Cherry Solo vs. Canaan Noble

Lu-Bu Heavenly Kitchen

Lu-Bu Heavenly Kitchen is the current location for the ever-popular ADAMANTIUM CHEF:: GAIA television show. In an effort to accomplish some cross-over appeal with fight fans across the multiverse, Adamantium Chef has decided to redecorate their Kitchen to resemble the famous Lu-Bu Dojo.

Terrain

General: The are inside the semi-circle of cooking conter-tops is 40' in diameter, but the overall room is 75' by 75'. The floors have been layered with tatami mats, and the walls are lined with weapon racks, punching bags, dummies, and other assorted training gear. The "north" end of the stage is on a raised dais that is 10' higher than the rest, where the judges would normally sit. This area is empty of people, but the four chairs and long-table are still present.

Weapons: Assorted kitchen gear, ranging from the mundane (chef knives) to the arcane and complex (sous vide machine). If you've seen it in Iron Chef, it's probably here. On the far walls are wushu weapons: staves, nun-chucks, tonfa, sais, and the like. There are punching bags of all shapes and sizes, a mu ren zhuang (Wing-Chun training dummy made of wood), and many mock-up human targets made of ballistic gel. Along the walls are also a fully pantry and fridge full of various foodstuffs.

Bonus Features: None, other than the possibility of being able to cook a meal in the middle of a fight.

Truest Valor Wrote:

Cherry Solo, Food Artisan

“Welcome back viewers, you’re just in time, our second competitor has arrived. Give a big warm welcome to Cherry Solo!” the excited host accosted Cherry the moment she stepped through the Dojo doors. “You’ve been making a big name for yourself lately Miss Solo and now you’re finally on Adamantium Chef. I know it’s a lot to take in but tell me what are you going to cook for us today?”

“Uhm,” ever friendly Cherry counted down the short list of foods she enjoyed before finally settling, “A peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

“You mean a peanut butter and KNUCKLE sandwich don’t you?” the host said with a wink.

“No… why would I—no.” and with that Cherry stalked off.

Who was Lu Bu? Why did he own a dojo? If he wasn’t from Wutai why was he appropriating their culture? Why had a legendary warrior turned his sacred home into a kitchen? And more importantly where did California fit into all of this? Cherry Solo felt like she was caught in the middle of some massive inside joke and no one was going to explain it to her.

Though physically an adult and possessing all the appropriate faculties of one Cherry herself was still very much a child. She knew nothing about cooking and often forced more experienced members of the agency like Nathan Hill and Nitten to prepare her meals. She was notoriously picky and abhorred anything that looked disgusting, was attracted to bright colors to the point of being unsafe, and consumed a lot of sugar in her free time. So when she approached the central ring it was with a look of utter consternation on her face, the Batterized Beauty didn’t know what they expected of her but she was certain she couldn’t provide it, and then there was Canaan Noble lounging forty feet away without a care in the world. He was shoveling cereal into his mouth by the handful and the box sported a colorful dragon proudly declaring how healthy Ryugi-O’s were.

She was instantly jealous.

Battery: 100%

Truest Valor Wrote:

Cherry Solo, Bad Manners

Cherry Solo caught the box of Ryugi-O’s and her eyes lit up like a child on Hushmas day, a very dangerous child with electricity dancing in her eyes, but a child nonetheless. With at least a few seconds before Canaan decided to dispense with the niceties and punch her in the face Cherry plunged her hand into the box, scooped a handful of iron pellets into her palm, then shoveled them straight into her mouth. Now she wasn’t one to complain about a gift, after all the only major gift giving holiday in Neo Midgar revolved around reliving the terror of eldritch invasions, but the shock was clear on her face. Cherry looked like she had been betrayed, not by Canaan but by Ryugi himself, and without a second to waste her jaw swung open and the pellets rolled out and onto the floor.

“Bleeegh…”

Well, all except one that is. When the final iron pellet rolled to the tip of her tongue Cherry’s mouth converted from a wide vomit chasm to a projectile vomit chute and fired it towards Canaan’s face. Now Cherry was super human and her ability to spit was probably impressive but it was nowhere near dangerous. The ability to apply magnetic pressure to any metal object in her vicinity was though and that’s what turned the last Ryugi-O into a bullet! …Well, probably not, there was no way the lone Ryugi-O would fly faster than fifty miles per hour and even at that speed it would do little more than irritate Canaan, unless she hit him in the eye or something.

With that Cherry snapped into a stance, right leg forward and right arm out with the palm turned down while the left hung close to her abdomen, and thus she approached.

Battery: 95% (-5%)

Truest Valor Wrote:

Cherry Solo, Plays With Food

Cherry Solo giggled, perfectly fine with his disgust.

Soon a little spit would be the least of their worries. She made a slow and steady advance towards the center, her pace unbroken even when Canaan decided to rush her down; his fists were slung up in a boxer’s guard with a slight change. Martially inexperienced and naturally ambidextrous the difference between a southpaw stance and a regular one failed to register with Cherry as little more than an annoying swap of what she was used to seeing. With an experienced fist slinger like Canaan standing across from her this assumption was likely to punish her but not quite yet.

Canaan was rushing into her range and bringing the pain with him, not all that dissimilar to Randall Smalls or Ogelsby Misra, but without the natural openings that came with either warriors personal style. She didn’t like that. Cherry wasn’t interested in engaging in a standing striking match with Canaan that would see both fighters dip and dodge for any number of minutes and so she opted for something new, to put a name to it, avoidance. As Canaan approached Cherry’s stance suddenly became very solid, muscles tensing as they often did before she sprang into action, and her left leg(the one set back) rose onto the balls of her foot. Just as Canaan was set to enter her range her right leg rose with a bend at the knee and right as his first punch fired her leg snapped out. A straight kick aimed to plant her right foot solidly into his abdomen with the tips of her forefoot and toes looking to shove him back. She would also be leaning back, adding a few extra inches to her extension that would see his punch miss just in case the push kick didn't knock him back out of her range. A spark of electricity raced down her leg simultaneous to the strike, hitting her sole and toes without pause, guaranteeing that any connection between foot and Noble would feel unpleasant.

Plus Cherry was a big girl with metal bones so it might wind him or something like that.

Battery: 95% (-5%)

Truest Valor Wrote:

Cherry Solo, Tiger Knee

Cherry Solo was impressed by Canaan’s resilience. Even if contact had been incidental a discharge from her internal battery was enough to make most people recoil in pain. That was fine, she had plenty of power left in the tank and the inclination to use every last drop if it would make him squirm.

His next move was anything but incidental though. Mister Noble turned to the side, caught her ankle, tugged her towards him, and by the looks of things he was bringing his left arm back in to finish the counter with an elbow to the chin. It was a decent move but not an unexpected one. Cherry’s training was shoddy at best but she knew that when legs started flying people were inclined to start grabbing and normally that wasn’t a bad idea. But then normal people weren't capable of doing the things Miss Solo could.

Gender differences aside Canaan and Cherry were near perfect mirrors of one another in terms of build. It was therefore a safe assumption that, fast as Canaan was moving, there was still a window of time for Cherry to correct her errors and prepare for their inevitable collision. Which she did by, rather than fighting his attempt to pull her, going right along with it. Another explosion of electricity went off, this time internal, and when Canaan tugged at her right leg she sprang off of the left. By the time the two met somewhere in the center her right leg would have reeled itself back in and alternated positions with her left whose knee was set to plant into Canaan's chest, almost dead center if not for Canaan's last minute turn . At the same time her right hand would have fallen low and caught his elbow, he had been wrong in assuming she’d dropped her guard despite logic dictating that it was the best way to stay balanced, and thus absorbed the force of his strike into her palm and the metal plates that layered over it while turning it to the outside. There would be a slight turn in her body as she passed him by, using his elbow at a pivot point to torque her body and aiding it with the burst of electricity at their knee-chest connection.

If the knee strike did land Cherry Solo was hitting at double her regular strength, easily compensating for what power she had lost in her lunge and then some, and would have crushed the chest of a normal man. The burst that followed would in turn test just how resilient Canaan was to electricity with potential paralysis and severe surface level burns being a regular side effect of her instantaneous power bursts. Hit or miss it would be interesting to see how Canaan reacted.

Battery: 90% (+5%, -10%)

Truest Valor Wrote:

Cherry Solo, Just Passing By

Truest Valor Wrote:

> Canaan planted his lead foot and stopped his movement, leaning to his right to let her whole foot slip by his side. He quickly snatched her ankle with his left hand and yanked her very hard towards him.

Cherry Solo didn’t know much about the martial arts but she did know her right from her left and that they were the reverse of Canaan’s.

Canaan’s initial dodge had put his left in line with Cherry’s left which is why her knee strike had been set to glance off of his left side. Given that presenting his left profile to her wasn’t going to stop her from kneeing him, it would just guarantee that she struck him in the anterior rather than the pectoral area, arguably worse given that one set of ribs would be taking the brunt of the impact rather than both. As to the power of the strike itself? Granted that it would be less effective than if she’d had a proper base but a knee lift from someone who could deadlift fifteen-hundred pounds wasn’t going to be pleasant and even if Noble was a verified tank he would still be dealing with an explosion of flesh and muscle scorching lightning, and this before his stone skin came into play.

With a head on impact Cherry would no longer be able to glance off of Canaan and so with freshly arrested momentum would instead settle to the ground right in front of him, both legs on solid ground once more and her right arm still connected to his elbow, she was ready for whatever came next. Canaan went to extend his arm and she transitioned her grip to his forearm and shoved, keeping the limb pinned for the time being. Then he brought his right into play only to find Cherry still had her left free. His hips twisted, he threw a fist her way, and Cherry’s palm was there to meet him to the music of metal banging on metal. Thus they stood with arms crossed and their bodies locked in place, just like one of her cartoons, cool!

All in all, Canaan was in for a bad time if he wanted to keep Cherry at close range, her training may have been spotty but her instincts were on point and her options varied, and it was about to get worse.

Whatever advantage Canaan may have had over Cherry in terms of balance would go away as Solo snapped her mouth open and unleashed two-hundred decibels of nightmare inducing static on her opponent at close range. Sudden as it was the shout would leave her throat raw but it was worth it, not only was the sound itself loud enough to shatter glass but it was so powerful that it was a literal wave of force that could easily knock a disoriented man down, like say one who no longer had eardrums. Though not a standard application of her powers the ability to vocally maul her opponents was quickly climbing its way up the ranks as one of her favorite moves both for its unpredictability and its long lasting effects, and Canaan was about to learn why.

Battery: 70% (+5%, -25%)

Cherry Solo, Mirror Match

Cherry Solo’s electric hands had recently melted a hole in chainmail on a glancing blow and that was at half the physical strength and half the battery power that she had just hit Canaan with. In other words if he had just taken a hit from her in any capacity he was dealing with severe burns and potential paralysis in addition to whatever physical trauma being clipped by a wrecking ball would do. Stone skin would help dampen the effects of any future electrocutions but this time he was fucked. Given the severity of the damage done it was entirely understandable that Canaan would need time to process what had just happened…

But hey, at least Cherry wasn’t trying to angle around him anymore, she was standing right in front of him and ready to throw down.

Speaking of which, Cherry wasn’t reaching one limb under the other. They were standing across from one another after all, so it didn’t take much reaching for her to put her left palm in line with his right fist, seeing as how they were standing across from one another and their sides were reversed. Between the elbow from earlier and his latest punch Cherry now had a decent grip on both of Canaan's arms and she didn’t intend to let go unless he forced her. After all a significant portion of her fighting style involved laying hands on her opponent and making their life miserable through periodic electrocutions or other unfriendly applications of Maji generated electricity.

With this in mind it was easy for her to see the uppercut coming. Between his knees bending, his upper body dropping lower along her field of vision as a result, and whatever crazy twist he had just used to free his right fist from her left hand it was pretty clear he was up to no good. Cherry Solo had a strict policy against hit in the face whenever she could help it too. So up he came and to the side she went, a quick step carrying her out of range of the telegraphed uppercut and towards her right, but with her right hand still secure around his left forearm. It was a spectacular miss though, nearly perfect, and she had just the thing to make it better. Funky magnetic tricks were one of those things that the fans just expected to see when someone could fling lightning and Cherry wasn’t one to disappoint. As Canaan freed himself and threw his right her left would detract but in its place she left a vicious magnetic shove on his vambrace and tweaked his forearm back until Canaan would be clubbing himself in the face. It was a tough sell for sure, after all most people naturally avoided hitting themselves in the face, but that was exactly why he wouldn't see it coming, well in addition to a sudden invisible hand jerking his forearm out of line.

Well if Canaan did end up knocking himself out with his own super powered punch that’d be great. Most likely he’d just be left with a half swung punch, off balance, and connected to a Cherry Solo who was now screaming at the top of her lungs. Yeah she didn’t intend to stop that, put a delay on it sure, but just for the split second it took for her to step to the side and that just to take a nice deep breath to guarantee she got the full effect. They were still at point blank range and she was still unleashing that nightmare inducing wave of sound at Canaan, bursting eardrums and leaving him less coordinated than a one legged dog.

What about after that?

Well, if he looked particularly vulnerable she’d probably just fire a few fast punches into the side of his head. He hadn’t given her a whole lot to interact with beyond an attempted interruption, so might as well keep it simple and catch he breath.

Battery:65% (+5%, -10%)

Truest Valor Wrote:

Cherry Solo, Noggin Knocked

Cherry Solo was gifted. Her coordination and perception were both top notch, such that she could perform fantastic feats with relative ease and was incredibly hard to get the drop on. It was difficult to call these gifts natural given Cherry’s unnatural origins but they were engrained all the same. Of course this all made Cherry dangerous but sometimes her choices in the middle of combat weren’t the best…

In hindsight she was probably strong enough that she could have kept wrenched Canaan’s guard open and gone to town on him at close range but instead she’d try to play cute with it. She saw him in the opening motions of a punch of some sort and thought it’d be a great idea to have him hit himself. It probably would have been too but in Cherry’s defense she had absolutely no way of knowing that Canaan was a goddamn fist wizard. Now Cherry was actually a good deal heavier than she appeared, between her thick skin and metal bones, much like Randall’s own fist wizardry the shockwave was only just powerful enough to fling her from her feet. But fling her from her feet it did…

Cherry had made a move to step back but it wasn’t nearly fast enough that said most of the impact was coming at her from below. At the tail end of her scream Cherry’s mouth slammed shut, her tongue safely tucked back inside of her mouth, but her lower lip splitting open from an awkward scrape with her teeth. When she fell it wasn’t backwards but upwards, lifting a solid three or so feet from the ground before dropping with a thud to her back where her reinforced skeleton did what it could to absorb the fall. Then she laid there, limbs spread akimbo and a look of utter consternation on her face.

Cherry had been in three fights so far and each time she’d won through her superior physical gifts, choice application of electricity, and the devil’s own reaction time. But Canaan was a clever guy, probably more than she was willing to give him credit for right now, enough so that he’d been able to keep the score even with her so far, with her stacking incidental damage while he’d landed one big one. This fight was going to require something different than her other bouts, but was that not the measure of a hero, to dig deep into their reserves when the chips were down. Yes, getting the shit kicked out of her was exactly why Cherry Solo had joined the GCL, but Mister Noble still had a way’s to go if he wanted to take this one out.

That said Cherry spent the next turn sprawled out on her back and staring at the ceiling. On a subconscious level she had activated her sonar, flooding the area with pings that let her see Canaan’s shuffling around on his side of the battlefield, her body having skidded a lot farther than she’d realized, but for now she’d enjoy the cold hard floor.

Battery: 70% (+5%)

Truest Valor Wrote:

Cherry Solo, Light Sleeper

Cherry Solo would have laid there until Canaan made his approach, content to see him mill about in the eye of her mind, until the ten count started. The refs voice boomed from invisible speakers hidden in corners and beneath floorboards, announcing that if Cherry did not show she was willing and able to continue the fight she would be disqualified. So it was with a grumble and a groan that she rolled to her feet before the nine…

Cherry wasn’t all that fond of weapons and in her mind they were a coward’s cool. It was an opinion laced with salt though. She was confident in her ability to take stand toe to toe with anyone, she had taken beatings that would have broken lesser warriors with a grin on her face, but weapons were another story. Thick skin and hardened bones may have afforded her some measure of protection but wouldn’t do much to stop her from bleeding out once the wound was in place. That was terrifying and frustrating for a budding warrior to deal with, so as soon as Canaan had made for the weapon’s rack she began to devise a way to get past his new toys and blast him in the face with lightning, each plan riskier than the last.

But sometimes when in Rome…

Cherry walked to the wall and picked her own set of toys. A three foot straight sword in her left hand and a one and a half foot dagger axe in the other. It felt weird, not that she wasn’t coordinated with weapons, but it was out of character. Nonetheless she arrived at the inner circle a little after Canaan and would settle into a stance about five feet away from him. The Jian was held forward with its point slightly inwards and the axe was held high while ready to chop.

“Are you sure you don’t want to return to punching each other?”

Battery: 75% (+5%)

Truest Valor Wrote:

Cherry Solo, Chopping Down the Competition

Cherry Solo didn’t need a weapon's master to explain that Canaan’s spear was going to excel at a distance that would make her own sword-axe combination next to useless. Just like Canaan no doubt understood that she was banking on her ability to close the distance between them. Thus their second dance of the night had begun with the man on his back foot and the woman pressing forward...

To this end Cherry turned and moved forward to counter every step that Canaan took, keeping their centers in line with one another and even closing the distance whenever possible. But cautious as her approach was that five feet between them would not shrink by much, a half foot maybe, she was after all well aware that a rush would end with her skewered. When his thrust came for her mid-section the left oriented sword caught it, a twist of her arm and body saw the flat of her Jian press to the shaft of his spear just below its head and then pass the thrust off to the outside, and while Canaan's two-handed approach certainly gave him more control over his weapon Cherry's defense was already in place. When and if Canaan’s spear chose to retreat from its unplanned adventure to Cherry’s left he would find that the flat of her sword remained pressed to his spear, pinning it with her prodigious strength and forcing him to rethink a simple retraction.

At the same time her right handed axe fell horizontal across her chest. Her right angled forward, presenting her right shoulder to Canaan while simultaneously making herself a smaller target, effectively setting the spear thrust to pass by the front of her body and setting the two parallel to one another. All the while she advanced faster than he could retreat, shrinking the gap between them to something more amenable, and yet even if she could have struck his right forearm or made a precarious stretch all the way to his left bicep she was content to simply shrink the distance between them and mitigate the threat that was his spear, for now.

Battery: 80% (+5%)

Truest Valor Wrote:

Cherry Solo, Never Miss A Beat

Cherry Solo was no mind reader but she was pretty sure that Canaan Noble was thinking of retracting his spear, after all he’d done just that, unless he was one of those types who reacted without thinking. That would be awfully hypocritical of him but it would also explain where the cup of water he’d been holding had gone.

Probably broken on the ground somewhere right?

Cherry kept advancing, her parry and turn had come on the wings of a step, and when he retreated a step she took another big step forward and righted her stance. At the same time her hand axe swung down and out from its position at her chest, catching that incoming spear under the shaft and pushing it to the right and safely away from her unprotected hip. Her sword had reset its position in front of her body and her axe was going to realign itself with her chest unless he decided to try anything with that spear of his.

Now Canaan may have been under the impression that he was the only one who could move and act at the same time but Cherry had been doing that the whole time and with the superiority of linear movement over backwards movement the distance between them would only continue to shrink. It had been a mere five feet at the very start of their dance and it was getting smaller with every beat that passed. Generous estimates put the space between them somewhere between three and four feet, no more and no less, and with the shift in Canaan’s target and Cherry’s shift in position they were once more in line with one another. Even if Cherry wasn’t attacking quite yet she would take a free action to wink at him and send a spark rolling through her electric blue eyes.

Battery: 85% (+5%)

Cherry Solo, Ride the Thunder

Cherry Solo had no idea why one Canaan Noble continued thrusting into her parry, he had been fast to react the last time, but if she had to put some thought into it she would say that the terse warrior wanted this fight to end and he didn’t care who won.

Cherry however was not keen on being turned into a metahuman shish-kabob.

Cherry Solo was no weapon’s master, this much was clear, but she was a special combination of innovative and shameless that allowed her to parody those who were better than her. She had once seen a Wolf Prince wield the sword-axe combination with fascinating results and within this combination it was the hand-axe that played the defensive roll by hooking whatever came close in order to create openings for the blood. The Wolf Prince had been a Norse man and she was an Oriental woman but her choices were obvious mirrors of his own, a three-foot Jian and a one-half foot Dagger Axe.

To this end the Dagger Axe had always been prepared to defend. Rather than attack it had set itself at her chest where it was coiled and ready to defend, parrying the inevitable spear thrust that entered its radius and then catching the spear’s throat in its beard when it attempted to maneuver. Just like her step forward it was not so wide and dynamic a move that it required a significant telegraph, the tell was in its positioning and relative silence in the heat of battle, and prepared as she was it was easy enough to knock the spear off to the side when it came in. That was there things would get funky, Canaan was supposed to turn his spear away and go for another strike of some sort, at which point she would attempt to tangle him with the beard of her tiny Dagger Axe and keep his spear trapped for her sword to strike.

Even if she had to use powers to do just that…

But that wouldn’t happen. Instead Cherry would end her step well past that thrust with her axe set against a spear shaft that was in turn set against her hip. Her sword wasted no time in driving across the scant few feet that remained before them and looked to hammer itself into Canaan’s abdomen while the act of stepping into a thrust had oriented her slightly forward. Unlike the dragon disciple Cherry had nothing holding her back from gutting the man, she had damn near murdered Randall Smalls and the League healers had been able to patch up the big man just in time for him to get obliterated by Canaan the next day, so long as she didn't kill him instantly it was a safe bet that he would survive. After all he had already tanked two separate flesh melting shocks, one bone crushing impact, and a brain rattling sound wave. Canaan wasn’t so weak that he would die from three feet of metal in the guts but if she left him in such a critical state that the medics needed to call the fight quits before he bled out, well she was just fine with that.

So there was no remorse in her thrust. All of the strength she could muster in that instant went into running him through at the belly, splitting his too tough skin if she had to and then filling his belly with electricity. Of course she remained ever vigilant, maybe this was all an act and the instant she over extended herself he would go for that super human punch of his, it didn’t seem likely right now, but if a little girl from Midgar was to crown herself Queen of Coliseum then miracles were bound to happen.

Battery: 75% (+5%, -5%)