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With Mooo's momentum still going forward, Blade propping his hand on Mooo's head for that split-second didn't exactly stop him. Mooo kept on going, his body going through the motions he had planned through--only this time, those motions inadvertently saved him.

His head ducked down in such a way that Blade was able to vault over him, Mooo's right arm dipped back as it prepared to loose the first upper, the vents at the back of the gauntlet spewing energy, spraying it out like air exhaust from a jet engine, the whine of the energy sounding like steam from a kettle as it powered the punch--and dispersed the flames above him when Mooo's elbow was pointed upwards as the punch was chambered. After all, fire went where the air told it to go--and if the air was pushing away from Mooo, then the fire would blow to opposite sides of him. He'd be singed a little, but not much more.

Not feeling any impact from the punch, Mooo's head tilted up as he ended up running through a wall of flame, shaking out his arms as he skidded to a halt. Bits of his clothes again had soot caked on them, smoke rising from his shirt and his skin, the metal of his glasses warm against his face. This was getting ridiculous.

(And here is where you won't be confused, as I explain. xd )

Glancing to his left, then his right, then back in front of him, Mooo whipped around, pivoting to face his opponent, lowering his stance a bit as he kept his elbows slightly out from his body now.

Mooo didn't make the first move this time--he'd already seen that his opponent was the type who jumped around, and even when it came time to rush in and exchange blows, his opponent was the type who never, ever wanted to get hit. That's fine... Mooo was fine with taking hits, and so far had been able to withstand everything his opponent had thrown out. Now he'd--

He'd...

Something didn't seem right. Was there some other attack hidden within the last one, the flames? There had to be. Poison? No, his opponent didn't seem the type. All Mooo remembered was a rumbling, a sudden impact that left him with a weird feeling. A weird feeling that was keeping him frozen solid.

Something--an explosion or some kind of impact-based energy--was transferred along with the flames. While Mooo's body could handle the vibration, the fluid in his eardrum was vibrated by the force of the explosion or whatever it was, and had temporarily screwed with his equilibrium.

This was bad.

********! MOVE, MOVE!

Yes, Mooo could move, but not very well--Mooo was conserving his energy during those seconds that felt like days as he waited for the tingling in his thighs and shoulders to dissipate, the one sign when he knew he'd be able to operate somewhere close to normal for more than a couple seconds.

But, well, it didn't come. Not yet, anyways. Something did come, though--a sudden impact next to him. Blade's sword sank into the ground just next to him--that couldn't have been an unintentional miss. The ******** was planning something involving that weapon, which was emanating a ridiculous, almost oppressive amount of heat and energy, and it almost certainly didn't have anything to do with the fact that Blade was simultaneously charging him from the opposite side.

Something was wrong about his opponent's weapon--that wasn't a "knock you down for the win" attack Blade was coming at him with. Blade barrelling in on Mooo wasn't too good a sign, either. It was good that he could move a little--whatever he whipped out in the next second and a half would be the only effective move he'd be capable of, at least for another second, and then he'd (generally speaking) be back up to par.

Mooo's eyes darted from his left, where his opponent was coming from, to his right--where his opponent's sword was standing there, stuck in the ground within easy reach. Oh well, what the hell?

Reaching over with all the speed he could muster, since it was only two feet away, Mooo grabbed the weapon's handle, yanked it out of the ground, and pointed it--not swung it, pointed it as quickly as he could--at Blade's left shoulder. Blade's left arm was across his body, already occuppied with a horizontal swing--which came out slower than a vertical swing, and in addition to the fact that his hand strength probably surpassed Blade's arm strength, Blade's sloppy arm swing would not be fast enough nor powerful enough to knock Mooo's steady arm off-balance. All Mooo was doing was sticking the sword out--Blade was moving fast enough to close in, but he'd be closing on his own sword instead, as the distance had been changed, given an extra few feet by the addition of pointy steel. Unless Blade could change his course of movement while in a full-speed dash, or could somehow throw enough extra weight into a sword-draw that was already halfway out of the sheath to knock away the outstretched sword, he'd be skewered on his own weapon. Ahh, the ******** irony.

Well, that was unexpected. Then again, Mooo should've seen this coming a mile away--his opponent, full of s**t as he was, had somehow thrown another trap in there while multi-tasking to a point that had bordered on ridiculous.

Just as he'd pulled the weapon from the ground, the sudden backlash of energy hit Mooo's gauntleted hand, pointedly causing him to practically throw away the weapon he'd so easily procured, the sword clattering and bouncing off a good seven to eight feet away from him, propelled both by Mooo's wrist tossing it away and the force of the explosion itself. The right gauntlet was damaged--cracks spiderwebbed along the entire gauntlet, and Mooo's arm tingled from the shock and backlash, small lacerations and smoldering burns marring his arm. His shirt was burned off partway, already gone from his right shoulder and barely hanging on to his left by a few threads--the shirt was torn and blackened with soot, the entire right side of Mooo's face was also smoking from the sudden explosion. Mooo's arms were the strongest part of his body besides his shoulders, jaw, and legs--the amount of shock they weathered with each and every punch he performed had prepared him for taking those kinds of impacts, sudden or not, with relative grace.

"Relative grace" in this case being him screaming something you'd never hear in church, while reflexively swinging his left arm toward Blade, palm forward, as his body skipped a little toward Blade from the sheer surprise of the weapon exploding in his ******** hand. Blade's attack was still coming in--the long, cross-body sword-draw starting from Blade's right and crossing over to his left--Mooo's left to his right. As Mooo was landing from the little skip, his gauntleted left palm stalled the swing--his hand stopping the motion of Blade's attack much like stopping a pendulum at the base nullified all its energy--when Mooo's left hand pressed against Blade's left tricep.

With Mooo landing first on his left leg, gritting his teeth as he tensed his right arm as best as he could, he turned sharply on his left leg, letting his right foot land hard, both greaves digging into the earth as he put his hip into it, his right shoulder leaning back to gain just a bit more torque before bending his right elbow, then throwing the punch cleanly from the hip to shoulder as he threw a hard body blow at the left side of Blade's rib cage, aiming for the floating ribs. ******** was trying to kill him, so he might as well make Blade suffer for it. In addition, Blade was already rushing him at full speed, with Mooo's left hand effectively holding him in place even if he wasn't actually gripping him--in addition to the fact that with the force Mooo was punching, should it hit, not only would the right gauntlet shatter on Blade's body, but Blade's left floating rib would more than likely detach and cause internal injuries. Changing direction meant losing every ounce of power he had in his swing. His only intelligent option was to change angle of the strike and go forward--but that would also mean taking a possibly crippling body blow that was coming in under his line of sight, since it started from behind Mooo's right hip and was sunk in well under where Blade's arm was crossing his body. Blade would see Mooo's shoulder go for the punch, but he'd have no actual idea as to what the actual target would be, whether it would be his main rib cage, his stomach, his floaters, his diaphragm, or his kidney.

The cleaner the cut, the less pain was actually felt--and in this case, Blade's perfectly-executed (and probably last-minute "oh s**t oh s**t") defense left a flesh wound on Mooo as Blade passed him. The spin-maneuver dodge kept Blade out of Mooo's line of sight for a few seconds, Mooo's body still going through with the punch that curiously hit nothing but air, Mooo still not noticing the injury at his side.

Not feeling the impact he was expecting, Mooo glanced to his left, then his right, then whipped around--and then he felt a sting at his side. When did that happen?

With Blade a decent distance away, again Mooo was going to have to rush in again if he wanted to get that hit in--and now it was crunch time. He had several options at this point--either he could drain the last bit of juice from the gauntlets and put it back into his body and rejuvenate himself a tiny bit to try and draw out the fight more, or he could try and use the last bit of energy the gauntlets had for a powerful attack and retain all the wear he'd had when they dissipated. Mooo weighed his options, keeping his fists at his hips, watching his opponent to see what the circumstances dictated--since time was running short.

The distance between them allowed Mooo to try Blade's own tactic against him--the execution was rougher, but the general idea was the same. As Blade started off to attack him, Mooo raised his left leg, then stomped the ground hard as he launched himself back, kicking up a sizable cloud of dust and debris into the path of Blade's dash, right as Blade cocked his arm back to throw what looked like a straight.

The small rocks pinging off Blade wouldn't cause much damage beyond a little annoyance--but the real reason for this was the dust. Blade would have to take a nice, deep breath of the dust, but there were several ways to avoid this, each with drawbacks. He could hold his breath, but that would cause his dash to slow down, plus it would leave his eyes open to get an eyeful of painful concrete dust. Of course, he could close his eyes in addition to holding his breath, but the results as he came out of the cloud wouldn't be too good.

Mooo, landing about two feet back from his previous position, would see how Blade responded to this before making his next move.