Trebuchet vs. Corant

Both fighters are set in a field of grass where the wind is slightly blowing and the clouds are fairly overhead as the morning comes upon them both, a slight fog passing over the dew of the grass, lowering visibility by 30% (which means, with normal sight, both fighters can barely see one another if there is more than 30ft between them; if the distance goes over 50ft, they become invisible in the fog by normal sights). Around them was a circular boundary set up, designated by an unpenetratable magical wall that was transparent, but still a bit visible, standing at fifty feet tall. Outside this barrier, cameras were set up, giving people a chance to watch this fight from the safety of their TVs, while there were watches kept on the fighter's locations.

Both fighters stood from the center by fifteen feet each, making thirty feet between them both. And then a horn goes off....

FIGHT!

Quote: Wrote:

> Size of the Arena: 100 ft diameter, Wall equals 50 ft tall > > Spectators' Location: All spectactors can only be present in some other place aside from the fighting area, using either the television to watch the match or any other appropriate method. > > Ring Out: Going over the wall, which means past the boundary itself, or ascending into the air past 60 ft. > > Special Rules: After the first post on Page 2, the fog will decrease, making visibility only 15% lower. So, both fighters can truly see one another no matter where they are, yet if they are more than 50 ft apart, they see the other barely. > > After the first post on Page 4, the fog disappears as the sun rises, yet the sun will occasionally be blocked out by the clouds. > > ((Other events may randomly occur as the match progresses, assuming it prolongs.))

Ja`Kalie also crouched. From his back, he pulled out an assault rifle of sorts. The rifle, pitch black, was the same color as his armor, which was full body and seem form-fitting, as it was somewhat bulky. His HUD switched to Infra-red vision, lighting up the massive figure in the fog, even if it weren't as clear as without fog, but there was definitly something there.

Corant's fist first when to his belt, then to the ground, where he implanted a plasma-yeild mine just below the surface, a sharp crack resounding as his fist broke the surface of the ground with that amount of force, then released the small metalic ball, his finger activating it as it withdrew. A small green dot appeared on his HUD inside his helmet - the mine certified that it had been activated remotely. His hands withdrew two more of the mines, and he lept forwards, a sharp wiff of sound following him. In mid-air, just above the ground, his right fist slammed down, implanting another mine, activated already, and his arm redirected his flight as he made a slow circle around Tacitus, equidistance at all points, at just about twenty-eight feet, and shoved the third into the ground. He was now dangerously close - about 10 feet from the edge, so, in the blink of an eye, his feet shot out in front of him, stopping himself and attempting to propel himself back.

The shockwave through the air caused Corant Ja`Kalie's bones to shudder in the armor, and slightly altered his course, but he hit the earth on his feet well before the course change was dangerous. As the pool of acid slowly crept closer to him, he drew his particle rifle, aiming at Trebuchet, while taking note of the green goo, which his HUD noted it to have a highly acidic pH and his eyes told him was at least something like acid. Because of that, he checked his shields. The armor itself would be slightly susceptible to the blob before him - the shields, as they were energy, not solid, would act as a wall that would not be phased. He had to be careful. Corant knew that Trebucket did not have knowledge of the shielding system, but when the giant figured it out, he'd work to bring them down then throw him into the acid. The MK87 Mod12 trained itself on the head of the storm giant, and Corant's finger pulled the trigger twice, his suit controlling the recoil, as did his arm. Each trigger pull let off a small burst of neutrons, fired quick enough to burn through the air, creating a thin trail of plasma behind them as they headed to their targets, quick enough to blow holes of immense size in the thickest and strongest of armors on a technologically equal scale.

Solarian Federation technology would have just as well have been considered impervious to the effects of electromagnetic pulses, and could usually wash the effects of electricity - of massive amounts - over them like water over a rock. If anything, the Solarian Federation technology would only benefit from such emissions. He fired again, this time, after the first two shots, his thumb fingered a new selector on the rifle, rapidly switching it to make the barrel slightly distort the pulses of electrons - in effect, the rifle was turned into a shotgun for the next two blasts. In the course of those two blasts, he used what would be utter confusion to thumb to a new selector, this one a "burst" mode, and traced the barrel even lower, giant's bottom right side. Now, his finger double-pulled the trigger as drew the rifle up to the storm giant's right shoulder, then down on the second burst. The result would be a line of fire in an arrow formation, like a slanted A without the middle bar, across his body, forwarded by two massive blasts to confuse his opponent as to where the shots were coming from - at over a tenth the speed of light and invisible to the eye, as each packet of neutrons was far too small to see. All that would be visible would be a line of plasma - fire - behind each shot, but that lag would be far too late. The goal was to have the first two shots be a usual expectancy of fire, then a pair of shotgun blasts to throw off the storm giant, to make him think that the shotgun-like blasts were a new thing and meant for the kill. However, the last two bursts, which would come long enough after of the Giant's swinging tree to be missed, and the momentum of the tree too great to alter course for the new bursts.

The rifle was slung once more over his shoulders, and his hands went to his sides. From his fists, he produced two small balls. Sidestepping a few meters then lunging forwards, one arm threw one of the plasma grenades at the base of the tree, where Trebuchet held it, and the other directly at Trebuchet, timing them to explode on contact, and directional towards their targets. Recovering from the lunge, he kicked into the ground, creating a foot-dee p skid from the utter force of the blow, which sprayed a shower of dirt into the acid.

Corant thought for a fraction of a second longer, then switched weapons once more. This time, a neuropistol was drawn; it's blast, not on any wavelength of light would be hardly affected by electricity. Corant Ja`Kalie, the Cybrid, was running through his options now, prodding and poking just to see what would work and what wouldn't.

The two grenades were de-primed in mid-air through a command - one fell to the ground inside the arena, the other into the audience, both as harmful as ordinary rocks. He took a short leap back away from the approaching pool of acid, which had by now reached the edge near one of the implanted grenades, which he remotely detonated, causing a massive crater ten feet deep and fifteen feet in diameter, which would hopefully fill with acid and slow it's advance.

Corant aimed the neuropistol towards the head of Trebuchet, and depressed the trigger rapidly over the course of a second, bringing it down towards his chest as his did. It's waves of invisible energy played absolute hell with a nervous system, first crippling the enemy through massive waves of sheer pain -deadly, not merely painful- and, if enough force was applied, frying the nervous system and hopefully causing some irreversable damage on organs. There was no telltale sign that he had fired. No lights, no sounds, just heat emitted directly back from the pistol, expending any "recoil" energy that could not be thrown back into the gun. A low hum also reverberated from the gun as it fired. If anything, before the blast hit - which would take hardly any time - it would seem like the weapon misfired. If this didn't work, he had one good last plan.

Corant rolled to the side, well out of the way of the oncoming tree, then, on the horizontal strike propelled himself into the air, aiming to jump over it as if it were a high-bar in a track & field competition. The tree, on that hit, clipped his arm, sending him into a violent spin, but the H/K armor absorbed the blow, so he felt the hit, but no nerves coursed with pain. He landed face down, catching himself on one knee, one foot, and both hands, his face inches from the ground. The pistol was still in his palm, leaving his right hand in an awkward position, but it survived the blast. However, now was the perfect opportunity to strike, with the tree still moving on it's arc. Corant lept to his feet and turned to face Trebuchet, knowing another attack would be likely to come. The pistol found it's holster, and the particle rifle was removed again, and Corant squated down again, aiming at the edge of the pool of acid, and squeezed the trigger, holding it down. As a long stream of the neutrons moved forward, the rifle slowly moved upwards to Trebuchet's feet. A massive trench in the ground would be made between them, but as well, acid would be thrown up by the force of the exploding ground and the shockwaves of air, directly towards the storm giant.

Corant paused, when his opponent was gone, he did a quick search, his suit doing a full search with every detection system at his disposal. Even though it took a matter of seconds to find Trebuchet hovering in air, it was disturbing to Corant that it took so long; the accursed fog and static field didn't help him any. Fortunantly, Solarian Federation armor was impervious to all things electrical, but it had to work harder to burn through the electronic fuzz that the field fed the detection equipment, and the suit was actually counteracting the static field's effects. Another test. He did not, by any means, like to wait for an attack, but Ja`Kalie did not want to underestimate, miscalculate, or even miss a bit of information entirely. The soldier grabbed a fistfull of dirt, crushing it in his hand to form a compact ball - comparable to diamond - , and gaining momentum by spinning his body, hurled it towards Trebucket at remarkable, hypersonic speeds. If the static field was connected in some way to Trebuchet, like a forcefield, even blocking it would cause the giant to float even further upwards. If it wasn't, then there would be no such effect. Other possibilities were also true, but, with polarization and electromagnetic fields, they did have affects on the object that they were being caused by, and, with the massive amounts of charge in the air from the static field, the dirt clod would be polarized in an opposite manner, and would actually accelerate and break into a small line of pieces as they went towards Trebuchet, actually doing more damage than if they were one clod. In reality, all he had to do was wait and be able to brace himself and not get crushed. It was just a matter of time unless Trebuchet wised up about the circumstances... To further the test, another diamond-like crushed bit of dirt was thrown at the same speeds, seconds after the other.

Corant covered his eyes with both arms. He didn't know if the visor of his helmet could take what was going to happen next, but he was smiling.

A force would befall the arena prior to the tree. Any electrical force has one fundamental element to it. A flavor of charge - otherwise, it simply cannot be, it cannot function. The flavor of the charge of the static field about Trebuchet was likely negative - making everything around him positive. How he'd been able to be in the air for so long with this charge so powerful was an absolute miracle, but one thing was certain - because he no longer touched the earth, he was not charged to it, rather, the electrical field was charged opposite. The earth, a natural energy-sink, because of the opposite polarity, yearned to equalize that charge. Corant aimed to fulfill the ground's desires. Thusly, the first clod of dirt was a lightning rod. Not aiming to produce the electric-wind that was the primary goal of a lightning-rod, rather, be a bridge. In a massive flash of light, the first clod of dirt bridged the gap between Trebuchet's static field and the ground, acting as a midpoint, and the electrons lept from the field to the compressed dirt - not a good conductor, but in this case, it was better than air - and then lept into the ground in an absolutely blinding flash of light. The air smelt of ozone. The ground was charred, but happy, no longer polarized. The electric field was gone, the last of it dispersing into the ozone filled air. The second clod smashed into the tree. Corant rolled out of the way of the tree as best he could, grabbing the weapon from his back and looking up at Trebuchet as best he cloud, spinning so that his body was facing the giant above him, and felt himself pulled to the ground as the tree pinned his left leg to it, but the armor held firm. If Trebuchet had at all attempted to hold the electric field in place, it would be calculable to literally trying to hold the moon on his shoulders. The force washed over him, his shields obviously taking the brunt of it and flickering, but him raising his rifle was belayed. Another grin on his face, he fired, fully automatic, using the ground against his shoulder to steady his quickly-produced aim. Within a second, hundreds of packets of neutrons flew upwards at Trebuchet, and his left hand crossed his body, grabbing out his particle dagger, but his aim never wavered.

The second blast once again force Corant to the ground, but his grip held on his rifle, and the shield's force was diverted properly - but not entirely - to the sections getting hit the hardest. Reserve force was drawn from the generators that would normally let him go into Fast-time for extended periods of time, boosting his shields, though, he felt he might regret doing that later. After the new blast had washed over him, Corant rose his body up just enough that he could throw the particle-sword, of battleship-plate slicing power, at Trebuchet, supersonic, and directly into Trebuchet's chest - at least, that's where he aimed it. Corant slowly bled off a little energy to help him into fast-time, and acted quickly. A clip was ejected from the Particle Rifle, and this was thrown to the side. A new, fresh, clip was entered, and aimed carefully at Trebuchet with one arm, and unloaded. With his free arm, Corant Ja-Kalie tossed a plasma-yield grenade towards the hand that held the tree, where it would detonate just far enough out to yield absolute destructive damage within about ten meters of it's point of detonation, not a half meter aimed from where the hand met the tree.

Corant spun, one mighty leg kicking at the base of the tree, shunting it aside and toppling it into the stands as the action also succeed in freeing his other leg as it was hit full-force by the blast once more. Once more, the shields and armor took much of the blast, but he could feel his leg numbing. He knew it to be there, and that was enough to use it, if not entirely effectively, but chemical stimulants in his system would have it back in shape in no time. This time, his rifle was lying on the ground next to him, thrown a few feet by the blast, which also caused him to roll towards it, though, not entirely all the way to it. He kept on rolling, willingly now, and it latched to his back with one hand, while the other pulled out his neuro-pistol. Now Trebuchet's nervous system was exposed, and he rapidly pulled five poorly aimed, invisible shots, which could feasibly miss. The next two, however, as he got onto a knee and aimed at the exposed rib-cage, were not so haphazard, firing two massive bursts of crippling wave energy at his enemy, aimed to cause extreme pain, and carry that pain up his nerves directly into his brain.

Corant's energy shields crackled and fizzled out, attempting to repair, but for now, the armor would have to do. Corant recovered from the impact of the new blast, watching the tree fall to the ground. He slung all of his weapons to the ground, and, getting on the balls of his feet, he awaited for his opponent to finally face him. He waited, one of the small holes inbetween Corant and Trebuchet - he hoped that his giant opponent would trip and fall on it, possibly in delirium from pain.

The rifle was drawn again. Corant, once again, aimed carefully, and depressed the trigger. If all of the force was absorbed into the stone, the stone giant would find itself literally pushed back by the fully-automatic fire, the kinetic force of each small packet being more powerful than the cannon of an M1 Abrams tank, and each "round" being a series of these packets, and hundreds of rounds now being flung at his chest, all focused into tiny areas.

Corant slung his weapon, and now had a choice to make. In a split second, it was decided. He charged forward, throwing one of his last plasma-grenades at the feet of Trebuchet. Charging forth, he reached the aforementioned hole, and then another, and another, snatching from each a plasma grenade previously imbedded. One by one, as he charged Trebuchet - in other words, in a matter of one second - all three were thrown with proximity detonators at various points on Trebuchet's body. One more at his feet to make him stumble, the other two at the top of his chest to make him fall backwards, and then, one final move: He lunge at the giant's gut, feet first, a sonic-boom echoing through the area as the man and the one-ton suit of armor came barreling towards Trebuchet.

In lue of the semi-failed attack, Corant was going with one more solution. Throwing his enemy. Something was very liable to go wrong, but then again, something was liable to go right. Corant rolled to the ground, and, with his right foot - the good one, and his shields powering up once more, he used the shielding to create a rift between Trebuchet in the ground, and attempted to fling the giant upwards, back over his head, and towards the closest edge of the ring, not more than thirty feet away. That itself was not a large feat, considering Corant could manage that with something three times the weight of his opponent, if not more.

Corant appropriated the shields properly to defend against the assault, and did something most would consider brash. One again, he charged, and when he got close to it, prepared for a bicycle kick, and as it rolled nearer, he crouched, still moving. His arms hit the ground, digging himself in and he once again used his feet to lob the tree upwards, timing and meaning for it to purposefully hit Trebuchet dead on. At the time that he had reached it - not even three seconds after Trebuchet caused it to spin, it wasn't fully "wound up" as power-cores generally got. Also, his throwing of the tree with his feet was not aimed directly at it, so as to not damage it and cause detrimental affects to Corant - being close to it in the past didn't seem good, and the acid my be contained in it.

As the tree struck the ground, Corant rolled into one of the shallow holes previously made by explosions, not shallow enough, however, to count him out of the ring. The blast washed over him, and he emerged, for the most part, unscathed after it was over. He walked a few feet, and did something peculiar. Squatting down, he began to get handfuls of dirt, squeezing them into rock-solid forms, and pocketing them, one by one. Some of them he tossed across the arena with no real aim in mind - he certainly was not attacking.

Before the tree hit, he gathered up another few dozen dirt/diamond balls, and jumped into the air, avoiding the main force of the second blast. With several dozen of the balls, he now started lobbing the first of a trio of the balls at Trebuchet's head, each with a hardness higher than that of most stones. Massive sonic booms could be heard as they entered hyper sonic speeds of over mach fourteen, with more power in each one than a tank cannon.

Corant drew two more of the balls, throwing them this time at the giant's "neck." He stood his ground, seeing if the stone giant would try to get within melee range, wondering if the giant knew any of Corant's abilities just by sheer reason. Another two balls, this time aimed just below the last two, all four being at the same speed of approximately mach 4.

Corant threw two more of the rocks, then... lept. Landing on his hands and tips of his feet, no more than two feet away from Trebuchet, and attempted a swiping-kick of the stone giant's legs. No, the goal was not to trip him, rather, damage him. The force produced behind the leg that swept at the giant was more than that produced by the rocks. If the leg shattered, it was likely that both would, or at least part of the torso, as the shattering stone leg would act like shrapnel. To make matters worse for Trebuchet, the shield on his leg sharpened itself to act like a small blade to direct the force better, so that the leg would swipe all the way through and do much damage.

The overall motion of the soldier hardly effected, his shields taking much of the damaging force. The storm mana and heat hardly affected the suit at all - it was able to take the temperature change from 3 Kelvin to over 6000 Kelvin in minutes. This heat nearly had more of an adverse affect on him, creating a cushion of hot air beneath him, trying to loft him up, so the leap was hardly affected.Once again, he resumed the attack, charging Trebuchet, attempting to get within a foot of him, his leg swinging madly - but with control - at the feet of the giant.

((After a talk with Tacitus, he has told me that he has withdrawn Trebuchet from the tournament. Skyburn gains this win.))