fandomtownies | The Beach, Friday Evening (After the Carnival)

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The Beach, Friday Evening (After the Carnival)

After a pleasant day raising money for Fandom while partaking in one of his favourite passtimes -- kissing cute guys -- Ronan grabbed a quick supper in town before heading to the beach. He started stretching out, and laid out a few spell circles ahead of time, thinking there were a few useful things it wouldn't hurt to have ready.

Ronan had picked up a few tricks since the last time he sparred with Reno.

[Expecting one, but open for passersby! I'm about to head out for a couple of hours but will be slowly phonepinging in the meantime, and then I'll be around for the rest of the evening!]

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Reno, meanwhile, wasn't warming up so much as he was tuning up, checking his materia to make sure it was all in working order. It didn't take long, of course. His weapons were his pride and joy.

After a few minutes, he looked up with a grin.

"Ready?"

Ronan rolled out his shoulders one last time, then pulled a pen from his pocket. With a click*, it expanded into a longsword, blue and red shimmers running up and down the length.

"Ready," he replied, with one last check of the spells that blunted the edge juuuuust slightly. He didn't want to remove any of Reno's limbs, after all.

* I swear he used this trick in canon, and while I'd need to check publication dates, it may predate Percy Jackson! XD

Well, if Reno had any idea that Ronan was blunting his weapon, he would've had to thump him a good one just for that. As it stood, he simply grinned, lifted his baton, and then blurred out of sight.

He'd been making very good use of Lady Ghanima's training over the years. He absolutely intended to some to a stop right behind Ronan to tap him on the shoulder, yes. Why not have fun with this?

Well. Blunting is a relative term when you're talking about swords literally forged in spellfire that were originally intended to cut holes between worlds. Ronan was just making sure it would only cut flesh, that's all.

The speed was a little unexpected; Ronan remembered Reno being fast, but not quite that fast. Still, the tap was enough warning for Ronan to whirl, sword slashing out about mid-chest. At the same time, he shouted the last word of one of his prepared spells, sending up a plume of fire about eight inches behind Reno.

Reno brought up his rod to block, metal clanging against metal, and he could feel the heat of the fire at his back.

He grinned all the more. This was the kind of spar he'd been hoping for, yes.

"Very nice," he said appreciatively, and then blurred sideways, coming to a stop a few steps away. "This is gonna be fun."

"Well, I did promise," Ronan pointed out, concentrating. He hadn't quite been planning to use these spells, not like when he sparred against Kaidan way back when, but he had used them with surprising frequency when out-and-about planet-hopping. A quick adjustment to a few variables and a few uttered words, and as Ronan turned to face Reno again, gravity in the general vicinity... increased. Just a bit. But Ronan was hoping it would throw Reno's speed off enough to make a difference.

Reno noticed that shift in gravity immediately, and shifted his weight slightly to get a feel for it.

Then he laughed.

"Shit, Woo-Woo, you're spoilin' me, here."

The Weirding Way was about one's perception of reality, about having a different grasp of space and time, of cause and effect, so this wasn't going to slow him down, really. But he appreciated the effort enough that he was going to stick to usual Reno speeds for now- fast enough to leave after-images, still quick enough to follow with the naked eye- as he ran at Ronan again.

Or maybe he was just holding one more blur in reserve. He liked surprising people almost as much as he liked being surprised.

This was more what Ronan was used to, when it came to Reno; he flipped his sword around so he was holding it backhand, plunged it into the ground in front of him, and ripped it out with another shouted word. The next triggered spell sent sand flying, at high speed, in an arc in front of him; it may not do much harm in and of itself, but Ronan was hoping it would distract Reno for that crucial second he needed to strike with a bolt of pure, bone-breaking force from his free hand.

Reno was still laughing. Not at Ronan, just out of sheer exhilaration. The only monsters on Gaia that gave him any trouble, besides, of course, the summons, tended to live up in the Northern Cave, and Reno didn't spend much time up there these days. The Turks tended to avoid it when they could help it, after that whole thing with JENOVA's friggin' head.

He couldn't block the sand, no. Casting pyramid would only end the fight, and anyway, for it to do him any good, he'd have to lock himself inside of it.

Which would be kind of counterintuitive anyway. So he took the sand full-on, and braced himself for the attack that followed. He actually welcomed that snap in his arm, grinned harder as the force shoved him backwards through the sand. It didn't stop him from running again, moving to circle his opponent, the sharp pain giving him a rush of adrenaline as he levelled his rod Ronan's way and fired off a flurry of fireballs in fast succession.

Limit Break.

Oh, now Reno, that's just unfair. Ronan doesn't get any kind of limit break game mechanic.

Fireballs, though, that he could deal with: he'd readied four different shield spells before the battle even began, including Nita's old favorite and one he'd learned from Dairine. It's that latter he used now, a variable-strength, one-way-permeable shield that Dairine used most frequently when doing work inside the solar corona. It could more than handle a few fireballs, Limit Broken or otherwise.

As they were impacting, Ronan flicked his wrist and a small knife fell into his palm; through the smoke and the kicked up dust, he threw it at where he was pretty sure Reno would be in three, two, one...

Impact?

Clink.

When the smoke cleared, Reno was grinning, baton in front of him, knife in the sand. He tilted his head for a moment, and then blurred again, appearing directly in front of Ronan, swinging his baton hard and fast at his head.

Think fast!

The second shield snapped into place with another word, but not quite quickly enough; Ronan was able to absorb some of the force of the blow, but not all of it. His head rang, and he was going to have a spectacular bruise (until he healed it away).

Ronan shook his head, trying to clear it, even as he slashed out with his sword once again, the edge sparking with barely-suppressed power.

Reno was still grinning luke a lunatic as he raised his baton to block, his other arm hanging by his side. That attack from before had apparently done a fair bit of damage.

Like Reno had ever let that sort of thing slow him down before. He gave Ronan a little wink, blew him a little kiss right there on the spot, and then, baton still crackling against the sword's edge, shifted his weight and ducked low so that he could swing out a kick aimed to take Ronan's feet out from under him.

Ronan jumped, but not fast enough, and Reno's kick clipped his legs. His balance got thrown and he couldn't land properly, twisting his ankle on the way down. "... Ow," he said, even as he rolled away and got back to his feet, trying to get a little more space between him and Reno. He could feel his ankle throb, but he shoved the pain aside for the moment.

He still had a couple of tricks up his sleeve. Probably not enough of them, Ronan knew, but he wasn't ready to go down yet.

"Had enough?" he asked, tauntingly, holding his sword up in a ready position. His other hand flicked quickly through some signs, one of the physical forms of the Speech. He rather hoped that shouting the ends of his spells earlier in the battle would mean Reno wouldn't realise what he was doing; he was pretty sure he hadn't ever shown off the somatic Speech to him before. (Mostly only with River, once upon a time, and that with dance.)

Behind them, the waves began to crash a little higher on the shore.

Ronan, man, Reno had lived on the island for years. Even if he didn't know how your magic worked in particular, you doing some funky stuff with your free hand probably meant you were up to something.

"I look like I had enough?"

He wasn't going to wait before throwing off a blast of Thundaga, no. If Ronan was doing anything more complicated than making dirty gestures at him, he wanted to cut that off at the pass.

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The Beach, Friday Evening (After the Carnival)

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