Glacier vs Retribution

Heaven or Hell: RE-Union - Round 3

Team Glacier vs. Team Retribution

Moonblade Manor - Fairy Garden

The Nobles District is one of the smallest and least populated districts in the City of Durem. Built upon the remains of the original medieval fortifications that protected the walled town of Durem, the Nobles district rests quite literally above the rest of the city itself. Though the castle that once stood here has long since fallen, new walls both political and economic have risen up around the most prestigious district. This district is home to the wealthy, the elite, the heads of crime organizations, and the headquarters of corporations, lending an air of sophistication and power surrounds this area.

It is also home of one Master Magus Extraordinaire and his 10 acre Victorian estate.

General - As opponents enter the center of this breathtaking garden, the plant-life will swell and form a maze, with trees, thorny bushes, and flower beds intertwining to create walls of plant-life. While the trees inside the walls extend upwards roughly 30 feet, the rest of the walls are around seven feet tall and passable, through combatants risk getting stuck in thorns and tangling vines. The footing is slightly uneven, with random bits of stone path intermixing with the otherwise grassy terrain. Various benches, small fountains, and other garden décor can be found inside the maze in the dead-ends.

The central clearing of the garden remains a 60 foot diameter circle, the very center of which contains a 5 ft. diameter fairy ring (circle of white mushrooms). Corridors of the maze are otherwise 5 feet wide and extend to cover two acres of grassland, giving fighters plenty of room to traverse the maze throughout the fight.

Weapons - Rocks, mushrooms, stone benches.

Natural Element Resource - Plants, Earth, and Opulence.

Bonus Effects - Spending two consecutive posts in the fairy ring causes the unfortunate victim to be pulled into the fairy realm, effectively ringing them out. If destroyed the fairy ring is disabled until it regrows itself, which it accomplishes over two posts.

Small fairies are flying around to maintain the maze. Mischievous and occasionally vulgar, they like to loudly trash talk in an effort to heckle people but otherwise do not directly interfere with the match. They otherwise follow the same rules as spectators and are off limits to deliberate attacks.

Tenkai Matsumoto Wrote:

Crimson Hawk Hotel | Tenkai's Room - 4:03am

It's often said that fate rarely calls on an hour of choosing. Things can go wrong, right, or sideways at a moments notice. And in their wake things may never, ever be the same. A trip across a street can become a chance meeting with ones soul mate, or a chance adventure to eat asian barbecue with a friend can end in tragedy, betrayal, and loss. It was impossible to truly predict the methods and madness of a turbulent universe.

So to, it was impossible for Tenkai to predict where this day would lead him. Today was his teams match against team Glacier. The schedule said the match would begin shortly after noon. But now, just a handful of hours before Dawn there would be a set of knocks at his door. Exactly three. And then precisely three seconds later, another thee knocks. And then three seconds after that, a third. The knocks happened as if programmed that way and regardless of if he replied verbally. If he ran immediately to his door and swung it open after the first knock the subsequent knocks would still wrap at his door despite the fact the hotel hallway was completely empty. There was no one here, but there was a single envelope on the floor in front of his door with his name neatly written in cursive.

Inside the envelope was a something ordinary...but something that changed the rules of his investigation entirely. The letter was signed and stamped from the Heaven or Hell official offices, the paper had an official signature. It was a letting detailing the time of his next match, and his opponent. Ordinary.

But not. Invitations didnt come in the middle of the night they came days in advance. They held all the permissions and credentials necessary to get an individual into the arena. And this invitation had all that. But this invitation said he was slated to have a match in the luscious garden of Moonblade Manor, in less than hour, at 5am. The letter detailed that his opponent had been carefully hand selected by the tournament owner. That he was to come alone without the other members of Retribution. And it was signed by one Elia Noah. Signed, that he could see the indentation in the paper and see actual pen wrote this and not just a computer.

His opponent? Well, that was impossible.

His opponent was a dead man. No one knew that more than Tenkai did. Tenkai who had been their in his final moments and watched the life drain out of that man's eyes. Tenkai who slew him. His opponent was listed as one Maximos Lucillien Dark.

Of course that could be a joke or a lie. Anyone could have entered Maximos name in the tournament. But this was a letter from Mr. Noah specifically. That had other implications. No one knew the fate of Maximos better than Tenkai...because no one else knew the fate of Maximos. No one else was there. Even if this Maximos was a sham, how did Noah know? Tenkai had spent so many years watching the auspicious business man...had Elia Noah been watching him too? What else did he knew about Tenkai? About Maximos?

A late night hotel room now held more questions than answers, but for the first time in years he had a location where answers might be found...and more...so much more. If he left right now he could make to Durem in time for the match. But it had to be now, there was no time for anything else.

In a sea of queries only one remained that required an immediate answer that only Tenkai could give.

Would he go? Or would these mysterious elude him forever?

Moonblade Manor | Fairy Garden - 4:56am

If Tenkai went he would find the illustrious Moonblade Manor open to him. A private entrance would take him past the main house to where the ring was set up for use later that day. The garden itself of gorgeous, a place betwixt reality and whimsy. Just like this time was at the knifes edge between night and day where the sky was at it's absolute darkest. In a few careful minutes purples, blues and golds would wash over the clouds and fill the air with the glory of dawn. But here and now the night was darkest, and coldest. Here and now, in a place of magic like this it was easy to see why ancient cultures imagined that daylight was not always a promised thing. In the deadest part of the night just before dawn most fairies were sleeping. But other things rose in their place.

Amidst the beautiful vegetation and perfectly trimmed foliage, simply hung in the cool air were dozens on dozens of flickering lights like a sea fireflies. They looked as if they were weightless, just drifting in the wind haplessly around a fountain. The dancing lights dancing gave off a cold glow and seemed distant...

...perhaps that was the first clue.

Another might have been the fact that while the lights danced so peacefully in the wind, the high shrubberies were blocking all the natural wind. These were lights...that Tenkai could only see in the cursed eye that had been forced upon him.These lights werent fairies at all like. They were spirits. Dead souls trapped and hung here betwixt night and day in this magical place.

And at the center of their dance, sitting alone beside the fountain was a man. Had he just appeared? Or had Tenkai's mind denied seeing the phantom because of how truly he did not want it to be? Were those fairies asleep? Or hiding in fear? It was impossible to tell. But as soon as Tenkai noticed the man by the fountain, there could be no doubt as to who it was.

Only one man would have gathered so many fallen souls around him, knowing only Tenkai could see them.

Only one sword gave off such a vicious, oppressive aura.

Only one man smiled the way that man sitting at the fountain smiled at Tenkai right now.

Despite the whims of men fate would call, and it would have it's way.

That man....Tenkai...they just...

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Maximos Wrote:

arrow Crimson Hawk Hotel - Tenkai's Room - [4:03 AM]

Tenkai was not much of a sleeper but to say that he never slept was a stark exaggeration. The many years he spent wandering around Gaia had forced him to adapt to sleeping outdoors or in unsecured locations where he would be left vulnerable. This he had taken up the habit of “half-sleeping”, a quasi-meditative state that left his consciousness in the twilight between sleep and the waking world. With the addition of the “eye” in his right socket, this method of sleep was almost mandatory now. Closing the eye did almost nothing to dull its effects, which made it even more difficult to fall asleep. Ironically, this made it much easier to stay aware during half-sleep. He was only fortunate that the spirit realm had a solemn, somniferous atmosphere to it rather than a chaotic mess of colors. It was almost like a visual form of white noise.

The other downside to this, of course, is that Tenkai could not dream. One would think that someone like him wouldn’t care a wink about dreaming, let alone forty winks, but the truth was that Tendai did indeed miss being able to dream. There was only one time in recent memory he was even able to sleep so soundly as to be blessed with REM sleep, but he was far away from Bambi and the rest of her girls back at the Badlands for now.

Suffice it to say, even if he had a choice, Tenkai would have elected to half sleep anyway. Though their rooms in the Crimson Hawk were secure, Tenkai was not at all trusting of those that secured them. Even though his investigation had been a wash several years ago, the fact that Elia Noah and the Foundation had reappeared from obscurity to host another tournament felt oddly suspect. Was it merely for the sake of the fighting itself? At any rate, the swordsman monk was not keen to let his guard down, which is why the first set of three knocks easily roused him from his sleep.

Tenkai rose to his feet with a look of mild exasperation. It was far too early for the Crimson Hawk staff to be bothering him. What could they want at this hour?

Three seconds later, they knocked once more, exactly three knocks like the first time without so much as a “hello” or an announcement of intention. “Yes, I’m coming,” he said tiredly, loud enough that the other person could hear him over the other side of the door without him needing to shout.

He was already in the process of opening the door when another set of knocks came. “YES, alright, I’m—“

He opened the door. There was no one there. The last two knocks rapped against the opened door, and Tenkai snapped his head to the side in the direction of the sound. He peered out into the hallway and looked up and down it’s length in both directions.

No one. Not a soul. Literally. It certainly wasn’t a ghost, either. After all, Tenkai would have seen it if that was the case. Someone was trying to play tricks with him, and it was far too early in the morning for that. Looking down, he saw the envelope with his name neatly written on the front. With the slightest bit of trepidation, Tenkai opened it, half expecting it to be filled with pepper powder or glitter or some other light, messy substance that would only serve to irritate him further.

He would never have expected what it actually was.

There was a letter inside. An official letter, no less. A letter informing him that the timing of his next Heaven or Hell match has changed. That was the first red flag. Neither Arthur, Artanthos nor Durandal seemed to be awake either. Wouldn’t they have contacted Arthur several days ahead of time? After all, Round 2 had been their bye round, there was certainly enough time to let them know in advance. Why would they change the time for Tenkai alone and not the rest of team, or even provide them with notice in either case? Was it lack of professionalism, or was it deliberate?

Tenkai kept reading. He didn’t stop until he read the whole letter, and it wasn’t until ten minutes had passed that Tenkai realized he had actually read over it a dozen times, as if he had been stuck in a time loop. His disbelief had been so great that the reality only hit him after reading it twelve or thirteen more times, and by then he was already crushing the paper in his hands.

His fight rescheduled to an hour from now, just before dawn? That he was to be there alone, without his team? And his opponent was none other than *Maximos Lucillien Dark*, the very same man he had killed so many years ago? What kind of sick joke was this? Was it really the doing of the Heaven or Hell staff, or did someone with a little too much time on their hands simply want to screw with his head?

No, that couldn’t be all there was to it. There were serious ramifications to this sort of thing such so that doing it on a whim just for laughs was not worth it. Whoever wrote this definitely intended Tenkai to follow through. Whatever they wanted out of it seemed to be well worth risking the ire of the Judges. It had to be a trap.

That was exactly why Tenkai had to go.

Tenkai didn’t walk headlong into traps because he was foolish. He liked to spring them because he wanted to know who would go so far out of their way to trap him. Sometimes approaching a set-up with caution and turning it on your assailant was a much better option than simply avoiding it altogether. Otherwise, they would simply kept trying some other way until they finally manage to get you to a point where you don’t even realize you’ve walked right into their hands.

It didn’t take long for Tenkai to get out of his robe and smallclothes and into his bodysuit and armor. He silently crept out of his room, not willing to risk detection by going out the window. It was better to look as if he was inconspicuous, simply out to catch the sunrise or to train on the beaches of Latent.

Tenkai did not bother leaving a note for his team. He didn’t want to risk them coming along and throwing off the terms of the arrangement, which would scare off his would-be ambusher. He fully intended to be done with this farce before they were scheduled to arrive at their match with Team Glacier. If they demanded answers as to why he snuck out on them, he would tell them everything. About his prior investigation. About Noah. About Maximos. If that explanation wasn’t enough for them, that would be their problem, not his. He was fine with seeking forgiveness rather than waiting for permission.

arrow City of Durem - Moonblade Manor - [4:46 AM]

Tenkai was minutes away from his destination, the gardens of Moonblade Manor. How they ever convinced that foppish mage to lend his property over for the tournament’s use was beyond him, but the monk surmised it had something to do with large sums of money and several fancy hats. He had thought about arriving a half hour or more later than the requested time in hopes throwing off anyone wishing to get the jump on him, but there was one question burning in his mind that prevented him from doing so.

What if this really wasn’t a trap?

After all, that letter wasn’t some pure digital fabrication. It had been signed by hand by Elia Noah himself. A signature Tenkai must have seen a hundred times while poring over whatever documents he was able to procure way back when he carried out his investigation. Even after all these years, his memory of it remained clear. If this was a forgery, it was absolutely immaculate, as if the person was Noah’s *shadow*.

But why?

What did Noah know about gat transpired between himself and Maximos? Why would he lie like that just to get him out there to fight ahead of time? Wasn’t his team supposed to fight Glacier? Did he mean to imply that Maximos—or whatever doppelgänger they claimed to be Maximos—was in actuality the up until now secretive fourth member of Glacier? That would have explained why they had been so secretive up until now, but why go through all that trouble just to torment Tenkai over a past that he left behind? Was it Noah’s way of getting back at him for all the time Tenkai had spent meddling in his own business?

What had once been one question had now given rise to several others, and each of them gave rise to several more questions themselves. The closer he got to his destination, the more he felt himself returning to a place he thought had long been left buried. These questions coupled with his memories of the dark, gothic city of Durem as he ran through its streets hit him with bitter familiarity. It was like he was running back in time, and he hated every moment of it. There were reasons why the past was the past.

arrow Moonblade Manor - Fairy Garden - [4:58 AM]

When he finally made it to his destination, he was not so surprised to find that the manor was open to him. They weren’t going to just force him to break into the place he was supposed to show up to for his supposedly rescheduled match. Once he got to the gardens, however, something instantly became amiss. The “fireflies” did not fool him for long. They were souls, and a rather large concentration of them at that. But what were they doing in Moonblade’s garden? Surely he would have had some way of keeping his own property free of haunting, wouldn’t he?

But these were weak souls, barely able to maintain a sufficient corpus. Will-o-wisps was probably the more accurate term. But these weren’t the kinds of disembodied souls that one would find in just any old place. Either the magic of Moonblade’s garden had weakened the veil sufficiently as to attract these souls, or someone had brought them here. There were few people he knew who had that kind of power, and one of them was dead.

And he was sitting right there.

There, at the fountain in the center of the area just off the side of the prepared arena. There was absolutely no room for doubt the minute he set his eyes upon him. Both eyes. This was no imposter, no trick upon his mind. The soul did not lie, and he was there in the flesh. Carrying that same, terrible sword. The sword he had used Tenkai to create through the cruelest betrayal. The cursed might of the Yamata-no-Orochi was absolutely overwhelming and entirely unmistakable, and there was only one sword he knew of on Gaia that contained even an ounce of its power.

With his body, frozen by disbelief, swiftly coming to terms with the reality before him, Tenkai felt as if his body was acting on its own, an unconscious desire to act, before he could even process what he was doing.

*SSSSHHHHHKKK-THOOOOOOOOM!!!!*

In an instant, Tenkai had closed the gap between himself and Maximos, drawing Muramasa from its sheath and up overhead for a downward strike so full of immense, burning rage that regardless of whether he parried or dodged it, the air pressure displaced by the strike would split the entire fountain in two. Small chunks of shattered marble and clouds of debris spread out from the ruined piece of sculpture and plumbing.

Tenkai’s eye was wide open, his face filled with a mixture of shock and fury as m everything flooded back into him at once. Max’s betrayal, Elia Noah, Glacier, the Foundation, the Heaven or Hell tournament...there was no escaping this fate.

So he would have to cut it down.**

arrow Moonblade Manor - The Gardens

The elvish woman didn’t have to walk for long before the sounds of lightly rushing water and annoyed grumbling reached her ears. As she turned one of the maze’s corners, she found herself in a small clearing decorated with colorful flower beds and a sizable fountain. A marble fairy sat at the construct’s center, spitting water in a steady stream from its perpetually opened mouth and filling a large stone basin.

A dark figure sat on the edge of the basin, whispering under his breath and hardly noticing the red haired woman until she came fully into view. In sharp contrast to the greenery all around them, Arthur sported a black dress shirt and slacks; while a brown pair of leather lace-up boots were strapped to his feet and a dark orange tie with black paisley design was tied in a decorative noose around his neck and clipped to his shirt. Long, open robes of black velvet hung from his wide shoulders, it’s trim and hood lined with beastly black fur in an intimidating display as the monstrous hair seemed to stand on end as the mutant turned towards his newly arrived opponent.

Arthur set his sights on the woman, the lenses of his white wayfarers shining bluishly in the sunlight. He grinned cryptically, producing a deck of tarot cards from the folds of his robes. “Good morning,” he greeted, shuffling the deck as he regarded Sierra politely, “I’m sure you’re dying to find out what happened during the battle here last night between your friend and my teammate. I couldn’t give you an answer myself. The answer to that mystery lays beyond...” The mage turned his head towards the continuing paths of the labyrinth to indicate the direction the elf would need to go, and undoubtedly the path that Arthur was now blocking. “Perhaps the cards will tell us more...”

The black mage drew the first card and planted it face-up on the marble basin. It depicted a bearded mage in robes and a pointed hat, writhing on the ground with ten swords embedded in his back. Arthur sucked in his breath. “You and your companions stand on the very precipice. Stray even a little and you shall find the edge.”

The mutant drew the next card and set it to the right of the first card. A witch sitting up in bed was drawn on the card’s face, astrological symbols decorated the quilt she lay in and nine swords hung from the wall. “Fear. The sword of Damocles hangs over your heads, weighing down your minds with worry and threatening the end of your adventures together.”

Arthur took a deep breath and reached for the third card. He paused as his fingertips touched the back of the last card; his mouth hanging open in shock before he shook his head. The mage released the deck. “I’ll spare you the grief of viewing the full spread. There’ll be enough emotions for you to contend with if you manage to get past me.”

“Lady Sierra” Wrote: