(CRP): Mostly Harmless

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Silence

Re: (CRP): Mostly Harmless

Post by Silence »

((I said feel free to godmod... so that's fine. Also, the cards and stuff were there... for... well, you'll see. They weren't a direct attack, let's put it that way. Some bits of it were just activation clauses for the magic he actually wanted to use, others were... for other reasons.))

A split second was an eternity to the changeling. Even when he had been human, before he'd taken Youken's place, he'd been able to process information fast enough to use magic that even Youken had struggled with. Humans weren't meant to be able to make several hundred calculations in under a second in their head. Yet Alder had done that even before his mind had been accelerated. He could maybe have avoided having a hand placed on his shoulder, but it would have been a narrow matter and that would have left him far more exposed than he was right now... if the old guy could move like that, even if he was only choosing to exist in another time line, then that meant that exposing himself just to avoid one attack was counter intuitive... especially when it gave away his own limits. Instead, he chose to use the contact on his shoulder to his own ends.

The changeling stayed sitting, his expression slightly curious as one area of his mind started to consider what in the world Krail was talking about. Two other important matters played through his mind as well... the first debated how best to absorb force from a swing of a cane... the other considered when the best moment was to grab the old guy's hand. At the moment of impact, he did both ((feel free to backtrack here)) and spun to his feet, reforming part of his body to avoid the clumsy ways of getting up that humans would have been restricted to. At the same moment, he yanked Krail's wrist towards himself and adjusted the way the cards were facing such that all of them in the air around him angled themselves at the old man. A moment later, their velocities changed as Alder yanked Krail into their path. Yes, they weren't sharpened or anything like that, but only the impact mattered to Alder. If they made contact, he could use that contact to channel force through, making each one as effective as a fairly weak punch... not too worrying on their own, but there were 52 of them. And still, the changeling talked as he fought.

"Two things... firstly, ain't yeh supposed teh, you know, hit me with that and have me be more hurt than you?" he swallowed the blood rising up in his mouth and pretended that he hadn't just internalised the injury... he liked people to think that he could nullify blows. So long as nobody ever found out that he could only really lower the impact and then take internal damage in return, his bluff would work... if they realised that that was what happened though, they wouldn't just give up hitting him and then he'd need to find out another trick. "Second thing, what in the name of Skapta do yeh mean by what yeh just said, eh?"
Krail

Re: (CRP): Mostly Harmless

Post by Krail »

((I know but its always awkward :P ))

Krail moved at the normal pace, he giggled happily as he was grabbed and moved around in all places. Its only when he saw the cards that he ceased instantly and decided to play the part. "Trivial matters and I am an old man Alder, I'm not physically fit any longer." As he spun into the cards he allowed a few to hit him, he felt the burst of what might equal a weak punch or a slap. A sensible trap he thought, such might trick an enemy or at least wither away there stamina long enough for Alder to prepare something else.

But it was in the end futile. After bouncing off the tenth card he ceased all motion, something happened during that time, he resumed just as quickly as the cards fell limply onto the ground. The power that controlled them having faded away long ago. He stretched his arms slightly, a yawn escaping him.

His body was beginning to take a toll from the over usage of time, he shouldn't be playing like this but he had enjoyed showing off a bit. It didn't hurt to some know of what he was capable of. "mmm maybe I should stop playing...what about this instead ?' he said as he flexed all of his fingers into a tight fist. All of the canes appeared and with the tiny string aimed to wrap around alder and whack him from all from all angles.

"The cane that survives is my new cane !"
Silence

Re: (CRP): Mostly Harmless

Post by Silence »

Perception and Time

Stop playing? But that was the whole point of this fight, wasn't it?

Nah, the point of this fight was to gauge how much of a threat this old man was and to see if he could learn any tricks from him... already, Krail's style had given him several ideas on how to conserve energy mid fight and flow from one move into another. Damn, he wanted to go and take that and see if he could apply it. Also, if time moved like that around Krail, maybe he could find a way to make time flow differently in his pocket dimension, a place where currently, time didn't flow... yes, that had previously worked out really really well for him, it had meant that he could preserve things forever or keep somebody trapped in a prison of time, but maybe there was still a better way.

Force eventually wore out, and so the cards had simply dropped from the air... but Alder was beginning to get an idea of how this guy worked... well, more than an idea.

As the strings appeared, seemingly from nowhere, the changeling actually focused. For the first time in months, he was almost not bored.

And with that level of concentration came an ability to evaluate the situation far faster than a human should have. In a hundredth of a second, Alder had calculated the trajectories of every cane and started to reform his body, adjusting his shape so as to make them pass through him. The next hundredth of a second, he realised that he'd been incorrect, he'd been assuming that their trajectories were controlled by force, not by their position in time, so he readjusted.

Still, it wasn't going to be enough... speed was one thing, but it didn't matter when your opponent could literally evaluate time. No, he needed to fully focus on this.

Setting aside thoughts of how to improve his fighting style, how to design a giant wood carving or how to tunnel through parts of the void without its god noticing, Alder focused on Krail... and time stopped.

Well, it kept moving, but from Alder's perspective, it may as well have stopped. His mind would give him all the time he needed to find a solution. Idly, he imagined himself pacing around Krail as he examined the old man... the canes weren't too much of a threat, although they were going to leave bruises that would hurt for days, even if he spent the next few days gorging himself on sugar. What Alder was looking for was an opening, a single blind spot that Krail couldn't possibly anticipate an attack from... directly behind was no good, any surprise attack came from directly behind, so an experienced fighter's instincts were attuned to attacks from directly behind. Instead, he searched the areas just outside of the man's peripheral vision, trying to find the best place to attack from... he took a few estimations of angles, then examined Krail's pupils, aiming to see how dilated they were... how much his irises could move, whether or not the blind spot of either of his eyes coincided with the blind spot of his other eye. He then moved on to the man's ears... sound was nothing but vibration, and vibration could be seen as air particles bashing against each other. He wanted somewhere where he could attack from, where any sound would take longer to diffract into his ears than the attack would take to complete... smell... well, he'd gone this far, why not? Hell, why not go with senses of touch and taste while he was at it?

Glancing back at his own body, he noted that a few of the canes had moved a millimeter... maybe he should do something about those, plot a course to avoid them or something like that. He looked back at Krail and imagined himself rubbing his hands together, satisfied.

Alright, that was something... now, to calculate exactly what sort of sound would be created by a pocket dimension suddenly opening, and how and where to open it to give the old man absolutely no time to react.

After all, from the start of the fight, Alder had been spreading his pocket dimension through the arena, why not use that now, eh?

It took him all of the thoughts that most humans would have experienced in a year to finally be satisfied with his plan. At that point, he looked back at himself.

Yes, maybe he should do something about those canes. But first, to put this into operation. Alder opened his pocket dimension just outside of Krail's vision, then rapidly moved it towards the old man, aiming to simply move the portal over him and then close it. Barely a shimmer in the air, the portal was silent, Alder had accounted for that by simply taking into account the velocity of every air particle and then setting it right the moment it passed the portal. He didn't hope, but rather knew that the canes would provide some distraction to the old man. But of course, there was always some way that a person could avoid a ploy, and if the old man avoided this one, he'd have to create another.

Right, the canes...

That was when the first cane struck him and yanked his thoughts back into the present.
Krail

Re: (CRP): Mostly Harmless

Post by Krail »

((Apologies for delay...life..then for whatever reason decided to become mayor again...))

Krail giggles were ended abrutly as he was whacked from mutliple angles by his own canes, he didn't understand but he suspected it was Alders doing. Him and his little toys. By the time Krail had ended his trail of thought a final Cane returned to him, it whacked him at the back of his neck causing a sudden shock to go through his body...and kill him.

His body fell to the ground, the shock had given his heart far to much stress and he had given way to death.

"Oh my, I should remember that I'm old and frail.." the voice didn't come from Krail, it was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Maybe ALder would hear it, maybe not. Either ways, Krails body would fade to dust and vanish like that of a ghost. Krail himself would seemingly reappear. He seemed tired however, bored even.

"Oh look at the mess you've made..." he decided to try to walk over to Alder and poke him, if he did he wondered if his old trick would work although it didn't really require touch but he prefered to make people think it did. He'd play around a little more and mess with the way time worked with Alder, he'd done so with the Blood Crusaders when Bandelson had tried to refuse to fulfill their contract. "Tired furry squrriels will not help you !"

Time would in essence be jumbled up for each and every living and not living being. If what Krail beleived was true then Alders entire body should...in theory be confused for a few seconds. It could be slow or dazzlingly fast, a single being could hold multiple time references which in usually confused it until it was able to make sense of it which most of the time was impossible because the time reference could easily change again.

"What...oh ..OOOHH die squrriel !" Krail picked up a cane and began chasing a squrriel which led him out of the duelling ring aand into the streets.
Silence

Re: (CRP): Mostly Harmless

Post by Silence »

Time... time was always a difficult thing to keep track of.

When he focused, a second could take an hour... or a week... or an eternity... usually he got bored and lost focus before it took more than a few hours. When he was truly bored, time could slip past him, hours fading into minutes. One moment he'd simply stare blankly at a clock, and the next thing he'd know, he'd have allowed his mind to drift and no part of him would be paying attention to the current situation... several minutes later, he'd finally get his jumbled thoughts together into one consciousness again, find that he'd done nothing productive and somehow, two hours had passed.

That was the daily life of Alder, so when Krail reformed himself, totally messing up his calculations on where to move his pocket dimension, Alder found himself actually losing focus. He'd just taken months to set all of that up, and his focus slipped. Krail walked up to him in a space of time that seemed barely a second. He pulled his consciousness together just in time for him to fully appreciate what had just happened.

He was used to time warping as he focused and let his mind drift... this was similar, only he had no control over it. He had no ability to...

Actually, he probably did. He took a moment to gather his thoughts, and then matched his focus to how quickly time was moving around him, allowing himself to get bored as time slowed and forcing himself to concentrate as time sped up. The result was that time began to flow linearly... two seconds of real time had passed by the time Alder was able to orientate himself again.

It was then that he realised just how useful that could be... if he could warp his perception of time like that, then maybe he could... no, that wasn't possible... but maybe. Still, Krail's style had interested him. He barely even noticed that the old man had turned to run after a squirrel, so caught up was he in his own thoughts.

Damn it, he couldn't stay here any longer, he had to find out if he was right... if he really could incorporate elements of Krail's style into his own. That, and this fight had become boring... he had actually lost focus during it, so he was done with this anyway.

Neither of the two seemed to notice how much collateral damage their fight had done to the arena as they both walked away, Alder gibbering at himself, not seeming to be able to finish one sentence before his mind moved on.

"If I stumbled left at the squirrel and then things would... maybe? Wait a second, I could... no, that was a minute... and arms don't bend that way anyway... of course, wood could act as a trigger to... and that would conclude in an automatic duck hurling from the seventh family of... pocket... wait, that's a minus sign."

As he walked through the doorway to the arena, part of the wall collapsed behind him, somehow, leaving just the doorway itself standing. He was so caught up in his thoughts that he barely noticed that or the fact that the arena master was huddled under a bench, scared to try to call the fight off. What was also strange was that the fight had lasted far longer than he'd thought by the time he left. 50 rounds apparently, although no news would tell of it the next day.
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