goneawayworld | spar log!

Before hitting the big START button, he gives Saturday a glance out of the corner of his eye.

"How are you feeling about a second round?"

He was a loner for a while when it came to battles - but since they were going to be on missions together they may as well get used to fighting in tandem, right? Why not ask her to join in? If she's up for a bit of a gauntlet, of course.

Saturday raises both eyebrows and bounds up with a grin.

"Well, if it won't cramp your style. Haven't had a good gauntlet in ages, most people can't keep up."

She stretches a little, and shakes herself out. "The duck was more of a warm-up, anyway."

"All right."

He hits that button to start, readying his sword. In truth, he's only recently re-learned how to do the whole 'teamwork' thing and is honestly not sure if their fighting styles will gel at all. Most of the time people tend to get in his way.

But hey, that's what training is supposed to figure out, right? The sim provides them with a sizable army of goblin-y monsters and rocky, uneven terrain. They've been trapped at the center of a ravine and will need to fight their way out.

"On all sides?" she complains cheerfully. "How'd we even get in such a dumb predicament, anyway?"

Saturday pivots, falling in back-to-back with Guts. Her sword slides out, hilt dropping into her hand, and she grins at the seething crowd. The dummies aren't smart enough to be worried by it.

"Come get some, then, if you think you're hard enough," she tells the gobs.

And they do. They really, really do. For a split second, she looks overwhelmed; then two goblins fall in a silver flash and the others scatter, poking at her with spears which she easily deflects, almost making a game of it.

"Carve us a path, I got your six!"

His 'six'??

While he doesn't immediately get the lingo, Guts reads her intent clear enough when he feels Saturday leave his back and hears the telltale whistle of metal blade cutting through air.

His flanks, then.

Focusing back on his own half of the predicament, he can't help but feel his own all too familiar rush of battle warm his limbs. Even if they were just dummies, it is something he can finally swing his sword at with all his might.

And so he rushes forward, bringing down his sword on the dummies ahead of him. Weapons, armor, bone, flesh, it didn't matter. It was all crushed and carved up in droves with each destructive sword swing.

Saturday almost wants to turn and watch - by the sound of it, he's taken her command quite literally - but there's too much right in front of her. Keeping up with Guts is no problem, even moving backwards; her magical senses are as good as eyes in the back of her head. Saturday's problem is keeping the horde off. There's a lot of Guts to protect.

Fortunately, she's very, very fast.

Right. Center. Left. Center-right. Left-right-center-right-right-left-left-left- center -

She feels the force of the arrow moments before it would have hit and slaps it out of the air, just as a particulrly suicidal goblin leaps and skewers itself on her blade. Saturday looks up, in the direction the shot came from, and swears.

"Guts! We got archers up top, both sides!"

Guts glances back, and that massive heap of a blade switches from destructive tool to shield as he blocks an incoming volley aimed at his back. The Dragonslayer is long and wide enough to protect them both, the projectiles shattering into holocubes as they make impact.

The next blow gets a bit more creative - impaling one unfortunate goblin at the very end of his blade, he flings the corpse in the direction of the volley to knock one archer off its feet.

"Think you can reach them? I'm fine down here."

One individual hoping to get the jump on his end will be rewarded with having its face vociferously smashed in by his iron fist.

Saturday had been trying to figure out the same thing, taking advantage of Guts' defense to shield her eyes against the sun and get a better look. A few goblins try and fail to reach her in the heartbeats between his question and her answer: she impales one, kicks another through the spine, and snarls at a third so fiercely that it pauses for a moment and is overwhelmed by its charging brothers.

She bites her lip, and her eyes shine bright as a thought occurs to her.

"Can you give me a boost?"

A boost? Like, throw her?

With one dummy being unpleasantly ground into the dirt beneath his heel, he weaves through another arrow or two being shot at his face to reposition his sword.

Fastball special? She could certainly fit on the blade if she wanted to hop on.

"Sure."

Saturday hops on the blade. Guts heaves it up, and she whoops in delight at the sheer force he brings to bear. The archers don't know what hit them, literally, since she flips midair and comes down directly on one's head. The one next to it makes a very stupid face, which she breaks with the hilt of her sword. And then it's really not even a fair fight; none of them are melee fighters and they're all standing on the edge of a really steep cliff.

Well, the last one has a dagger and even manages to get it out in time. In honor of this, she permits it one (failed) swipe before she kicks it over the edge. Then she jumps off the edge herself, with considerably more control, and hops across the gobs like a crowdsurfer in a mosh pit for her ride to the second patch of archers.

And, there she goes! Guts allows himself a moment to see her take down the first archer or two, and feels confident that he won't be harassed by arrows for very long.

Instead, he readies his sword as the crowd closes in, letting the familiar excitement of combat fill him. The kind he gets when he's closed on all angles and completely surrounded. With no one to worry about behind him and no Berserker Armor to keep in check, Guts briefly considers how it's been a while since he's allowed himself to simply drink in a good slaughter - even if the flesh and blood is fake.

And so from there, he lets loose. Less a man with a sword and more a monstrous whirlwind of metal. It really won't take very long for him to carve and grind up everything around him - each swing of that massive sword will down a half-dozen enemies at a time. Bodies cleaved into pieces that would have quickly piled up in blood and viscera if they didn't disappear shortly after their demise.

Saturday hangs from the rock she's climbing to the second batch of archers, cheerfully swatting their volleys away, and just watches for a moment. It's breathtaking; Guts is a force of nature, an avalanche of steel, and the gobs are just so many skiers caught and pulled under by his gravity. She can barely see him through the cascade of holocubes.

An arrow zings by her left ear and she grunts. Loss of focus kills, she knows better than to stare like an amateur. Saturday resumes her climb, and makes short work of the remaining archers. Then it's back down the sides of the canyon - assuming Guts has left anything for her.

Given those few minutes, he will vigorously chew up the entire crowd surrounding him in the time it takes her to finish off the archers. What should have been an easy time shooting fish in the barrel quite literally becomes a nightmare for these poor holocube goblins. He felt a little hindered from the lack of cannon or throwing knives - but his sword served him well enough.

By the time she circles back around there are a handful of survivors - really, if this were anything but a sim, they'd be outright fleeing for their lives. As it is, the last three or four are keeping a pretty wide berth around Guts, so focused on regrouping that they don't notice Saturday coming up from the other end. Well, he can at least appreciate their tenacity.

Saturday sees the situation and puts on an extra burst of speed, running with unnerving silence and catching the first of the four through the spine before the other know she's there. They see her, but have no chance to respond; her sword arm is a blur between them, her feet touching ground only enough to launch into another attack, and they explode in a shower of 'cubes.

Then it's over. The canyon flattens out and disappears, and a pleasant female voice announces their score.

"Session complete. 123 enemy dead. No damage taken. Scenario complete. Thank you for using Jorgmund advanced military training technology. Jorgmund: here to serve you."

Saturday rolls her eyes, and starts cleaning her sword out of habit.

Guts lowers his sword once Saturday finishes off the stragglers, seeing her weave between the last four - an agile weapon in her own right.

Once his own battle lust fades, he seems to relax quite a bit, watching as the environment flattens into the room it was before. By the end of the massacre, he'd managed to get a good sweat in to warm his body up.

"Thanks for watching my back there."

It was only an exercise, but he could feel a synchronicity there that would work well in the field. It'd be nice to do more training with her.

"It ain't hard to watch. That was amazing - the way you just," she mimes one of his more dramatic strikes. "It was like watching a storm hit land. You annihilated them."

She grins up at him.

"We make a good team. Should we do this again sometime?"

"Yeah. Joint training drills."

Just like old times, when things were a bit less complicated. He can't help but let a little fondness bleed through, even through the dimming haze of his battled frenzy.

"Next time we can cook up somethin' more difficult."

Saturday grins up at him, receiving and returning his fondness. It's nice to have a good fight with a reliable ally. "There's a couple big tentacle-y monsters I've run into. Venom spines and poison spit, a real good time. If we can get the machine to understand what they are, it might be fun challenge? The spit makes you blind, too," she adds. "Real pain in the ass."

Not for Saturday, who actually fights slightly better without sight to distract her, but she has this impulse that surprising Guts would be fun, and Saturday's generally one for following her impulses.

spar log!

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