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Deitric was wryly bemused by the course his opponent was taking. When James made it onto the stage with him, he would find the tribesman waiting for him, holding an unfamiliar weapon in his right hand, a length of hollowed, black metal nearly three feet in length.

It looked like the remains of a mic stand, broken off as close to the base as possible. It had broken unevenly, leaving the edges sharp and jagged, revealing the hollowed insides of the pole, making for a rather sharp goad of sorts. Compared to a length of rebar, it was light - not even five pounds worth of material - but what it lacked in power, it made up for in speed; not unlike a whipping switch or flogging stick.

Without waiting to see if James had gotten his footing yet, Deitric stepped forward, jabbing the improvised mic-stand-turned-rapier at his opponent, aiming to lance the rough points of metal at the broken end of the stand at his opponent's face. Beside him, the strings on the guitar bent and bowed from magnetic interference before finally snapping violently when he stepped towards the daemonslayer.

A handful of particularly brave news reporters had gotten as close to the action as they dared - using the massive skeleton of metal supports as walkways, trying to get a glimpse at the two fighters, but just as the brave stepped forward to lance his mic stand at the other man's head, the live feed from the cameras went from grainy, to pure static, the film in the cameras blotting out as the machines refused to operate so close to the electromagnetic anomaly of the tribesman.

Cameras wouldn't see the fight up close any longer - only eyes.

Deitric let James parry his attack aside, the wayward stab shifted off-course as the daemon slayer sought to close the distance. The tribesman released his hold on the mic stand, its purpose served. Perhaps he was mad, goading his opponent to attack him, but Deitric had long since developed a particular method to his madness.



He didn't bother parrying the punch when it came; instead, his entire body seemed to erupt in an explosion of movement and electricity as a second Spiral burst to life, the focal point emanating from his right hand, which was reaching now for James's face, his entire form propelled forward with the supernatural speed of his Maelstrom. The two men had, intentionally or otherwise, thrown one another into the face of each other's attack; James was going right into the outstretched hand, and Deitric into the incoming fist.

The two warriors were on a collision course for one another, and Deitric's right hand was aiming to catch James's face in its grip as he drove forward. His one key advantage wasn't speed - it was likely that neither man could have changed their paths at their juxtaposition of attacks if they wanted to - it was that he had reach. His greater reach, combined with having his hand already outstretched from using the mic stand, would hopefully enable him to catch James off guard enough for his gambit to work.

However, his reach couldn't save him from the explosion coming off the end of James's fist. The cackling, short-tailed comet of light that was Deitric Jocasta erupted into flames as he shot forward, literally throwing himself through the birth of the Dou Technique as his hand (presumably) smashed palm-first into the demon slayer's face and closed tight like a vice grip, aiming to carry him along for the ride, head first.

If Deitric were successful, the crowd would be privy to one of the most amazing light shows ever seen on the stage in front of them. The Spiral tore forward, and nearly at the same time, the fiery explosion of James's attack would expand and be drawn outward into a plume of blazing fire, following in the trail of Deitric as he burst through the flames. The roaring firestorm followed their flight, trying to engulf the brave a second time.

The Maelstrom Spiral was powerful enough to carry both fighters forward, careening through the air as if they had been fired from a slingshot.

And right into the face of one of the massive light arrays that was used to light up the stage; a still-standing twin to what had been toppled earlier in the fight. The entire array died and went dark with a crash as Deitric aimed to slam James's bodily into the lighting array with all the power of his Spiral backing him. The bulbs and glass covers burst around them and the metal housing twisted, creating a blizzard of razor edged shards. The lighting array served as the fighter's "backboard" - after he smashed James into it, the Maelstrom Spiral would "rebound."

Forcibly blasted apart, the cyclone of energy would send Deitric flying the way he came, sending him skidding on his back across the DJ booth. The platform looked like a scene from a warzone - their dual attacks had left any instruments or electronics destroyed, and small fires burned pieces of debris littered atop the platform.

Their entire exchange - Spiral-facegrab, punch, and subsequent flight into the lighting array would only take a few seconds, perhaps, but the subsequent results were astounding, if it had proven successful. Astounding, and painful for both parties involved.

Rolling to a halt against the dessicated remains of the drum-set, Deitric managed to ignore the world's spinning long enough to pick himself up off the ground. Smoke hung off of his body in a dark pall as he rose. The leather he wore was heavily warped from the heat, and there was a sound of crackling from where the ablative plates beneath his leather had fused together into one mass where the explosion had been hottest and hit hardest; the stomach and bottom of the ribcage.

"...."

Deitric had also become a short-hair; his once long mane of black hair was now a shorter, messier affair. His face - the only part of his body that was exposed - was a considerably brighter red than before where the flesh had been seared, painful burn weals covering his features. His shades crackled and fell from his face when he stood, leaving burnt plastic stuck to the side of his head where pieces of the earpieces had melted on his skin. The underside of his jaw along the right left side was blackened, blood leaking from between the cracked, ugly skin. The tribesman suddenly found himself sympathizing with his previous opponent, Shinji.

It was turning into a rough night. When he stood, Deitric let out a groan. A few of his ribs had been cracked under the pressure of the explosion, and standing didn't really make his torso feel any better. Beneath the leathers he wore, his entire front was burnt to a lesser degree than his face, but where he had metal studs and spikes, they had been heated and left scorch marks on his flesh through the leather. Truth be told, he hadn't expected to be throwing himself into an explosion, just a punch, or some flames. He should have known better.

Forcing a deep breath in and out of his protesting lungs, Deitric made his way towards the edge of the battered and broken platform to find James. He had exhausted a considerable amount of energy, even with the amount he cannibalized earlier, and his mind throbbed right along with his body. Dozens of small scratches covered his face, hands, and shards of glass were embedded all over his leather jacket and the leggings he wore over his jeans.

It was a small comfort that his opponent was probably considerably worse off than he was; and that was saying something. Deitric looked like he had just taken a stroll through Hell and back, but he was still standing. Whether or not the same could be said for James Eredas might still be up in the air.

Deitric's features didn't offer any hint as to what he thought. He remained silent as he stood at the edge of the platform, twisting left and then right at the waist, causing the fused plates of armor to crackle and break apart so that it wouldn't hinder his mobility. The hidden armor could still serve its purpose however. Breaking was part of the process; that was what made it so effective.

He was only mildly surprised that James was still standing. The light in his eyes flickered a few times, before regaining its luminous haze. The fighter's boots crushed the horizontal lighting panels as he began to walk down the side of the platform, the plating beneath serving as steps where the lights had been layered to provide a diagonal effect. Every time he took a step, the next series of lights beneath him would flicker and die before he shattered them beneath his weight, causing a slow, cascade failure down the entire length of the tower.

A hint of superhuman power was left in the dark skinned fighter yet, but he wasn't using it. It served him better to quietly generate energy, rather than an unnecessary show of force. Instead, he opted for something more physical: his tomahawks. The twinned weapons had been freed from his belt, one in each hand. The metal was a dull, leaden gray, and no light reflected from the axeheads. The edge of each was wickedly sharp, and their design was meant to punch through armor as well as flesh. The only elegance to the weapons was their simplicity; they were perfectly suited to their purpose.

Unlike a sword or other weapon, there was no "stance" to adopt with his weapons of choice - they remained at his side, waiting to strike. The brave stepped off from the bottom of the tower and began towards James, the last vestiges of smoke fading into the air around him. Nearby shards of metal wavered and quivered as he passed by, inching closer to him as if he were a giant, albeit weak, magnet.

"Discretion is the better part of valor; burning out instead of fading away still has the same result," he warned as he approached, his voice still picking up and casting over the nearest speakers in the same, eerie manner. Deitric watched his opponent carefully. He commended bravery, but James had gone through two of his most powerful attacks; he felt the daemon hunter was stretching himself dangerously thin. Too thin for it to be wise to continue.

The piece of metal flew towards Deitric, flying upwards from the ground at a diagonal towards his face. As it neared, the flight path began to mutate and change; it curved away from the diagonal path, away from the brave, and right towards his approaching opponent. Flying like a projectile from a slingshot, the spinning piece of metal cut through the air like a buzzsaw towards James's chest, having gathered momentum from his kick and the curving redirection.

Thankfully, a small piece of debris was much easier to manipulate than a heavy length of rebar, or an incoming sword or mace. These weapons were heavier, and had physical, driving force behind them in the form of someone swinging them; thrown projectiles lacked heft to them.

As ever, Deitric didn't stick to being stationary for too long - he disappeared behind the DJ platform even as jagged piece of debris began its rebound. James would have to deal with the piece of metal hurtling his way and follow quickly if he wanted to get the brave back in his sights.

Not quite yet.

Instead of keeping close to the tower, the fighter began to veer off, moving towards the open ground off to his side. For all intents and purposes, he was playing cat and mouse - letting James come forward only to use some means to disrupt him before pulling away, forcing the other man to follow him out into the open and away from the tower.

He was moving backwards to keep his eye on the man who was no doubt following him, but he was still keeping a good pace. The only things slowing James down was dealing with the piece of debris, and rounding the corner of the DJ booth - the demon slayer wouldn't find out if Deitric was waiting to ambush him, or if the tribesman had moved elsewhere, as was the case, until he turned the corner. The angle the tribesman took to move away from the tower was keeping him out of James's immediate sight until they were on the same side of the booth.

The crowd bustled around the stage, trying to watch and discern the tribesman's intent. As the only one with weapons, it would have been easy enough to attack, but he wasn't; he was purposefully drawing the moment out. Waiting for the moment he deemed best to attack.

All around Deitric, the small shards of metal debris rattled, following along in his path as he backed away. Caution on the part of James was wise, but it also gave his opponent time to put a little more distance between them - the brave had cut away from the platform and had backed away.

As if he were going to throw his tomahawks to James in an underhanded double-toss, the short-haired tribesman swept his weapons forward and up from his waist. The magnetic pull invested in his weapons tugged several pieces of metal along in the path of the dual tomahawks' swings.

Whoosh--

And at the apex of the swing, the magnetism suddenly stopped, leaving the pieces to follow the course of their due momentum. It was as if Deitric had taken a handful of the debris and swung his arm, letting go at the last second to hurl the items; small shards ranging from the size of coins to the breadth of a human hand flew through the air towards James. Without any magnetism to guide it, the collection of metal pieces and chunks flew through the air like a small, haphazard swarm of shining insects.

Because they weren't actually thrown, so much as slung towards him, there wasn't a lot of power, or accuracy - but there were a lot of the little things, and getting peppered with a bunch of metal wasn't going to feel great unless the target happened to be a masochist. The Khasmin warrior wasn't going to waste that much energy on the maneuver when he had better places to put it to use, when the time came.

It wasn't a real attack - at least, it wouldn't end the fight. But James would have no doubt noticed his opponent by the time the eight or ten pieces of metal took to the air, and it was meant just to get James's attention, and to bring him back into the fight, now that Deitric was standing out in the open where he wanted to be.

An inferno blazed to life in front of Deitric, and it gave him only one direction to go. He didn't have time to think or anticipate, but if he had, his actions would have been just the same. Going left or right, forward or back would all end with him getting burnt in some fashion; but only one direction allowed him to retaliate.

He went forward.



The next thing James would see after bringing the enormous tidal wave of flame to life was his opponent's leather-clad form bursting through it, hurtling through the air like a human rocket, electricity cackling to life around him while the flames licked and seared at him as he passed through the wall of fire. Deitric's right knee was raised, aiming to have him slam headlong into James's center mass. Whatever sparse distance the demonslayer had left between the two of them, the Khasmin fighter cut across it in a flash.

Sometimes, a fighter had to bite the bullet and go through some measure of pain in order to gain the advantage. Whereas many fighters shied away from the concept, it was so integral to Deitric's fighting style that he no longer hesitated in the face of pain; when provided with a situation where it came to being hurt and retaliating, or getting away safely, he most often chose the former.

And going through the flames a second time was certainly painful, but the one advantage he had was that the wave of flames had been so big. The larger surface area something had, the less force it would exert at any one point; in contrast, Deitric's propulsion was concentrated solely on his body, so that it cut through the enveloping fire like a blade. Like a fish, slicing through the water of a wave.

The fires burned him anew, but hopefully, he would have an element of surprise on his side and catch James unawares. He had used the last amount of energy he had been able to gather with relative safety - if the fight was still going, it would have to be purely physical, unless Deitric wanted to risk burning himself out.

Deitric hurtled through the air like he had been fired out of a cannon, and that might have been his greatest advantage in their exchange. James wasn't kicking a man who had simply jumped through the fire, or who was jogging - he was kicking someone who was literally shooting through the air at the speed of a dead sprint; which he had been able to accomplish solely through supernatural means.

He was almost like a two-hundred-and-thirty pound human wrecking ball, flying through the air. James would certainly succeed in kicking him, the martial artist's foot smashed into the brave's upraised arms - which were raised to help protect his face and chest from the fire - and pin them to his chest, but what was going to happen to the daemonslayer?

Very likely, he was going to get knocked back, and down - all that momentum and force of Deitric's airborne charge had to go somewhere, and his opponent had volunteered himself as the prime candidate. When the heavier brave practically flew into the kick, it would be as if he had "stuffed" it; there would be a heavy amount of recoil, enough to probably send the kicker onto his back. Standing on one foot didn't make for a terribly sturdy stance, after all.

To his credit, James had entirely and painfully arrested Deitric's forward motion - the man twisted in the air from the force of the blow and he dropped to the ground as if he had been clotheslined, hitting the ground with a heavy thud. Neither fighter was likely in a good position, if both of them were dealing with the subsequent backlash of their own attacks.

Ignoring the throbbing pain racing through his forearms and the shortness of breath that came from landing on his back, Deitric scrabbled off the ground, picking himself up as hurriedly as he could. He could feel the heat roiling from the flames just behind him. Both men had apparently exhausted their supernatural abilities, but Deitric still had one advantage.

He hadn't let go of his tomahawks. The twinned weapons gleamed in his hands as he rose, the sputtering flames behind him casting a shadow over his features. Deitric wasn't out of his element here; he hadn't been born with his lightning abilities. If he had expended them, he was still left with the more traditional approach: muscle and steel.