Sticks and Stones [Kizuna, Sola]

"Stupid freaking rock."

He muttered to himself as he wittled away at the rock in front of him. These quartz-like structures that littered the sands of the desert were pretty good for conditioning his weak knuckle. It was like a game, every chip that came off was a victory and every success meant to look for the next one. He was competing with himself everytime to try and get faster, better at the process.

After a while he'd bore a nice hole through the alabaster conglomerate of stone. How long had he even been doing this? No sun meant no days but damn it felt like ages that he'd been chipping at this punching bag. This wasn't effecient but he was just being persistent at this point, there was little reward for hard work but it's because it seemed difficult that he wanted to do it.

A few more good strikes and using the rest of his endurance, the luchador's spiritual power depleting as he ended up breaking his hand in the punch.

"You stupid goddamn rock. Next time you stupid structures are going to shatter from a finger, y'hear?"

What a dumb pursuit but Sola didn't care about that. The fact that he couldn't break the rock structure right now was enough to piss him off. He looked down at his bloody and broken knuckles with an unimpressed frown. Gotta go back to the drawing board if he wanted to overcome this challenge here.

Hovering over this little dweeb, Kizuna whistled in a manner that made it rather clear she wasn't actually all that impressed. Sure, his effort was pretty impressive, but it wasn't like he was actually getting too much done here.

"Hey, boy, you planning on punching rocks 'til your hands fall off? Not exactly a great way of getting anything done."

Hopping off of the pylon she'd been sitting atop, Kizuna almost casually pointed a finger at the rock and fired off an impressive cero, destroying it more or less effortlessly even as her eyes remained on Sola with a fairly smug grin. She did like these wandering fighter sorts, at least. They always seemed like they had something to prove.

"Or are you thinking if you keep at it long enough you'll suddenly be a big, strong man?"

"Huh?"

Now who was this nice piece of ass, short and floating all high and mighty but he bit his tongue when she blew up his rock. That bitch, now he'd have to find a new rock to smash up.

"Ain't got much going on here. May as well try to accomplish something before I go try and beat up some other hollows, I figure these are pretty tough so if I can break one of these I can break a mask. Might be weak but ain't no fun to sit here with my legs crossed waiting like a snack."

He explained while shaking out his broken wrist. The stinging and sharp pain through his arm was the worst but nothing that wouldn't heal up later. Too much to do and accomplish before he died.

"So whaddya want? I'm kinda busy trying to get stronger, hot stuff. Unless you wanna help me out with fixing my wrist, a garganta to blow this joint or lift that top of your's up - I'm looking for a challenge, get me?"

Of course she could just kill him but Sola lived life as fortune favours the bold so he'll be bold every time.

Oho, feisty. Kizuna liked that, it meant he might actually be worth keeping up with. She even grinned a little wider, and slipped a finger under her top, lifting it just enough to keep him from actually seeing anything other than her fairly impressive abs.

"I'm no healer, sorry to tell ya, but I'm sure someone trying to get stronger ain't gonna have any issues just dealing with something as plain as a broken wrist, eh?"

Her smug grin only grew more taunting, and she leaned over a bit both to show off a little more cleavage and just to seem particularly mocking. So he wanted a challenge? That was fun, she could definitely get used to someone like this, and she stepped right back onto her pylon as she kept her eyes on him.

"Tell you what, tough guy. You can get a nice eyeful and a garganta if you can catch me. Maybe even a little extra if you put your back into it. Sound good?"

Hey, that was pretty nice. Sola thought he had a pretty neat hunch there, hot girl mean want hot girl and with hot girl as goal it means that a competition has begun to have that girl over another person. In laymans terms, hot lady make neurons fire for simple man.

"Nice..."

Alright so with a glimpse of tits and a view of abs he had all the reason he needed but she felt inclined to sweeten the deal too. All he had to do was catch her? Well. Judging by that cero he was already outclassed but that wouldn't stop him. Really it just made him want to force the smug grin off her face in ways that even a simple guy like him knew what would get.

"Yeah, alright. You gonna float up there all day or show that those legs are more than just a nice ass and thighs."

He could've probably got into some negotiating here maybe insist that broken wrist means she can't ride her pylon-things or something like that. A handicap for a handicap but Sola didn't care about the fairness of the situation, if anything the unfairness made it more appealing for him. You had to try twice as hard to overcome a handicap, right?

Just because he didn't care about Kizuna's advantage of those flying tools she had, it didn't mean he wouldn't try and prompt her to show off that there was more to her than sitting on her ass shooting beams. Plus it made the chase all the more nicer you know.

"Heh, you like that, huh?"

Raising an eyebrow at his taunting, Kizuna nevertheless stepped back onto the sands, snapping and dismissing the pylon before stretching out briefly. It was all for show, of course. She was always pretty much ready to go any time. Not that she was the fastest chick around, but hey, this'd be a good opportunity to get a little effort in and fix that.

"Sure, I can stretch my legs a little bit. But let's hope you don't embarrass yourself trying to chase me down on foot, that'd be terrible."

With that little comment made, Kizuna took a step and bolted off into the distance. Her technique wasn't perfect, but it was alright. Probably fine for this particular guy.

Hmph.

"All I gotta do is touch you right."

Sola smirked as he took off after her, he knew from the get-go that he'd be playing from a disadvantage since she was clearly just better than he was in all this stuff. At some point or another he was going to need to use his head, he'd figured out while punching that rock that technique did a bit more than blindly thrashing it.

It was as he suspected that he was struggling to keep up but he hoped that she wasn't detecting him any easier than it was trying to detect her. At least there was still that sound if he was listening right so after two attempts at sonido he winced from the strain. Not the easiest but he'd need to bait her into getting far too confident somehow. How the fuck did he do that? Maybe he could pretend to be more worn out than he was and trick her.

Worth a shot he thought. Chasing her normally wasn't going to get him anywhere.

"That's right, boy."

There was a mocking familiarity to Kizuna's tone as she said that, a lilt to it that really conveyed just how intently she was needling at him now. Of course, she wasn't doing it entirely for her own amusement. He seemed to be the sort that took well to that kind of encouragement, being pressed on his own abilities and all that. If that was what it took, she'd gladly keep at it.

"Ho~? Tired already? You'll never impress me with stamina like that, you know."

Kizuna had stopped to keep up the mocking, but she wasn't nearly so stupid as to suddenly walk closer. She might have enjoyed this game of cat and mouse, but she wasn't going to just hand him his reward on a silver platter. She simply leaned over once more, offering a beckoning "come here" finger toward him.

"C'mon, pick up those feet. I don't want to see slacking like this, get moving."

Nah. Little bit of fatigue wasn't going to pull him down, plus he was really keen to get that sneer off her face and stick something in her mouth to shut her up. Not that he didn't like her, it was all just good banter to motivate each party. She was too far away so he thought about it, maybe he could herd her somewhere. Surely she didn't have the same spacial awareness as he did for this place since the time they'd each spent here must be quite different.

He'd still need to be closer to even consider doing anything. Somehow he just had to interrupt her before she could make the next sonido at some point.

"I can do this all night."

Sola shot back, launching himself towards her with another sonido and reappearing with his finger outstretched and a weak cero on his finger aimed at destroying the ground around her foot to interfere with her take-off. If he could take advantage to the difficulty to sense an individual in sonido then he could charge ceros and try to slow her down a bit.

Had she developed it more thoroughly, been more acutely skilled in her pesquisa, Kizuna might have noticed that Sola was readying something during his Sonido. She only noticed after he had come out of the step, however, and while she was nevertheless able to continue moving again, she'd certainly lost some distance between the two of them, her smug grin only growing wider.

"Oho~! Now aren't you really getting spicy now, boy? If you want to throw things around, why didn't you say so?"

Turning around mid-step, allowing the momentum of one well-timed jump to carry her, she shot him a wink as she fired a beam from the tip of her finger, pointed directly toward Sola. At first, it might have seemed to simply be any other Cero, but such a thing quickly proved to be far from true. Her Spark Array split itself into dozens of smaller beams, all flying toward the man chasing her in a tremendous volley.

Of course, she'd weakened it by several orders of magnitude to make sure she didn't kill the poor boy. But why tell him that?