order to get this large speed and propulsion boost, Gold rotated his arms out to his side pushing them to the edge of their flexibility so that they pointed as far back as possible before he released his accumulated energy. Now one could not hold a pose like that very long, in fact as soon as one relaxes the stiff muscles that hold your arms in such a position they spring back to the front of your body, doing so even faster if you added your own effort this basic physical phenomenon. So as he was sailing through the air, his arms would be swinging back into view and would not stop until they were both extended in front of him. Their original purpose was to secure a grip on his opponent after a clean hit and thus lead into consecutive blows but they could still be useful in the new situation that was developing.

For extended to their full length in front of him, both arms reached further than his knee. Meaning they would be able to make contact with Yasuo's eerily green fist before that fist obliterated his knee. Which is exactly what he those arms would be doing as the final inches between the two competitors was eaten up. Both his right and left hand would brought together on top of Yasuo's attacking arm, clamping onto his wrist and taking a bit of the edge off of whatever damage his attack would have caused otherwise. Truthfully it was a very small decrease in the attack's destructive potential as there was no time for Gold to properly alter the attack, only to kill some of the speed before impact.


Therefore it was good thing, that Gold was built pretty damn tough. For although....



Yasuo was also unaware that Gold's....



meaning that both had roughly the same level of raw physical ability. So instead of getting his knee grinding into power or shot out of his leg, it was simply painfully compressed, bruised and battered. Gold was still going to have a very bad day, but at least he would be able to walk straight eventually and as the icing on the cake, Yasuo's was experiencing a similar anguish over his hand. Nobody was leaving his collision unscathed.

In fact, nobody was leaving this collision. As Gold's true motive for getting a hold of Yasuo's arm was not to shaving off a few days in the hospital recovering but to make sure that neither of them was going anywhere. Usually such grand collisions caused both fighters to be propelled back to their respective corners to start a new round in their battle, but after seeing his opponent's target, Gold decided that was not in his best interest. It was mighty hard to get anywhere or do anything when one leg just would not cooperate, so he was going to save himself a lot of time and energy by keeping the two fighter right up in each other's personal space.



So while he was howling at the great pain and injury inflicted on the largest joint in his body, with his head thrown back and his hair rattling around due to sharp rocking motion of his head, his fingers were digging hard into Yasuo's wrist. They didn't loosen and he didn't loose his grip from shock, for he had had a bit of time to see what was in store for him and come to terms with it. As well, he was just one of those many people who liked to alleviate some of their pain through physical action like abusive husbands and pregnant women, focusing his pain into the bones of the shinobi's wrist to try and make it go away faster.

If there was anything in Gold's mannerisms, thoughts or reactions to this situation that made it seem as if he was unaffected by the momentum behind Yasuo's powerful blow then said remark was in error. Not only the condition of Gold's knee was changed but his trajectory and positioning as well. The previous collision of knee against fist was that of two almost equal forces, both carrying large amounts of momentum, the only real difference lying from where that momentum was built with Gold's attack deriving it's strength from speed and Yasuo's attack deriving its own from pure unadulterated power.

Now there were two option of what would happen to the combatants after such a fierce collision, either the collision would turn out to be inelastic in which case their momentum would cancel out and they would fall close together to one side or another OR their collision would be elastic and they would blast apart away from each other at terrifying speeds. Since it seemed that for one reason or another (mainly anime fight scenes), most collisions in this sort of a battle were usually of the more dramatic elastic variety which meant that both combatants would be flung apart after exchanging blows.

To prevent such an event, Gold had changed the aim of his rebounding arms from Yasuo's head to his hand inorder to keep them apart, as a sort of rubber band effect would be created pulling the two back into close quarters after their blows threatened to blow them apart. In which case both fighters would seem to fly back for a second before, Gold's grip caused Yasuo's arm to rebound forward and thus pulling his opponent on top of him as they fell to the floor. The whole process would happen fairly quickly but it would last long enough to give the combatants a few moments to get over the initial shock of the pain they had just dealt and received.

However, if the collision was to be inelastic instead then there would have been no need for Gold to grab onto Yasuo's arm as they would stay close together regardless and he'd have kept his arms on their path towards his foe's head and attempted to get more damage in.

Working off the previous scenario, there would be no need for Yasuo to try any sort of leg maneuvering to get into the top position in this ground fight, as Gold would land beneath him with his injured knee straight out and his uninjured one bent skyward to allow him the ability to maneuver better. Having not really worked through the pain but simply accepted its presence and assimilated it into his current definition of self, he was able to move once more at this point.

Moving his arms in tandem with his head, he'd yank the arm in his grip towards the inside, towards the direction of the other arm, using he the maximum power and speed he could draw from both arms in order to befuddle his foe's body and draw him closer such that his rising head could come up swiftly and connect with his opponents.

Now if Yasuo decided to simply intercede his fist while this was going on, that was his prerogative and his right. But what he should take notice in doing so was that Gold's head did not come up all natural and void of energy as his knee had been. Instead his forehead was christened with garnet of flame, a burst of golden fire that covered the forehead in its entirety.

Now Gold's flames being as special as Silver's were, albeit in a different fashion, meant that such a collision would be quite the spectacle. The air might light up like the sky on the fourth of July or the explosion might rocket back their hair like a mini atomic bomb.

But who knew what Yasuo would do? Gold's author would not hold him to his previous action as he seemed to confused at what his opponent could and could not do, which was maybe his writer's fault or that of Gold's writer or both. To make things crystal clear, Gold was not a juggernaut who could ignore the force of his opponent's blows nor a a** monkey who pulled random s**t of his butt so that he had his way all the time. He was simply a normal man who followed the normal rules of the universe, save for the fact that he spit fire like a tobacco chewing southerner and liked to test his physical toughness against hard rock slabs.



((And we need to start identifying some limbs, which is mostly my fault for not naming my knee. It was a left knee that was offering up the pain, that same pain which you ate up only to regurgitate more. And depending on whether it is your right or left hand he's grabbed, he's either yanking to his right or left respectively.))

Well....there might have been an explosion and their might have been a kaboom but probably not of the size Yasuo was thinking. For as said before Gold's flames were different than silver's exploding fire, his flames too the complete opposite path, as they turned their energy internally instead of externally. Instead of blowing up in your face, Gold's flames tended to hold together under physical strain as they had existed in both the metaphysical and physical realms containing both heat and substance. So upon impact Yasuo will the resistance of the flame, impeding his path like a brick wall before the relatively small flame ultimately shattered under the pressure and thus creating some sparkles and blow-back but all of that was due to the flame's flashy destruction rather than any sort of detonation.

As Yasuo rocketed upwards away form the collision, Gold was rocketing downwards at a lesser pace since his physical flame had absorbed some of the force before its untimely demise. Then again, while Yasuo flew up into the open sky and thus faced very little resistance, Gold was shoved roughly back to the earth below which did not have as much give as the air above. It was a rather rough experience, as the motion jolted his already damage knee bringing forth much more pain that was really manageable for the blond fighter, drawing a very primitive growl of agony from fiery combatant.

It was becoming very clear to Gold that he could not simply leave his knee as it was, free to bump into or bounce up against anything at all to cause him even more pain as the fight continued. So while Yasuo was forcing his mangled hand to work itself into handseals for his newest jutsu, Gold was setting to work on finding a temporary solution to deal with his knee. He summoned more flame to his hands, drew more golden fire into existence flooding his arms with that golden light once more. However instead of firing it after his retreating opponent, Gold directed his time and energy towards his left leg, holding onto it firmly with both hands. A moment after he mad contact, he forced the flames to stretch and flow over his leg, clothing it in a cylinder of fire from ankle to thigh. Once the construct was complete, he removed his hands and the fire stayed exactly as he had left if, frozen in place to form a splint of fire that would keep his knee from bouncing around unnecessarily during the rest of the battle or until it was destroyed.

At this point int time, Yasou would be nicely hidden behind his trinity of pillars and getting to work on his chakra recovery while Gold would be getting gingerly to his feet, so that he could test out his quick fix. Meanwhile, his arms still glowed hot although at a dimmer setting while he allowing fire to begin building up in his arms once more to replenish that which he had just expended.