Let us have some sparring, Nishkis new initiation sparring ((Closed))

His jaw snapping shut, Vince peered through the fog. It began to clear pretty quickly, revealing his location, allowing him to see his enemy and her to see him, though the stench remained. His uppermost right "arm" was already drawn back, a good few meters between himself and the savage captain looking to shred what little flesh the cyborg had left.

Vince knew the feline marine had faster reflexes than him. He'd seen how lightning fast they were in her previous matches, and he knew his own were bogged down by the neural interface that linked him and the machines that kept his cadaverous body moving. Trying to capitalize on the moment's distraction, the poison appendage flew in an arc, the gleaming katana carving a path through empty space. A long, arcing white slash cut through the air towards Talitha, however, sticky strands of spiderweb flitting behind in it's wake.

((OOC: Tech))

Spoiler:

Talitha hissed, frightended by the sudden attack and jumped out of the corner, trying to escape. with a normal slash, it would have worked, but she hadn't counted on it expanding.
Her legs, previously burned, were caught in it and she fell on deck. It took the struggling lynx a second to notice it was stuck to the ground by a weir material, which mad it struggle even harder.
Finally, she got the idea to change into another form. Only a second later, she was in hybrid form and dragged at the webs with her right claw.

Taking advantage of her momentary struggle with the webbing, Kalamity surged forward. His real arm, holding the double-bladed Light and Moon, drew back and then flew towards her. The sword raced down at her, spinning as it did so, shimmering brilliantly in the setting sun.

"She'll only get tougher," Vince thought to himself. "Just like with Mary."

"Eeek!"
Did she just say "Eeek"? Really?
Much more imortantly, there was that blade coming at her, and she was c- had been caught! Her claws finally went through the webbing and she didn't wait for the blade to hit her.
She jumped back and up. Now he was in her range... and he was so... scary.... but what did they say? Cornered animals were more dangerous.
With a loud hiss, she brought her right hands claws down on his head. with the left ones, she treid to stab him in the stomach... if he had such a thing.

The grace and suddenness with which Talitha dodged had been expected but still managed to catch Vince off-guard. Her counter-attack was instant, viper-like. Just as his whirling blade hit the deck where she'd been a moment ago, he felt a set of claws coming down on the side of his head. They scraped across the metal with an ear-splitting screeching sound, clipping the side of his jaw and leaving a few shallow bleeding ruts where they passed over it.

The hit to his stomach had been more direct. While the metal plating had spared him being gored, the impact traveled through the to weak flesh beneath and rippled through his spine. Though there was no pain, a feeling of weakness and an awareness of structural harm accompanied the sensation. It wasn't something he could afford to let go on.

Once again, his jaw dropped open. This time, no fog came out; instead, accompanied by a vile retching noise, a pale translucent-red goop exploded forth, dozens of tendrils flying in every direction, many of them directly towards Talitha. These vines of venom snaked through the air, wrapping around rigging, laying on the floor, hanging overhead. Stepping on one, Kalamity sped backwards, away from the catgirl assault.

Standing a good number of meters back, Kalamity swung his greatsword and double-bladed sword at Talitha at the same time, a pair of criss-crossing, thin, barely-visible air-slashes tearing through the poison webwork towards her.

((OOC: Techs))

Spoiler:

"No way..." Tero's eyes were wide open in astonishment as he watched Kalamity fight. I was wrong...this guy...is not my equal... Tero thought. He shivered slightly as the full realization hit him. He's my superior.

Talitha half screamed half whimpered as the... red thing hit her right across the face. Another one hit her right arm, but the pain on her face was much more intense. She shot her left eye to keep the liquid out of it and turned her head just in time to see kalamitys blades only inches away from her.
she jumped back, and tried to keep as clear of the red... stuff as possible,... and found herself in a dead end. She was sitting on the reling, the ocean waves behind her and a crazy cyborg in front of her.
Maybe it was still the after effects of the poison, but she was scared to hell. Scared and in pain.

Instinct told Kalamity that he had a pristine opening to attack, but reason held his hand. Talitha was on the ship's rail; a single mistep in his attack, a miscalculation in his judgement, and one or both of them would be tumbling down into the sea. No matter how many people they had on board to go in after them, he didn't want to think about that.

Closing his mouth after vomiting a few more tendrils of the Walk of Death, Vince stood still. He held all of his swords ready to defend, that single, lifeless, black eye-disk over where a human would have their left eye staring at her.

"Bring the fight back to the center, Captain Blythe. You're in a dangerous spot."

The thought of giving her another charge was painful, but it seemed the only option to keep this spar friendly. Without knowing it, Talitha had taken the highground, found the best place to keep him from pressing his attack. Legs wound up, swords at the defensive, Vince waited once more for the fight to come to him.

What was that? Mercy? Pushing her overboard would have ended this fight...
Still, if he gave her such a good chance to attack, how could she refuse?
She jumped towards him, claws at the ready.
Slowly, she felt the fear growing lesser... the gas must be wearing off.

Vince saw her closing. Part of him regretted giving her the chance, but overall he knew it had been the only thing to do. One of the conditions of a 'spar' was that the combat be deliberately non-lethal. If that meant relinquishing an advantage...well, it was in the rules.

All four blades extended to his right side. Like a meat cutter, he held all his blades out in one direction, all facing the charging captain. His foot was securely on the tendril; as she closed the last few meters of the walk of death, Vince began his own charge. Speeding along the thin, tiny rope of poison, he sped towards Talitha with his swords ready to meet any assault she dished out.

"Toki no Tsurugi..." he rasped quietly, time seeming to slow down even as he sped towards his target. At the bare moment he expected to pass Captain Blythe, Light and Moon, Great World Shaker, Bloodkindle, and Matsuri all swung towards her in one great sweeping motion.

He wasn't sure if his blades connected or not, but as soon as Vince was past her he did his best to turn around and survey his opponent. It would be too dangerous to assume anything had finished yet.

When Talitha saw the blades coming, it was already too late. she had jumped, and you couldn't really stop yourself once you were in the air.
She changed into the smaller lynx form in hope of somehow getting over the blades.
When she landed behind Kalamity, she winced. Her left paw was cut and bleeding strongly. Her animal instincts wanted to lick the wound, but her human instincts reminded her that a) that was pretty unhygienic and disgusting and b) she had a battle to fight here.
She could see kalamity turning already, and reacted quick: she changed back into hybrid form and this time aimed for his arms with her claws and his throat with her teeth. The reson for that was her still remembering the pain of her claws hitting a metal plate straight on... But somewhere, he had to be vulnerable, right?

Right on top of him, just as he'd expected. She was like a wind made of razor blades. Even covered in metal she kept finding ways to make him bleed, and the armour did nothing to help with the impact of her blows, blunted as they were. Again...right on top of him.

The claws hit first, ripping through the synthetic fabric that coated his arm. There was no metal on the underside, where her claws struck; that area was left open for purposes of flexibility. A cold feeling in the area told Kalamity that he was bleeding, even as the jaws closed on the metal links of his throat. Given that they were thin rings, made for flexibility, they slowly began to pierce in the four places of highest pressure. Vince fell back to the ground, the wildcat atop him.

"Chraaaaaaaahhhh!" Vince's topmost right arm dropped it's sword, Matsuri, directly over her. In midair it changed into a bizarre spider-sword hybrid, a freaky looking gold-bodied thing with katana segments for legs. It stabbed downwards through the air, trying to get Talitha in the back if she remained attop Kalamity.

Fighting time, Vince began his own attack beneath her; tiny red beads, almost looking like strange cherry perspiration, began forming all over his body. They spent several seconds forming, quivering, before drawing to sharp points and shooting out from him, upwards, towards where the beast was gnawing on his windpipe.

Whether for the spidersword from above or the toxin from below, he hoped Talitha would move. The feeling of his airpipe being crushed slowly wasn't something he enjoyed, pain or no.

((OOC: Tech))

Spoiler:

Not that stuff again! If it was the same stuff... she could hardly ever tell what that guy was poisoning her with this time... And the pain from the last time was still there, right on her face...
She let go of him as quickly as she could and leaped forward, over his head and away from him. At least one thing, she had learned. That guy was vulnerable.
...Sadly, so was she. The bloody footprints she left made that all too clear to her. Ew. did that mean her blood had mixed with his? that would be like.... bonding.... ew.
She shook her feline head in disgust and finally gave in to the urge to lick her wound. The blood tasted of iron... But it was always that way, right?

Matsuri landed with a tiny patter on Vince's stomach, having reverted to full spider form the moment it became clear that he wouldn't be landing on Talitha. Rather than stand on his own, the rear admiral reached over and grabbed onto one of the many ropes of paler, translucent red. In a flash he was yanked off of the ground, standing back on his feet and facing his foe. Red of another shade and quality ran down his real arm, passing over his gloved hand and following it's way down the lower blade of Light and Moon.

Matsuri turned back into a katana the moment he had scurried his way back into Kalamity's hand. Each breath seemed a labour for the cyborg, his voice giving a grating, metallic rasp with each rise and fall of his lungs. His jaw hung open, streaks of blood running between his yellow lower teeth, tricking down over his charred jaw and slowly leaking from the four dents on his neck rings.

Again he began vomiting an explosion of those pale red, itchy-rash tendrils from earlier. They flew towards Talitha, to the left and right and criss-crossing with the hanging and laying tendrils from earlier, forming an even denser, more tangled webwork. Even as they spilled from his mouth, Kalamity began to glide along one of the old strands, sliding around the deck at extreme speeds, trying to circle around behind his opponent and create the network of webs on all sides of her.

Talitha looked around, extremely confused and almost unable to make out her opponent.
took a step backwards and winced when she stepped on her paw. Of all places to get hurt...
She lifted the paw from the ground and changed back into hybrid form.... damn it, she wouldn't be able to change into full lynx form anymore so easily. At least not if it was tied to walking.
But right now, there was a more important issue: How to attack a foe she couldn't really see. Or to dodge.

Having completed a circuit of the arena, Vince had left strands of the red goop hanging everywhere. They could be navigated between, but it would be difficult to avoid touching any. A smell like sulfur and ammonia filled the air.

Though he was a swordsman, it looked like he needed to keep his range up. Every time he got anywhere near that girl she neatly started tearing him apart. Stopping, he drew Light and Moon back, along with World Shaker and Matsuri. Swinging all three forward at once, Kalamity sent an asterisk-shaped blast of razor-sharp air cutting towards Talitha. As it sped towards her it cut through a portion of the webwork, globs and strands of the red goo falling all over the place.

"Hr!"
Talitha saw the... air coming towards her by the strands falling to the ground. She definitely didn't want to get hit by that. She leaped through the side, but it had already been a little late. She could feel the pain as one of her ankles got cut deeply.
It not only got her another dangerous injury, but threw her off course a little, just a little. But it was enough to get her away from the small not red spot she had been aiming for. She was quick witted enough to avoid landing on her hands... who knew what that stuff could do to a wound?
Instead, she landed on her shoulder and slided through the liquid a little.
She winced. But she knew she could not possibly stay in this... stuff.
So, carefully, she jumped from the lying position into a kneeling one, and from that to the safe spot she had originally been aiming for...
Only five seconds, and already her condition was twice as bad as before.

"I wouldn't stand in it," Kalamity advised, nearly the entire deck in the area in which they were fighting coated in that pale red stuff. "I can feel no such thing, but I am told the itching will drive you mad." He began walking forward, all four swords held defensively.

"Chraaaaah..." Kalamity wheezed, a metallic and wholy awful sound, the white mist from earlier rolling out of his throat. He didn't make a bank of it to obscure sight; he seemed to be breaking it as he approached Talitha almost reflexively. "I really cannot say how much more my specs were meant to take..."

Vince was ready for another push...he prayed it was the final one. They were on his turf now, almost everything coated in his toxins. A black sheen flooded down each of his swords as he closed in to resume their melee, his paralyzing toxin coating the blades. All at once, for the first time all fight, all five arms began hacking and swinging, at melee range, together.

The dance of swords was sporadic, unpredictable, and strangely hypnotic at once. The real arm drew figure-eights with the blades of Light and Moon, their assault a defensive action as much an offensive one, slash-and-parry. The bottom two right arms performed long, loping sweeps with the massive Earth Shaker, inaccurate but unforgivingly powerful if they landed. The next arm up lunged and thrusted with the cruel barbed point of Bloodkindle, always aiming somewhere random, unpredictable. Of the five, the one holding Matsuri was the calmest; it remained mostly stationary, defensive, only taking the occasionally precision swing when the others had cleared the way.

In essence, the assault was an anachronistic, bizarre, multi-cultural mess of swordplay. The trouble was that it it all executed well together, the limbs never tangling or getting in each other's way, even passing through one another occasionally, as they were only made of toxins. Such was the essence of the strange, unusual style of swordplay born of the warped and shattered mind - and suitable for use only by - Vince Kalamity.

Talitha was in a tight situation. Whenever she dodged Earthquaker, she was hit by Bloodkindle. But dodging Bloodkindle would only mean leaving her back open to Earth Quaker or Matsuri. And attacking would mean getting blosked and possibly losing an arm in the process.
Even worse: she had to stand in this one spot while dodging. The parts of her touched by the red stuff was burning and itching horribly, and she did not want to add more of them.
All this while holding her breath to avoid breathing in any of the white gas.
So she jumped and dodged as good as she could. After ten seconds she was covered in blood. This blood drowned all her humanity.
All that was left was anger when she fell on her knees.

Vince's movements seemed to slow slightly with each swing. Though his false arms were moving with their original vigour, his real one was beginning to go limp, it's slashes slowing down dramatically. Kalamity's eye strained to find an open spot, but the woman gave him none. Until the very moment she went down to her knees, the rear admiral wasn't even sure if he'd ever have an opening.

"Twenty-two percent," Vince croaked, his voice tinny and hollow. His arms stopped moving, save for the bottom right two, which raised Earth Shaker into the air. "Nobody in the science division fought this well...there were logia users that pale in comparison to you."

Vince swung down at Talitha with the greatsword, the flat of the blade turned forward out of consideration of the match's spar status.

Later on, Talitha wouldn't be sure whether it was the anger, the humilitaion or the fear that really put her human side to a well deserved, long sleep. The last thing she remembered was the view of a metal blade coming towards her. Vince had been saying something... but she was already unable to understand what...

The lynx growled loudly. The growl grew into an angry hiss when it felt the danger approaching, like a bear awakening from its winter sleep to find an intruder in its cave.
Talitha would have minded the poison just as much as she would have minded the possibility of losing an arm. The lynx didn't think about it.
The lynx didn't care about defence. It attacked straight on, and it attacked with more strenght than Talitha could have gathered in this situation.
Jumped from the spot it had found itself sitting in and clawed at the first thing that'd get close to her, weapon or human, friend or enemy.

One moment's he'd been delivering the merciful finishing blow, a blunted strike with his largest sword. The next something hit him in the stomach with the impact of a cannonball, knocking his largest sword from his hands and the breath from his artificial lungs. Though there was no pain associated with it, the familiar feeling of wetness came. Talitha was tearing open every inch of skin that wasn't covered with metal.

Once more tiny red beads began to form all over Vince, a great congeries of them forming in his mouth. Within a moment every inch of him was covered in the tiny, cherry red beads, though in some places so much vile, black ichor was running from Kalamity's wounds that it was impossible to tell.

Leaping back as far from the feral marine as his legs would let him, slamming his three remaining swords into the deck around him to propel him back further, Vince let a massive spray of red needles out in all directions. They'd be very dense and hard to dodge at point blank, but would become exponentially easier to avoid as the distance from him increased and they became more disperse.

Heaving, rattling and making noises like a car in the middle of a breakdown, Vince fixed his eye on Talitha. It was exposed, now, the black disk covering it having half shattered off. The eye that lay inside the metal covering was hideous, a thing of wires and cauterized tissue, glowing a dull, sickly red colour at it's core. It writhed about in the artificial socket, tracking Vince's berserk foe.

Of all his swords, he still only held Light and Moon, which he drew back over his head in all five arms. His every instinct told him that she would charge, and that would be his last - his only - opportunity to stop her. Sword at the ready and marshaling his remaining strength, Kalamity waited for the charge.

((OOC: Tech))

Spoiler:

The lynx charged ahead as soon as vince was out of its reach. One of the needles cut its side, but it barely threw it off course. Another one dug deeply into its shoulder, which caused a little more problems, but still it didn't slow down.
All claws and teeth, it jumped off the ground, barely to be seen because of its speed, but clearly to be heard as it emitted a bloodcurdling roar.

Talitha's ferocity had made her behaviour completely predictable; just as Kalamity had expected, she charged directly at him. There had been absolutely no doubt in his mind that his foe would come for him, head on, with no regard paid at all to her own defense.

Her behaviour was completely predictable. What Kalamity had not factored in, however, was just how much fight the Captain's body had left in her. The speed and power behind the oncoming pounce were beyond the scope of anything any human in her condition could have been capable of.

At the moment, unfortunately, she was no longer a human.

The Rear Admiral could see that fraction of a fraction of a second's opening appear before his eyes; it was the opening that he'd known she'd give him in her animalistic rage. In that moment, however, Vince dropped Light and Moon.

There was no way that he could swing his sword at his foe. The force of her charge would making even a glancing blow from a bladed weapon potentially lethal. Both combatants were on their last wind, of that he was certain. In the end, the match had become a battle of wills. For the last time in this tournament, the rear admiral correctly predicted the fight's outcome.

Even as his last sword fell towards the deck, however, he began his counter-charge, now-empty fist swinging forward at the ferocious feral female feline. His own form became a near-invisible blur as well as he pushed his cybernetic limbs to the furthest limits of their capability to meet his foe in their final exchange.

There was a moment of silence as the two passed eachother, the sound of the roar lost in the fury of that final attack. A moment later the deck of the ship was engulfed in a rippling shockwave expanding out from place where the two had met. All the poison scattered about was vaporized by the force and blown out all over the deck, expanding into the sky, out to sea in a wave of seething red mist. A deafening boom followed the concussive explosion, which seemed to shake the massive ship in it's entirety.

When the final surge from the epicenter of the clash had cleared the air of the red mist, Vince could be seen standing where Talitha had been mere moments ago, their places switched. His body was perfectly still, fist still held in the follow-through of the punch he had delivered. Time seemed to hang up for a moment.

Turning his head towards Nishki, Kalamity opened his mouth to speak. His voice was echoing, raspy, occasional metallic screeches or tinny reverb noises marking his words.

"Chujo..." Kalamity paused, the hideous half-machine eye in the artificial socket fixing him with it's red-pupil'd stare. "The match has been decided...I am the winner. I have used a sure-kill technique from which there is no escape, so powerful it will kill even a pirate emperor in one blow."

There was a pause, a moment when it seemed the atmosphere on the ship seemed to have frozen over entirely. An unnatural, deathly silence replaced the wild sounds of chaos that had marked the rest of the fight. A moment later, Vince's real arm began to shake violently. It slowly rose through the air, twitching and sparking, dripping with a crimson fluid that did not resemble his poison. Soon his hand was held in the air, flat, palm out towards Nishki.

"No such...technique..." All four of Kalamity's black artificial arms fell from his body, landing on the deck with a wet, sickly-sounding splash.

"...is possible."

Punchline delivered, Rear Admiral "Toxic" Vince Kalamity fell forward, crashing loudly against the deck.

The lynx was not done with its rage, it's eyes now set on any other living thing on deck, stopping when it faced Nishki. It wanted to go on...
Its legs were shaking when it took one step towards him, then a second... Not enough strengh was left for jumping...
Its whole body trembled when inside it, something woke up, only strong enough to whisper "no".
That word was enough to bring it the fatigue and the pain its human side had put up with.
There was blood dripping from its fangs, some of it was its own...
With a whimper, it finally fell to the side and lost conciousness.
Its body, lacking the energy to keep up with the changed form, transformed back to its original form.