Headhunting Zahra (Closed Recruitment Thread, Zahra/Shizuka)

[Shizuka Sanamizu ✮]

Shizuka watched as Zahra retreated into the bush closest to her. She smiled. The tactic wasn't a bad one. Zahra knew that Shizuka couldn't sense much so long as she was hidden, and it made it difficult to sense any charges in Reiatsu. Knowing this and what the Fullbringer had gathered from experience, her plan was likely to catch Shizuka off-guard. If she had to wager a guess, Zahra was going to charge up some sort of an ability and try to use that. What was it that Beast-Clansmen used? Yaseishin? Well, she had to be fair. It wasn't necessarily going to be Yaseishin. But the blonde's various analysis skills and experience in the field over quite a few years exposed her to people who abused her lack of Energy Sensory. Still, she gave the jackal some props. It was very smart.

An option existed for Shizuka to simply follow Zahra into the bushes and try to track her down. She would be able to hunt for footprints and try to locate the fur-covered creature that way. Shizuka could also just remain still and wait, but she didn't like playing the waiting game. Zahra wouldn't, either. The only waiting game Zahra was playing was waiting for Shizuka's Ken to deactivate. That was fair. The disadvantage to her, though, was that Shizuka was able to reactivate it quite easily since she had grown to master the technique. If she wanted to use an attack for a split moment and go right back into the protective aura, she could. But she didn't want to. That was going to be draining in more ways than one.

Plus, she didn't want to give Zahra the wrong impression. On techniques, alone, Shizuka likely won over the jackal. She had a few things that would be wonderful counters to Zahra's attacks. But what Shizuka wanted was for Zahra to show off her powers. It gave them both a chance to learn about each other and study what their respective races could do. Book knowledge could only take the Fullbringer so far without actually being able to see what happened on her own. The howl that Zahra used was new enough, but Ken deflects practically everything so it was mostly used as a defense. She was trying to study the Beast-Clansman, not discourage her.

So, as if to just keep the fight going, she tilted her head and deactivated her Ken. Zahra got a taste of it once and would probably try to do something to counter it, though that may be difficult. Or perhaps not! The blonde was excited to see. Though it was highly anti-climactic, all Shizuka did was stand there. She was waiting to defend. That was all she wanted to do. This wasn't going to be a fight, per se, but more of a display. She wanted Zahra to come up with a way to sneak by and grab the gold ball. Perhaps this would make a good teachable moment for the two of them.

[Zahra]

Zahra was tensing, watching her knives heat up and trying to figure out how she could hurt the woman. The first time she had tried to attack her, she had the weird barrier thing pop up. She didn't know how many times she could bring it up or how much it would cost her to do it, but she had to assume that she could do it whenever she felt like it. It brought up a few challenges that she now had to face. If that barrier could block all attacks, how was Zahra even going to hurt her? But, then again, hurting the actual woman wasn't the point of this little 'trial' that Shizuka had brought before her.

The entire point was to try to get the gold orb away from her. So, really, all she needed to do was injure her hands to the point that she couldn't grasp it anymore. But, she was still powerful. Hitting her hands would be rather difficult, but there was no way that Zahra was just going to give up on her. She looked down and the knives started to glow orange. She could wait longer, but she didn't want to wait much longer than this. She was being nice enough to actually wait for an attack from her. It was then that she remembered something that could actually help her in this situation.

She took a deep breath and focused on the heat in her hands, that was passing off to her knives. She tried to focus that to her body, trying to will her body to actually burn hotter than was normal. It took a minute, but she did start to feel it. Glancing back down at her knives, they started to quickly glow a bright white color. This would be as good a time as any, since she was going to give it her all to get that nice, shiny golden orb. Staring at her, she threw the first knife at her back, then aiming the next knife to hit the tree that she is standing next to, right around her eye level.

Hoping that at least one of those knives would hit home, if the knife actually hit the tree, Shizuka would have to react to an explosion. Once the knife made contact with the tree, it would explode, with a radius of 30 feet. This explosion, if she didn't move, would be right at her eye level. She hoped that it would explode, making her move out of the way, that would give her the opening she needed to grab the orb. So, after throwing both knives, she would quickly climb up the nearest tree and would jump down towards her, grabbing two more knives and tensing her muscles, her knives growing a slight orange color. She would aim the knives at the woman's hands as she falls, trying to get her to give it up.

OOC: 285/810, -75 for Feel the Burn (1/3 posts), 2/6 Yaseishin, 2 posts of tensing

[Shizuka Sanamizu ✮]

Zahra was doing pretty well for herself. She was being quiet and calculating her every move. Shizuka had to admire it. That was something not many people did. And she was taking advantage of the Fullbringer's inability to sense energy properly the way some others could. But Shizuka had been at this for years. She'd won fights, lost fights, gotten horrendously beaten up, and had even beaten up others. She knew what was going on when her opponent was hiding. If they figured out Shizuka's handicap, they all tried the same thing. They would attack her from behind in hopes Shizuka would never notice.

And that's what Zahra did. The first knife wasn't surprising, so Shizuka jumped out of the way of that one and had turned around to say something sarcastic. Instead of speaking, however, her eyes widened as she saw the second knife. She had gotten a bit cocky and didn't act quite as paranoid as she usually did when it came to these things because this was a test. That mentality needed to change. The Fullbringer squeaked for a second out of shock and used Bringer Light to avoid the explosion that followed the knife hitting the tree beside her. She ended up running away from that danger and Zahra's follow-up attack, stopping herself fifty feet above Zahra on Air Ground.

Shizuka checked her pockets and sighed with relief when she still felt the gold ball, but also now knew not to stand idly by while Zahra attacked her. Simple dodging wasn't going to work anymore if she was going to try attacks like this. It only took one time for Shizuka to learn what not to do, so watching her own back was a must. But here came the real question. Should she also attack? Was it worth it? She didn't want to scare Zahra away, but she also didn't want to come off as a pushover. She pondered for a moment. Maybe it was worth it to have a little bit of fun, too.

Zahra would probably feel it, but Shizuka's Reiatsu flexed as she spread her Minefield across the ground. She then jumped down, keeping her eye on her furry opponent. Shizuka essentially surrounded herself with a limited radius of protection if Zahra chose to step down, and even if she felt the initial flex, she wouldn't feel any other Reiatsu pulses until Shizuka chose to detonate an area. Her only hope right now was that Zahra didn't immediately recognize what technique the Fullbringer had used. But she might. At least for now, Shizuka could see what else Zahra could do before she considered yielding.



Shizuka's Remaining Reiatsu: 4550 (-400 for Minefield, -50 for Bringer Light)

[Zahra]

This was hard. Much harder than the Beast-Clanswoman expected. She had never fought a human before, since she had assumed that none of them could see her. But, this woman proved that not only could some humans see her, but they could keep up with her and actually fight back against her. It was definitely an eye opening experience and one that Zahra would definitely remember for quite some time. She had tried her best to keep the woman on guard and off balance, like she had done so many times before, but it seemed like Shizuka would stand strong and tall against her, which made her a worthy adversary.

Zahra grinned as she watched the surprise in the woman's eyes as the second knife was coming straight for her. The surprise from that showed her that she could indeed be thrown off balance, but she doubted it would be that easy again. Before she was able to launch another attack, the woman had ran. Looking around in the hopes to find her, she happened to look up and see that she was standing on air. Wait........standing on air?! How was that even possible?! Her eyes widened slightly, but she tried to keep her face neutral. Maybe the woman had wings on her body that she had kept hidden out of sight?

It could be possible, but Shizuka had wanted to show her more than what she knew. Could humans that were able to see her do this? Or was this some special thing that only she could do? It seemed like humans like her were able to release power similar to what she could do. What she was doing had to be something slightly minor if she did have a power like hers. Zahra was intrigued and had to know more about what was going on. While she was thinking on these things, she thought she had felt something moving around. She didn't see anything but she swore she felt something happening.

Confusing as that feeling was, Shizuka landed back on the ground with her eyes on her. So, she had no element of stealth left unless she moved from her current spot. She could do that, but with her hands tensing around her knives, it would make moving around a little more difficult if she could only jump around and hoping that wherever she landed was sturdy enough to handle all her weight. So, she did the only thing that came into her mind. She threw both the knives, aiming around the woman's feet. Since she was tensing for what amounts to three posts, the white hot knives would hit the ground and both give off 30 foot explosions.

She had no idea if she would run from the explosions or put up that weird barrier thing that she had used before. Not dwelling to think too much about it first, she would tense up her right hand, and jump towards the woman. Using the explosions as cover, if the attack hit, she would first hit with the middle of her fingers, releasing one post of heat. Once that had hit, she would completely her fist, pushing out the the last post of heat into the woman. Once she had made her two hit fist, she would try her best to use her arcrobatic skill to get out of arm's reach of her. She had no idea what the woman could do and didn't want to stay too close to her in case she threw something weird at her.

OOC: Feel the Burn (2/3 posts), 3/6 Yaseishin

[Shizuka Sanamizu ✮]

Zahra was tricky, but it didn't take much for Shizuka to be able to read her opponents. She was a quick study. Zahra tensing her grip around her knives yet again caused the Fullbringer to focus more on those as she continued to watch. Them getting thrown wasn't too much of a surprise, and Shizuka was able to hazard a guess that some sort of sneak attack was going to follow just like the first time. She used Bringer Light twice. The first time was to step out of the way of the explosions and get outside of their radius, but the second step was to get closer to Zahra. She was within six and a half meters of the jackal when she used her Class 4 version of Electrocution.

The blast would be as quick as someone blinking but only do about as much damage as a taser, assuming it hit its target. This was used for the purpose of stunning Zahra and forcing her to stop attacking. Shizuka had essentially seen enough, but it was up to Zahra to avoid any further confrontation. Shizuka was ready to retaliate if need be or continue dodging, but she was surrounded by a defensive barrier of explosive Reiatsu and learned very quickly what Zahra's fighting style was like as time went on. So the Fullbringer saw a few options. She could either push the jackal to her fullest fighting extent, keep dodging, or yield and give the golden ball to her. She would have to see which one she'd do.

"You couldn't have expected for this to be easy. You've succeeded once or twice in sneaking up on me, so that's always good, but I am a very fast learner. I know your patterns. You distract and try to get a hit when your opponent is dealing with your initial move. You think you have them trapped and go in for a quick kill. That's not a bad thing."

Shizuka kept her eyes on Zahra. She was the type to observe first and learn about her opponent. This was a good opportunity for her. She had never properly entertained one of the Beast-Clan and was finally able to experience what that was like, but she also hoped she wasn't being discouraging. There was so much potential that Shizuka saw in this girl and she wanted her to be able to expand upon it. The strength in her heart could be even stronger if she was trained and motivated. It made Shizuka somewhat determined to give Zahra a home in Xcution.

"But you do need some work. I can train you. You can meet other people like you. Not everyone looks the way you do, but you can learn how to use your abilities to their fullest extent. Don't you want that?"



Shizuka's Remaining Reiatsu: 4200 (-100 for Minefield, -100 for Bringer Light x2, -150 for Class 4 Electrocution)

[Zahra]

Zahra was watching the knives hit to where she wanted them to, and then she ran in for her punch. But, two things happened that she didn't take into account. She didn't expect the woman to not be there, since she had never fought against a step technique before. Second, she wasn't expecting the woman to appear right in front of her. She was still in momentum forward, to throw her special punch, not expecting her. When she did appear, her punch was still moving forward and depending on where she appeared, she might get hit by the punch. But, when she reached towards her, Zahra didn't have the traction to move.

The electricity hit her hard. She growled low before she collapsed on the ground. What the heck was that? She had never been hit with electricity like that before, and the shock of it made her stop and think about her situation. The woman was obviously stronger than her. But, Zahra had put up a good fight against her. She was able to surprise her twice, but now, it seemed that the woman already knew her tactics. She couldn't keep fighting like that against her, but it was really the only way she had fought against people before. It seemed like she needed to try to change up what she was used to, but knew that it wouldn't be against her.

Her power was strong, but slightly limited. She could throw explosions, for the most part, but could only fight full out for a short time before she tired, not even considering that her biggest attack made her a sitting duck for three posts. She knew that the woman had won, but the fact that she had caught her off guard at least once made her feel better. She slowly stood up, patting herself off to clean the dirt off her from the fall and the fight. Looking towards the woman, she started to stretch slightly. She was powerful, but definitely more experienced fighting against different things that she was.

Shizuka then spoke to her, saying how she quickly learns patterns and that the offer for her to train Zahra was still open. Zahra didn't really have to think about it that hard. She could learn new techniques from this woman, maybe even discover techniques on her own that she might not even know she had at her disposal. She honestly didn't see a down side to the offer that she was giving her. She would be an idiot to say no. "I want to be strong like you. Zahra can be strong if you train her. Zahra would like to be trained by you. I accept your offer." She stands up straight, walking a little bit closer to the woman, holding her hand out to see if she would still get the glittery golden ball.

[Deleted]

93 Paragraphs means 460 TP.