Closer and closer he came and from the looks of it the swordsman had no intentions of stopping his advance. It was rather odd how so few fighters were intimidated by the beautiful whip. Perhaps they were just ignorant and underestimated the damage that it could deal. But Kenji had good reason to not dread her whip, he had a pretty good option to deal with it. His sword...Rosalyn hadn't seen someone use the two-handed giants in a very long while. This was going to be interesting for her. The range advantage that she had normally commanded was nullified by his selection. Maybe he made the decision to wield such a blade just for that reason.
There was also a great advantage in Kenji's strategy to keep pressing forward. He was probably trying to force Rosalyn back into an unfavorable position, cornered at the edge of the platform. A strategy that was great for limiting her mobility. At least, this was something she was well aware of and was going to fix when the opportunity presented itself. And as she watched him carefully while maintaining her grin, she noticed that the opportunity was going to come very soon.
As Kenji took his final step forward, placing his sword in range of her arm, Rosalyn moved her leading left foot back as a reaction. If pushing the succubus back was Kenji's goal, then he had accomplished it. Each step back that she had to take in retreat, no matter how tiny, was a substantial gain for him. At the same time that she stepped back, Rosalyn's right arm swung to the left. One might have assumed that it was going to run right into the horizontal slash that Kenji had made with his large blade, but that would had been a mistake on their part. Her arm moved to her left while it simultaneously moved upwards, carrying the whip above her head.
Kenji may had thought that the range of their weapons being roughly the same put them on equal grounds. Rosalyn was going to demonstrate that she clearly had the advantage. By bringing her arm up and to the left to have the whip follow in that direction, she had set herself up in one of her primary attack positions. It would be great if his face was in range of the popper because it would be just moments away from creating a nice gash. But since that wasn't a possibility, another attack would have to suffice. Her arm and her wrist snapped and pulled the whip back to her right to follow the direction of his blade. At the point when the whip would had made contact with his face, the whip finally delivered the much anticipated pop.
There was something that made this single crack different from the many the succubus had thrown out already. She used the whip like an extension of her arm by directing her own Ku to travel through its body and to the popper. And once the whip had cracked, it was like sparking a lighter. From that point flames jumped and fanned out at Kenji. If they dealt any significant damage at all Rosalyn would had been pleasantly surprised. She didn't expect that the swordsman would be close enough for them to do much. But dealing physical damage was not her primary goal here. She wanted to demonstrate early on that she still had the range advantage by being able to extend her abilities through her weapon. She was trying to control his movement by limiting his options.
After the brief and sudden burst of flames the whip did not stop moving. It was imperative that it remained constantly in motion. Her arm suddenly shifted again, her wrist pulling the whip back to the left to perform another overhead crack directed where she had just placed it previously. And then again, though, the angle of the strike had shifted and the popper pulled further away from Kenji. Rosalyn had started to walk to her left side, her body moving fluidly like a dancer's. Her arms, her hips, her feet, they were all in sync with one another as she slowly began to circle Kenji on the platform. At first when starting her path she approached even closer to the edge of the platform, but by the time she would be approaching his back she would be near the center of the platform, about ten feet away from him if he hadn't moved, giving her a favorable position.
[ Hot Touch Degree -1 ]