Ita Illu 1

[00:05] With a gentle gait, Ciarán stood as far from the dueling duo was feasible, while spreading a thin, faint coating of fire athwart the retinue of beige stretches to his aft.

"Y'lads go ahead an entertain."
(Ciarán)
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[00:05] As it often was between Arlo and Ita, things were simple. Throw yourself into stance, activate whatever amazing latent magical powers you've got, and then beat each other in the face until someone falls. "Ya know how it usually goes, Itty. I ain't gonna go easy on ya just 'cause you're..." He looks off to the side, losing the plot for a second.

"Y'know, you." Ambiguity hung in the air as to what he meant by that. Maybe he'd just figure Ita would pick up on it. "I'll be facin' ya with everythin' I got in the tank, so I expect the same outta you."
(Arlo Waters)
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[00:09] The prospect of a spar with Arlo is far less anxiety inducing. It's something she's done a time or two before, and he's not exactly a stranger. She assumes her stance and can expect an old fashioned beat down. Not that things ever get too out of hand.

"Everything I got, and not a bit less."

Whatever there is to pick up, she must have gotten it; if nothing else, she knows how his head works. Anything less than her best would be a disservice to him.
(Ita)
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[00:13] Ita says, "...wh"
[00:14]
{LOAD GAME}

[00:22] With Ita's kit limited as it was right now, Arlo was able to take on the edge of the fight with relative ease. They both might have known that at the moment, but there was no reason not to keep it going regardless. There were still things to learn: how one ought to open a fight, how to approach after some time spent circling around each other, and so on.

He could end a fight with his usual illusion-abusing antics as he does, but Ita's often spared that little pinch of horsing around. Instead, as she approaches him, he twirls his beatstick about and repels her with a stiff blow, sending her sliding backwards some. "Not bad, Itty. But yer gonna need to put some new tricks in the bag sometime."

"Again. Tap into your mana. Sense mine for what it is. Get a bead on it, and then try pursuin' me in the fight that way. Relyin' on your senses can be handy, but ultimately what ya have to do is feel." Feel in a sensethat wasn't necessarily 'touch,' of course. "Tap into what it is ya think ya can do to affect the world with your mana."

"If it ain't manipulatin' mine, try manipulatin' the world around you. If it ain't that either, try manipulatin' your own energy. Just try to come up with what ya think ya can change."
(Arlo Waters)
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[00:24] Zachary sigggghhhhhhs.
(Zachary Retinea)
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[00:24] Zachary Retinea says, "Occupied. Let's go back down."
[00:29] Ita knows she's outmatched, but she gives it her best try regardless. It wouldn't just be a disservice to Arlo either. It'd be one to herself.

He's gotten used to her tricks, the darting about with the swift blows here and there. It shows when he smacks her back and gives her stout reprisal for an attempt at his kneecaps. And it's then that a spar becomes a lesson.

The little padfoot hasn't been smacked about so hard so as to keep the advice from sinking into her rattled noggin. Ita squints through the gloom, which is wholly unnecessary due to the nature of what he actually wants her to do. Still, it signals her focus on him through the dimly lit gloom of the arena's upper floors.

She can swear that, for all of a moment, there's a corona of some kind that surrounds him so long as she pays good enough attention.

"Alright...yeah. One more time?"
(Ita)
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[00:35]
{LOAD GAME}

[00:45] Arlo's torch went out. It went out just as he had wished it to - he throws a heavy cloth over the pitch, and suddenly the room's that much darker. Relatively speaking, it's Ita's home turf - without sight, her superior sense of hearing won out. There was another reason for this, though. The punk's voice called out from the darkness.

"Go ahead, Itty. Suss out the shape of it. Figure out what my mana is like without seein' - look for its shape, its flavor, anythin' interestin' you can figure out about it. Look for where it is from where you are, and follow it to beat the hell outta me." Without much more preamble to gon with, the illusionist charged forward at her, relying on the presence of Ita's mana alone.

Having already gotten a decent feel as to its size and shape, he manipulated it to dull her sense of hearing - making it that much more improtant for her to try and rely on her sixth sense. From within the shadows, Arlo endeavors to push and toss her about... and, consequently, develops his own insight of the darkness.

The magic that Juri deployed wasn't terribly unlike that. Becoming the darkness by any means necessary, whether that meant dulling the opponent's senses or enveloping oneself in oppressive, opaque illusory shadow. However, he still needed to get a firm grasp on how one aspects their mana to such a state.
(Arlo Waters)
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[00:50] With a wolfish grin, Ciarán continued to have his attention repeatedly diverted to a dozen varying spots across the fulvous stretch of the arena's pavement, intensely bent on accompanying the fast-paced rhythm of the duelists' patterns.

For two so young, their agility sure was something to behold- but the nimbleness of the more minute and youthful denizens of Sudbury was always a factor to be reckoned in any scenario that regarded physical confrontations of any scale.

"Bloody good footwork. Gotta say I envy tha' kind of agility."

He, for one, remained a hopeless brute.
(Ciarán)
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[00:52] Sure, she usually has a distinct advantage, but so does Arlo with his decidedly unique magic that he's been practicing tirelessly over the past several years. It more evens the playing field now that he can 'feel' where he needs to aim.

As Ciarán had pointed out before, there were a lot of applications for these sorts of things in her line of work. Illusions could be a great tool, an invaluable asset, and this is just one such example that doesn't apply to her less legal activities.

Ita doesn't speak, lest she give Arlo another leg up in this new combat situation. It's one that he hardly needs to trounce her. The ambient noise muffles and as a consequence she's forced to 'feel' for his mana all over again, lest he continue to buffet and bully her in the dark.

She can feel it again, that dim blotch in her opponent's vague direction, but it only provides her a hint and takes up much of her focus that would otherwise be spent on attacking or defending. It leaves her slightly above helpless.
(Ita)
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[00:58] Another raw bout in what would soon seem to be an interminable series of training spars. The 'dim blotch' that Ita sensed was no other than Arlo's mana, however fleeting she could feel of it. It was as a bottle of soda shaken to its reasonable limit: a solid outer core that held a maelstrom of effervescent manipulative mana within. Something deeper, even wilder, lie further within, but Ita presumably can't 'sense' that much yet.

The urchin continues to push, prod, and goad her where she is in the darkness. "Is that the best ya can do, Itty?" One of the voices in the dark, a distinct distance away, taunts her. "I figure that can't be all ya got," another one calls. "Wonder what's for dinner," a third, in the northeastern corner, muses.

The exercise here seemed fairly simple. Identify where the hell the actual Arlo was, among a forest of indistinct muttering. While he continued to move about in the shadows, the urchin himself was still trying to grasp what it meant to bias one's mana towards darkness. It might have been literal in this case, but it wouldn't be for every other one.

The butler turned into a silhouette of himself in broad daylight, and was so inscrutable as to be untouchable. How could he emulate that? Was this what it was like? Arlo's mana fluctuated and shifted, attempting to adapt itself to the surroundings.
(Arlo Waters)
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[01:03] Ciarán says, "One of y' hold this, for Kraus' sake."
[01:06] Arlo Waters says, "Nope. Darkness is part of the exercise now. Gotta commit."
[01:06] Ciarán says, "Y'can't be serious..."
[01:09] Ita's used to taking her fair share of lumps. Or more used to it, not quite so fragile as the young Ita-that-was. That's not to say there isn't room for improvement. There's loads.

She's lost her bead on him after another more jostling in the darkness- she forgoes the torch. The lack of light is sadly the point, even if it costs Ciarán his spectacle.

Now that she can hear a little more clearly now there's not one voice, but three to consider, each with jabs of their own. That's the point though, isn't it? It's what the illusions are for. To disorient, to taunt, to goad and misdirect.

In real combat stopping to focus would be asking for a beating, or at worst it'd be a death sentence. She tries not to think about the second one. Instead she tries to hone in on her fellow urchin's signature in the darkness.

When she's pretty sure she can pinpoint him with a shred of accuracy she winds up her beatstick and swings it wide in an attempt to catch him in his center of mass. Or whiff miserably. Either way.
(Ita)
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[01:15] Arlo's self-directed thoughts regarding the shadows continue to be a point of contention in his mind for a while longer. Long enough, that is, that he attempts to execute that thought process in real time. He manages to touch upon one sharp insight - shadows borne of illusion magic are not necessarily ones that the caster inflicts upon others. What he saw was mana aspected very similarly to plain shadows that one cast.

It wasn't enough to be in the shadows or to fool another - he had to fool his own mana into the deceit that it was the projection that his silhouette cast. With this theory-crafting in mind, the distracted Arlo immediately attempts to manipulate his own mana, experimenting on the fly. This has twofold consequences.

One: he manipulates his own mana with illusion magic, causing that horrid magical, backfire-inducing recursion that can only end poorly. Two: he also gets clocked in the gut by a strike he could have easily dodged. To Ita's credit, this did mean that she had hit the correct target amidst his two other doubles, and within pitch-black darkness at that.

"Hhhff..." Arlo lets out a wheeze, quite clearly unprepared to sustain the blow as he was. If Ita was still trying to suss out his signature at this point, she would surely notice that swirling effervescent mass was now growing unsettled, practically spewing this way and that. It was volatile.

In the darkness, there's naught more than a hard thud.
(Arlo Waters)
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[01:19] Ita connects with something in the dark. It's not one of Arlo's shades, and if it were Ciarán she'd have known; that hard thump would've probably come with fire and/or swearing. Let's be honest, probably both.

"Ha! Got you!" she squeaks, with a hissy 'yessss' thrown in.

But, now that she's hit him and isn't immediately having to worry about reprisal, she can hone in on his location again all the better. Wait...wait, is his mana supposed to be like that?

"Low? Low, you okay?...Oh man, I didn't mean to hit you that hard, I'm sorry."

She might've totally meant to hit him that hard in the heat of combat, but that is entirely irrelevant right now okay.
(Ita)
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[01:20] "Eh. Crap."

A snap of fingers produce but a minute speck of flame, birthing an arcing jolt of blaze that, in an instant, tatters the air until it hovers to a location feasibly seekable by tracking the calorific signature of Arlo's form.

"Look out, Ita. Think 'tis a timeout."

The flaring, diminutive grain of bloom ascends in a spiral, before it quite literally explodes mid-air, illuminating the entire room through a dispersive array of dozens of flickering, descending cinders.
(Ciarán)
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[01:24] Arlo was down, but thankfully he wasn't out. It just so happens that a moment of heavy concentration and the ill-advised manipulation of one's own mana was not conducive to receiving heavy swings to one's abdomen. Still doubled over, he was just writhing a little bit - just a little bit on the ground. The increasingly mana-sensitive Ita could probably notice that his signature was sealing itself back together, but the swirling mass within was still churning hard.

As far as Ciarán's spell was concerned, Arlo had at least wherewithal to go "Augh!" and grouse some more about the fact that the entire room was now brightened up by the resultant explosion of his wisp. The lad even had to cover his eyes and everything, as one might be forced to greet the day after a rude awakening.

"I'm good, I'm good... eugh." He stumbles back up onto his feet. "Hggg..." A shuffle tohis step, and he shakes his head rapidly before standing up to his full height, which... still wasn't particularly impressive. "We... we can probably call it there. Ya got me good, Itty." And still he had his own insights to stew over it.

Manipulating his own mana - he had to do it, but he had to be wise about it. Maybe circumstances like these weren't the best way to put that into practice.
(Arlo Waters)
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[01:28] The flash of light is dazzling, but Ita's cognizant enough to have an arm ready to avoid most of the fire's flare. With the other she shoots a thumbs up to Ciarán on the sidelines. Yep. Looking more and more like a timeout.

Something is amiss. The novice can tell that much. Putting a finger on the exact source is impossible at this point. In the mean time the least she can do is offer a hand up for the fallen urchin. No man left behind.

"Didn't think I'd have gotten you that good," she reasons. It doesn't make her feel any better about giving him the ol' got whallop in the first place, no matter the excuse.

"Alright, alright. I'm fine with that. You need help getting down the stairs?"

He might turn down the offer if his pride dictated so. Still, she had to offer.

"Thanks for the light, Cia."
(Ita)
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[01:28] Ishizu says, "This place really needs better lighting. Looks like a murder scene waiting to happen."
[01:28] Ita says, "Not wrong...no murder here."
[01:28] Ciarán says, "Aye. Was nothin'."
[01:28] Ishizu exclaims, "WAITING TO HAPPEN!"
[01:28] Arlo Waters says, "Yeah... eugh. We should probably turn in."
[01:29] Arlo Waters says, "I'll be fine. Just gotta walk it off..."
[01:29] Ciarán shrugs. He did it more to set up an atmosphere- but this had ended somewhat anticlimatically.
(Ciarán)