((Logged 3/24/01 by Dirah))
Bart rushes in, his cloak all around him as he hurries to the box, "Oh man! I'm late! I hope I didn't miss anything!" he looks around, seeing it not so crowded. "....Uh, ok," he finds a seat and sits, wondering if he's early or something.
Joseph glances at the latecommer. "Don't worry, kid, nothing's happened." He rolls his eyes up. "They didn't publisize this match as well as the first."
***
Sigurd steps onto the field quietly, stopping near the center to bow to the general audience, too nervous to fall into his old habits of playing the crowd. He does, however, free his whip from his belt, snapping it free of its coil with a flash of... certainly whips don't reflect light. Do they?
***
Already having arrived, Dirah has already found a seat- and for a change, he actually seems to have some sort of interest for this fight and its outcome. He spares a glance to the newcommer, but allows no shift of expression to it... But if nothing else, there is amusement in that visable eye, pale as sky's blue. But he makes no comment, and turns back to the fight.
***
Jalon/ Small Man says, "And now....Bart Fatima!!!"
Tifa enters the arena, in...actually, quite the same disguise Bart was wearing. Simply his normal clothing, only slightly differen't colored, and with a large billowing cloak. She carries a pair of coiled Cobra Cracka whips, one in each hand as she enters the arena. Her topaz-blue eyes fixated on only one person: Sigurd. She remains silent for the moment, even after she's in place.
Jalon /The Small Man works the crowd up for a moment, and then rushes off down the hallway.
***
Jalon has arrived.
Bart looks at his own clothing for a brief moment, blinking. "....? Uh...," he sweatdrops. "...Geez, he's GOOD," he says.
Jalon takes a seat near the wall of the box rin the front row.
Joseph glances over at Bart. "Hey, stupid," he says conversationally, "Who's that pretending to be you?"
Dirah resists the urge to chuckle at Bart's rather blank gawking and exclaimation. Why bother, after all, to complicate things when this will be fun enough to watch without? Merely, he even keeps the trace of a wished smirk from his expressions, and keeps his focus to the fight as it starts.
Bart narrows his eyes at Joseph, "Watch who you call stupid!" he says. "I don't know who that is, but he's doing a damn good job," he then notices something. His eyes fall on those whips. Ok, one of two things: Either he went and bought those himself in the Thames before this tourney, ALL THE WAY OUT IN THE THAMES, or..., "....? No wonder...," he grits his teeth. There were his whips! That guy stole his whips!
Joseph rolls his eyes up. "Listen, Bert, you have to keep things calm. Just because you're not as smart as the aveage boll weevil is no reason to get all snippy." He reaches under his seat and slides out a cooler. "Beer, anyone?"
Jalon shakes his head, his eyes never leaving the fight.
***
Sigurd looks mildly shocked for the briefest of moments, then his good eye narrows slightly. There were enough differences to tell it -wasn't- his charge, despite names and appearances, and it frustrated him, frankly. He didn't move for a couple moments, nor did he speak, focusing only on the fight about to unfold before he took one careful step foreward, then another, faster, darting just into his whip's range, snapping the blue weapon out to lash at 'Bart's' chest. He kept his gaze fixed solely on the 'man' opposite him, focused intensely on him. No one messed around with his Family's name or his charge and got away with it.
***
Dirah rather distractedly shakes his head in responce to beer.. Ech, why? Dirah had absolutely not the faintest stomach for it, and had an actual wish to focus, anyway. Smile delicately in responce to Bart's little rant and nothing more.. And Dirah merely continues being quiet enough to be, well, hopefully unnoticeable.
***
Tifa took this moment to jump out of the way of the whip. "Hah! Is that the way you greet me, Sig? Don't we at least get to shake hands or somethin' before the fight?" a laugh escapes the man, in a similar yet uncanny tone to Bart's. He slowly gets up, and cracks his whips out. "...Sig, i've been wonderin'. Didn't you ever think about what Luka said? It came to me as I was awake in the bunk area...like someone threw a rock at me, ya know?" he starts advancing towards Sigurd. "She's been feeding us nothin' but LIES."
***
Bart just blinks slowly, not responding to this. He's just in pure -shock-. "...Gah! This is stressing me out!" he puts his palm to his head. "...How could someone know that much about me?! Is someone following me?!"
Joseph shakes his head saddly. "Bert, buddy, pal, you don't exactly live a low-profile life." He pulls a can out of the cooler and tosses it accross the room. "Calm down. I'ts not as if Agani's gonna lose."
Dirah clasps his hands before his face, in something of a focusing or perhaps thoughtful pose, and smiles behind his hands. Go, Tifa, go. What an amusing approach...
***
Sigurd backs a step or two, keeping a distance between them that he was comfortable with. "Don't waste your breath on me. I don't know how you know what you do, or who you are, but you are -not- the Young Master." The 'not' was accented with an aggressive crack of his Optical Whip, aimed to keep him at bay, and judge reaction time. He couldn't fight effectively without knowing just how good he was, and if how well he impersonated his charge was any indication, he had good reason to be wary. "Leave Luka out of this, shut up, and fight."
***
Bart sighs, "...."
Joseph pops his beer open. "If I was out there," he says, determined to carry a conversation where others failed, "I'd just hit the copy with a laser array." He pauses for a slurp of beer.
Jalon raises an eyebrow at Joseph's thought......but keeps his sight on the match. This was getting to be very interesting.
***
Tifa laughs, "How do you know?! Come on, Sig, why would you doubt me like that?! You know, if I can see this, -me- of all people, you should too! Her -convenient- disappearance, she's planning on destroying us all with Solaris' forces! Why do you think they were so eager for those "peace" talks!" he continues his advance, and swings one whip to crack directly at Sigurd's chest rather lightly, as if to mock him.
***
Joseph strains to hear the conversation. "I can't quite hear them..."
Bart blinks, "I don't get what he said either...," he scratches his head. "Damn, Si...I mean Agani, get him! Don't let him do that to you!"
Jalon nods. "Neither can I...."
Joseph punches the window angrilly. "Dammit! Kick that dim-witter doppleganger's butt! You haven't had a chance to lose to Kale yet!"
Bart looks at Joseph, "...lose to Kale? Are you crazy?" he shakes his head, as his mind's temporarily taken off of the doppelganger for a brief minute. Or two.
***
Sigurd jumps back a bit, lashing out with his own whip abruptly to tangle with Bart's, yanking back hard with a sudden jerk to pull the one whip out of his hand. One vs. two whips wasn't to his liking, let's see if he can even the odds while he was busy babbling on about Luka and Solaris. "If I don't trust Luka, and take what you say, I still trust my friends. Kahr's in this for real peace, I trust him, if anyone. You are the liar."
***
Joseph nods. "Kale's six feet of draconic muscle, kid. Even an Ex-military type like Agani'd have a heck of a time damaging him, let alone defeating him." He chugs down the last of his beer, and tosses the can over a shoulder, not really looking where it goes. "What's your guy got, hmm? A bug-zapper?"
Bart sighs, and rolls his eyes. "I wish I could hear them better, dammit," he says, putting his cheek to his palm.
Joseph pauses for a second, and then pulls out his pocket computer. "Hmm..." He begins pulling out wires and connectors from his jacket.
***
Tifa pulls back, trying to keep a grip on the whip Sigurd's trying to pull from him, "Maybe Kahr does want peace, but how do you know Luka isn't manipulating them all?! You're just in the dark! That's why I got into this second fight, Sig. I was looking forward to this...but I had to bring this to you before she could fool us much longer!" he continues the tug of war with Sigurd, gritting his teeth.
***
Joseph pushes a few wires into the computer, and attaches the other ones to the window. The aged speakers begin playing a terribly low-quality feed of the fight below.
Bart blinks at Joseph, "What the hell is that?"
Jalon nods. "He's trying to amplify their words so we can hear..."
Joseph beats the computer against the floor a few times. "Piece of junk..." he mutters. "Sorry, this is the best I can do."
Bart blinks, "Well, if it'll amplify the words, it's doing what it can, right?" he looks out at the field, "...I need to know what they're saying..."
***
Sigurd shakes his head slightly. "Stop talking to me as if you were the Young Master!" A slight shift of his grip on his weapon's handle, and a surge of electricity, enough to startle and shock but not harm too bad, races from his whip, through Bart's, and into his arm. He kept his grip firm, but not putting his weight into it, careful not to lose his balance. He said no more, however, only adding a slight yank to the whip as the shock was delivered, a last attempt to disarm him before he would give up and disengage.
***
Joseph winces slightly at the sight of the electrical discharge. "Unpleasant, to say the least."
Jalon says, "Ow.....I wasn't expecting that."
Bart twitches, "Ouch...
Dirah raises an eyebrow mildly to the goings on down there.. And, with the electricuting attack and the rather blurred, but a shade more audible, audio of what's being said... Dirah looks a little less overly amused and finally drops his hands, focus still silently held to the fight.
***
Tifa grits his teeth as he's shocked, letting go of the whip. "Dammit, Sig. Stop that! Listen to me, I -am- Bart! Stop trying to doubt me, Sig! We're all in danger, don't you see that?! Don't you?!" he swings his whip forward, this time it's a real strike.
Bart blinks, as the word danger comes by, a bit blurred on the speaker is everything else, but the word danger seems to come clearly, "What the?"
Joseph rolls his eyes up, and pounds on the window. "HEY!" he shouts. "MORON! LOOK UP HERE!"
***
Sigurd snaps his left arm up to intercept the incoming whip, wincing slightly as it connects and wraps around his arm, creating rather painful welts and drawing blood at the point of first contact. "Fine then. Tell me what kind of 'danger' we're in." He narrows that one too-blue eye as he snaps his whip for the arm holding the whip, since he's not in a position to really hit him anywhere else... But at the last moment he changes his mind, altering the whip's course with refined skill to aim at his leg in an attempt to catch his calf in the coil of his whip and knock him off his feet.
***
Joseph looks over at Bart. "I hate it when people lie so obviously." He sits back down in his chair. "Guess they didn't hear me."
Bart blinks, "...geez, I can barely hear what they're saying...isn't there anything more you've got?" he turns to Joseph.
***
Tifa steps back in an attempt to dodge the attack, but that fails. Though the whip doesen't manage to knock him off his feet, it knocks him off balance. "Geez, alright. You remember what I said? Luka plans on disposing of us all, so she'll have noone in the way of what she's planning!" he finally regains his balance, though not quite so gracefully, and retorts by beginning a rush at Sigurd, hopefully to ram him and knock him down.
***
Joseph shakes his head. "It's not that powerful a system," he says. "What you hear is what you get."
Bart sweatdrops, "Damn..."
Jalon narrows his eyes....though his look was not his customary angry one. "I wonder who this 'Luka' person is...?" Of course he knew Sigurd, and he also wondered who the 'Young Master' was....but he thought he knew. This Luka person was the person he wanted to know about. For some reason......he thought he recognized that name.
***
Sigurd braces his feet in the sand, then drops low at the last second, reaching up to grab his belt and shove upwards, adding that momentum to his already quick foreward one, aiming to send him flying over his shoulder, gritting his teeth at the pain of moving his left arm now. That was stupid to catch his whip like that, he wasn't 16 anymore. "Then what is she planning, if you think you have this all figured out!"
Tifa is thrown over Sigurd's shoulder as planned, and he lands behind him in a rather unceremonious thud but the squeal that comes out does NOT sound like Bart's low tone in any sense of the word, it was high pitched. He slowly stands up. "...Damn...," a cough follows this, "...geez, take it easy!" he coughs some more.
***
...Well... -That-... Wasn't good. Mildly, Dirah manages to pull his stare away from the battle, if just to bury his eyes in a hand. Charming. That... Wasn't likely to be a slip up that can go unnoticed. Wonderful. Softly ill expression hidden in his hands, Dirah manages only by some remarkable display of self control to -not- break into a litany of soft curses.
***
Sigurd turns and gets up, shaking the whip off his arm and backing several paces, allowing him time to recover. "Answer me, -'Young Master'-." His tone wasn't too gentle there, slightly bitter in use of that term on one he just -felt- wasn't his charge. If he hadn't been an empath, he might have fallen for it, but the emotion was too different. That -squeal- was a dead give away in itself.
***
Jalon raises his eyebrows. "Something tells me that that person is -not- a man......that 'squeal' from the speakers sounded more female to me."
Joseph shrugs. "My guess... some girl wanted to be taken seriously, so she dressed up as someone dangerous." He sniggers. "If only her role moddel haden't lost in the first round..."
Bart sweatdrops, "...A woman...? Uh uh. I doubt that, how can a woman manage to imitate my voice -that- well."
Jalon shrugs. "Why would you say that? Some of the most dangerous people in the world are women."
Dirah absolutely bites his tounge. Do not curse loudly, do not curse loudly... Things are going badly enough without you having this odd necessity to throttle someone. He can't even stomach to -watch- the battle anymore, listening to the gurgle of the speakers and the odd comments about the room... With none sounding utterly encouraging, he continues to cover his face with a hand.
***
Tifa stands up, ".......," he turns around. "...Sig...," he steps back, clearing her throat. "...you're going to destroy us all by clinging to your blind ways! Luka plans on destroying us all! Not peace! You'd doubt this?! I -am- Bart, but how am I to know you're Sig, then?! You rejected me, when you should understand what i'm saying most!" she pulls out a coin. "So, -Sigurd-," she flips the coin up into the air a couple of times. "...maybe i'm not the Bart -you- know...but who needs that Bart anymore? You people are old, withered ideas an artist long threw away. It's our turn now, we're ready to step in, and you better damn well pass the torch!" he laughs, his hand glowing, he flips the coin high into the air, and it soon becomes, but a sparkle in the sky...
***
Joseph punches the window. "Ether! Ether! Judge, make the caaaaaaaaaaallll!!"
Dirah drops his hand from his face, finally, blinking a bit as he finally turns back up to the battle. Getting the bits and pieces of conversation from below, all Dirah can think is that... Well.. That was rather well spoken. Rather well put indeed... With a mild nod of approval, he finally dares to cast his focus back up to the battle.
Bart widens his eyes, "...withered...ideas...?!" he tries to put this together in his mind, but it's not working. He then hears Joseph, and blinks. "Ether? Wait, that was," this person even went so far as to steal -his- ether!
Jalon narrows his eyes ominously at the false person after hearing 'her' words. Small fires dance behind the bluish-green curtains that are his eyes as his pupils un-naturally change their size to that of something a bit larger than a pin point. "For some reason.....I do not like this person."
***
Sigurd narrows his eye and shakes his head. "You just sealed your own fate. Had I even a thought that you were Bartholomew, he would never speak as such! You lie about your identity, why should I trust you about Luka." A flick of his wrist, and the whip in his hand slowly comes alive with electricity crackling along it. Who needed Bart? He did. Aveh did. Their very -cause- did. How dare this person say otherwise. How -dare- they?! "Old ideas we may be, but tried and true, and we will not be erased so easily. I don't know who you're allied with, but you can tell them the Pirates of Aveh will stand against you with every ounce of our strength! Now let's finish this!" A short rush foreword and Sigurd swings his arm up from his right hip to over his left shoulder, his whip whistling through the air in a deadly arc, trailing electricity behind it in a brilliant display for the spectators, sending a charge of electricity just short of lethal flying toward 'Bart'... If he isn't able to dodge, it's pretty much over.
***
Dirah stares. Blankly, his one good eye wide in something just short of stunned horror to the battle below. His focus, previously divided, is now latched to the battle, if in just a sort of choked surprise. Wasn't that a bit.. overdoing it? As that electricity looks.. Unpleasant. Hmph. What people will do when met with words they do not favor...
***
Tifa dives to the left out of the way, dodging the attack entirely. He stands up, clearing his own voice, and laughing a mocking, piercing laugh, "Tried and true?! You foolish pirate! Your "tried and true" ideas couldn't protect your precious Solarian Ambassador!" he begins a rush, reeling back his whip and swinging it forward, if it connects it will 'lasso' him (Head Hunter?).
***
Jalon drops his jaw. "She....completely -dodged- that!!!!!!!"
***
Sigurd ducks out of the way, barely, wincing as the whip catches him across the cheek, leaving a shallow cut. "I am not Solarian, it is not my responsibility to protect her. Pick a different battle." With the remaining electricity in the whip, he snaps it up in a circular motion, creating a blinding flash, lunging in as soon at it's passed, his left fist swinging for Bart's jaw. Alter tactics, get close enough to nail him with brute strength before backing off again. While whips were his strongsuit, he still knew a few things about hand to hand combat that stuck in his head from the many beatings he took from Hyuga back in Jugend. Usually after burning a plushie... But that wasn't what he should be concentrating on right now, was it? Back to the fight....
Tifa is hit with the whip, and is knocked back into a kneel. "...Well, i'm afraid my job's done...," he says, coughing. "I don't intend to finish this fight with you right now. I'm afraid losing and being thrown in jail isn't the point, since i'm at such a sore disadvantage," a smile forms across her face as she stands. "Not to worry though...we'll soon be the true Yggdrasil! Your time is over! Except your fate!" she runs off, dropping the second Cobra Cracka as she runs down the stairs into the underground area, where hopefully her allies have cleared the area for her escape.
***
Joseph puts a finger in his ear and swivels it about. "Did I really hear that?" he asks.
Dirah narrows his eyes upon the battle as it turned out, watching Tifa flee the arena. Well, as good as anything, one suspects- it got the job done as much as anything else would, even if that was a shade.. Undignified. Without hardly more a pause, Dirah raises swiftly to his feet, with all the grace-and-speed of one realizing that they were late, and, with a single glance to the scene, walks towards the exit.
Jalon nods. "I did."
Joseph blinks, and shrugs. "Odd... I wonder what that was all about."
Jalon looks up and notices the man start to leave. He suddenly narrows his eyes as fires dance behind his eyes. "I assume you're in league with that woman?"
Joseph waves a hand. "Let them go, private. She lost, didn't she?"
Jalon nods and leaves the man to his business......"Alright."
Dirah pauses mildly before the door, casting a mild sapphire glance back to Jalon. He meets that offered narrow glance with one quite utterly unphased, noting merely, as if the entire event were something of a passing amusement, "Whatever gave you that idea? Jumping to conclusions isn't very.. Becoming." A passing smile, more a smirk to its faintness, before Dirah exits the box, with that same sort of casual rush.