Gods Among Men: Mavrick duels Roun (24/09/2403)

Having decided to sleep in late, Roun would emerge from his ship to find Zadavia laughing with an odd channeler.  Roun assumed that the channeler was a recent acquaintance or potentially a relative given the similarities in skin tone and hair colour.  As he approached the two however, he would note as the man broke off from his conversation with Zadavia and turned to him, approaching him with a look as if he and Roun were the oldest of friends.  Needless to say, the Itami was rather confused.

“Roun!  My boy.”  The man stated loudly before making his way up to Roun and slapping him on the shoulder.  “What’s going on?”

“Uh... not much...”  Roun replied, scanning his mind to see if he actually knew the channeler before realising that he actually didn’t.  Roun was about to inquire who the hell he was, but at this moment the jovial channeler quickly switched to a serious tone.

“So, I heard that you took out my subordinates Reign and Paco.”  He started, causing Roun’s eye to rise.  “That must mean that you have some skill, but when I heard the rumors that you’re supposed to be some kind of legendary ‘super channeler’ I decided to come and check you out myself.”  He stated arrogantly, clearly not believing the hype.

“I see...”  Roun stated in reply.

“Now ready yourself Itami, this is going to be a match to remember!”  He stated as he powered up, causing Roun to do the same instinctually as he backed away from the apparently insane channeler.  Roun would watch as the man began to strip off his Expansion suit and rid himself of his addons, causing Roun’s eyebrows to raise again.  “Throw off these petty enhancements Roun.”  Mavrick proclaimed now.  “We shall battle like men!”

By now, Roun was too amused to decline, disabling his Expansion suit as well before removing the thing along with his add-ons before giving them to Zadavia to hold.

The two would then begin their battle with nothing equipped by their basic scanning hardpoint.  As usual, Roun would hold his ground and wait to see what his opponent was up to, confident that he had enough time to observe, calculate and react before he was hit with any attacks.  Unfortunately, this was Mavrick’s plan as well, as he stood casually waiting for an attack.  Roun would shrug and indulge him, dashing forward and spinning, setting up for what appeared to be a high roundhouse kick.  Mavrick would slow time and engage his Dynamic Strike skill in an attempt to guard the attack, barely catching on at the last minute that Roun was switching it to a low round house at the last moment.  Mavrick would be unable to guard the low attack now, being caught at the side of his calve and sent spinning off of his feet while a temporal clone appeared behind Roun at that instant to launch an attack.  Roun would not be able to full dodge the attack, but he would move enough to prevent the knife-hand strike from impacting his spin, instead being caught on his shoulder blade and sent spinning as the attack pierced his guards.  The attack would not be enough to stun Roun, who would quickly spin and dissipate the clone with a Combustion Drive powered hook kick that reset the clone’s position in the timestream.  By now, Mavrick had recovered from Roun’s first attack, grabbing the young Itami’s foot and flooding his body with his Chaos Drive and Entropic Drive.  This would serve to stun Roun as his form went to work attempting to combat these energies, giving Mavrick enough time to roll onto his back and swing the young Itami, slamming him into the ground.  The impact would serve the stun the Itami once again, giving Mavrick just enough time to attempt to Interface with his form using his Reality Drive.  Mavrick would attempt to recode Roun’s stored Crisis Core, but the energy would be too vast.  Roun would waste no time powering up both of his special abilities to deal with this intrusion now, double Uplinking his form via both of his special abilities before he attempted to take control over Mavrick’s code.  This feeling was extremely unpleasant for Mavrick, forcing him to break his grip at this point before rolling backwards to get to his feet.  Roun would smirk at the thought, combusting the same Crisis Core that Mavrick had just attempted Reconfigure to blast to his feet and engage the Phalanx more seriously.  Before Mavrick could react, even with all of his precautions, he would be impacted by an elbow that was driven into his sternum.  As he folded around the impact, Roun would deliver a back first to the face, before a spinning back-hand rocked Mavrick’s face.  Mavrick would predict the next attack with his temporal abilities however, dodging under the 540 roundhouse and grabbing Roun, planting him with a spine-buster right at his feet.  Mavrick would smile as Roun was stunned once again, picking up the Itami to deliver a spinning power bomb.  Roun would only recover in time to dissipate some of the energy from the powerbomb.  Now he would lock Mavrick’s neck with his legs and roll over, slamming the Phalanx into the ground and Roun rolled on top of him.  Mavrick would dodge the punch that left a hole in the ground next to his head, before blasting Roun with another attack.  The attack would connect, but fail to launch the now energetically overdriven Itami, who simply delivered another punch, this once connecting with Mavrick’s face and drilling it into the ground.  Another two punches would follow up, before Mavrick exploded his Ashura form to knock Roun away.

“Not bad.”  Mavrick stated as he made his way to his feet.  “But I feel like you’re holding back.”  He smirked.  “But that’s good, because so am I!”

With this Mavrick engaged his True Limit ability, pushing himself past his form’s limits before he vanished from his location, drawing a smirk from Roun before he allowed his form to get a bit closer to his full Transphasic state.  By now, Roun’s subordinates had made their way out of the Versillion to watch their Commanding Officer in action, but they would soon realise that they were actually unable to follow the high speed exchange, with the exception of the speedster Daito.  As the two appeared and vanished throughout the environment during a series of clashes, a temporal clone of Mavrick would appear next to Roun’s subordinates.

“Wow, this is a spectacular display of skill.”  The temporal clone commented as he tracked the movements of the battle.  “One day you should all aspire to be this awesome.”

Back in the fray, Mavrick’s joking around was beginning to take a toll on his form, as he finding it more and more difficult to keep up with Roun.  Even now he could sense as Roun was setting up a Crisis Grid, but he was simply unable to redirect the energy as fast as Roun was able to code it.  Mavrick would attempt his Zantetsuken ability, but Roun would be having none of it. The area would explode with Aero in the shape of the expanding wings of a dragon, an image chosen no doubt due to Roun’s Itami heritage.  Mavrick would explode from the cloud of charged ether and slam into the ground, his form quickly approaching a state of reversion.

Mavrick would quickly make his way to his feet now, Seraph rushing to his side to heal his damage, a fact that seemed to go unnoticed to the particularly delusional channeler.

“Still impressive.”  He stated, his temporal clone only now dissipating.  “But you’re still holding back.”  Mavrick would pause dramatically as Raena began to heal Roun.  “Cast off these mortal shells Roun, it is time that we duel as gods!”

With this, Mavrick powered up his Malleable ability, boosting his Unsealed Beast form as he commited himself wholely to the Ashura.  Roun would sense an odd distortion as the Demonic Entity possessed its host, expanding his normal Kratos abilities into his full Gigas energy type.  Roun would raise an eyebrow, clearly this battle was getting serious.  Roun would power up his Arche energy type now, expanding his own abilities across the full spectrum of Life Force components.  As the silver energy arced through the air and streamed off his form, Roun would allow his body to go into its full Transphasic State.  Now moving faster than most had the capacity to comprehend, Roun would open with a flurry of punches and kicks, impacting everywhere from the head of the Ashura straight down to the shins.  Roun would score a series about over one hundred relatively light attacks as the demon erected a Gigas barrier, before it finally shattered and the attacks connected with its form.

At this point, the Ashura would activate Mavrick’s Omega Drive, flooding the area with temporal and quantum clones while extending Gigas based tendrils through the environment to ensnare and drain Roun’s power.  Unfortunately, Roun could activate his Omega Drive as well.  In this state, Roun would hold his ground, literally guarding, parrying and counter attacking the Ashura and all of its clones.  Even through Roun was unable to do this perfectly, resulting in him trading blows rather than guarding and parrying them all, the display was still a spectacular one as Itami was able to engage 17 opponents while moving at full speed.

Unfortunately for Mavrick, he would slowly get a feel for the power of the Arche energy type and why it was still dangerous when not mastered.  This energy type allowed Roun to overwrite the code of Life Force Constructs, literally coding into anything that he desired.  Unfortunately, with Roun only being extremely proficient with his ethereal coding abilities, Mavrick’s Spiritual and Psychein energies would find themselves garbled extensively.  In just seconds, Mavrick would be unable to maintain his Ashura form, causing him to drop out of that form and his Omega Drive.  Roun would barely stop himself from delivering a round house and reverting Mavrick’s severely glitched form, before he quickly disengaged the energy type.  Mavrick would be left on the ground glitching heavily as his Life Force components tried to reshuffle their code and autocorrect themselves.  He would be incapacitated for quite some time.

Mavrick: 520 Exp
  Seraph: 180 Exp

Roun: 540 Exp
  Raena: 160 Exp