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Interrupt? Rivven was busy gritting his teeth, eyes so tight they were near shut, fingers digging furrows in the sand. Heck, with all the groaning he probably hadn't even heard Tacitus speak.

"Hurk-" he started to sit upright and stopped less than halfway up, gritting his teeth. With his face contorted, patches turned black on his reddened face cracked and fell off, baked eyebrows coming apart and dusting his cheeks. He couldn't hear much, his sight was blurry, but...

...a gun...?

He slowly toppled onto his back again, and let out a long breath, shaking violently as he turned his head to the side, and spat blood onto the sand.

Is he serious?

Tacitus may have had some god of time lending him it's powers, but he still had his body running on... his body. He had to react to things by seeing, hearing, touching, or smelling them. Or tasting. Point was, senses were necessary to know, and once those reached the receptacle, it had to send messages to the brain, which had to sort, which had to then come to action.

There was a reason humans couldn't dodge bullets. By the time the sound and sight of the bullet- if they cought the tiny blur at all, you never did really see any bullet but a tracer from modern weapons- reached you, it had thudded itself into your stomach. The soundwaves didn't reach you until after the speeding object had gone into you, and the sight was something you had even less chance to catch, even if light was faster than the bullet. And that was for the information to reach the body, not even go to the brain yet.

What came wasn't equatable to bullets. But it was close. There was no sound of firing, only of the sound bearier being broken. Not the speed of bullets, but fast enough.

The blood snapped violently in that instant, leaving deep bruises on the base of his chest as the bits of shrapnel removed from him all shot off of his skin or the ground, where ever they had fallen. They weren't aerodynamic as bullets, but they didn't have to go far.

Every single one was aimed, angled, to go for one very specific target that was staying very still for a very good reason.

The barrel leveled at Rivven.

The rounds of shrapnel were going to make a mess going up the barrel, striking an unfired bullet in the chamber. Which was there the s**t went down. It all set the bullet off, as if the 'rounds' coming in weren't enough. It'd blow up all together. The barrel was tough, but it was rooted on, and the chamber was going to explode as the force aimed up that barrel countered the force trying to leave, mass and velocity taking advantage by far over an object that had less mass and wasn't in motion yet. None of it went down the barrel.

Rather, the gun would blow apart like a grenade all it's on, right were it was. Quite possibly, taking Tacitus arm with it.


Rivven hadn't wasted time. The sound slammed home on each of them, and a second came as the stone between them cracked, sand flung into the air by the force, as more cracks formed in an instant, and water safely below ground was dreged up.

This time, it wasn't the water he was using though.

Several long fissure cracks running through the stone where water forced itself through split the stone around Tacitus into three distinct plates. The first of which, whipped upward, standing on it's side to provide a good four foot tall barrier of solid rock, against the back of which Rivven flung himself, trying to draw himself up onto hands and knees.

The other two plates were coming up on the time magic man like a bear trap. Only, instead of snapping teeth into his leg, they'd come up like hands clapping over a fly on the lower half of his body. It was the kind of thing that made a good, satisfying crunch.

Rivven meanwhile, was left in the defensive again, right where he was comfortable while he regrouped. Because he was so damn good at it. He had a small, but well proportioned for it's task, body of water just under and around the stone slab protecting his front, blood on his skin almost everywhere now, though in scarce supply, and all around, moisture in the air and spilled blood, as well as other burried water, that was there for the taking and he only had to clear his mind enough to connect to.

He might have been dead, but he wasn't finished yet. Not by a long shot.

Spite was the sort of thing you should have learned to expect when you flung overwheening arrogance into the face of an escapee slave.

He was going up in the air? It was a bit late to stop the stones smashing up to try and pre-cede him taking any action after the firing, but his motion meant he wasn't there early enough that it just wasn't worth bringing them together. They broke free and rose, settling with a grumble into place.

Rivven whipped his head up frantically, hardly able to percieve the other man at that sort of speed. No after images, no blurring, just a he knew had to be the other man, flying up into the sky.

What-?

Rivven might have been able to supplement his body's capabilities to lessen the gap in other condition, but he had come in with his body running low. There was no chance of it.

All he could do was watch, hoping the guy slowed down enough that he could pick up on things and actually be involved. He didn't know how a human body didn't tear itself to peices moving at those speeds, but his time was better spent collecting water by his half-prone self and recouping, he knew.

Yet again.

Rivven's teeth set hard, grinding together, as he forced out enough energy to for the motion. Water gathered underneath the large slab of stone he was using for cover slammed together, collecting other nearby as it pressed into a spiral, lifting the slab of stone upward and hurling it at the grenade.

It was going fast enough to catch it- and being a flashbang, Rivven would feel teh pain in his eyes and ears, reducing his senses to a blurry shadow of what they had been, for a little at least, but the worst was taken by the stone. Which, not stopped much at all by the contact with the non-explosive grenade, still had enough upward force that rather than topple off the tower pushing it upward, it continued to rise, gathering speed right until the water snapped at it's limit and came back down.

Leaving a very large stone hurtling very quickly at Tacitus.

Rivven for his part, was stumbling to his feet and aside, feeling a sort of bleeding effect in his energy. He'd expended what was naturally his. Now, all he had he'd be taking from that well inside him. It'd get harder as he went on, and what was worse, he'd be facing adverse effects, mostly insubstantial in the short term, emotoinal pressure, pain, ect, but very substantial in the long run, besides the usual feeling of fatigue, and body being reduced to practically be the human norms as he usually faced with his own reserves sapped.

...s**t.

He'd played too close with the Ahj'Kratuel one too many times recently. He was going to have to be very careful with this.

Rivven's senses weren't fully straight yet, but he saw the rock stop easily enough- and Tacitus keep on going.

He dug in his heels, following behind on foot to limit the distance for a moment, drawing the water behind and wreathing himself in it again, gathering about his arm. The right one, drawing back as if he were getting ready to throw a pitch.

He snapped the arm back around again, in a motion more or less typical of the windup and pitch, sliding to a stop as he did. The water didn't though.

A large portion of what was on him snapped up following a small circular end like a padded cap on what was forming into a lance, stream growing longer as more water contributed itself into the motion, forcing it in a powerful and rapid stream like that from a firehose, even if the stream wasn't quite so thick.

His aim was on enough that he'd manage to strike somewhere on the main of Tacitus' body if his course continued, and the water would contract and snap out again, as if adding a punch of it's own to the strike, following through for a moment, as a ball off perhaps a gallons worth split off, continuing to drive into him, and the rest retracted back to Rivven.

It's effect would pretty much be the same as imaginable too.

The armor might take the 'punch' of the strike, and prevent it harming Tacitus at all, in way of bones or bruises. But if he took the hit, he was going to be sent flying, higher and further that direction into the air.

And Rivven would start jogging into pursuit again, arm coming back for a follow up.

Like some overstated version of juggling your opponent in a fighter game.

Which left Rivven gathering himself, recovering as he kept up with the slowly drifting Tacitus and watching.

The ball of water on him was acting a bit differently than that. The outside part of the ball would repeatedly force itself forward, through the center of the ball, forcing what had been there to travel around the outside. The part traveling forward would contribute force created by that motion slamming into Tacitus' torso. And then it'd happen again with the water that had flowed around to its past position. A couple of times over of slamming him to get a little more motion until it became clear that he...

Well, was doing nothing, in the truest sense.

Time travel was a painful thing to think about. With him and all the forces on him slowed, you'd have to figure that what was going on was that he was backdrifting somehow. Holding himself in the past. Which, in a sense, meant that he wasn't there at all anymore. Only, he still was. Bizzare.

But really thinking about anything like that could only give one a headache.

Still, for one stuck in time, he'd still be absorbing all of that force.

Rivven wasn't quite sure what was going on, standing below and watching, getting ready to do something. If anything ever happened, or ceased not happening.

But chances were Tacitus would have to come out of slow mode eventually. And when he did, he'd snap into normal time, and have all those forces that hadn't been able to exert themselves on him before sick of waiting quietly in line. Basically, turning all that whallop from a series of several hits into one big one.

Shame Rivven hadn't kept it up with his pounding, or Tacitus probably would have been sling-shot right out of the arena as soon as he turned his time stop off. If it worked that way, and the force wasn't trapped in the funnel of time-warp-travel-stuffs somewhere, fated to drift a while before it came out and smacked some poor man far after home in the head, leaving him unconcious at an inconvinient time and easy prey for some hungry merlocks.

Rivven drew himself up, steeling himself into the act of collecting power and then using it, albeit responsibly. Tactical force he could still do, but if he tried too much at once, to overwhelm or outpower, the tide would roll him under as well.

He let his arm drop.

The legs went wide, ready position to move any direction at a moments notice, hands down so as to not even devote their weight to any given course.

And rather than using the water on himself, it was the ball on Tacitus that acted.

The dust, depending on how it acted, would either be caught up in the water somewhere, bits still whole but floating about, or have had enough mass or downward force to push right through and gone about their way with only a slight amount of water coating each- naturally, not of Rivven's doing. The ball would have more or less stuck with Tacitus, trying to maintain its shape. But it would begin to fall a bit, slipping down him, which put it in prime position to do some diverting when he started falling down too.

The ball simply flung the liquid within in one direction, hauling the rest along, in much the same way it had been striking, and flung itself toward the down-most part of his body, the nose leading his descent. Striking it, the ball would latch on, as opposed to striking or slipping on past, and simply yank with its momentum to divert the direction of his decent toward the nearest empty spot among the stands.

If the match was having a low in-person show up, as might be common with how hazardous watching these matches was proving to be, it'd be a simple matter, but if they'd drawn a thick crowd, Rivven might well have been forced to aim just short of the stands.

He was no hero, and he'd put his own safety before the crowd's every time. But he wasn't going to risk hurting anyone unnecessarily.

Rivven gritted his teeth, and half-ran toward the potential cover of the displaced slabs of stone, loose water all collapsing to the ground and seeking him out at a quick creeping pace.

He wasn't sure what this guy could do or what he was going to pull up next, but he was worn, he was facing a very real limit on what he could do before he started gambling with his sanity. His opponent though, as far as he could tell, was using a lot of technology- which meant he wasn't wearing himself out- apparantly with some magical supplement that not only wasn't wearing him out either, but as far as one could tell kept him running out of munitions.

He was in a rough spot. He was used to the defensive game, but usually, he had a pretty good idea of what he was against before long. This time, he really wasn't sure.