Master vs. Derek

TB Fight, choose rules.

Ah, how i'm going to enjoy this...

Hybrid.

My AL version of Derek against whoever you got.

Bring it on.

Master entered the area with a different aire about him, not holding his usual calm presence. His steps were quick and intentional, his manner short and abrubt. No games this time, no casually lazy stance. His sword was held out to his right hand side, a full five feet in length. Held with one hand from years of conditioning, the blade glimmered a bit as his form came about to halt, swinging the blade into the space behind him. The closure of his motion was quicker than the reaction from the wind, as it drove past him with a host of meandering particles before realizing that Master had stopped.

He lifted his left hand a bit to a more ready position, and began to breath in through his nose. With the exhalation of this breath through his mouth, he extended the aura which was so familiar to him. He sank the tendrils of energy into the thick fluid around him, penetrating the viscosity of the air. Pushing them about as a tree would root in the ground, he began to secure his position as he gathered his mind for this match.

[align=center]Footsteps of a Titan[/align]

The casual footsteps, crushing the small expenditures of the mammoth oaks towering about him, foretold the nature of the apathetic advance. Slow, calculating steps, reaching bounds over miniscule universes that continued their non-existant traversings of daily rituals. All unaware, uncapable of understanding that the nonchalant deity would most likey lay ruin to their metropolis, and the entire area surrounding it, if the thought simply crossed his mind.

That cursory being, that towering personage, human-esque only in appearance, passed over it all. Simply disregarding all that underfoot, yet knowing it's underlying composition and it's neccessity for the oncoming battle. Pointless to others, yet capable of disrupting the presently known plane of reality in well experienced hands. Those hands, their owner, their central being that passed down the orders for those and every other juggernaught of devastation within his grasp, kept those formidably trained eyes staring straight to the eventual battle ground; a friend's final resting place.

Passing through the foliage, those well prepared instruments of genocide lifted, errupting through the vegetation with a simple brushing of the hand. Seemingly without touch, yet igniting none the less against the faint orange containment that encased the extended hand. Leaving in remnants nothing but a disintegrating flow of ashes before the unseen array of floating nanites picked them apart, seperating neccesities from waste.

As the end of his venture fell upon those eyes, those horrible jade eyes that seemed to only fuel the eerie invisible aura that followed, a small trace of lines etched over his body's extent to halt him in his tracks. Passing, falling away, the simple coalition of dead or dying skin cells broke apart, disrupting the almost perfect outline of the fighter.

In a sudden outbreak of energy, the surrounding forest was ablaze in a mixture of crimson and orange. Encasing the single occupant that stood within it's burning embrance, the fires lifted, fueled by an unseen agent that caused their flames to reach higher and higher as their fragrant smoke tinged the senses of those in close radius.

From within a disclosed area of flames, a lone figure advanced to that faintly visible cirled that still contained living grass. Passing amongst the inferno, disregarding it without a blinkg of the eye, as the fires tinged the skin of Master. Finally, he stepped out of the flames, quite sure that Master himself would be surprised.

Derek hesitated before the ring's burning reach, staring calmly towards the crimson haired Master that had readied his blade. Had he been sensed? Possible, yet not likely. Although, it was apparent he was prepared for battle. He never was one to let other's down...

"It's been a damn long while since i've seen you 'round, Master. never really liked that name neither, always made me think that you wanted to glorify yourself over others by reducing them to speak to you with such a title. Instead, I shall call you............Bob! Ah, yes, that's a grand name. Quit suiting for one of your physical past, don't you agree?", that same smirk, that same damn smirk slid across those thin lips of Derek as that southern accent simply rolled off the tounge, calm and cool as it ever had. Even his attire hadn't changed, it appeared nothing at all had.

"It's a grand story, really. Instead, I think i'll save the small talk and simply say, even death couldn't keep me away from this fight. So, before we break out the tissues for the dignified welcomes, I think it's time we finally settled the old score. What'cha' say, pal?", gifting only a wink to accompany his facial expression, Derek lifted his right hand to grip the brim of that famous black cowboy hat residing atop of his head. Tucking his opposite arm across his waist, he bowed slightly while tipping the hat in juction, even the forecast of shadow over his face unable to hide that arrogant smirk.

Allowing surprise to bounce from his steely wall of purpose, Master listened with an equivalently apathetic expression. Feeling the flame about him through the tendrils of his aura, he adjusted the grip on his blade as this abomination posed his rhetorical question of his very own name. Completing a cycle of respiration with a drifting breath, he brought his head into a tilt to the right, angling it away from his opponent's brazen form. He added the extra toss of his head that would be necessary allow the minute pockets of nitrogen to shift, creating a chain of snaps to be emitted from his cervical vertebrae only to be drowned out by the sound of the flames around him.

"What a pleasant resolution." he lamented, keeping his words short as was characteristic for him. He thought back of when he had last seen Derek. Pausing for a moment here, his eyes wavered a bit in the heat, before sniffing audibly the air through his nose, and nodding his head back in acknowledgment.

"So it ends. As usual, ready when you are not. Commence." he sneered sarcastically, alluding to that which Derek had also spoken. It would have been noted that his left hand twitched a bit, but the motion and heat that proceeded his formerly inanimate friend's classically flashy and consequently flawed entrance.

[align=center]Pointless Words[/align]

The gentle swaying of the carefully orange tinted flames danced about the two as each kept and unwavering glare against the other. The moment for words had passed, and it was simply boiling down to the simplistic notion of who would issue the first strike.

Derek's posture shifted slightly as his lips tightened unnoticeably, as his microscopic assassins danced around the downward reach of Bob’s legs, tracing their miniscule markings across the heels of his boots. It was a reach, yet if Bob had intended to use any type of magic in this battle, the unseen placement of the negating runes atop of his own boots would render them useless; pretty much the way Derek himself liked to fight.

The unabridged information of their current surroundings displayed within the mind of Derek, inked upon a list of other pointless minerals, yet offering the same sufficing assurance that nothing else was available within close reach of Bob himself. It was simply boiled down to whatever Bob had within his own grasp against his attire, and nothing more.

Upon mental compliance from the nanites themselves, their work increased by ten fold as their mirroring of his own power overtook their capabilities, speeding up their somewhat menial task before subjectively combining their work. Mending atoms together from the floating ash, the hazing smoke, the burning timbers, and several other associative contributions from various deposits, their newly prepared works of devastation rose from the flames unnoticed.

Bounding in leaps, the flames snaked their way from the inferno itself, coiling against the ground before their arrival at the heels of Bob himself. Curling upwards at impossible speeds, their vicious wrapping of heat encircled the limbs of Bob, tearing his body back from his standing point into the fiery embrace of hellish fury they had prepared at his back.

Once within reach, the fires themselves leapt from Bob’s surroundings to perform their encompassing wave of well over 400 degrees of pain as they washed over his body entirely, their adaptive shielding allowing only the oxygen necessary for sustaining their burn, and the pain dealt against Bob himself, in or out.

Master simply sneered, his tendrils of energy radiating from his form - noting the presence of the invaders. He would merely whip this left hand about in a snapping motion, instantaneously pooling the energy in his palm. This was nothing but a postcursor to the burst of hurricane force wind that had burst downward from above, descending with the force of a legendary tempest. It curved about his form, arcing from the collision with his own head to curl down unto his feet and outward towards the old friend, Derek. He maintained his gaze, though the air was littered with the cloud of thrashed remote appendages, having been deflected from their attack. This force whipped about his back as well, curling in a directed motion to his opposite, blowing with amplified mass. This botstorm drove forth, propelled in fleeing gesture by this wave, this wave of non magical energy. He felt it - Derek too, had access to runes.

His eyes flickered with the sudden lack of clarity to the flames that were thrust back, the lack of oxygen from the depression of sudden barometric inequality starving them. It would have been something internal that caused this, as the wavelength that was emitted by the dying flames had decreased in intensity. Master felt that this match was urgent, and placed little delay in his actions. His otherwise lack of motion solidified the action of his left hand, driving the attention of the omnipresent to this sole point of focus.