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Viper speaks in response to Vahn, before he starts the Mirage Kick.

"You know, running around irritated me almost as much as it did you. Shall we discard all pretense here and get down to it?"

As the greave touches the ground, a series of rapid fire-cracker bangs begins to echo through the arena. Miniature explosions ripple across Viper's form, drawing in and burning the oxygen and feeding off one another, growing rapidly in frequency and size. His hair blasts back and the embers in his eyes begin to burn more brightly. Light flashes through the explosions, maintaining, concentrating, and condensing the power from each explosion within the body of his power. If Vahn had any sort of senses for this sort of thing, he would be visualizing Viper's "presense" swelling up like a ballon.

"Chain Crusher."

With a release of his will, the chain reaction spirals mad-cap out of control. The explosions are not singularily powerful, not yet, but each fed off the others and they were numerous enough that unless someone stopped effect they would continue endlessly.

All of this took no more time than it would for Vahn to kick Viper, which he likely still would as his opponent declined to block as the chain reaction ripped outwards from him. Then again, unless Vahn stopped the Chain Crusher sooner rather than later he might be in trouble.

((Chain Crusher begins at the end of my post as a small effect, by the end of Vahn's will be large enough to effect everything within fifty feet of Viper, by the end of my next post will likely fill the arena, etc.))

In accordance with the rules of the tournament:

Viper times out.

Vahn wins and advances.

Someone get my thermal underwear!

Viper's head snaps to the side and back like a weight on rubber bands from the impact of the elbow to his temple. The followup blow would land too, and the combined attack would send Viper soaring backwards. He would bounce, catapult into the air, and drift to a stop. His expression hadn't changed, and he just seemed more annoyed than anything else.

An explosion is a sudden increase in volume and release of energy in a violent manner, usually with the generation of high temperatures and the release of gases. An explosion causes pressure waves in the local medium in which it occurs. Explosions are categorized as deflagrations if these waves are subsonic and detonations if they are supersonic (shock waves). As Viper moves, the explosions in the area become detonations and rapidly move to fill the arena.

"Was that it? Seriously? After all that your response is simply hitting me twice? Come now, and I had heard you were supposed to be good at this."

The points around his wrists turn brilliant white as the explosions fill the arena. There wouldn't be any avoiding them now.

Viper dodges of course, suddenly suspicious. His opponent had started his hand with deception, but his moves were clearly telegraphed now...

Still, he wouldn't stay this cautious for long. His blood was up, boiling in his veins and screaming for conflict. It could wait though, it could wait.

For now it was time to use one of his pinpoints, each glowing a hot white almost painful to look at. The speck of light moved from his wrist to the center of his palm, which he points in Vahn's general direction.

"I can't believe you actually used that line..."

-=KRAKOOM!=-

For a moment, the fireblast from a single pinpoint would clear the area of his own Chain Crusher attack. It was vastly more powerful than the combo attack had been, and this time it was centered directly on his opponent.

The fire hadn't just blasted away the sand, it had turned it to glass in an instant. In the realm of purely powerful flame, not a whole lot got closer than what Viper had unleashed.

But he just drifts, waiting for the smoke to clear. Sure that his opponent was still in fact alive and kicking he mimes tapping his foot and spins a finger in a classic "Get on with it" sign.

Viper jerks backwards as the chains fly out, pouring on the speed to escape the grasping links. But in the end quanity wins out, and a few of them snare him.

He shoots downward and crunches into the ground.

"The problem with chains."

Viper's arm rotates downward at the elbow, catching the fist. The close range punch would land full on into Viper's palm, and several things should become quite clear to Vahn with this blow.

The first was that there was no ease in knocking Viper around, even chained and at close range he was budging. The earlier hits were either a fluke, or something that this man wanted to happen. The second was that while Vahn would get a good feel from the punch, and Viper was at a horrible angle for blocking, the white-gray haired man's body would not respond as a body normally should. There was no give, no resistance, nothing to say that the man had any joints or even a remotely standard body structure. There was no reaction from muscles or bones. It wasn't even like hitting the limb of a creature, instead it was as if punching Viper meant you were attacking all of him, not just a piece. Lastly was that punching Viper would feel like a super-heavyweight boxer punching a tank.

"Is that they can only restrict a guy so much ya'know? And unless you got something else going on with em, they're just not the most combat worthy of weapons. Especially when your opponent is good at close range too."

Viper's right hand comes up, and the red blade stabs out like a machinegun, firing repeatedly at Vahn's stomach.

((^^ Forgot to hit the submit button))

Again Vahn's strike would snap Viper's head to the side, too much in fact as the other fighter whips his head to lessen the blow. He sneers, letting the left hand go as the attack barely marks his face with a slight discoloration. He doesn't seem disoriented in the least and when the tugging comes, he stands firm.

"What, now you don't want to play? Well come on, isn't this what you wanted?"

Viper fires his left knee into Vahn's solar plexus, fast as a shot, and follows up with a right elbow thrust to the other fighter's neck and an open palm upward strike to the base of the nose and then would flow back to continue with repeated strikes to the vital areas. There was no wasted movement, and even at blinding speeds he had a surgeon's precision to match his inhuman strength. Whether he collapsed the lungs, crushed the throat, or drove the nasal framework into his opponent's brain... Viper was obviously going in for the kill.