Welcome to Gaia! ::

With the burns on his hand from her ability even the softest touch felt like a hot brand pressed on his arm, and so despite appearances the sensation of shoving his hands into her chest was anything but a pleasant experience. At least he wouldn't have to endure the feeling of her nails digging in to his shoulders thanks to the thick leather padding on the jacket he wore protecting him from that as well as another potential application of her special touches.



She wasn't quite done yet though, and in that short span of time when they were all tangled up in each other the vicious woman took the initiative and delivered a fast and hard stomp to his forward knee; the force of the strike being more than enough to drive it to the side. If his leg had been straight it could have done a lot worse to the joint but with the both of them barely standing upright at that point it struck hard at the bent knee and forced his left leg to turn inward sharply, no longer able to support his weight. Pushing her back was the same as pushing off of her now as his back leg slipped off balance, and with a heavy thud the masked male fell onto his right arm in the dirt while Jay stumbled back.

His knee ached, his arm throbbed, his a** bled, and his face hurt... but she was mistaken if she thought that he would stay down so easily. By the time she had gotten her footing back he was already propped up on his elbow and pulling his legs in underneath him.



"As you wish." he said, bringing his left hand up to touch the newly formed crack on the mask with one finger.

"JUSTICE--"

His hand snapped outward pointing directly at her chest and in an instant --



-- with a brilliant flash of light and a terrific kaboom a beam of JUSTICE fired from the mask straight at the bloody woman. The beam itself was about three feet wide and, if it struck, she would feel like she'd just taken one to the chest from a flaming linebacker.




The kickback from the optic blast was enough that it send Justice onto his back as well, having already been in a poorly supported position. He didn't have far to fall though, and quickly recovered similar to when she had thrown him off, by rolling once over his shoulder onto his hands and knees, and then pushing up into a kneeling position. Given another second or two he would be back on his feet, and draw out the Truth and Justice batons to hold out in front of him crossed over each other.

Oh. She looked mad. From behind the cracked mask that he wore the male known as Justice Guy couldn't help but to smile. Perhaps his mask had been cracked by the headbutt but hers was beginning to crack from the accumulated damage she had taken... that cocky attitude she had come into this match with was breaking away and revealing the woman's vicious nature with far more truth than her poisonous smiles had done.

They both got to their feet unsteadily, but it was a revelation that filled Justice with confidence. He was going to have a hard time keeping himself standing if she kept focusing her assault on his legs, but the masked male hadn't once attacked the woman's legs and she was looking to be stumbling almost as bad as he was -- it meant that despite her gorilla-like strength his attacks were still having an effect, and that he wasn't completely out of this fight yet.


His answer to her was to uncross his weapons, turn one hand up, and gesture for lucky contestant number one to come on down.


Well, this was something it looked like there was no getting out of. If he'd still had a pair of good legs beneath him that would have been another story, but though he could still stand and move the idea of dodging someone coming straight at him was almost a joke; at best he could dive out of the way at the last moment, but that would just end up with him back on the ground again without taking her along for the ride this time. It was a disadvantage he couldn't afford to take without giving something back in return...

Likewise, there wasn't much chance of stopping her charge. He had a pretty good estimate by now of just how strong the woman was despite her size; trying to resist the rush would just get him bowled over. If defense wasn't an option, then he really only had one thing left to do.

The baton in his right hand flipped down and he reversed his grip upon it as he held the weapon about shoulder level, the other hand went high instead and he spread his legs out past shoulder width. The best he could do to soften the impact would be to provide no resistance, and to push back on his heels when she came in at him -- even then the woman's bare shoulder crashed into his stomach like a punch in the gut and took the wind out of him with a loud guffaw!

As he fell back he had plans of taking her with him though; the right arm that had been off to the side came in quickly right as she connected over her left shoulder and around her head, pressuring the right side of her face against the leather on his chest and the left side of it into the crook of his elbow. The left arm came down on top, not seeking to hold her in any sort of passionate embrace but instead intending to slam the end of the baton's handle into her back with as heavy a strike as he could manage from the awkward position. His legs had been spread out to take the fall more easily, but when she charged into him he would bring them in as close as he could against her and try to sweep his knees and calves around her right arm on the way down - trying once again to pin one of her arms underneath both of their bodies once they hit the ground.

What would result from it would be a jumble similar to what they had started with a minute ago. It seemed that they just weren't going to be able to avoid all of this rubbing up on each other, though it was doubtful either of them had any intentions of making it look like what it most certainly looked like.

He was going to do everything he could right now to keep her from getting back up. If he'd managed to get his leg around her arm he would bend his left knee and bring the lower leg back as far as he could into him, trying to squeeze her upper arm between the hamstring and calf while sticking his other leg straight out over the top of it to hold both in place. With his right arm wrapped around her head he held on as tightly as he could to keep her from being able to wiggle out, grabbing onto whatever he could get a hold of to keep his injured arm from slipping; and with her very broad definition of 'clothing' the only thing he managed to grab onto was the back strap of her top.

"Don't think you're getting away so easily this time!"

By now it should have been clear to anyone what the masked male's strategy was for this fight... to immobilize Jay one piece at a time in order to neutralize her. She was too dangerous in a close range battle for him to fight against in any other way; it meant taking risks and sometimes putting himself into a dangerous position in order to gain the advantage, but without taking those chances he would have been pushed out of this fight already by that gorilla's explosive power. They fell to the ground and Justice quickly pulled her into a position to incapacitate her right arm and give her legs very little chance to contribute... but it should have been obvious to both of them where the next attack was going to come from.

He hadn't done anything about her left arm in that tumble, so while her right was pinned under them in some type of leg lock she still had full control over her left. With his own right arm wrapped around her head keeping her pinned down he didn't have a limb on that side to defend with, but he had a pretty good position to watch her movements from -- that was why it wasn't a surprise when she thrust her left dagger in at his side; in fact it was something that he expected, or even had counted on to happen. He was ready for it when it did, because it was the most obvious angle of attack she had.

He couldn't block it, and he couldn't guard it, and he sure as hell couldn't dodge it. So what could he do about it at all? He could use it against her. The instant that he felt her shoulder tense up to move her arm he started his own movement: The first act being to suddenly thrust his hips upward into her by digging his heels into the ground underneath them and pushing his back into the dirt; he didn't need to throw her off or even move the jumble that they were in very far, he only needed a few fast inches off of the ground at the right moment to turn the penetrating stab she had intended on into a much shallower slice across his backside. At the same time his right arm let go of her head and swept down around her left side; letting everything go at once as the rod of Justice just anticlimactically rolled off of her back and his arm instead dove in under her chest, hooking his arm around her upper arm just in front of the shoulder. Just like he had grabbed onto her top a moment ago now his hand went for his own belt to grab on and hold; trying to pin her left arm under his back by locking in her upper arm and dropping his back onto her forearm.

It was very likely he would come out of this struggle with a number of minor cuts from that blade sliding around under there, but she wouldn't have the necessary force or the angle to make another stab with it. The narrator, who had been in a hurry and forgotten to include a segment about the voraciously vicious and vehemently vivacious vixen and her 'special touches' then reached down from on high, pointing a finger at the mysterious masked male meticulously molesting the maiden and said "can you feel it?". The answer of course was yes. Justice clenched those cheeks hard in response to Jay's touch, feeling that sensation of "oh my" and "it burns and stings" taking over. Thankfully, despite that his hip now felt like he'd just had a shopping cart full of midgets roll past and swing for the fences with a metal bat onto his backside his immediate plans didn't involve making use of his a** for anything other than dead weight right now.

Her head was free now, but at the cost of her other arm. She would still have a difficult time slipping away from this with all of her joints intact.



"What can I say?" The masked male pulled his left hand back again, tightly clenching the fingers of his metal gauntlet around the handle of Truth and took a shot at the easy target that was laid out in front of him; slamming his Five Fingers of Justice into Jay's head just above her right ear.

"I'm clingy."

Where had all the snarky comments gone?

Jay bit down on the leather covering his stomach as the masked male slammed his fist into the side of her head; trying to keep her composure and not cry out. She wasn't backing down even though she was in a bad position, and had enough respect for herself... or perhaps disdain for her opponent... that she wouldn't show her pain if she could avoid to do so. It was an admirable trait one way or another that spoke of composure and willpower. Had Justice not been entirely too busy trying to bludgeon her into unconsciousness he probably would have stopped to compliment that side of her.

It had been an uphill battle to get this gorilla into the position he now had her in, and now with both arms locked down and her legs wildly thrashing in what might as well have been another world he was going to do whatever it took to hold her. The woman was vicious, savage, and stronger than he was. If he gave her an inch she would take a mile, and he knew that if he let up on his grip even a little and she slipped away he likely wouldn't be able to get back on his feet again after her repeated assaults on his right leg. It was a situation he absolutely could not let happen, and so his answer was to clench everything. Eeeeeeeeeevvvvvvvverrrrrrrythiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnggggggg.

Two legs locked in around her right arm, another arm barely holding on to keep her left in, an entire body tensed up to make her fight for every centimeter of space she wanted to try and get from him... and it still probably wasn't enough. He could feel her left hand worming around against the ground trying to dig into his open wound and the only thing he could do about it was clench his teeth with slow, measured breaths and hold it in.

Her hand, though... he hadn't forgotten about it. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. But fool me three times...? Justice still had a few tricks up his leather sleeves as well, and he would bring out one of them that he had started on at the beginning of this match: Focusing his spirit energy into his back he fortified it against further 'special touches'. It wouldn't completely negate her power, but she would find it to be much less effective than she would have hoped for; the pain in the area increasing to a severity that made the masked male choke down his breaths. Clenching in tight would hopefully give her fingernails a harder time of digging in, and reinforcing the area around where her hand was with spirit would make it harder for the touch to penetrate as deeply or as quickly.



So what was left for him to do? ...only to have no mercy on her. He simply couldn't afford to. She was too dangerous for him to let his guard down or to pull his punches, so the only thing he could do was to just. Keep. Punching. Until she stopped moving or broke free from his grip, this was the only thing he could do; even the burning sense of JUSTICE that was flaring up inside of him was bottled in - he couldn't afford to show mercy or weakness to the woman that had started this battle off with lies and tricks, but the hero inside of him still couldn't bring himself to bring down a judgment on her when she was pinned down and unable to defend herself.

He bit down, swallowed his pride, tried to look past his own contradictory behavior, and slugged her in the head.

Well... this was bad.

It wasn't the kind of bad like holding a losing lottery ticket when you really could have used the money, nor was it the kind of bad like being caught out in the rain on a cold day with a long way to go... no, this was the kind of bad like trying to tiptoe past a sleeping lion and accidentally stepping on its tail. It was that kind of bad.

To be honest about it Justice had been hoping that she would have forgotten about it by now; through a combination of keeping her off-balance and heavy blows to the head he had been hoping to keep Jay addled long enough to put this match to bed before she realized what he had been trying to keep from her this entire time. Unfortunately for him, it hadn't worked... the masked male had kept her distracted for a good long while by keeping her desperately reaching for a way out of whatever bind her put her in, but as she pulled her legs in underneath her and began the slow process of dragging the both of them up from the dirt again it dawned upon him that she had finally remembered --

-- this woman was some kind of monster.

Hero or not, he was only human. He had human limitations, human strengths, and human weaknesses. Until now he had managed to take control of the woman in these close exchanges because she overestimated him; he put her into a bind with leverage on his side which effectively gave his strength a multiplier when it came to what would be necessary to break out, and because of that her mind immediately went to looking for agile maneuvers to slip away without fighting force against force. But therein lay the problem... a good hold multiplied his effective strength for the purpose of keeping her contained, but she possessed multiples of his strength without the need for complicated maneuvers.

It looked like she had finally remembered the major difference between them that she had tried to flaunt at the very beginning: No matter what type of tactic he tried to employ, she could always just answer it with brute force.



Justice would suddenly get that sinking feeling... and then that falling feeling... and then that crashing feeling...

"GAAH!" He lost all the air in his lungs at once in a loud, reflexive shout as his shoulders hit the ground first; the best he could do to manage a reaction to being dropped like a ton of bricks was to curl up so that he didn't take the hit with his head, but that sort of 'defense' only went so far. The impact was like being hit over the back with a club, but the shock of it was far more penetrating; it rattled his bones from head to toe, blacked out his vision, and relieved his tension...

The tight pressure that the masked male had been applying to Jay's limbs slacked involuntarily after the slam... in fact everything about him did for a moment. His grip on her slipped, arms falling out to the sides and the weapon sliding out of his hand to the ground, limbs feeling like rubber and shoulders aching like... rubber. He'd even lost the ability to make a proper simile, laying there like a rag doll in the dirt. And then he gasped for breath; air filling his lungs once again with a painful ache that would have made him gasp if he wasn't already in the middle of one. The black shapes filling his vision faded and he saw himself staring up at the sky through two slightly misaligned holes in his mask, and his first thought of course was a simple one:

'Oh barnacles, where is that woman!?'

Both of the masked male's arms snapped in from his sides, fists clenched at about chin level and forearms over his chest in a reflexive guard; tucking in his chin and curling up his upper body to get his shoulders off of the ground and a better view of anything other than the clear blue sky.

His question was answered quickly enough; the woman that had crashed down to gaia with Justice dragged herself up from the ground before he did, dragging herself up on top of him and having a seat. Blood ran down her face from her smashed nose and the lacerations under her matted hair, dripping off of her chin and onto both of their chests. His armor already had a large smear of red across it where he had been pinning her against and it was only getting larger as big, wet drops fell onto the leather.

The weight of her climbing up onto his stomach, even despite all of the blows he had taken up until this point, surprisingly didn't hurt at all. He'd thought that she had been the one who had forgotten what kind of a monster she was, but perhaps it had been him who had forgotten... even if she was a gorilla, she was still a girl. A small person with a light body that he could hardly even feel the weight of compared to how heavy her slams had been; exactly the opposite of the kind of opponent that Justice had been expecting to be paired up against.

For a moment he could only sit in stunned silence as she placed her hands on his chest and pushed him back down to the ground; his eyes inevitably drawn to the ashen color of the black veins that ran up her arm and into her shoulder, mixing with the vivid red color smeared across her face and chest in stark contrast to the pale color of her skin. The sight itself was almost a hypnotic pattern alone, but what really had shocked him was how easily he had forgotten about the person who was behind those iron fists and vicious snipes.



"...you won't."

The masked male snatched her arm with his left hand; sitting up slightly and pulling his right elbow in a bit behind him to prop his body up from the ground at a slight angle. The steel gauntlet wrapped its fingers around the wrist of the woman's blackened hand and pried it away, holding it between the two of them in a tight grip as the leather armor where she had touched started to tighten and peel; small tears appearing in it that stripped away larger sections into curling, dried strands. Within a few seconds the plate of hardened leather behind it was exposed as well, and subsequently cracked into fragments like a piece of glass struck with a hammer; the entire portion of his armor slowly peeling away into brittle pieces that fell apart from nothing more than the gentle rise and fall of his chest.



"...but you might kill yourself at this rate." The masked male's voice was steady and unwavering, showing the depth of conviction of a man who dared to call himself a hero. His hand's grip around her wrist tightened, but not to a painful extent. Though his body ached and bled he hid his pain behind a mask, while Jay's pain ran in salty streaks down her face. "I won't ask you to stop, Miss Jay. I can't ask you to back down and not see this through to the end when you've already tried this hard but..."

A section of his armor broke off and rolled down his stomach and into her leg before it shriveled up into something completely unrecognizable. There was a large hole in his armor now over the right side of his chest, exposing a blue-grey shirt underneath that, too, was beginning to fray as small holes started to appear in it and a dark splotch began to dampen the material from underneath.

"I'll make sure this ends without anyone dying," Justice added, his voice picking up in both intensity and sharpness. "I promise that... as a hero!"

The masked male held her by the hand as tears streaked down her face; it was true that he had not intended to hold back against the opponents he met in this competition but he couldn't bring himself to raise another fist against the woman... not right now. He didn't fight against her or try to push her off, he simply squeezed her hand tightly pleading that she stop using the power that was eating away at her body so obviously now. He had no idea of what made her so desperate for victory that she would endanger her own life in the process; there were dangers inherent with this type of lifestyle but it wasn't the same thing as intentionally cutting your own life short -- there were things worth fighting and dying for, and then there was pride.

When her hand reached out to his mask all he did was to turn his head away slightly, closing his eyes as he felt the friction of her fingers dragging across the rough wood. A crackling sound filled his ears, followed by a sharp snapping and popping sound as the wooden mask began to splinter and break up; the wood itself becoming dry and brittle as it began to noisily snap apart like a damp log tossed onto a raging fire. The wolf skin stretched across it curled and shriveled as the fur began to fall out and the hide underneath grew mottled and pockmarked. With one last loud crack the thick split that had been left in the wood from their collision earlier burst open and in two crumbling pieces the mask fell away; shards of wood sliding off into the dirt on either side of his head and the wolf hide slipping off of the unmasked male's head with a heavily shriveled edge that looked as if it had been burned.

"See? There's no reason to cry... you won the bet after all, Miss Jay."

The young man tried to smile, as much as he was able to do. The black paint that completely covered his face was streaked in a few places from sweat, and a trail of half-dried red ran from a small cut on the center of his forehead over his nose and halfway down one cheek was like a lone splotch of color that ran over the streak of white paint across his sky-blue eyes. He did his best to smile reassuringly... even though he couldn't feel one side of his face where the paint, and the skin, was starting to peel slightly.

"...Miss Jay...?" he repeated, leaning his head up slightly as her own head began to slump and her eyes unfocused. Despite his hold on her hand, it did nothing to keep her up when the woman's body went limp and swayed away to the side with nothing left holding her up. Justice tried to pull her back but her arm merely outstretched as her body fell to the side into the dirt with a soft thud. "Miss Jay!?"

With a tremendous ache that shot through his entire body, the unmasked male rolled onto his shoulder and pushed off of the ground with his hands; dragging his sluggish legs in under him to dig his knees into the dirt and crawl that arm's length between himself and the other fighter; reaching out to her with his burned hand to touch her face, and seeing no reaction from her put his hand instead on her neck -- a gesture he quickly realized was futile; the numbed feeling in his arm kept him from doing anything with the dexterity he would have wanted to. Pushing up onto his knees the young man tucked his left arm under his right, hooking his fingers around the back of that gauntlet as he twisted his left hand free of the steel shell in a matter of seconds. Leaning in over her he put his right hand on the ground beside her shoulder to support him and the fingers of his left hand on her neck, trying to take measure of her heartbeat and breathing. What he found was... not promising. Her pulse was extremely weak, it was a miracle he had even felt it. Whatever it was that her power was doing to her it had no doubt placed her life in danger.

"Don't make me a liar, Miss Jay..." he said, almost choking on the words as he desperately looked from side to side to see if a medical team was on the way in -- but this was a competition, and it was likely that they were waiting for a confirmed resolution to the match before the protective shields around the arena came down. Justice's left eye winced closed from the searing sensation; the slow burn on his face had been diminished significantly by the destruction of the mask but it was still spreading ever so slightly, the skin on his left cheek was already splitting in places as dry cracks oozed blood that ran down to his chin and fell, splattering a large red dot onto the back of his left hand as it moved over her chest and pressed down flat over her heart.

Over the course of the match the blackness in her veins had been spreading, it started with her hands and moved up her arms. A moment ago it had reached her shoulders and the sides of her neck but now it enveloped her almost entirely. Her chest was like a twisted ball of black string streaked in blood, and whatever it was that her touch had been doing to him it was probably having a similar effect on her as well, if he had to guess. With his hand in place over her heart he could even feel the swirl of energy there, threatening to choke the very life from her body.

"I promised, didn't I...?" said the young man in just above a whisper. "We're both going home at the end of this!"

He'd also made a promise to himself before coming here; a promise that he would rely only on his own strength in this competition and not on borrowed power. But there were circumstances at play that he could not stand idly by and ignore, and his personal pride was not something that was worth more than someone's life. He would break every other promise he had made without hesitation if it meant preserving the one ideal he had sworn to live by: that he would not let anyone die a needless death.



Justice's right hand shot to his chest as his head was thrown backwards; teeth gritting tightly together as he choked down an agonized scream. His fingers dug into the armor covering his chest to no effect, fruitlessly trying to dig out whatever was causing the pain that seized a hold of him suddenly. Legs giving out completely he fell onto his back and shook violently -- arms pulled in tight against his chest as he rolled onto his side spitting up froth into the dirt. His breath caught in his throat as the unmasked hero slammed his fist violently into the ground over and over, stopping only to claw at the dirt with his fingertips while whatever depraved curse the woman possessed worked its way into him. Black streaks slowly grew, running up his arms and over the small patched of exposed sin on his chest... and then receded... shrinking back down under the sleeves of his armor as his body fought off the poison he had just taken. Out of breath and sweating like a dog in summer he lay on his side on the ground still holding his chest with one hand and staring blankly into the distance with glazed over eyes. His Dramatic Recovery had fought off the worst of it but the pain itself had stolen a good deal of his remaining stamina.

Right now he didn't even want to move.