A deep voiced announcer comes across the arena, “Our next event is one that has been requested for decades, and its always a crowd pleaser. Virtual Realms is proud to announce Gambit vs. Nightwing.”
My Heads up display, or HUD comes to life. Earlier that night I had been assigned Nightwing. He’s a pure martial artist with no supernatural abilities, and he’s a pretty good match for me. Technically I fight with an old martial arts style called Jeet Kune Do. It’s a style without a style. What works best for me is what I use. My grandfather would have called it a dog’s breakfast. I train hard if someone uses something I feel is better than what I use now. In my virtual gym, I master the technique. The nanites in my system make sure I’m physically capable of completing the routine. If my body can’t do it in the real world, I can’t do it in the virtual world.
One of the most interesting parts of these fights is that neither combatant knew who they were fighting. We only knew the powers they were capable of. In this fight, we were limited to no powers. The scenario is that we were both pulled into an alternate dimension, forced to fight inside a cage.
With a mental command, I pulled my inventory up and equipped Nightwing’s signature fighting barons. In another room, Gambit was equipping his expanding staff. Thinking of Gambit, immediately made me wonder who they had chosen to take his slot.
My vision flashed green and went black, at first, they were about a second apart. Then they started flashing back and forth faster and faster until suddenly I exploded in a flash of motes of light. In the center of the arena, I began to take form. Across from me, Gambit was doing the same.
The bell rang almost immediately, and we jumped toward each other. Gambit brought his staff around swinging it down like a long axe handle hoping to use its range to get a win right off the bat. Using both batons, I deflected it and used my momentum, continuing around. I hopped to bring them to his side. He had brought the staff down and shifted his grip, singing the end back up between us. Effectively using the motion as a shield to force space between us.
He stepped around bringing himself, facing me and took a step back spinning the staff faster as he went. It became a blur of motion in his hands, arcing to his right side then to his left. The pattern was flashy, and it wouldn't lend itself to an attack, but for the moment he didn’t appear to be planning an attack. Instead, he was using it to gain space and look me over. Trying to gauge who I was so he could come up with potential tactics against me. Doing the same as I was, except I had hoped to learn something during my attack.
Suddenly the staff traced a slightly different pattern. Its arc would bring it parallel to the ground and right towards me. Off and on over the years, I had trained in an odd martial art called Capoeira, lots of acrobatics in style. That additional acrobatic training paid off well for me here. A back-hand spring brought me out of his range. As my feet kicked up, I tried to kick the staff out of his hands. The only thing I could manage was to slightly bat it out of the way.
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He brought the staff around again trying to club me, but we had backed up to the close to the edge. A crescent kick slapped his staff into the cage; I stepped in with my batons the left under my right arm was driven into his ribs, the right baton
As he recovers, I reach in and slap his knuckle with the end of my baton. The pain causes him to release staff put that hand, and with that moment of inattention. I capture the staff between my batons and force it into a spin out of his hands. It flies out and over the top of the cage loading in the motes of light
with me now having the upper hand, gambit falls back into a classic boxer stance. I step in and start trying to get body blows with my batons. He talks his body in tight and takes the blows on his forearms. The ringing metal lets me know he has metal plates guarding his forearms. The Actor playing gambit is probably a little faster than me. He's able to easily get his guard up as I shift my blows trying to find an opening.
His shift around he strikes out with his hand and grants my baton, I attempt to smack his hand with the baton, and he grabs it as well. So, we are standing with his arms crossed holding both batons, I am I am attempting to pull back and down on them to break his grip. In our struggle, he brings the batons up to his neck not knowing that I can charge the batons. They are against the collar, and I know that that should give him a decent shock if not a knock out in one shot.
With a flick of my thumb, the batons activate, and the color drains from my face as I realize what I’ve done. The electrical charge courses through the collar and deactivates it. In the moment when the collar pops loose, and he can pull the batons out of my hands. Over the cage wall, they go. I step in and get a couple of quick shots into his sternum when he leaves himself open. Gambit takes a step back, and the collar gets tossed over the top of the cage as well in a burst of sparks until it dissolves.
Moving back in we trade a flurry of blocked punches and kicks. He can get a forward push kick into my abdomen, knocking the air out of me and forcing me back at the same time. He uses this to pull a hand full of cards out of his jacket charges them quickly and has a spread of them in the air before I could blink. They fanned out slightly; he was hoping I would dodge further out in panic. Luckily, I didn’t react as fast as I should have, and it saved me from getting hit by one of the blasts, from the exploding cards. They exploded, and my first reaction was to try to move back.
It was a mistake, giving him more room to through more cards. I ended up backed up in the cage with nowhere to go, using the bars of the cage to jump and move around. I hadn’t trained for this, but I had included parkour in my training for years as cardio, a strengthening, on top of that it worked wonders for my balance and foot dexterity. Knowing that staying back here was just a losing battle, I dove in and rolled. As I came out of the roll I swept his legs; cards went flying some charged, some not. He rolled towards me hoping to avoid some of the cards, and I took the opportunity to drive a knee into his face. After a moment of resistance, I slipped through. His body was exploding into tiny particles of light.