Scene #7566: Adult Male Sword Owners Act Like Children

Owner	Pose
Muramasa	Dirt crunches underneath his armored tabi, an uncomfortable breeze blowing through what could be the Desert Quarry Set for any TV Show under the sun -- a genuine wasteland where, no matter how crazy the stunts got, no one uninvolved would get hurt. One of many nameless locations in the Overflow, Muramasa plants himself on the ground, a reed stuck out of the corner of his lips as he idly chewed on it, waiting here for Okada Izou, the manslayer. He'd tried sending one of those 'text' thingies that Gawain had instructed him on how to do, since Lilian had asked him to do so when he was going to fight ... at least, he was fairly sure he'd done it correctly. Whether or not she receives it in time is another question entirely. The moon shines overhead, bright and full, like a big white eye gazing downwards. Muramasa meets it and recollects ... it makes his head hurt. It's a nice night tonight, isn't it, Shirou? Yeah! The moon is nice and full. "Though, the porch would be a much nicer seat than this rock, right?" The Shroud of Martin is pulled taught against his arm, his haori dangling by his shoulder. "Eh ..." Truthfully, having the time to actually sit here and think about it was taking the fire to fight out of his belly. He still wasn't sure why, but just hearing that other guy talk annoyed him, in a very different way than Archer did. He got the feeling that Izou had felt the same way. It was only natural that as men they'd decide to butt heads to sort their issues out, but ... "It's kind of a drag if he gets lost ..." he sighs.
Okada Izou	Long ago, before Shirou Emiya, after Sengo Muramasa, there was a bloody, awful war. It was a war that destroyed the ideals in which Muramasa lived, a war that obliterated the notions of the samurai, of the chivalrous, of the righteous nobility. That war tore a hole in Japan and left it bloody and raw to be patched up by the Imperialist government and made into a democracy as part of the new world order. The Ghost of Tosa was on the front of that war. His blade sliced into the throat of Japan, and though it was not he who dealt the crippling blow, though it was not he who finished the nation, his blade prepared the way for the draining of the corpse. It is through nicks and slices that a country falls. Death by a thousand cuts. But men die much, much faster. The Manslayer does not approach Muramasa as an honorable duelist. He does not walk through the reeds, hakama flowing around him under the moonlight. No samurai movie, this, no romanticized fiction of a dead age, no attempt to capture an honor that the Shogunate only barely possessed at its height. This is a man who lived through a civil war. He appears quite literally out of nowhere amidst the blowing reeds. There is no hint to his existence beforehand. No telltale whisper of cloth against reed. No shadow cast by pale sky. No disruption of the stars. For just an instant, Muramasa sees him. He does indeed resemble nothing so much as a scruffy dog, with unkempt black hair, an orange scarf like a collar, and a black hakama. At his side is a wakizashi, as befits a samurai. In his hand is an empty sheathe. Muramasa gets the full force of a terrible, horrible killing intent. Were Muramasa an ordinary man, he wouldn't even be able to move. He might not even be able to breathe. But the instant it becomes apparent to the Manslayer that Muramasa is indeed someone worth fighting, the pressure disappears. And so does Izou. This time it isn't invisibility. It's raw, god-like speed. One minute he's there, and the next, the reeds flatten in his wake, and the ground is torn up by his passing, and after-images of the Ghost of Tosa flow behind him as he moves directly behind the blacksmith. The sheathe comes up for the neck.
Muramasa	Knowing that his opponent was an Assassin class Servant, his expectations had been tempered by encounters he'd had in both of his lives with a man who called himself Sasaki Kojiro, someone who very well could have been a Saber all on his own. Which is to say that while he knew he was fighting an Assassin, he'd on some level expected him to if not announce himself, attack him in a conventional manner. This pressure. This is, doubtlessly, a malevolent intent, the manifestation of his intention to murder me staining the air. He hadn't felt such a spine-chilling gaze since the battles in Shimousa. So this was a Manslayer? If 'Shirou Emiya' had been the one standing here in his place, he'd have been killed for sure. Even if Izou were not using his blade, it would have been that much of a difference, between a human being and something that specialized in killing human beings. "Trace on!" Raising his arm, it was an instinctual feeling, as Assassin begins to vanish; it was a sensation similar to the rush of a bullet running towards your head. You can feel the supersonic wave before it splatters your brains. The sheathe is intercepted by his arm and as a result, his bones begin to crack. Magecraft allows him to pour energy into those fractures as they appear, reinforcing the injury in the same instance it is made with a hiss of pain. Pushing the soles of his tabi against the rock, Muramasa shoves the held sheathe back and leaps, striking Izou's face with his opposing foot to kick off of him and gain distance to settle back onto the ground. " ... whew." If I had been attacked by a blade instead, that could have been bad. But, to strike me with only his empty sheathe -- how much is he underestimating me? Is that bastard seriously telling me he thinks he can defeat me in a sword duel without a sword? Golden hued pools narrow into offended slits, as Muramasa holds his hand out and magical energy begins to crackle between his fingers. Analyzing the sheathe had shown that it was the sheathe to a common blade without renown, but he was fine with that. It was easy enough for him to re-create, even if it wasn't a sword necessarily. Grasping an identical scabbard in hand, Muramasa points at Izou accusingly, "Hey, you..!" It was a wordless gesture that said, 'I won't take that crap lying down!'. One or the other he felt he could perhaps swallow, between his honorless assault and his insulting display, but together it was too harmful to his sensibilities. Even he had his limits. Using Reinforcement on himself to accelerate to a speed that could compete with the Assassin, Muramasa launches a bullet-paced, three-point strike with the scabbard's tip in an attempt to battery Izou's chest.
Okada Izou	Hah. So he's not just a blacksmith. The three-pronged strike narrowly misses its mark - and only because, at the very last possible second, Izou parries sheathe-tip with sheathe-tip, dulling the force of the impact and throwing the strike off dead-center. It's enough to send him skidding backwards. Muramasa's stronger than expected. There's probably a bruise under that hakama, at least. Maybe more. Hair hides the Manslayer's eyes. But it doesn't hide the grin. The horrible, predatory grin. This man, though he might be goofy as hell, though he might come off as a complete moron - and, indeed, is self-admitted 'not too smart' - is still one of the Four Great Manslayers. That grin is the last thing many men saw in the chaos of the Bakumatsu. "Thanks." "And here I was expecting this to be an easy kill." Beneath his hair, his yellow eye almost seems to glow. His bloodthirsty grin widens. He charges. It's a dead-on charge. There's nothing interesting about it, no flickering dart, no dodge, no speedy jerk to the side. The sheathe is hanging at his side, pointed down towards the ground in both hands- -and then it comes up. It is an exact mirror of Muramasa's move. No, not an exact mirror - a mirror executed by a true genius. A mirror improved on by a true genius. Because, at the instant of the triple impact, his hand comes around to smash the bottom of the hilt and send the sheathe thrusting directly into Muramasa's throat. It is fully intended not to choke him or knock the wind out of him but to utterly break his neck at speeds that humans should not be able to match. Precisely-targetted. Precisely-targetted to compensate for the blunt nature of the sheathe. A katana he could shove up into the jaw, or the chest, or the shoulder. He's improvising on the fly with Muramasa's own skills. Swift and powerful as a falcon.
Muramasa	"!!!" That kind of malicious sneer put him on edge. And just a moment later, that wariness is validated, as the three-point lunge is recreated in front of his eyes, only ... no, that's not quite it. He grasped the fundamental nature of the strike and altered it into a killing blow. To do this, he had to adjust not only the trajectory, but account for everything that would change along with it, as well as supply enough force to break the bones in my neck. Altering his grip on his own scabbard, Muramasa swings up to push the strikes away at the last second, and, very nearly he did not make it. Gashes tear themselves along his face and neck as his scabbard shatters in his hands, forcing the blacksmith back with a loud bang, the projection fading away into motes of ambient prana. <J-IC-Scene> Okada Izou says, "Friendly tip, Blacksmith. Assuming you can still breathe. Draw a sword or you're gonna die." <J-IC-Scene> Okada Izou says, "I'm not really the kinda guy to talk during a fight, but I figure, what the hell. If you're trying to match me with that sheathe you'll regret it." <J-IC-Scene> Muramasa says, "Is that what you think? It goes without saying that you can certainly kill me with that scabbard in your hand, but ..." <J-IC-Scene> Muramasa says, "Even I have my own pride. Having to use a sword against someone using nothing but their own empty sheathe, at that point I'd rather just give up and concede the fight." <J-IC-Scene> Okada Izou says, "Kahahaha. If you say so!" What he said wasn't un-true, but as well .. he had the distinct impression that any sword technique he used here would just make Assassin stronger. If he had been able to turn such a simple thrusting attack into a killing blow, just by looking at it ... He felt a cringe of disgust. Rather than someone who practiced hard every day and accrued talent to draw out the potential of their sword, and in themselves, he realized he was looking at what people could call a "genius". Or in other words, someone with such massive innate talent that working hard for himself was pointless. All he had to do was look at someone who had drawn out all of their potential and he immediately understood how they did it. Even if he discarded his own pride and drew his sword, unless he defeated Assassin in a single blow, Assassin would simply be that much stronger. Holding both hands out to the side, he projected two more scabbards, holding them perpendicular to the ground. And, as he steps forward, he suddenly slams one of them into the ground so hard that it kicks up an obfsucating cloud of dust! If he can't see me do it, then he can't copy me! Holding the other at a particular angle and trusting the instinct of the swordsman he was drawing on the technique of, Muramasa swings the second scabbard, and .. The air parts as a vaccum forms, and a gust of wind sharper than most swords aims to bite into Assassin from several paces away.
Okada Izou	Muramasa's instincts are absolutely correct. The longer it goes, the stronger Assassin becomes. The more Muramasa shows him, the more the Manslayer can take. That empty sheathe waits to devour everything Muramasa can give him and then some. That empty sheathe waits to turn attacks meant for saving lives into means to end them without peer. That's the only thing Okada Izou ever cultivated. The only thing he ever learned, he ever worked hard to learn. That swordsmanship is nothing but instinct, self-taught, letting genius guide his hand. That speed and stealth is nothing but necessity, required to leap into a government building, cut down a politician and his bodyguards, and escape into the streets of Kyoto, into the forests of Shimousa, into the ocean of Tokyo Bay. But how to kill a man? How to target the parts that make men die? How to precisely turn any technique, no matter how benign, into a killing tool? Okada Izou worked hard for that. Two scabbards. One to the ground to kick up dust. The other... Ah. The swing parts the air. A blade of death made of nothing. A mythical technique from a mythical time, an era before the blood-soaked Bakumatsu, when heroes walked the land. Real heroes. Not men like Okada Izou. Myths shrouded in shadows. Most men would probably jump backwards. Izou does not. Izou charges. He dives directly into the blade. He does not deflect it. He does not dodge it. Deflecting it would take precious direction from his strike. Dodging it would take precious momentum. A sheathe's killing tools are momentum and direction. Compromise on either, and the blow won't land well enough. So Izou dives directly into the blade fearlessly, tilting his head to the side. The blade of air nicks across his throat as his speed blows through the cloud. And then he hits the ground in a crouch, one hand in front of the sheathe's end, the weapon itself pulled back. He skids without losing momentum. He leaps upwards for Muramasa's jaw, thrusting the sheathe upwards. Someone spent their whole life perfecting that stab. It was a signature of the Shinsengumi, a strike meant to pin people down and fill a street with blades, so that even if musketeers took out or two, the line would still arrive. Charge, advance. Charge, advance. And here's Izou, using it to try and bash Muramasa's jaw like a boxer and shake his brain into stupor.
Muramasa	Muramasa's head rattles -- and although his body was made of flesh and blood, he was still a Servant. If he weren't .. no, even so, if he hadn't of reinforced his whole self before, his head would have burst like a watermelon. It's a miracle he does not bite his own tongue off as he recoils, his head springing back so far as it cranes that it might even appear that his neck had snapped. But, not quite. Fractures appear all over his jawbone, he understands this as pain radiates out. He fills the injury and reinforces it, preventing it from causing immediate problems, even as the reinforcement performed on most of the rest of his body fails. As long as he protected his vitals and ensured the strengthening magecraft remained active on them he wouldn't be in any mortal danger. But it was hard to rationalize any of this in his head as he reels, even if he understood in that brief moment of lucidity among the haze of a rattled skull, that if he didn't get his act together Izou would close in for a finishing attack. He was on the back-foot, and Assassin had the momentum. If he didn't strike a critical blow of his own now, he may as well forfeit, as he would only continue to lose steam. Blearily, he thought to himself, that Assassin's strength came from stealing the battle techniques of others ... he hadn't reacted the way Muramasa had hoped he would to the windblade, but, that he had not attacked with his own seemed to suppliment the thought that he had. But on that same line of thought, he was losing because he was still trying to contest Izou in scabbardship while severely limiting his own capabilities, while he had the impression that Izou was barely being hampered at all by the fact he wasn't using a real sword. "Hah..." He had one idea to turn this around. But, if it didn't work, then he'd be defeated in the next moment. In order to utilize magecraft, one needed a 'trigger', a kind of mental image to help the caster access the mindset necessary to utilize mystery. Inside of the eye of his mind, the 'gun' was 'loaded' countless times ... And in reality, this was actuated as he holds his hand out, the previous two sheathes having been dropped to the ground during the exchange. "Now..!" Like a machinegun, a stream of Izou's scabbards fire at their owner like a bombardment of artillery.
Okada Izou	"Hey, hey!" Izou's eyes light up, "That's fucking absurd!" The change in expression is almost comical. He goes from a murderous gaze to just pointing at Muramasa with a bewildered stare, watching the other man conjure scabbards out of thin air. "Seriously! What the hell is that?! Doesn't anybody in the Multiverse just fight like a normal person?!" And then the storm. "Woah, woah, woah!" Izou's yelp is, indeed, much like a puppy barking loudly as a spray bottle comes down on it. He barrels backwards, his feet barely touching the grass. If Muramasa is paying attention he can see Izou literally running along the reeds, his feet never touching the ground or slowing as he tries to evade the sheathes. It is, again, hilarious. He dips backwards, wheeling his arms around as a storm narrowly passes him by. One of the sheathes comes perilously close to shattering his nose. He can feel it graze past him, knocking him sideways. His hand comes down to catch himself on another reed and flatten himself to try and evade the storm, but the reeds are being flattened out, so his hand misses its mark and hits the ground, and that gives Muramasa's sheathes another opening. On all fours, Izou scrambles forward, loudly shouting something incoherent but probably along the lines of 'THIS IS BULLSHIT!' It's hard to tell over the storm. But nothing's caught him directly. It's a death by a thousand cuts, one Izou's frantically trying to both escape and come up with a means to counter. His own scabbard's still clutched in his hand as more of them scrape along the side of his face. Bruises are building up. "Tch!" "FUCK IT!" He leaps. His feet land on one of the scabbards. "YOU'RE STILL MOCKING ME! I DON'T..." He darts to another scabbard. He's using Muramasa's own technique to move him closer, although it is very probable he's doing it out of sheer bloody-minded stubbornness. "LET ANYONE!" Another. And another. He's running along the scabbards. In the hands of a Rider descended from the Minamoto clan, this might be a lethal attack on its own. But for Izou this is just a means to an end. He closes. He closes fast, from above. His sheathe slides back into his belt as he hits the ground running. His hand hovers above it. Iaijutsu without a sword. What's the point of that? The point of it is that when he gets right up in Muramasa's face, his hand moves like he's drawing a sword at ridiculous speed, but instead of a blade, or a sheathe, it's just a godspeed throat-smash sideways, as if Izou had drawn the weapon and gone to pound the hilt into Muramasa's throat in the process. The follow-through could send Muramasa spiralling on sheer impact alone. "LAUGH AT ME!"
Muramasa	The bombardment is steady and precise as Muramasa's hand and eyes guide the shots, steadily chasing Izou down with an unending volley that, much like Izou's earlier blows to his neck and head, would have blown a normal human apart just the same as if they'd been struck down by military grade firepower. It was pretty clearly far and away getting out of hand, but, he felt that this was a marked improvement in his performance over the rest of the preceedings. But steadily he knew he was chewing through his meager reserves of Od, as without a Master to supply him with their magical energy, he was relying purely on what this physical body could generate, which wasn't a terribly large amount. "--!!" Daringly, Izou manages to break through his Sword Barrel Gatling. His stance, a battoujutsu he realizes, would seem worthless without a sword to draw, but ... Given everything thus far, he had to trust his gut instinct that somehow, Assassin could and would kill him with that strike if given the opportunity, and so Muramasa whips his haori from his shoulder and spreads it in front of him as the strike accelerates, reinforcing the cloth as much as he could. Even a poster could become as hard and strong as a steel plate like this, which says leagues for how deadly Okada Izou's strike is that it manages to break through the hasty reinforcement and strike Muramasa dead on, sending him crashing back into a rock formation, tabi skidding across the dirt. "Guah..!" It was a decisive attack that declared victory. The pain in his neck was vicious, but blunted enough from his defense that he remained conscious and able. Fighting further was pointless, however, as he knew that he'd more or less lost too much ground to recover.