Scene #6068: If You Can Dodge A Scythe You Can Dodge A Ball

Owner	Pose
Seifer Almasy	This is basically assisted suicide. Oh, sure. It's theoretically going to be nonlethal, but isn't everything theoretically nonlethal? Any battle could be your last, and if you don't treat training like a fight, you only learn how to train. That's the motto Seifer Almasy's lived by for twenty years. Even back at the Garden, Seifer trained bare-blades, and a single misstep could've killed him or his rival. The fact that neither of them died is a testament to prodigious skill. The fact that both of them walked away with scars on their face is a testament to how close they came to death despite it. And now Seifer's testing that prodigious skill against something that is almost assuredly certain death. Worse, he's not doing it to fight, not doing it to /battle/ Priscilla. There's something he wants out of this, something specific, not a generic test of his strength, and it's something that necessitates allowing Priscilla to have the deck as stacked as possible in her advantage, necessitates allowing Priscilla to have every attack, and is effectively putting out his neck and waiting for the executioner to chop it off. He even had to warn Caster not to be upset at Priscilla if he got hurt, knowing full well that he asked for this, it's his responsibility, and if anybody should get yelled at it should be him. Behind him is the translucent spectre of Gilgamesh. Greg is clad in a tattered red cloak pulled over his chest, with yellow-and-purple puffy polka-dot pants. Three grey hands emerge from one side, while three...cardboard cut-out arms?...stick up from his back on the other side. White eyes stare out of a red-cowled face, a tuft of white hair sits atop black horns, and grey skin covers what isn't covered by clothing. Gilgamesh has never been quite this clear before, but then, he hasn't been un-Junctioned before. Normally, he dwells inside Seifer's head, lending power. Now, he's free-floating, more defined than ever, with a horde of weapons rattling on his back, a cup of spectral coffee in one hand, a donut in another, and a box of donuts in the third. It's probably best not to ask where he got those. As Seifer enters the ring, Gilgamesh stops, standing off to the side. Seifer steps forward, gunblade on his shoulder. He's trying to keep the nerves off his face. They'll go away soon, but he knows what he's doing is ludicrous and stupid and kind of a little bit insane, and, well, even if he thinks he's invincible, there's times that gets tested, and this is gonna be one of them. "Thanks, Boss Lady," Seifer says after a moment. "I know this is kinda a weird request, but this is something too interesting to pass up. I'm not trying to beat you or anything - there's no way I could, not under these conditions, even I'm not that dumb. I just need to see if I can figure out how to deal with this trick of yours." Seifer closes his eyes. "And to that end I pretty much need you to attack me like you're gonna kill me." "If you attack like you're trainin', it's different. You attack different points when you're attacking nonlethally. The blade goes slower, the targets are different." "So...I pretty much need you to go full pace." Seifer swings the blade down to his side and opens his eyes. "Give me three tries. If I can't do it in three tries, I'll give up for now. Given what you've told me, if I can't do it in three tries, I'll be too injured to keep going anyway, right?"
Priscilla	Whatever Priscilla's opinion, she will grant that this is the first time anyone has ever /asked/ her to come at them as if she intends to kill. In fact, it's the second time anyone has ever even requested to fight in training with her (and the last time she was bad enough that they quit). Even though she had personally seen to the construction of the building she enters, stepping into the field of altered causality under the sky-high dome of ebony and cobalt hues, and selecting a simplistic setup that is essentially the renaissance version of 'the dojo and walled courtyard' training set, some little part of her wants to warn her away anyways, attempting to stay her hand in the same way a survival instinct tells a base jumper not to step off the edge, even with their cord. The two of them have a little bit of selection as terrain goes. The field is a simplified recreation of one of Anor Londo's sword halls, for small groups of elite knights and supplicants to be bodyguards or champions of clerics or lesser gods, rather than bulk troop training. Marble floors under a vaulted ceiling look out past gothic pillars and arches to an adjoining circular courtyard, flanked on two sides by overhangs and high granite walls, and terminated by a baroque stone rail and a sharp drop off a long cliff. The courtyard itself is largely hard-packed earth, as if most of the grass had been trampled out of it, save near the edges and corners, where a couple of large and gnarled trees spread their boughs. There is a raised, likewise circular platform at the center, fenced in, for two people to go head to head, and a shallow ditch a ways to either side past the more open areas surrounding it, with a path of flagstones leading to the cliff overhang. There is nothing so convenient as water or mud, since Seifer had indicated he didn't want to cop out (though it isn't as if Priscilla hadn't acquired ways of dealing with those too). The lighting is basically mid-afternoon, but that hardly matters much. Priscilla shows up, not dressed in her gold and white, but in the more rugged, two-tone grey and white fur dress she used to wear all the time, but is now more or less casual and/or winter wear. It somehow makes her look a little younger, in a sense, with more weight on her, and less of a figure. "Well met." she says. "Certainly, yes, but it is a request thou hast submitted in full worthiness of being humoured. Merely remember that I didst warn thee, and thou art free to cease at any time." probably fully well aware that saying that might just make Seifer more adamant on continuing.
Priscilla	At first, she picks up a standard wooden boffer sword, clearly intending to do things the purely academic way, but when Seifer fervently insists otherwise, she hesitates. For a good several seconds, Priscilla wavers with the blunt training blade, tail twitching slowly, gears sticking every other turn behind her gold, slitted eyes. Finally, with a suddenly more reserved and hard look, bereft of that implied smile of before, she puts it away, and instead summons her more usual weapon. A scythe of truly fearsome proportions is hers, seemingly 'sculpted' out of the same piece of something, fusing handle and blade, out of some material like a rough but highly metallic stone, dark black as a base, but worn bright silver where it has been elaborately eroded, giving it a twisted and uncanny appearance. Just holding it, Priscilla has a certain air of dormant, hostile 'wrongness', as if there were already something invisible in the room, somewhere, and the lizard brain shouts not to catch its eye. It's something in the way the shadows are a little too deep and stretched, the air a little too cold and heavy. "Thou art not incorrect. I pray that thou art not subjected to what is beyond thine tolerance." she says, in a flatter, more stilted voice. "Thou has three attempts, then, against invisibility and this blade." Just like that, it happens. A faint, chilly breeze blows through the setting, and Priscilla fades away as if she were never there, startling for its immediacy combined with its lack of fanfare. It's as if Seifer fell asleep for a second and she'd left. No amount of squinting betrays a ripple of air, a shimmer of light, a faint outline, or an untoward shadow. There had also been no sound of footsteps. She could still just be standing in the same spot, but it's equally or more likely she'd managed to move without making any. Effectively, after a couple of seconds tick, she could be anywhere in the area. Across the courtyard, behind a pillar or tree, or even staring him down almost nose to nose. She doesn't attack immediately though, and instead waits for the reality of the situation to kick in viscerally and emotionally, instead of just basing plans off a radio conversation. There's no point if she jumps on him before he has any time to think of anything.
Seifer Almasy	The dojo is impressive, and Seifer's taken the time to look around while waiting for her. The baroque courtyard excites him. It's something out of a fairy tale, something out of an age he never got to belong to because in his world that age didn't happen the same way. It's something a Sorceress might construct with a mighty spell, a grandiose castle of beautiful marble that if it wasn't for how serious he is he'd be marvelling at and gawking at like an excitable little boy. But this is something that Seifer is utterly serious about. He swings the weapon twice more in front of him, either testing or out of habit, as Priscilla talks. "I know," he says to her, and the look in his eye says that he does. Despite everything, despite all appearances to the contrary, Seifer takes this sort of thing deadly seriously. This is self-improvement. He's asking a favor, and a big one, and he knows it. Moreover, he knows that his tolerance as a human is low. Without Greg, he has no supernatural endurance, no supernatural speed, no supernatural ability whatsoever save his skill with the blade. Even two shots from that wicked weapon, which he watches neutrally, could be too much. And he's painfully aware of that. His gaze is an uncharacteristically calculating one as he watches the weapon take shape. Priscilla can already see the wheels turning in his mind, reflexes taking shape. It's not just a challenge to predict the attack but to figure out how to /deal/ with a scythe, how to parry a weapon he's only really ever seen in textbooks. It's not a common weapon. It's not a common tool. Parrying it doesn't work the same way as a sword or a gun or a claw. Any excitement he has, any youthful impetuousness, has been tamped down so deep as to be submerged beneath the warrior gaze. The wrongness draws his eye, and for a brief, brief instant, he starts to wonder if he made a mistake. But there's no turning back now. He gives her a smile before she vanishes. It's a little bit forced. Then she's gone. Seifer closes his eyes, and takes a stance. He's holding the gunblade like a gun. Even Priscilla, who has probably never used a gun or a blade, can tell that this is idiotic. All the weight is on the front of the blade, all the killing power of the wrist is fighting against the grip, he can't apply his full strength to the back of the weapon, and a dozen other problems. Moreover the stance is /full/ of openings, openings in almost a dozen places. The sides. The back. Maybe even his entire left side. He looks like a rank amateur. But Priscilla has also seen him fight. A closer look, a closer study - which a more arrogant opponent, or someone who didn't have the luxury of invisibility, wouldn't be able to do - reveals a lot more. There are no openings. Seifer is so good at what he does that he can fake openings as casually as most people walk down the street. The giant HIT ME signs all over his body are a great big target, one too tempting for anyone but an obscenely gifted swordsman to see through. He leads them into a trap and then he turns his blade on them and reveals the truth, and more people probably fall for it than not. There's no battlefield banter, no charming quips or flirty comments, nothing. Seifer's eyes are focused dead ahead. His fingers are still. He moves back and forth only slightly. He's focused on /something/. He has /some kind/ of plan.