The Essentials of Combat. [Elyss/Magnolia/Open]

Here she comes. Read her movements. Look at her whole body. You understand this Elyss. You’ve seen it before. Her mind recalls the moment when Alex attacked her that one time. His whole body had tensed. The muscles in his leg had carried such power to his arm that came out of his fist in a punch that literally sent her flying. Elyss can see this, the energy traveling up Magnolia’s body as she opened her palm to strike at Elyss. That’s it. That’s the commitment, but there has to be more. Since the start of the match, Magnolia has continuously caught her off guard with her legwork. Not this time.

Elyss does exactly what Magnolia was expecting as she stepped in with her left towards the incoming palm, but then, her right slides forward carrying her body mass to the right allowing her head to slide right past the incoming palm. Watch. The next thing Elyss knows, she’s grabbed, but that’s no problem. She expected something like this, and as Magnolia rose her knee, Elyss’ body shifted again as she tightened her body and shimmied her stomach to the side of the kick absorbing it into her right side with a grunt that is soon followed by her arms attempting to lock around the knee inside her gut.

If successful, Elyss throws away all regard for herself and jerks the top of her head upwards aiming to launch her head right into Magnolia’s jaw as she lifted up with all her might to pick Magnolia off of the ground after disorienting her with the headbutt moving forward using Magnolia’s own pulling action against the blonde to try and fall forward while sliding the leg trapped in her arms through her side hoping to drop Magnolia onto her back in a sort of grappling takedown. However, as they would rise and fall, it becomes obvious that Elyss is purposely pulling back with her strength to not slam Magnolia to hard into the ground, not actually wanting to injure her opponent. And, even then, as they hit the ground, Elyss does not attempt to instantly move into another technique opting to mount Magnolia if not interrupted by raising her upper half up and looks down with a strange smirk. Ow. Her head…

“Was that good?”

This is going to cause her head to ache later. Actually, this is going to cause her whole upper half to ache later. Elyss felt the leg wrap around her as they fell. In all honesty, she did not expect for her attempt at reigning the situation in to work as well as it did. She caught Magnolia off guard for just a moment with moves that the blonde probably didn’t expect the redhead to make, but it proved useless in the grand scheme of things when one considers the massive gap in skill and power level between the two. That laugh is going to haunt her for a bit, no doubt about that, but right now, she should worry more about her sudden inability to breath.

Bwah. She left her body exposed with her actions allowing for even a novice to take advantage of the opportunity. Oh god. It feels as if her head might pop any second now while trapped in Magnolia’s bearlike embrace. Elyss’ mind flared demanding she make attempts to escape from this dangerous hold. Strangely, despite her position, her face was pressed into Magnolia’s chest making her feel even more awkward and flustered. Oh… These are rather… feminine when compared to the manly grip that is slowly killing her! Ignoring her growing blush which is also being exemplified by her inability to get any oxygen or blood to her brain, she attempts drastically to escape by pushing her hands against the ground to rise, but Magnolia is making it hard to use her upper half with the way her legs are locked around her back.

‘Ugh! There’s no escape!’

Though, she can feel that presence of Tenmarin in her mind goading her to do what she knows she should do in a situation like this. Elyss has never actually tried using this ability in an actual fighting situation, but she’s quickly running out of time and needs that extra bit of strength. Despite the hold, she closes her eyes and stops struggling so hard as she focuses her thoughts on her dying mind asking for Tenmarin to do what it must to unhinge her it and allow her body to respond to her with higher proficiency. It doesn’t happen immediately, but maybe Magnolia will feel Elyss’ muscles flex strangely as veins running down her arms, legs, and head bulge. Soon, Elyss begins to rise slowly, but surely with renewed strength, yet, she only rises a short amount before letting her body fall to the ground once more with Magnolia as a buffer. The redhead has little idea how to escape, so her best bet is to simply try to brute force the blonde off by hoping to cause enough discomforting pain to make Magnolia release her hold.

Sealed Power Phase 1: 10% boost to strength and speed

Ugh. Freedom. It seems she was graced with another chance. Good. She didn’t quite know much longer she would have lasted without having to get a bit desperate. Of course, she doesn’t immediately rise taking a moment to catch her breath after having the life nearly squeezed from her. Though, she catches Magnolia’s words and couldn’t help but grumble and rub on her face just to keep any coloring from spreading on her cheeks. The last thing she needs is to get anymore flustered about something like that in a situation like this. She can fantasize later or whatever. Right now, she needs to focus.

It doesn’t take long for her to get back to her feet. Her body feels lighter and her lungs are working at a capacity greater than before. As Elyss’ dark eyes focused on Magnolia, that wile smile on the blonde’s face caused Elyss to shiver slightly. It seems someone didn’t like that a piece of their person was touched in such a way, but you can’t blame Elyss for something like that. It was Magnolia’s fault that it occured. This makes her think of those stupid manga where the male protagonist somehow always gets in a situation where he’s groping some woman, and knowing what happened next to the male, Elyss figures she’s about to get a beating worse than before. Ah, whatever. She’ll just deal with it appropriately.

“I’m a bit too jittery to end things here, so yeah… I’m prepared for a bit more.”

Her muscles feel stretched out due to her allowing them to swing more vividly. To be honest, her whole body feels a bit stretched out because of her allowing for her muscles to work just 10% more proficiency than what they’re used to. She can’t just let that go to waste, so she begins rolling her neck and shoulders loosening up the parts of her body that Magnolia abused before retaking the stance she had before preparing yet another attack. Or, Magnolia might tell her to get this rodeo started again. If so, Elyss is already letting ideas flow through her mind about how to approach.

She’s not going to be that easy, not after everything that’s already happened. Magnolia is either being predictable on purpose simply expecting Elyss to not be aware of the woman’s repetitive attacks on her legs and feet. Though, of course, Elyss moves to guard her face backing her body up with a step with her right sliding that foot back. However, once the feint has been shown, the redhead lifts her left foot as Magnolia’s tries to kick her shit allowing her toes to bend and buffer the kick only causing minor discomfort as her foot lands back on the ground. Then comes Magnolia’s assault on her body.

Focus? She’s trying to do just that! With Elyss’ arms still being up, she quickly lowers her left catching the elbow aiming for her chest; her hand instantly burning from the force of that attack which causes her to flinch, but inevitably, that causes the blow to her nose to connect with a loud smack that has her reeling back but catching herself solidifying her stance. Yet, even after regaining her stance quickly, the pain in her face has caused her eyes to close momentarily causing her to catch sight of Magnolia spinning, but all she could do was buffer that attack with her guard causing her already wobbly stance to break and send her stumbling more.

Dammit. Time to improvise or something. She can’t let herself get bullied around like this. She only has this one chance however to actually do something rather than protect and take a beating. With a deep breath as she’s stumbling, she grits her teeth and slams her foot hard on the ground forcing herself to stop moving and bends herself backwards with said sudden stop just in time to dodge the kick that was coming for her. Though, immediately after, she falls onto her back with a grunt and rubs at her nose missing her chance to actually launch a counter at Magnolia. Looking at her hand, she notes the light trail of blood. Payback from earlier, huh?

With slightly grumbling, she rises and turns to Magnolia licking the blood on her lips and spits it out on the ground next to her. She’s hurting, but she knows that charging in recklessly will just end up like every other time. Maybe that’s what Elyss should do though. Improvise? Nah… Magnolia seems too trained to continue falling for dumb tactics that only work by suprising the opponent. Once is probably enough to make sure it never works again. Elyss simply takes a deep breath and retakes her stance. Her mind is aching to do something right in this fight.

None of what Elyss did appeared clean. She was simply reacting to what she could and failing at it. Counterattacking proved impossible, and it did frustrate her. What frustrated her more however was Magnolia deciding to end their bout. That means the blonde figured Elyss wouldn’t get any better at the rate things were going. A blossoming disappointment emerges in Elyss’ chest as the other nears. At least she did one thing right this whole fight, even if it was because nothing else was working.

Though, with the sudden adjustments made to her body, she felt awkward. She’s obviously not used to standing like this, but allows for Magnolia to do as she pleases. Learning more about how to fight never hurts even if she must swallow her hurt pride a bit. She’s not new to losing, but she’d have preferred if Magnolia had just continued beating her up over pausing in front of the onlookers like this. It’s a bit embarrassing. However, she has little time to voice her opinion as pressure is pushed down on her causing her legs to scream out randomly as she did as told and flexed her muscles to keep herself from falling.

Oh yeah. Her muscles are searing an image into her mind alright. Magnolia has a lot of strength that Elyss wasn’t particularly prepared for, and the redhead could barely contain her silent cursings at the excruciating pain shooting through her body from her legs. She tries her best however. She has failed at one task, but she still has time to succeed at others. She just hopes Magnolia doesn’t end up causing her legs to snap from under her.