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Haguro The sun rises or sets on Stage 2 of the MECC Arena today, depending on which side of the world people are watching this fight from. With the winds set to dramatic and the noisemakers set to full blast, the fight looks like it's going to be starting any moment now!

On one side of the arena, Haguro can be seen doing squats to get herself PUMPED UP. Her armor is all in place, there's a faint blue glow on the back of her classic purple uniform/weird half-nun getup, and her turrets are all loaded and ready to go. She checks her revolver over, but she keeps glancing over towards the other side as well.

For some reason, she looks worried.
Seifer Almasy      Seifer's still in his Hand of the Concord gear. The haori over his shoulder. The one gauntlet. The sharp, smart military uniform. The fox-emblem necklace flanked by dogtags. Hyperion slung over his shoulder. And he's still enjoying this, being in the middle of the arena, in the middle of the fight. Just because he doesn't get to risk his life properly doesn't mean he's not going to try his best - his best just, well, might not be good enough without that edge to take him past the limit.

     He stops and taps his sword on his shoulder, grinning. "Hey, cute boat. You look a lot better like this, y'know? All that black junk isn't your style."

     "You ready to do this?"

     He raises his blade in his lackadaisical, lazy, amateurish stance.
Haguro "H... He-ey there, Seifer brother!" Haguro delivers her greeting in an excessively stilted way with a terrible attempt at English, putting on an uncharacteristically wide grin before shaking her head and tapping her chin. "No... No, 'hello' just works better."

There was an attempt.

"Hello, Seifer. Th... Thank you. I still feel more comfortable like this, to be honest, but changing things up can be good once in a while." She chuckles lightly, then nods as she strikes an attempt at a kickboxing stance. "I'm ready. Don't take it easy on me, alright? I'll be angry if you do."

She flashes him a friendly smile, then moves in for the first attack. Closing the distance between them rapidly (thanks to her weird blue thrusters lighting up), she goes for a series of left jabs to test out his defenses!
Seifer Almasy      Rapid left jabs come in. Seifer moves to block, but he's actually not especially good at blocking fists - he never really has been. He didn't like dueling with...with...

     Man, he'll remember the name eventually. Chicken-something.

     Haguro's assault is fast and rough and bruising, hammering at his chest. Seifer stops trying to parry and instead goes left, then right, a quick feint while his gunblade comes around for her back. As much as he may hate not being able to feel the adrenaline flow, at least he can fight as lethally as he wants still.
Haguro As fast as her intiial attack is, Haguro's defenses still need work. Although she turns towards Seifer as he turns left, she doesn't quite react quickly enough when he feints in the opposite direction. He gets that free slash to her back and cuts right through armor and flesh alike, creating a nasty gash and exposing the black armor underneath!

It seems that she's gotten a few upgrades to her stuff since the last time he's seen her in this form. "Geh... That's good! Keep the..." She trails off at that last bit, not quite able to think of something to say to fill the empty air.

Perhaps that's better, though. It's a fight, not a training session or a conversation starter. Without turning to face Seifer, her turrets fire behind her blindly, and only then does she whirl around with a high spinning backhand to try and catch him right after the shots.
Seifer Almasy      He really didn't enjoy fighting people with fisticuffs.

     The backhand nails him as he carves through the bullets. He's fast as hell, supernaturally so, but she can shoot independent of her fists and that is a massive disadvantage for him. Even if he's got ridiculous skill, his ridiculous skill...ends...at a point.

     Still, he's never been one to *just* give up after a few solid hits, not before he's done his best. He rolls with the backhand, rolling to the side like he's dodging in a gunfight. His fingers snap, and an explosion erupts underneath Haguro's feet - something to give Seifer time to charge back in and take control of the fight once more.
Haguro Haguro's hands are strong indeed, but her footwork still needs... Work. She doesn't notice that explosion until it's already popping her up into the air, and it puts her at Seifer's mercy when he charges in with his gunblade.

And then she remembers what she learned the other day. Right after his blade starts cutting into her, a curious thing happens: The shipgirl disappears! She reappears a split second later right where she was, creating the distinct sensation of cutting into something, somehow missing it, then cutting through the back end.

Maybe that's how people mess themselves up with avocados.

Landing on the ground with a painful grunt as she lands on that new wound, Haguro flips herself back somewhat clumsily as the blood/oil/ghostjuice is already starting to flow. Biting back the pain, she swings her arm up for a quick feint before ducking downwards, then launches herself at Seifer with a big dropkick!
Seifer Almasy      Yeah, that throws him off a little bit. No matter how good Seifer's senses, how fast his reaction time, he sees through his blade more than anything else. If he thinks he cut something, he thinks he cut it. When she flickers, it throws him enough that she almost gets him with the dropkick. His blade comes up, parrying it aside at the last possible moment, which sends him spinning in a weird horizontal sort of cartwheel before he lands and stabilizes. The second he does, he's charging back in, his blade flashing in a rapid combo strike. Zoning an unarmed fighter is *much* harder than zoning a swordsman, especially when they can just...shoot you in mid punch.
Haguro That could have gone better. Even in the best case scenario, dropkicks are risky business. As Haguro's pulling herself back up and wincing from agitating that prior exit wound, Seifer's already upon her once again!

He's fast. Too fast. Parrying his blows isn't really ideal considering that the swordsman is faster than her, but she can't exactly back off, either. Just using her guns would be an exercise in futility with Seifer's speed being what it is!

So Haguro decides to screw it. Figuratively. As Seifer's slashes draw more splashes of blood and peel off more layers of heavy armor, Haguro starts to go on the offensive more... Offensively! For each slash, she swings at his arm. For each stab, she kicks at his legs. She closes in even more after the first few, aiming a big stinkin' shoulder charge to try and get the wielder of Hyperion right off his feet above her!
Seifer Almasy      Fast.

     Once she starts sacrificing armor, Seifer has to speed up. She's already dictating the span of the fight as an unarmed fighter, since her range includes clinches and grabs that a swordsman can't do. Now she's dictating the pace, too. Seifer is *not* a fistfighter, and he can't just bring his fist around to parry, or kick, or do stupid stuff like that. When she charges in, she does, in fact, get him off his feet, despite his admirable parries of her kicks in the middle of his strikes. He's not off his feet for long, but he's off his feet for long enough, rolling backwards - forced out of range again.

     He snaps his fingers.

     Twice.

     A pair of eruptions burst into the air in front of Haguro's guns. He's hoping to set something off, some gunpowder or something, blow up something that will start a chain reaction. At this point, desperate hope and gambling on Haguro's weak points is all he can do without fighting *real* dirty, and he frankly likes Haguro too much to do that, much like he likes Touta. Plus, he may not have much dignity, but he's above fighting like a jerk in a tournament.
Haguro Haguro pauses briefly to catch her breath as the sustained cuts are putting a real dent in what little armor is left on her. Also, the bleeding. Or the oil leaking. Whatever it is, she's looking fairly banged up, and it's only going to get worse as Seifer snaps his fingers. She jumps on reaction as if anticipating it coming from below, but when it happens in front of her guns?

She's not getting out of the way of that. It works spectacularly, detonating one set of turrets on her arm and blasting off another gun on her shoulder. She lands with another painful stagger as she hurries to yank the rest of that burning hot turret off her shoulder, casting it aside and exposing singed arm underneath.

She smiles. "That's... That's more like it, Seifer. Please don't sell yourself short. I.. I know you can do better, even if it's not life or death!" Coughing once, she casts a wary glance at the burning wreck of her fallen turrets, shaking her head quickly to try and keep her vision focused on her opponent rather than SCARY BAD FIRE.

Back to the offensive. Bringing up her other arm with the mostly undamaged (for now) turret, she fires off a pair of shots in a V-shape around Seifer, then dashes in to try and grab his Hyperion'ing arm for a big toss!
Seifer Almasy      "Heh," Haguro gets a grin from Seifer at her pep talk, "I'm not giving you less than my best anyway. You don't need to pity me!"

     He charges in, parrying aside the shots as he usually does. Haguro grabs his arm as he moves to turn it back upon her. She picks him up, and casually smashes him into the ground with an overhanded throw.

     He doesn't let go.

     OK, now he's gonna fight a little dirty.

     Seifer's feet kick for her legs. His hand tugs her down.

     He's taking advantage of her greatest weakness: her shyness. He's pulling her into an Awkward Anime Trip.

     He's grinning, wide. "Hey there, cute boat."

     Snap. BOOM. Right in her ear.

     Take her off balance and take control back from the fistfighter.
Haguro Is that the fight? Haguro, unfortunately, lets her guard down just long enough that Seifer's able to trip her up and get right on top of her! The implications of it don't quite hit home just yet since wrestling and ESPECIALLY MMA are all about Awkward Anime Tripping and rolling on top of each other.

And then he does the thing.

Right in her ear.

"Eh..? Wha... Ah! Seifer?! Wh-what if... B-bu-but there's people watching...!" For better or for worse, Haguro's defense to that sort of attack still hasn't changed.

Sadly, her reactions have. With Seifer right there on top of her, her body acts before her brain can object doing the one thing that would make her brain freak out even more.

Her arms open up, and she goes for some grounded grappling. On one hand? Close contact.

On the other hand, kidney punches.
Seifer Almasy      She hits him, hard.

     That's it. He knows he's out. Any more fighting and he'd be violating tournament rules, pushing the system to its limits. He laughs and rolls her off him. "Haguro."

     "C'mon."

     "I like you and all, but I'm happy with Caster. You gotta get better at that. You gotta guard your emotions easier. You get embarassed way too easy."
Haguro Once Haguro notices the continued flaw in sticking so close to Seifer, she's all too happy to get a bit more distance between them.

At the very least, not being right on him. "I-I know, but...! B-but that's still..." Letting out a frustrated noise, the cruiser pouts for a little longer before smacking her face to try and get herself out of that... Whatever it is she's in.

It's not working very well. "How would I even work on something like that/ And... H-how do you even do it so easily?!"
Seifer Almasy      Seifer sits up and grins. "'cause I've hit that point where I know myself so well that I don't get embarassed doing stuff like that. I'm not ashamed of who I am. I know who I am. I mean, you know, mostly." Obviously the memory thing has sent that into some question. "And I know I love Caster, and she knows I love her. It means I can use stuff like that easy."
Haguro "That's... True. Hm. I don't know if I could ever do that, but... Maybe that's just who I am, then?" Haguro questions, seemingly more to herself than to Seifer. Her expression becomes a more thoughtful one as well, although it might not be for the best reasons.

"So what you're saying is I have to try flirting more... And then I won't be so embarassed by it once I find my limits!" She pauses, then strokes her chin. "Or... How did you two get married? Who proposed first?"
Seifer Almasy      "Uhhh..."

     Seifer leans back a little bit on the ground. "Actually...she kinda did? Sorta? But also didn't? It's sort of complicated. You know how my dream's been to be a Sorceress's Knight. She basically approached me, and told me she was a Sorceress, and she wanted a Knight, and laid out all the stuff around it. And then when we made the contract she told me she was my wife. And I...you know, I was okay with it. It was neat. At first I was like, okay, I have a cute girlfriend who's also the person I wanted to protect. And then it sort of..."

     He waves his hand. "I started relying on her. And she started relying on me. And somewhere along the way it went from a romantic dream to a romance, too. And I really started to love her for her."

     "And she knows that, so I don't really mind exploiting," he pokes Haguro's forehead, "Your weakness on that, 'cause Caster knows I'd never betray her. I even took on a second female Servant and she knows she's got nothing to fear. I'm 100% for her."

     He stretches a little and sits up. "I dunno, maybe you should flirt more? Or maybe you should just realize that these situations come up in combat, and that people are gonna use it against you, and learn to shut it out."

     He pokes her forehead again, still grinning. "Also, I think you're a little bit into me, or you wouldn't've said something like 'we can't do that here.'"
Haguro "Really? How non-traditional..." Haguro sounds rather amazed by that, the flustered expression soon fading into a more curious one. She hadn't heard their story yet, after all. "I've certainly never heard of a proposal like that before. Impressive..."

She'll have to take some notes from the fox caster the next time they meet. As Haguro mulls things over, she's interrupted by the poke! "Eh? O-oh. Wait. A second now? Who would that be?" Beat. "But you're not married to that one, right?"

She can't help but be curious, especially if she's trying to learn unconventional ways to improve herself. That last bit still has her burning red again, though, as she stammers out another flustered response. "O-of course not! That was just a... A mix up!"

Yeah, she totally is.
Seifer Almasy      "No, I'm not married to the other Servant," Seifer says with a grin, "Lancer is helping us win the Grail War for the Concord, and she's serving as Caster's royal guard, but I've got no interest in her. I really care about Caster."

     He pokes Haguro's forehead again, still grinning. The crowd's probably mostly thinned by now. "If you'd been a little bit faster, we'd probably be dating right now. Sorry, cute boat. You'll have to take it up with my wife."

     Then he stands up. "Speaking of my wife, I better go see her. That kidney punch was real good. You've gotten a lot stronger, Haguro."

     "Good job."