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Wandering Dog As the two competitors enter the arena, the crowd cheers. Wandering Dog, 0-2 in the matches, is still primed for the match, giving two thumbs up to the crowd as he steps up to the middle of the arena, moving to nod at Doctor Strange when he eventually makes his appearance. "Good luck in the fight." The 'you'll need it' is left silent, but inferrable.

And then, when the bill dings, Wandering Dog enhances his speed so that he can go first. His body speeding up, he moves to throw a quick series of jabs at Doctor Strange's torso, trying to test how durable the wizard is and how he'll need to fight against him.

Doctor Strange would know Wandering Dog's a martial artist. How is he going to handle that?
Doctor Strange      Strange offers a flat response to the opening taunt. "Uh huh."

     As it happens, he might actually need it. He kind of expects an aggressive opening from a martial artist, but actually dealing with it is much different than merely predicting it. The sorcerer is on the back foot, attempting to retreat from the initial flurry of blows. He's able to deflect the first, and only the first.

     The rest of them strike him squarely in the chest, knocking him off-balance. His back hits the ground hard, and he rolls to the side. The Cloak of Levitation billows out behind him and pulls him upright again. "That could be a problem..."

     Strange brings up his hands in a defensive arrangement, and bright orange mandalas hum into existence before them. Aiming them towards Dog, he fires two cones of freezing cold... which miss the martial artist completely, covering the ground behind him in a sheet of slippery ice. Strange flicks his wrist, and suddenly there appears in his hands a red and gold staff. After twirling it overhead, he makes a thrust at Dog, and the staff extends its length considerably to attack him, attempting to push him onto the ice and cause a slip.
Wandering Dog Wandering Dog grins as Strange is unable to handle the flurry of blows. However, this also leads Wandering Dog to sort of underestimate his opponent, besides the fact he's a sorcerer. When the mandalas hum into existence, and the cones are fired, Dog braces, only to be missed. He doesn't realize what's going on at first, until the staff comes out, extends, and strikes into Dog.

Moving back onto the ice, the Wandering Dog loses his footing, hitting the ground hard. However, he quickly uses his hands and does an actual /flip/ off the ground and back onto his feet, probably to impress the crowd, but it has another effect.

Most people wouldn't expect someone to come out of a flip into a strike. Wandering Dog does. As soon as he hits the ground, one of his legs lifts off as he moves into an essence-enhanced spinning kick, moving to whip into Strange's body several times and batter him. "Your magic's impressive...but nothing beats martial arts, y'know?!"
Doctor Strange      This time, Strange is prepared. He banishes the staff back to the Sanctum. Dog moves in with a spinning kick, and may be surprised at the results. The first strike hits him, but he vaults over the second with a jumping split, then bobs and weaves his way around the rest.

     "My magic /is/ martial arts." He takes a step back, then makes a palm thrust. To Dog, it resembles something from the Earth Dragon style, with one key difference. The difference is that the thrust of his palm creates a mystic eye within the mandala, which, upon opening, blasts an angry red ray of burning energy in Dog's direction.

     Continuing the attack, Strange makes two upwards, sweeping arm motions, one after the other. They resemble a warm-up from the Water Dragon style. At the mid-point of each, a bolt of green concussive energy leaps from his fingertips, flanked by crackling yellow lightning.
Wandering Dog As Strange vaults over and weaves, Dog tsks, but he doesn't seem truly upset. Dog's eyes light up with some recognition as Strange uses techniques similar to those he's seen before, and there's more clear respect on his face knowing he's a martial artist sorcerer. As the burning energy fires at Dog, it impacts, but he brings up his arms to block the brunt of it, his tunic durable, and then the arm motions come in. The concussive energy and yellow lightning blasts into Dog with the sweeps, sending him skidding backwards, tunic and arms burnt, but shaking his head like a dog with joy. "Now that's what I'm talking about! Alright, let's ramp things up with some Tiger Style."

As Wandering Dog charges up, black tiger stripes appear over his body, making him more durable, as his fingernails sharpen and harden into basically black essence tiger claws. Wandering Dog dashes forward, but then he leaps, trying to get an angle of surprise to come /down/ on Strange and claw into him, powerful strikes and clawing motions.
Doctor Strange      When Dog leaps into the air, Strange casts another spell. As with the ice, this one seems to have missed its mark. The claws, on the other hand, appear to have hit their target entirely too well. Strange is literally shredded like paper, complete with the tearing sound and the fact that he's become weirdly two-dimensional. As the sorcerer streamers hit the ground, they fizzle away into orange energy.

     "Let's not," says the real Strange from a point behind Dog. He puts the finishing touch on a spell prepared with the time his trick bought him, and a screen of brightly glowing circular mandalas burns itself into the air. From the center of each magical circle emerges the business end of a weapon, and many of them are similar to Creation's own. With a flick of his wrist, they're off.

     Staves, meteor hammers, straight swords, broadswoards, scholar's pens, rope darts, hookswords and all, the squadron of magical weapons forms a bright orange bullet hell for the Exalt to navigate!
Wandering Dog Wandering Dog tears Strange to shreds, and /immediately/ realizes something's wrong. As he turns towards the real Strange, the many weapons flick towards him. Wandering Dog starts weaving and dodging through them, but several impact, meteor hammers bruising his skin, swords cutting him and drawing blood, rope darts slowing his approach by stabbing into his leg. But Wandering Dog keeps coming, as he throws another basic flurry of blows. This seems...boring, compared to everything else.

Except that Wandering Dog's charging energy as he strikes. He's preparing for something big. As a fighter, Strange can tell. The next hit's not going to be pretty.
Doctor Strange      Strange gently deflects Dog's blows, flowing around them with passable skill--but it's clear even with this basic flurry that of the two, Dog is the more comfortable in close quarters. Strange's reflexes aren't enough to keep a few errant strikes from impacting his face, one of which splits his lip.

     As the last of his conjured weapons strike the protective barrier near the audience and dissipate into motes, he makes an effort to do the same as Dog--gather energy.

     Though he draws his energy from different sources than an Exalt, Dog can spot the clues. There is, firstly, the matter that the glyph-rings which flank the mandalas in front of his hands are spinning rapidly. There is also the matter of his counter-attack, which is just as tame as Dog's initial strike.

     The moment he sees an opening, he makes a conservative one-two snap-kick, one left and one right, aimed at Dog's head.
Wandering Dog Wandering Dog and Doctor Strange both charge up. As they do so, the snap-kick impacts with Dog's head, staggering him back as it hits hard, but Dog shakes it off even though it /really/ hurts, moving to keep fighting. "Alright. Let's go with the blossom of the perfected lotus." For someone as learned as Doctor Strange, that might be worrying.

"PATH FOUR!" Wandering Dog charges forward, as his arms suddenly turn into metal. They strike into Strange, hitting like trucks with each blow, as he throws another flurry. Metal hands move to try and pulp him, send him flying, and overall batter him until he can't fight anymore. This is an extremely risky tactic - trying to take out his enemy even when his enemy is solidly healthy, before he can take Dog out. "Show me what you're capable of!"
Doctor Strange      Strange blanches visibly at Wandering Dog's transformation. He casts a spell of speed upon himself with a motion like the stirring of a cauldron. Afterimages of the sorcerer follow his every movement, making it slightly more difficult to accurately attack him on top of the added speed. He flows around Dog with his usual dispassionate frown, but at this distance, the Exalt can easily see the panic in those emerald eyes.

     One of the blows strikes him square in the ribs with an unseemly cracking noise, and the air escapes Strange--as does a clipped groan. A burst of warm golden energy radiates from his palm, staunching the wound with healing magic, and he leaps backwards. It's one of those wire-fu leaps, and at the apex of it, the Cloak of Levitation flares out dramatically behind him.

     Strange's hands move like an Immaculate Monk's, in the midst of a demonstration. With a snakelike forward jab of one hand, his mandalas unleash the spell he'd been preparing. Multitudes of disembodied hands, each seemingly made of flaming rock, fly forth like a cloud of locusts. They make their searing path down towards Dog and encircle him, clawing almost hungrily at him with sharp talons and burning whatever they they can grasp. It's like being surrounded by pissed off bats that are also on fire.
Wandering Dog Strange recognizes what he's doing and is panicking. That's great to Wandering Dog - it means the weight of what he's doing is felt. As Strange heals and leaps backwards, using his cloak, Wandering Dog prepares for the counter attack. And it's - flaming rock hands. Oh, shit.

The hands encircle and claw at Wandering Dog, ripping him to shreds. He bleeds and groans in pain, flesh torn, but he keeps going. Metal hands move up to smash through the burning hands, as the martial artist pushes forward for one last attack. Either he wins here, or he's down.

He moves for a square, solid, double-fist punch to Strange's face in an attempt to take him down.

There's a sense of pure elation coming from Dog. The sense of just enjoying the fight as it truly gets going, even if he wants to win it.
Doctor Strange      The last of the Demons of Denak disappear, banished back to their home plane. Dog is... still standing. Not only is he still standing, he actually punched his way through it. Strange squints in disbelief. How is he still standing after /that?/ Surely he's about to fall over. The disbelief turns to annoyance as he sees Dog making his approach. "Ah, f--"

     The swear is cut off as two metal hands strike out for his face. That's still up?! His hands hurry to guard his face, and several of his fingers are broken. A pained groan escapes him as he tries to muster the last of his strength. A bead of sweat, one of many, rolls down his brow as he lifts a foot and presses it forward to vault off of Dog.

     If he's able to find purchase, Strange not only vaults off of him, but strikes with a surprisingly agile flip-kick. He halts his descent, turning around mid-air, and fires one last spell: a series of punches fling fist-sized chunks of ice from the mandala to rain down upon Dog. After seeing him survive the Demons of Denak, Strange /really/ doesn't want to chance it.
Wandering Dog Dog is a bloodied mess, but he moves in for a strike, breaking fingers. The metal hands finally, after that, disappear, as do the tiger stripes. Dog is out of energy.

Which means that when Strange vaults off Wandering Dog and strikes with a flip kick, the martial artist wobbles. The ice chunks finish him off, knocking him to the ground, barely conscious. Dog signals the tap-out.

As he rises, slowly, clutching his head, Dog just laughs. "Good fight! I didn't know what to expect from you, but that was impressive. Man, 0-3, I need to step up my game." And then, Dog heads off, surprisingly happy for someone who just lost. Probably because all of these fights have been so close.
Doctor Strange      "Right back at you, guy," says Strange, cradling one of his hands as the Shrine slowly begins to repair it. He sucks in a breath through his teeth as the crowd cheers for the show that's been put on. A cracked rib, broken hands and a split lip--and this was from Dog in 'competitive' mode, not 'kill' mode. He's glad to have won, but if they have a 'disagreement' elsewhere he'll definitely stick to the air.

     As usual, Strange doesn't pay the crowd much attention, just kind of awkwardly creating a portal home so he can collapse on one of the Sanctum's various and sundry couches.