Round One, Bracket B: Kirakage vs. Bang, whoosh, slice, death

Nikolai stood, judging his options, as the man who looked as if he was in a giant hamster ball ran swiftly around him. The clan warrior knew he wouldnt be fast enough to dodge the attack, so the decision was to either attack, and match speed with firepower, or to take the hit, and hope that the other man didnt have a weapon that could penetrate the armour.

While he debated this, he flicked on his enhanced imaging to see that a second man, who seemed to just stand there, was where the first had started from.

Deciding on a course of action, he judged the distance and the speed accordingly, and fired a pair of his short range missiles; one directed at where Kasei was to be in about two seconds, and one at where the man would be in about four seconds.

The missiles streaked off of thier blue-white contrails, looking beautiful as they closed the 50 yards between Nikolai and the hamster-ball-warrior, while Nikolai kneeled down as best he could and ignited his jumpjets, propelling him at near mach speeds towards his target.

His jumpjets were designed to fight gravity to allow the battle suit and its pilot to jump for a decent distance to cover ground more quickly. In Nikolai's predicament, he used the force instead to propell him at near mach speeds toward his target with a small loss in manouverability. They also left behind a two foot wide sheet of one inch thick ice that the hamster-ball might slip on and slide right into the Freeborn, Maddison's, waiting blades.

If all went well, the explosions should bracket Kasei about half a second before the Elemental Warrior would impact.

Out of Character:

The missiles are travelling near mach, with nikolai a half-second behind them.

Out of Character:

I am formally withdrawing from this tournament, the only reason I have to do this is because my real life, school and work are getting in the way and those come first. Gordie your attempt to insult Kasei was half-assed and inaccurate, his aura is form fitting to his body like a second skin as I said so this "Hamster in a ball" thing is very wrong.

Out of Character:

Ah'mma postin' anywho.

The next thing I knew, a familiar wave of nausea passed through me. I collapsed to my knees and started heaving. My hands felt cool, but they were touching something hard and smooth. I strained to open my eyes, only to see that I was now back at the building that had teleported me to that frozen wasteland in the first place. The polished, amber-colored marble floor stretched in a circle that was roughly twenty feet in diameter. Two stone pillars held up a domed roof, while ample sunlight streamed in through the giant glass windows.

"Um, excuse me, Ms. Freebird..."

The voice was deep and assertive. I slowly rose to my feet, several feet away from one of the guys running this tournament--or maybe one of his interns. With the way these people dressed, you could never tell.

"There seems to have been some mistake with your match up."

The man, who was maybe in his late forties, with a clean crop of graying hair and a five o'clock shadow, searched my eyes, waiting for some sort of reply. I was too busy trying to regain my breath and wiping saliva from my lips to give it to him.

"It appears that, ah, you were given the wrong opponents. See, you were supposed to be fighting... um..." He looked down at the small stack of parchments in his hands and flipped through a couple of pages. "Elijah Morendale and Nadia D'Aroth."

"So, what am I supposed to do about this round," I weakly asked him.

The man shrugged his broad shoulders. "Elijah and Nadia already left, so you don't really have anyone to fight now. We're going to discuss the fates of you and Nikolai in a while."

"Then just open that portal and send us back to the battle we were about to win anyways!"

He looked at his feet and cleared his throat. "We, ah, can't do that."

"Well, go fuckin' figure. Assholes can't get anything right!"

I stormed off in a huff. Of course, since my system never agrees with teleportation magic, I took about three steps before I had to lean against the arch of the doorway. The sandwich I scarfed down before the battle decided to hit the eject button.

Luckily for the expensive-looking floor, I was able to get the door open in time.

Nikolai stood completely silent, having also been wrenched from the battlefield and heard the same explanation as to why they were pulled from the battlefield. "You cant put us back on the battelfield now," The Large un-augmented warrior seethed aggressively through clenched teeth. "or I may personally decide to take my displeasure out on you." The Clan warrior grabbed the monk's collar, and lifted him about 2 feet off the ground. If Nikolai's hurculean physique wasnt enough, the Jade circuitry running through his facial tattoo should have put the monk into a terrified panic. "Do I make myself clear, freebirth!" The warrior practically shouted at the poor monk, who hanging there by the collar of his robes.

"Th-th-the f-f-fact i-is, Mr. Redmond..." The monk began to stammer, before being shouted at again by Nikolai.

"NIKOLAI, OR POINT COMMANDER." The spit practically flew from the point commander's mouth and started dripping down the poor monk's face as the warrior continued to shout, "YOU WILL ADDRESS ME BY MY RANK, NOT MY BLOODNAME! THIS IS CLEAR, QUIAFF!" With a thud, the frail monk was dropped from his perch on Nikolai's hands and landed in a pile on the floor. Without missing a beat, Nikolai turned from the monk toward the door just as his battle partner launched her lunch halfway across the hallway. 'How weak does one have to be to launch thier lunch after a jump.' Without flinching at the sight, he spoke over his shoulder as he strode towards and out the monk's office door. "Decide quickly, and decide well, for you will need both your wits and your luck soon enough." With that he strode out the door, over top of Maddison's Lunch.

Thank you for participating! Alias will judge this battle shortly. Please do not contact your judge regarding the judgment until after it has been posted.

Greetings, I have been chosen as the judge for this match. Since this match defaulted, I lumped my notes together for each person at the start of each team's judgment rather than separating them into their corresponding sections. It is my hope that my scores and comments are both fair and insightful, respectively, and if there are any questions you can PM me directly.


Kirakage


KaseiYamanako:

You referred to the arena as 'this area' many, many times, and indeed used 'this' throughout your posts. This is more applicable when you're speaking of one specific option out of several possibilities, but in this case, the reader is unaware of the other possible arenas. I would recommend changing most if not all of your 'this's to 'the.' You stuff entirely too much into your sentences, and a lot of it is unnecessary clarification. It's also done in a very wordy way, and makes your post long-winded. I would strongly recommend breaking your sentences up into complete thoughts, rather than adding information on the fly. This will also help you determine which 'thoughts' are more necessary to the post, and which aren't.

You give a good image of the area around you most of the time, but often lapse into too much information, and the most visual parts get buried under excess lines. You mention your 'Nightmare' entirely too casually to give it any real sense of evil or danger, and you also mention some 'Twilight' energy, but never explain exactly what it is or how it works. You also have a tenancy to overuse 'was,' which can actually be dropped in most cases since it isn't actually the verb.

For such a 'mastermind,' Kasei is exceptionally long-winded in his explanation of what his partner should do, and he also mentioned several things one would assume their partner knew by this point. You sometimes use very few commas, even when they are needed. The general rule is to place a comma anywhere you would naturally pause while speaking what you've written, and around interjections like ', of course, '. While your description of opening a portal to the Twilight realm helped explain the source of that energy, you became exceptionally wordy and exact in describing exactly how this was accomplished.

There were entirely too many actions in your second post, and you didn't even give your opponents a chance to see you. You throw the word Twilight around so many times in the end of your second post it loses all meaning, and draws more attention to the repetition of the word than what you're trying to say. Same thing with the word 'two,' actually. At the very end of your last post you ask a direct question to the reader, and while the intended effect of suspense was obvious, it was really pretty cheesy and seemingly out of place for the writing style you had used up until then.


Xero Hexus:

Your introduction is interesting, and you introduce your character's name appropriately. Though you include a fair bit of Xero's history, you jump from one thing to the next so quickly I hardly even get an effective overview. You describe the transformation of your eyes, and the aura, but really don't describe Xero physically much at all, not even what he's wearing. You also hardly describe the arena at all. Almost the entirety of your first post is narration. You made a number of typos in your second post, and a few in your first as well. Your description of the effects of your 'shadows' got rather lengthy, though the rest of your post kept a solid pace. Your reuse your character's name a lot, and that draws more attention to the name than what's happening in your post. Using some 'synonymous phrases,' like 'the paladin,' would help this.

Story: 16.75/30

Storytelling: 2.75/5

Setting: 6/10

Pacing: 8/15

Character: 22.75/35

Dialogue: 7.25/10

Action: 9/15

Persona: 6.5/10

Writing Style: 20.25/30

Technique: 6.5/10

Mechanics: 7/10

Clarity: 6.75/10


Wildcard: 1.25


Total: 61/100


Due to not meeting the posting requirements, neither of you are eligible for any rewards.



Bang, Whoosh, Slice, Death


BlackAndBlueEyes:

Your choice of onomatopoeias to create a sense of sound in your intro was originally very unique, but your sounds seemed more like footsteps in leaves and dry underbrush than hydraulics. You give a pretty good image of the world around you, but never describe your character, or your partner at any real length. I have to say I enjoy the informal and amusing nature of your prose, and first person perspective is well suited to it. Your thoughts on your initial fight with your partner were also pretty humorous. You do slip into second person once or twice, though, with your little asides starting with 'you.' You also start a number of sentences with 'but.' Your mention of frozen and cracked lips brought more of a sense of the cold of the arena. Your dialogue is pretty appropriate, and quite funny during her exchanges with Nickolai. Just a little note, 'like a human in appearance' can be summed up with the word 'humanoid.' I got a very clear picture of the initial fight scene through your character's eyes. Your decision to have your final post take place back where the tournament began was a rather interesting twist. The dialogue between you and the 'Cabal member' was fairly humorous, and emphasized the frustration of the situation.


Gordie:

You pick the pace right up in your intro and touch on the neccessary back story later, improving the overall flow of the thread. You give a fair bit of description to the technical workings of your suit, but never much to the actual look of it. You reused the word fence at least seven times in fewer consecutive sentences, drawing more attention to the word itself than what you were saying. You should have explained the 'clan lingo' in character, rather than adding an ooc note. Assuming a reader had only what you wrote in character to go on, they would be mostly lost. You mention the name of your opponent, Kasei, even though your character would have no way of knowing this. It is not clear exactly why 'jumpjets,' which I assume are powered by explosive fuel, would leave behind ice. If the melted snow could freeze that quickly, your partner would be dead. Though it assisted the pacing, simply saying that he 'had also been wrenched from the battlefield,' and 'heard the same explanation,' seemed just a little cheap, and didn't give me a good idea of your character's thoughts on the matter outside of his anger. His explosive reaction to the monk's mention of his name was quite hilarious.

Story: 20.5/30

Storytelling: 3.5/5

Setting: 7/10

Pacing: 9/15

Character: 24.5/35

Dialogue: 8/10

Action: 9.5/15

Persona: 7/10

Writing Style: 23.5/30

Technique: 7/10

Mechanics: 8.5/10

Clarity: 8/10


Wildcard: 1.5


Total: 70/100


BlackAndBlueEyes receives...

950 EXP and 300 GP!

Gordie receives...

400 EXP and 300 GP!

Bang, Whoosh, Slice, Death wins by default!

Exp and GP added!