Round 1 - Low-Budget Man vs Juder [Judge: G]

[G]

The room was cavernous and chaotic; multi-coloured beams of light bursting from the ceiling to sweep over the crowd below, briefly illuminating sweaty, ecstatic faces as they danced with wild abandon to the thumping beat. There was scarcely room to breathe - every inch of available floorspace was filled by an undulating body, the air above thick with raised arms and nodding heads.

In the centre of the mass of dancers stands a raised platform, its' floor lit up in blocks of coloured light. Spanning about fifty square feet, the platform is empty of revellers - save for one small girl, twisting and jumping around the space, seemingly lost in the music. Her long brown hair whips around her as she twirls in place, raising her own arms to mimic those below her.

The combatants stand on the left and right sides of the platform, respectively, and the girl pauses as she notices them. Her face, unlike those below, is free of sweat or exertion. She grins at each of the warriors, the cheek in her eyes betraying the seeming innocence of the smile.

"Oh, right! The battle! I suppose I should have cleaned all this up for that," she remarks, waving an arm around herself. "But no matter! You can fight here!"

She claps her hands excitedly, bloodlust in her eyes, and raises a hand to click her fingers. At the sound, two large jets suspended from the ceiling begin to expel thick smoke, shrouding the dancers below in a misty haze. They are unaffected, continuing their stomping ritual.

"I would try to stay on the platform if I were you," the child advised the battlers with a smirk. "That lot, they're so lost in the moment, they wouldn't even notice if you fell. You'd be trampled in seconds!" She looked rather pleased with this idea. "Oh, and the smoke will keep coming too, so make it snappy!

Time to fight!" With another twirl, the child disappeared, and the warriors were alone on the platform.

-

On the second round, the smoke machine will turn on again, bringing the thick, grey smoke up to the combatants knees.

On the final round, it will turn on a third time, filling the room with fog and severely impairing vision (though not completely.)

You have 4 Posts per person and 48 Hours to respond between posts.

By the flip of a coin, Low-Budget Man will be the first to post.

[Low-Budget Man]

Puppet stood completely erect on the platform while his head faced directly forward at his opponent. His body was scarecrow still as Puppet adjusted to his new environment. His earholes were bombarded by a cacophony of music and dancers. It burned the inside of his ‘head’ as the sounds overloaded his senses. They were relatively sensitive since Puppet utilized echolocation to primarily “see” his surroundings.

Already, he felt a dim throb from all the sounds attacking his ears. However, it did give the benefit of painting a perfect image of his surroundings. The numerous sounds helped build a strong image of his location. Each sound wave would bounce off some sort of surface and would be reflected back to Puppet, allowing him to pinpoint the distance.

This essentially allowed him to have a fuzzy geometric map that is constantly updating due to the consistent sounds. Sight was not needed for Puppet. His vision was weak and not very useful compared to his echolocation. Puppet’s ears had a slight pain spasm through it, but he didn’t react. His body stood completely still, a perfect image of a puppet without a puppeteer.

Mentally, he made a note to himself to adjust his ears later. Have some sort of apparatus or device that would decrease his ear size so this situation wouldn’t occur again. But that meant the removal of critical components. That meant to remove flesh to input steel. Every day it seems like Puppet is become more machine than man. Puppet didn’t know if that was a good thing.

He would feel glimpses of emotions every now and then. It was an curious experience if he had to describe it. Something positive in his harsh robotic life. Most of the time, the emotion was uncomfortable or comfortable. Few things elicit emotions like rage and excitement. Even comfortable was a rare emotion. The only thing that would even have a chance of bringing out emotion was killing. It brought a sense of near content occasionally. It was nice to feel that.

At first while mostly man, he had feelings about everything. The murder of his family made him depressed. The revenge for their deaths made him giddy. Now, he just felt numbed and passive. Nothing bothered him. The machine was overtaking him and Puppet was accepting it. Efficiency over emotion.

The platform seemed to be the only safe place in the arena. His echolocation observed that the ground was a mess of crammed bodies and chaos, not an ideal fighting location for a flexible and quick fighter like himself. The girl had said he should avoid him, maybe he’ll heed her advice. He was not too proud to take advice from anyone. Pride was an emotion, and Puppet only had efficiency.

His tattered poncho was draped over his arms, obscuring all four of them from sight. His arms hung down at his sides as the party raged arm. His head gave a quick three hundred sixty degrees turn to do a quick visual check of his environment. While his echolocation had drawn a pretty picture of his circumstances, his eyes filled in the colors and the textures. Albeit, not very well, but it was better than nothing.

His head centered itself on his opponent. A robbed man. A wizard of some sort perhaps. The racket of what they call music bounced sound waves off his body, allowing Puppet to “see” his opponent well even at a distance. The man held a colossal scythe. An ineffective weapon against Puppet, even if it was made for battle. It would do poorly to hold Puppet back.

The girl wanted him to kill this strange man. He followed no one’s orders, but maybe this would give him a smidgen of feeling. If it didn’t, maybe he would kill the girl as well. That might give him some emotion. He hadn’t felt anything in a long while. He had numerous hearts and they all felt dull. It’ll be nice to have some sort of emotion flow through his body.

Puppet, sudden as a heart attack, darted forward at his opponent. His first two set of arms sprang out of his poncho in a swift motion. His two arms stretched outwards as if parodying a friendly hug. There angled exactly the same with the open palming facing his opponent. It was like a cartoon character running away from a monster, except he was the monster coming after the victim.

His second set of arms instead of attacking remained concealed within the poncho. Instead, the second set of arms compressed closely. They folded like an accordion, ready to be shot out like a spring. All the “elbows” were bent to the max and the entire set of arms were compacted tightly together. They were hidden from sight and ready to be launched when within range.

Puppet’s long legs didn’t move in a straight line either. He moved like an elaborate dancer with only a dance pattern eh could see. He zig and zagged like a madman, his legs propelling him in odd unpredictable directions.He might take three steps to the right, then one to the left, before taking another two steps the the right. He incorporated slight jumps to his approach, to further cause confusion. Each leap took him a different distance as well with some spanning eight feet while others took him a mere three feet. He moved erratically like a lizard dashing through the grass. His head remained stationary and stared at his opponent with its dull eyes. His real eyes have been replaced with mechanical sensors a long time ago.

He moved as fast as the wind, with his long legs carrying him a ridiculous distance with every step or jump. Hie emotionless bare face was turned directly on Kato, Slowly, his sight began to fill out the missing details on the Kato. His echolocation only gave the general shape, now his sight was coloring in whatever was missing. Black clothing that has enough tatters to rival Puppet’s own poncho. A light pale face that seemed young and old at the same time if such a thing was possible.

Whatever the case, killing him might grant Puppet some satisfaction. After his death, Puppet might appropriate his robe for himself. His poncho was getting awfully torn apart. The scythe like interesting, perhaps the blades can be used as well. Whatever garnered more efficiency and strength, even at the loss of biology.

After a few seconds of pure turbulent sprinting, Puppet closed the distance of the field. Puppet could have maintained that speed for days if he wanted, he never tired. The machines within him wouldn’t allow it. He stood only a mere ten feet away from Kato before he launched his assault His first set of arms sprang out like a rocket.

Heavy duty chains connected each section of Puppet’s arms together. His arm had four parts to each, each linked by a ball joint. The hand, the forearm, the midarm, and the bicep were parts. A chain connects them all together.

The hand, forearm, mid arm, and bicep spiraled forward at Kato. They were still attached to the body by the extensive length of chain, but the segmented parts flew forward at intense speeds. It was like shooting an entire arm at someone, or at least most of an arm. Even if the arm missed, Puppet could easily reel the arm back in like a fishing rod. The sound of chains clicking as they were shot filled the air. The chains clanked madly as they were extended to their full lengths.

The plan was to grapple Kato with two of the arms. Grab onto his face, robes, or arms, whatever Puppet could get his hands on to distract Kato from Puppet’s approached. The arms attacked Kato from two different directions, the left and right. His attention would be split between the two and even if he blocks one, the other would provide some minor distraction for Puppet to close in. There was hopefully no way Kato can deal with arms coming in at the same time fast enough before Puppet can close in.


Also the force of the entire arm would pack quite a punch as they land. Not only were they moving at an rapid speed, it was an entire arm being shot at someone. Puppet’s arm’s internal machinery and organs were protected by a metal shell. All that added up to a decent weight being thrown at a high velocity. It would be like getting punched by an extremely heavy weight boxer. One that was made of metal and had four feet long arms.

Even as his arms were fired, Puppet still ran forward erratically, trying to close the distance between them to get into a proper melee. Puppet excelled at close range combat especially with all his mobility and limbs to do damage. Also if he needed to escape, he could always try to grapple hook away.

His second set of arms was still kept hidden from sight under the poncho, ready to be unleashed when Kato gets closer. Distract then attack. That was how he was programmed to fight and he hadn’t died yet. Puppet could feel some emotion beginning to bubble in his body. Not enough to even call it emotion. But it was there. It was the slow start to the emotion of excitement. Puppet was going to enjoy killing this man.

[Juder]

Kato stood above the throbbing mass of people and inhaled deeply. The musty smell of sweat and smoke greeted his nostrils as the people danced the night away. Was this...some kind of club, of sorts?

He remembered the strange note that had led him here, claiming there to be a rogue spirit at this night club. He had thought it to be a note from his royal subjects. After all, he was Pale Rider, king of the grim reapers. It was his duty to keep the souls of the dead in check. However, he could not sense any rogue spirit: if there had been such a creature here, the club's activities would have been severely disrupted. Let's just say a string of strange occurrences and a few mutilated corpses here and there wouldn't be very good for business.

That was, at least, until the strange girl started to speak. She had come from nowhere, almost as she had appeared to them from thin air. Unlike the crowd, she clearly had not been dancing. If she had, she definitely wasn't a heavy sweater. He could feel kind of an odd aura from her...as if she weren't exactly human, perhaps? Nevertheless, she sent a chill down his spine that made him wish he had brought an extra sweater.

"Oh, right! The battle! I suppose I should have cleaned all this up for that," she remarks, waving an arm around herself. "But no matter! You can fight here!"

Battle? Kato looks around, his eyes darting around and then finally settling on the strange Puppet. He---rather, it---seemed more automaton than man. The reaper's lip curled up into a sneer. Even this creature seemed unnatural. While it had clearly once been a living being, its flesh had been replaced little by little until it was only one step away from being a machine. Why? Was it some attempt at trying to achieve immortality? Either way, it was clear that in this moment, he and this strange creature were enemies.

He readied his scythe as the girl babbled on, saying something about how it would be better if they stayed on the platform. Whatever. If he thought it would be better for him to jump off the platform, he would jump off the damn platform. Then, she said something about the smoke. That made Kato frown. It could prove quite worrisome if he couldn't see. Then, she disappeared.

"Huh," Kato muttered. "What the heck."

All the sudden, he heard a rush of air as the mechanical beast launched its arms at him. The arms were coming at him from both the left and right, seemingly attached to the automaton by some kind of chain. He leapt into the air, since every direction but up would likely get him killed, and landed squarely behind the metal beast.

"Go go gadget arms? Well, I have a few tricks up my sleeve too," Kato murmured with a grin. With a quick slip of his fingers, he made a small cut in his hand. Little crimson droplets of blood fell onto the blade of the scythe, and it started to hum deeply. The dragon on the scythe glowed a dark red. Soon, it would come alive.

He watched carefully; no doubt, his opponent had something else planned. The dragon would do him no good if he was dead.

[Low-Budget Man]

Puppet’s feet skid along the disco dance floor in an effort to slow himself. An irritating creak reverberated as he fought against his forward momentum. His foot scrapped across the floor, sending a firework of sparks flying as he slide a several more feet before halting. He had moved at an incredible speed earlier and it took effort for him to slow down. Especially when he wasn’t prepared to slow down, but instead was ready to ram his opponent with his own body weight as well as attack with his blades.

His opponent had more mobility than Puppet originally thought. A common man would have been bashed and properly concussed after Puppet’s assault. The two arms would have severely broken some bones or at least distracted the person for Puppet’s finishing move. This robbed man was fast and agile, leaping several feet into the air and gracefully landing behind Puppet was a maneuver reserved for only those fleet of foot. Dodging Puppet’s fast moving chained arms was also an impressive feat. However, for all his grace, he was probably still a man. And all men bled when stabbed. It was a common downfall of being a meatbag.

His first set of arms were still shot out and connected only via a thick chain to his main body. He still maintained control due to the chain providing a link, but it was still detached from Puppet’s shoulder. Both the arms were lying on the ground with their chains crossed. It formed an basic “x” shape with the chains. Due to the way Puppet shot them, they were meant to intercept Kato at the same time, but since he missed they simply flew forward until their momentum ended, far overshooting their original target.

Puppet’s echolocation gave him a decent map of his general layout. The distance between him and his opponent was several feet since Puppet slid forward a great distance. His first set of arms sat only a short distance away from the edge. Puppet didn’t need his arms, but potentially losing his arm in the sea of people wasn’t an ideal plan. The smoke that was slowly rising was going to affect his visual sensors, but once again he didn’t hunt with sight. Echolocation was all he needed. The smoke wasn’t high enough to cause problems for his visual yet, but it seemed to be rising every second.

A plan formulate inside Puppet’s head. The smoke was the key to victory. The man was quick, but he was still human. He was still presumably organic. That meant inefficient and weak. That meant the man fought with sight and only sight. That was why humans feared the dark. They feared what they couldn’t see. Puppet thought back to his scattered memories of his past. He remembered being a man and cowering in houses when it was dark. He feared things like bandits and bears. Always fearing what he couldn’t see. Always afraid to venture out when it was dark.

Puppet’s head rotated one hundred eighty degrees to face the robbed man. His echolocation sensed movement by the man as he seemed to be casting some kind of spell. His eyes spotted the wizard doing some motion that somehow triggered the scythe to glow crimson. Was it a staff instead of a scythe? Had he misinterpreted the weapon? Was that the source of his power? Puppet didn’t like it one bit. Wizards were powerful folk, but only if they can cast spells. That was why Puppet filled them with holes.

Quick as a hare, Puppet shot his first set of arms in the air. The two arms were sitting on the ground and were already extended with chains before he tossed them, so they flew in a wide arc over his head. The arms were flicked by the inner mechanism controlling the chains. Instead of flying directly at his target, it flew above Kato. The way it was fired wasn’t a direct shot either; it instead traveled as if fired from a mortar or a catapult. The goal was to move over the enemy.

The chain clacked wildly as the arms flew in an arc over Puppet. Puppet was a machine and he could easily calculate angles and distance. Missing a stationary target was impossible. For a few seconds, it looked like the arms were simply going to land atop the robbed man’s head to try to bludgeon him once again. However, the arms spiraled slightly onto one of the jets that were spewing smoke. The arms grabbed onto the tube and firmly held on. The hands locked its fingers so he wouldn’t lose his grip.

Once that was accomplished, Puppet’s chain reeled. Clack, clack, clack. The internal mechanism of Puppet’s chain whirred as it struggled to pull the tube. He wasn’t trying to break it, instead, he was merely trying to redirect it right at his opponent. The tube resisted against Puppet’s effort for a few seconds before it began to dip further downward until it pointed directly at Puppet. They'll do fine. The smoke worked to conceal Puppet’s movement as it clouded his general figure. The smoke wasn’t all obscuring, but it made it difficult to see what Puppet was doing.

Puppet’s second set of arms was still concealed in his poncho. They were still positioned like a spring with all the elbows bent. It was like looking at a Jack in the Box toy before the Jack is sprung. However, Puppet wasn’t packing a friendly puppet. Distract then attack.

With the smoke rendering his movement vague, Puppet leaped at the robbed man. Both his feet came off the ground as he jumped and he allowed the first set of arms to carry him forward. He swung forward on the chained arms like Tarzan swinging through the jungle. However, instead of vine it was a chain attached to a set of arms grappling a tube.

Puppet continued reeling in the chain as he soared through the air, further pulling the tube to follow Puppet’s swinging trajectory. The smoke screen continued to follow Puppet as he swung since he maintained a hold on the tube. The smoke clouded from Puppet like a a personal storm.

Puppet maneuvered his body so that his feet were facing point blank at his enemy. His legs were parallel to the ground as he swung, but his torso was slightly bent upward. His entire body was in a very odd crescent shape. His primary reason for this was less wind resistance, which meant more speed to slam into the enemy. With less appendages sticking out, he would simply move faster.

Two knives sprang out of his feet. Both were six inches long and were attached to what would be the Achilles heel of his foot. The blade was positioned perpendicular to his foot, so he would simply need to essentially stomp on someone to send the blade driving into their body. Both his feet were flying quickly at Kato, backed by the forward weight of Puppet’s entire body behind it. Puppet was a wrecking ball with Kato as the marked target.

An opponent that wasn’t immediately killed. That proved interesting. It forced Puppet to adopt new tactics and plans. It forced Puppet to think before simply killing. It provided a change of pace. Puppet felt a brief spark of what almost felt like excitement before it faded. Puppet enjoyed that feeling for its short-lived period. Maybe killing the wizard would bring that feeling back.

[Juder]

Kato swore as the clever puppet used the vents to his advantage. Not only could he not see, but it seemed the automaton was having no trouble finding its way around. That probably meant that its sight was not visual like most people, but auditory.

Kato moved out of the smoke, using his scythe to dig into the ground as he moved, making a high-pitched, loud screeching sound. The puppet's knife grazed him as he moved, but he didn't let it stop him. He continued making the loud screeching sound, hoping to disrupt the creature's hearing. He pushed the pain to the back of his mind: he could deal with it later.

The dragon from his scythe came to life with a sharp roar. Its petite, snakelike, silvery form darted around the room and charged towards the puppet, raking it with claws. Granted, most of the Puppet's body was machine, but there was still some flesh to be clawed away somewhere. Besides, it would serve as a great distraction while Kato got his bearings.

There was no longer any need to make any noise, as the dragon from the scythe was doing a well enough job of distracting the mechanic beast. He quickly ripped a piece of cloth from his robes and tied it to make a tourniquet for his wounds: he had been cut a little deeper than he'd thought. It would require stitches later, but for now, it would be fine. In his line of work, he'd dealt with wounds that would have killed a lesser man. He, however, had a resolve of steel. No matter how bad the injury was, he would keep pushing forward until the job was done, even if it killed them both.

"What are you? I haven't met a creature like you before. All that metal...you, sir, should be dead," Kato purred. "I will be happy to remedy that fact, if you like. Not that it matters what you think. I am the Pale Rider, king of the grim reapers. I am the east wind: a force that, in the end, takes us all."

He admired his dragon's handiwork as he awaited for an answer. It truly was a beautiful creature. It was swift, graceful, and slim. It was a harsh contrast to the puppet's crude build. While the dragon's sliver body and ruby eyes glittered stammeringly in the colored lights of the club, the Puppet's steel was dull. Most of him was covered by a poncho that looked like it had been half eaten by moths. Kato almost felt sorry for the creature. After so long, its humanity would be lingering. Instead of emotions of the flesh, such as love and sorrow, it would be stuck in a steel limbo of nothingness. While many people craved immortality, the automaton was a prime example of why it never worked out well. Eventually, it would turn you into a monster and rob you of the life you were trying so desperately to cling to.

[Low-Budget Man]

If Puppet could properly express emotion, he easily would have. The wizard had managed to dodge Puppet twice, once while Puppet was shrouded in mist. A common man would have felt at least a bit of annoyance at the situation, but Puppet was no man. Rather, he felt nothing except for the will to kill the wizard intensifying.

Puppet still had the tube facing him and it was spewing smoke out like a broken hydrant. His own vision was impaired, but that didn’t matter. As long as the enemy was crippled in sight, that didn’t matter. The smoke was building ontop of each other and was slowly creating a massive cloud to shield Puppet from sight. Since Puppet redirected the tube, Puppet was getting his own personal smoke cloud. It was a good thing he didn’t need to breathe.

However, since he was focused on his echolocation and hearing, the screech of the scythe on metal disrupted his thoughts. It was a painful sound to his acute hearing and cut him deeper inside his head than the music previously. While previously, the pain was just a dull burn, the scythe exaggerated the pain into an infernal. Puppet could still “feel” the general geometry of his surroundings, but the pain torched his innards as he continued using echolocation.

More machine and less flesh would do to resolve the issue. His fleshy bits were weak compared to the cold efficient steel. Machines don’t feel pain, while meat do. It was why he was the perfect assassin, the perfect warrior. How do you harm a warrior that doesn’t fear harm?

Puppet however, didn’t outwardly react to the pain. Pain was something he could handle and even secretly enjoyed. While his mind spoke about efficiency, his soul craved feeling. Or at least what was left of his soul. Pain was just an extension of emotion, and Puppet enjoyed feeling even if it was negative. Most emotion of any sort were cut from him with a scalpel so anything that resembled feeling was desired. The pain would bring about even more feeling in time.

A roar interrupted his musing. A small silvery dragon dove at him, coming into existence out of thin air! He couldn’t see most of its detail due to the smoke, but he could easily tell it was fast and wasn’t looking to play hide and seek. However, Puppet was.

His first set of arms was still firmly gripping the tube to aim the smoke at Puppet. Puppet released his grip at reeled both arms in at max speed. The chain rattled loudly as he reattached both arms to their appropriate socket. A distinct click could be heard as both arms were properly set into place, like a putting an arm back on a broken toy.

The dragon flew at Puppet and Puppet allowed it to make contact. Its savage claws tore at Puppet’s middle torso, ripping open his armor like paper. The sound of metal being shredded filled the air for a brief second as the dragon greedily attacked Puppet like a fat man opening a lobster. The dragon had gotten through most of Puppet’s shell and was ready to take a bite of his organic and mechanical innards, before Puppet made his move.

The inside of Puppet was a grotesque mess to the few that have ever managed to see it. Metal piping, steel boxes, and organs were crammed together into a tiny space. There was not an ounce of open space and everything was packed to fill capacity. Sacks of strange green slime wrapped themselves around organs and metal. Every piece of flesh had blisters of the slime and some of the blisters even held themselves on the metal. It was an abomination of machine and man. The meat moved and pulsed every few seconds, all of it still alive and fully functional. What looked to be a pair of lung squished together was hooked via wires and tubing to a metallic container.

The mechanical man allowed the dragon to push forward with all its previous momentum and grappled the dragon with his first set of arms. Puppet collapsed backwards as if he was going to crab walk and simply tossed the dragon behind him. He used his first set of arms to grab the dragon by the scruff of its neck and redirected all its momentum forward past his crab walk form.

It was a common technique in Aikido, redirecting your opponent’s attack away from you. No matter how strong or fast something was, they always usually obeyed the laws of physics. If something is moving fast and hard, its usually harder for them to stop.

As Puppet collapsed to the ground, his second set of arms sprang out from the poncho and held himself up. Now he was properly crab walking. He had only a few seconds before the dragon came back, so he had to make his next move quick on the wizard before he casts another spell. Puppet placed first set of arms on the ground as well after throwing the dragon.

Puppet flipped over so his head was facing his enemy and began darting quickly toward the enemy. All six of his limbs were on the ground and he was moving like an elaborate spider. His limbs clattered and metal echoed quietly as he move. It was similar to the scurrying sound of a fast insect, except more metallic. However, the booming music should serve mask most of the footsteps and handsteps.

The smoke had risen a great distance, but it wasn’t fully obscuring yet. The floor however, was already a mess of mist. The smoke was knee level a few moments ago, but now it would have surely risen. Combined with the fact that Puppet had redirected a tube directly at his location, it would be near impossible to see Puppet crawling. That would be especially true since he was only a few feet tall while crawling like a tarantula.

His limbs scurried toward Kato at swift speeds. Spiders moved ridiculously fast for their size. He had based on movement pattern on those critters and had mastered moving like one. A spider is capable of moving about a foot and a half per second. If one were to scale that up a human, that human would move at a hundred or so miles per hour.

The wizard was bandaging himself and was saying some words. Puppet couldn’t decipher them from the music’s loud pulsing beat. but he didn’t particularly care. Killing him was all that mattered. Puppet had already felt two brief licks of emotion, excitement and pain from fighting him. Now imagine what it would be like to kill him? If fighting was just an appetizer to emotion, then murder would be the main course!

When Puppet was only a two feet away from Kato, he leaped with all six limbs. He flew about fourfeet in the air. He leaped out of the cloud like a spider leaping from a hidden burrow. Only this spider had a lethal armament of weapon inside of him ready to be used.

Puppet splayed out all his limbs in a wide array. His first sets of arms were splayed out in the eleven o clock and the one o clock position. His second sets of arms were held at the nine o clock and the three o’ clock position. And finally his legs were at the five o’ clock and the seven o’ clock. He was like a gargantuan starfish flying at someone.

Where ever the Wizard would try to dodge, Puppet would shoot a couple limbs at him. If the wizard try to dodge to Puppet’s left, he would fire his two left arms. If he tried to slide below, Puppet would open fire with his legs. If he tried to leap right, Puppet would shoot with his two right arms. Escaping Puppet would be a complicated matter. Everything would be still attached to Puppet via a chain once he fired them so he had very little fear of losing them.

The primary plan behind shooting the limb was to entangle and disrupt the wizard. Each limb was four feet of metal or organic material. They were essentially oversized baseball bats made out of harder and heavier material. Each limb hitting the wizard would break bones at least from the force if they were fired. It was simple physics, mass times acceleration equals force. Shoot something fast and heavy, and it’ll hurt a whole lot. If they manage to bludgeon the wizard, Puppet would have the hands grapple and distract him for his finishing blow.

If Kato tried to jump above him that meant Kato would have to go in front of Puppet for a brief moment since Puppet was currently flying at him from a height of four feet. Puppet would try to counter that by simply snapping all his limbs forward to try to constrain the wizard in a colossal deadly bear hug. Even if the wizard was ridiculously fast, he would have to avoid all of Puppets long limbs rushing forward to grapple him. He may be fast, but Puppet has a lot of limbs.

If the wizard tried to move back, Puppet would simply used to forward momentum of his leap to reach Kato. Puppet was already moving at a ridiculous speed when he scurried and combined with his leap, he had a colossal amount of momentum and velocity behind him. On the other hand, the wizard was merely trying to talk and repair himself. The man was a stationary target unprepared for Puppet’s assault.

Moving backwards or forwards fast enough to dodge Puppet would be an impressive feat indeed. Someone that can move from zero miles per hour to ninety miles per hour to evade Puppet within a span of a split second would certainly cause Puppet a pang of fear. It was like someone standing still in front of a speeding car that has been driving for a few minutes and trying to outrun it. There would not nearly be enough time for the person to generate enough speed to outrun it, even if they could in the first place.

Puppet also had longer legs as well, he himself stood at a ridiculous height of seven feet and six inches. Both his arms and his legs were four feet each which garners him a fair among of reach. If the man manages to move faster than Puppet and try to escape by running left or right, he would have to run move four feet within the split second of Puppet’s leap. Puppet would also shoot the limb at him if he would try to move to evade that way, forcing him to have to travel even farther for even a chance to evade.

As he leaped, Puppet began to spew out his own gas. The gas was almost invisible and could only be noticed by the vague disruption of sight. It was like looking at a field on a sunny day, you would see heat rays mess up your perception. The area around Puppet became distorted and warped, the light bending oddly.

Puppet’s plan was to grapple the wizard in any means necessary. He had six limbs compared to the human’s four, so he would always gain the advantage. Once grappled, the human would begin to breathe in the toxic fumes and Puppet would commence the rest of his plan.

He had to move quick, the dragon he had flung away from him would be coming back at Puppet any second at Puppet’s back and his innards were exposed. While he did have two other torsos, damage to one would render him a lot weaker. They were meant to work in sync and damage to one would damage the other in a way. Luckily, it was only exposed on one side, the dragon only managing to tear open the outer shell in the direction of the wizard. So Puppet was leaping at the wizard with a hole in his chest.

Puppet realized he was wrong. The fight with the wizard wasn’t the appetizer. It was the main course. A brief thrill of excitement tingled through his body while in flight. It was sweet nectar to his human parts, drowning out the groaning dull metal. A rich golden feeling filled up his body. It felt like someone poured warm fire into his hearts. It was the warm feeling of holding your hands near a fireplace while a snowstorm raged outside your home. It was a feeling Puppet realized he yearned for. Something he never realized he loved until he lost.

And he wanted more. He wanted dessert.

[Juder]

Kato, as an added perk to his job, was loosely allowed to manipulate time, allowing him to speed up or slow down around him at will. This came in handy in times such as this, when an opponent was able to move at speeds faster than him. He muttered a quick incantation: one that would take a little while to kick in. Then, he would be able to move a lot faster than his opponent, but for now...well, it would be impossible to dodge the automaton rushing at him at inhuman speeds, especially when its limbs were splayed out in all directions. It was like a net, meant to trap him.

Kato finished bandaging himself right as the Puppet started to fly straight at him. The dragon flew back to him and rammed straight into the puppet's chest, slowing its momentum down slightly. Kato swept his scythe in a big circle, cutting through all but one of the chains that attached the automaton's limbs to its body. The limbs scattered across the stage.

Then the still-flying robot ran into him, its force knocking him off of his feet. He fell to the ground, gasping for breath. There was no doubt in his mind that the impact had broken a rib. Stupidly, he had allowed his opponent to gain the upper hand, but soon the tables would turn.

The silver dragon flew back to his scythe and curled around the silver handle. Its time had run out; once a creature of living metal, the dragon would once again become a useless ornament. The light faded from its ruby eyes as the silver flesh melded back with the weapon itself. Kato could almost feel the energy that had once occupied its small, delicate frame disperse. His heart sank; he had grown quite fond of the peculiar creature, and he found its living presence quite reassuring. When it returned to its dormant state, he could feel a void in his heart, as if he were feeling the absence of a close friend. No matter. With or without the dragon's help, he would win this battle.

As Kato lay on the ground, catching his breath, he had a brief glimpse of the opponent who had brought him to the ground. The dragon's work was still apparent, and Kato could see the insides of the ugly mechanical creature. Cogs and steel mixed with flesh and bone, pipes intermingling with real organs. The reaper almost threw up. It was an atrocity. Was the creature's soul still lingering, trapped inside of those bits of flesh that were few and in between? Truly, it would be better for the automaton if it had been completely replaced with metal. Then, it would have no knowledge of what had happened to it.

Still, the blood was the house of life. It was a possibility that small pieces of the creature's mind lingered. Likely, it felt nothing most of the time but fleeting tastes of the emotion that it once had. Such an existence was not worth living.

"You have proven to be a worthy opponent," Kato boomed over the music, hoping to disguise the pity that he felt for the Puppet. "However, I will not allow myself to be beaten by a half-life. I promise you, you will meet your end soon; as I already said, I am the east wind, and the east wind takes all in the end."

[Low-Budget Man]

Puppet felt the connection to his limbs severed in rapid succession. His previously chain linked limbs flew outward in random directions without Puppet’s personal control. Only one limb remained attached to Puppet tall frame. The upper right arm remained firmly socketed into Puppet’s body.

Puppet’s body flopped to the ground after the attack. His legs were lost somewhere in the dense smoke. His echolocation located them a few feet away. Puppet had managed to smash into the wizard’s body before all his limbs became disconnected. Multiple cracks could be heard as he his hard metallic body slamed into the wizard’s fragile one. Something was definitely broken on the wizard’s end.

How the wizard moved at such immense speeds astounded Puppet. It simply broke the laws of physics how fast he moved and seemed to react! No human could have done that! Magic definitely took part in the wizard’s defense. It had to be. Magic broke efficiency and law. Puppet could calculate all he wanted, but fighting against magic was an entirely different ball game.

Five out of his six limbs had been flung away somewhere. The wizard was fast and smart, but end of the day he was still presumably somewhat human. The smoke had risen to fully obscure the battlefield now. All of Puppet’s movements were shrouded in the all-consuming mist. While he had no lungs to speak of, the human would surely be coughing and wheezing. Another sign of weakness from being a meatbag.

Puppet was machine and required no outside oxygen to speak off. All his oxygen and was recycle and regurgitated by the machines in his torsos. Not doing so would be a simply lack of efficiency. The tendrils of smoke wormed its way into Puppet’s open torso, trying to choke to life out of his organs.

A slight burn felt its way through his vitals, like someone heavily putting pressure on his heart. The metal parts of his body felt nothing and didn’t react to the smoke. The meat was weak while the metal strong. Puppet made another mental note about the weakness of flesh.

Puppet’s machine-like mind thought through his options. They were severely limited due to the loss of his limbs. No feet meant no mobility. No arms meant no weapons. His attacks and maneuverability was severely stunted. There was no option that maximized efficiency. No option that could provide a solution without failure. Everything he could do displayed failure. All his standard tactics and ploys were useless.
He couldn’t move at all and was a sitting duck.


The small human part of his mind that remained spoke differently. It spoke of dozens of options, all risky and adventurous. All less efficient and smooth. They were options that machines wouldn’t take. They were options that spoke above doing what’s efficient and more about doing what he believes to be best. They were ideas that no machine would have every agreed to. They were excitable options that could either mean glory or death. And they were options he was going to take.

That was why he was made. No human could calculate and compute fighting options as fast as a machine could. But machines couldn’t innovate and figure out new ways to deal with different opponents. Puppet was a blend of both. An abomination of flesh and metal.

The warm glow of excitement filled his body once more. His human organs seemed to dance and pulsed faster to his emotion. The meat wasn’t always weak.

A plan formed in his mind, one that his machine-like mind would have never accepted or would have ever thought of. His three torso sections began rotating clockwise in a singular direction. Puppet slung his arm awkwardly around the top section of his torso like a belt.

With essentially his entire torso revolving, he began to roll at the wizard. His body was cylinder smooth and behaved like a wheel barreling along the floor. It was an entirely unorthodox maneuver that was purely improvised.

Puppet’s approach was only marked by metallic rattling and the clanks of his body on the dance floor. However, the gratuitous sounds that swamped his hearing masked a majority of his assault. The music’s beat only seemed to get louder and the dancing people only added to the commotion.

Puppet was unable to pick up individual sounds, instead everything melded together into a pandemonium of white noise. That worked to his advantage since the entire world was mapped out from all the hubbub.
Every sound wave bounced off an object or some surface and contributed to building an image of the environment.

As he rolled, the echolocation fixed a location for Kato. What was left of Puppet rolled toward the wizard with reckless abandonment. As soon as neared about one or two feet away, his singular arm flipped out while his torso was rolling. He used it as a spring to launch of barreling body at Kato. The palm slammed into the bright dance floor and sent the torso flying up a few feet. It would have been higher if he had more limbs to add more force, but he had to make do.

The torso, now leaping through the air and spinning wildly, popped out its blades. A total of nine blades, three for each torso section slid out smoothly and silently. They were perfectly fitted blades that would make no sound like a well-oiled machine. Since Puppet’s torso was spinning wildly, the blades were also spinning madly. Puppet’s torso was essentially a flying barrel of blades.

Distract then attack. Puppet fired off his head and upper torso away from the rest of his body. Puppet was split into two pieces, connected only the chain. His upper torso and head was one piece, and his mid torso and bottom torso were another.

The bottom torso and middle torso still leaped at the wizard with its blades flaring, however the head and upper torso were extended to the wizard’s right. The chain extended two feet long between the upper half and bottom half before it halted its mechanism.

The bottom half of his body was to slam into the wizard to provide a distraction for Puppet’s finishing blow. Puppet’s head inclined its neck to look down at his bottom portion diving into the wizard with its knives flashing. His mouth slid open, like a nutcracker’s lever being pulled. He was to attack the wizard from an entirely different angle while his bottom half hit the wizard straight on. Distract then attack.

He felt his internal organs inside his head and upper torso heat up slightly as the green liquid was piped to his mouth. The substance was sprayed out in a wide array. It wasn’t a singular stream, instead it was like a geyser of liquid flying out of Puppet’s mouth. Some inner mechanism inside Puppet lit up a spark and for the bare liquid became a blazing firestorm.

The liquid was only visible for a split-second before it was turned into an inferno. In fact, any man would have only seen a spray of fire fly out of Puppet’s mouth. The liquid was a homebrew version of napalm, only deadlier. Puppet’s napalm stuck to skin and burned hot enough to melt through bone. If even a lick of napalm was stuck to the wizard’s it would cling to him and burn him through.

Puppet’s flamethrower scorched a few thousand degrees Fahrenheit and was focused more on width instead of distance. The napalm was sprayed out like fiery net hoping to entrap the wizard. A price of that net was Puppet’s lower half was in the range of fire. The napalm would indirectly splash onto Puppet’s lower half and would possibly do damage. What’s worse, his exposed hole was in the bottom half. If any of the scorching jelly managed to splash into Puppet’s innards, that entire area would be compromised into a burning mess.

It wasn’t efficient. It wasn’t methodical. It was a risk. Puppet could have easily fired the napalm in a narrow straight line, allowing it to go further and into a more concentrated area. However, the wizard was fast and he needed large net to trap fast prey.

This way, even if the wizard moved fast, he was bound to be hit by some burning jelly. However, the barreling torso would hopefully distract the wizard so Puppet could roast the wizard alive. It was a risk, sacrificing body parts for a chance to kill, but it was a risk he was willing to take. The will be to mechanically efficient was loss the second the plan was made. If the wizard try to move, Puppet would simply try to follow his movements with his head to try to send to napalm tearing into the wizard with blazing heat. It was easier to move his head slightly than for the wizard to move his entire body.

Excitement instead flowed through his body at the prospect of the wizard’s death. A warm glowing feeling flooding his body. Or was that bits of napalm sticking to his soft flesh? Whatever that feeling was, Puppet felt human for the first time in a long while.

[Juder]

At this point, the smoke was so thick that Kato could almost cut it with his scythe. He couldn’t see a thing: certainly, his opponent had the upper hand. Well, maybe. The reaper wasn’t sure exactly which limbs he’d cut off.

His scythe buzzed madly, and around the same time he heard a something flying at him. He dodged the Puppet's body, but the burning napalm splashed all over him. Most of it fell on his thick, black robes, while some fell on his neck, arms and feet. Kato let out a sharp gasp as he quickly scrambled to remove all but the bottom layer of his robes, hoping to slow down its progress.

While his robes had kept his body safe—and even that meager protection would soon be gone—he could still feel the agent eating away at his limbs. Luckily, the spell he had just cast was taking effect. This slowed down the progress of the napalm while speeding him up. Still, there was no doubt that as soon as his business here was over, he would have to make use of his finest medic and would be recuperating for weeks.

Determined to lay waste to his opponent, Kato picked up the pile of his napalm-covered robes, felt around for the Puppet, and dumped them squarely atop it’s pitiful form. He let out a shriek of pain as the napalm ate through the tender flesh of his arms and throat. He made his pain known to the world: he would not be consoled, he would not be silent!

With his last bit of strength, he dug his scythe into the ground, once again creating a loud, sharp shriek. This time, it served no tactical purpose. It was simply designed to cause displeasure to his enemy: that horrendous automaton, that...cursed abomination!

He crumpled to the ground as the ligaments in his limbs were devoured by the insatiable napalm. His scythe clattered to the floor as well, falling out of his reach. Kato tried to retrieve it, as if it contained some beacon of hope, but his arms were too weak.

As he lay there on the ground, shame consumed him, burning through the pride that he had been feeling moments before. He had defeated goblins and ghouls galore. The king that had brought nations to its knees had been outwitted by a dull half-life of a machine. His only consolation was that his enemy was suffering the same fate, soon to be lost to the abyss forever. After all, the east wind did take everyone in the end, and it seemed it had come to claim them both.

[G]

This battle is now complete - scores will be posted shortly.