Tam Tenderpaw vs. Raynare - A Battle of Grace and Wind

The clash had left its mark of power, and Tam put a valiant effort, but Raynare's dropkick had been too overpowering! After Tam got knocked rolling away, Raynare backflipped and landed back on her feet, immediately crouching. She shook her head, and wobbled her foot to shake off some of that ringing feeling that the tonfa had left. Even if she had knocked the wielder away, those tonfas are made of sturdy stuff.

She then got on all fours like an animal ready to pounce, and as Tam sat up and resuming to get ready, Raynare's wing again flapped and leapt out at Tam, her hands outstretched in a grabbing motion!

If she successfully grabbed Tam, the two would roll around like a ball around the arena!

“Aw nuts…” Tam muttered to herself blinking at the primal nature of Rayne on all fours. She quickly scrambled to rise but the moment she had gotten to her feet she was swept off them by the speeding fallen angel. The young Sciuro wasn’t going to let herself simply be taken for a ride though, struggling back by throwing her weight around, grappling hold of Raynare by the shoulders to try and wrestle control of the top of the speeding missile they had become. Each bounce off the ground was hard and unforgiving as they tumbled about with no sign of stopping.

It was only when they moved near a pillar did the situation changed with Tam’s tail swinging out to wrap around the base of the pole and carry their momentum around the outside of it with a sweeping change in centrifugal force. Tam tried to get her knees and feet in, force them between the two to try and kick Raynare off and send the other woman sailing off while she clung to the pole.

As Raynare slammed into Tam, the two bounced like a grappling catball along the hard ground, and Raynare's hands tightly grabbed Tam's body as the two missile'd away! Tam however, was one step ahead in terms of quick thinking, as her counter managed to ground her and throw Raynare off and out of the ring!

Raynare spun wildly in the air, flying in spins before she slammed into the runic aura around the ring that prevented any magic attacks from hitting the audience. The runes lit up again, and this time Raynare let out a bright flurry of lights before she got fired and flung off from the shield and away, smoking, and smacked into one of the pillars near the center of the ring!

She slowly slid down the post, her head bumping on one of the sticking out monkey bars, then she slid off that and her head bumped into another one before flopping on the ground with a THUD, kicking up dust. She lay there motionless for a while, her fingers and limbs twitching and her hair kicked up like as if she had been electrocuted. Her wings were twitching, and slowly Raynare stirred, trying to get back on her feet and arms.

In a snap the two separated, leaving Raynare to fly off in one direction while Tam’s tail coiled around a ring pillar and had her spinning wildly around the towering structure at a dizzying pace until she slowed to enough of a stop and her body flopped to the ground with a soft thud. Her head was spinning and her guts were twisted up from her solo merry-go-round ride leaving her on the edge of heaving on the ground.

She looked up with a wince, the slight motion making her experience a feeling of vertigo even while firmly planted on the ground. She had seen the flash and Raynare being spit back into the quarantine area but hadn’t understood what she saw at first. Her head tilted slightly to one side, first and further until it stopped, ears perking up with sudden realization. The barrier holding them in could be a weapon. It was a dangerous game she would be playing trying to use it though, as Raynare could just as easily barbecue her against it. She wasn't sure how else to put the fallen angel down though. She seemed incredibly resilient and far too fast to pin down with any big moves.

She pushed herself up on unsteady legs, wobbling slightly to the side. Her tail instinctively shifted to balance her weight out. After a few steps though, it was clear she needed a moment, lurching forward with her hands on her knees. “If you wanna give up, I’d accept your surrender,” Tam called out, her head hung low as she focused on keeping her breakfast down. She wasn't really in a position of strength but who knew. Maybe Raynare would take it.

Raynare kept twitching, slowly trying to regain some semblance of a fighting stance, before standing quite wobbly on her legs. Her wing feathers were poofed out, her hair dishevelled, and her body wobbling as she stood unevenly on her legs, while covered in dirt and dust. She rose a hand to the sky, before Tam heard another psychic message.

"Go...shove it, ya little...." she said as she tried to shake some sense back into herself. Her face was unreadable but her body language absolutely was. Shaking her head, she took a shaky step forward, saying, "I'm not...done with...yoooou!" and she pointed an accusing finger before coming to a halt, again shaking her head and trying to regain some composure.

“Nh!” Tam still wasn't used to having someone speaking in her head. She supposed that hail marry surrender was off the table. A few beads of sweat formed on her brow t being reminded, still unaware of that meant the other woman knew what she was thinking or not. She might have just given her plans up fully without realizing it. She would have to check somehow to be certain, otherwise, it was too dangerous to try to use the warded barrier. How to do that though? She brought her palms to the side of her face giving her cheeks two light slaps to wake up a bit, then stood up fully.

“Hnnnh.” She swallowed back something unpleasant, patting a balled-up fist to her chest. Still a bit shaky but… workable. Tam cleared her throat, thrusting a finger out towards Raynare before declaring. "Hey you, you think you are so tough but you are actually…”And she stopped there, leaving her words hanging verbally while she thought about what she would finish it with, which was “A Pretty swell girl. Just kidding. Actually, not really you are weird and freaking.” Tam’s expression changed to one of smug satisfaction as if she had just solved an ancient puzzle in a dark crypt someplace and was waiting to see if it opened an old vault door. "Eh heh heh..."

Raynare was still regaining her composure...till she heard Tams thoughts.

The swell girl part made her head raise up, staring at Tam, but the latter part caused her eyes to narrow with a "Really?" look. Raynare managed to straighten out her vision and stop seeing multiple Tams, before responding, "Very funny, pest."

Her wings, now having resettled them into their former glory, flapped and Raynare lifted off the ground, before landing on one of the monkey bars poking out of the large posts. She eyed Tam like a hawk, waiting for her to make her move.

The Sciuro cringed at the voice in her head, apparently some of what she was thinking did make it through to Raynare. The degree of which was though she had no way of knowing. Did she have the ability to read her thoughts or was the fact that she Tam had been thinking about words that conveyed them through their minds? Her ears drew back slightly and shoulders sack and she started to drift into a bewildering network of what-ifs as it related to someone being in her head. She narrowed her eyes, wanting to test one more thing, and looked across at Raynare. She strained, thinking super hard about what Raynare would look like if her head were about ten times bigger and she had an “I’m with stupid” sign around her neck with an arrow pointed up at herself. She went red in the face trying to will that image to leave her head and give it to the fallen angel before being forced to stop and take a breath.

Right. No more time for games. Tam tapped the toes of her boots against the ground, eyes flicking across the arena, trying to figure out the possibilities of approach from here to where Raynare was. Her ears twitched as she thought through the possibilities before coming up with a general path in her head. Holding out her tonfa, she set the ends together about to cast another spell but stopped before uttering an incantation. She could certainly use some more healing, but the acrobatic feats she was going to have to do would require her to be on her toes. She got a bit fuzzy when healing, and not the good sort of fuzzy like her tail. It was better she just tough the pain out.

“Alright… you just gotta get to a flying creepy mannequin lady and fight her in the sky. While she is in your mind. No biggie… this is just like back home.” She said, dripping with sarcasm. She had stalled long enough, it was time to get moving. She started from the ring, from the ropes to a primary post. Topping up she clutched it with her hands and used her tail to secure her as she climbed vertically up the pole. Easing and tightening her tail, she had the appearance of practically scrambling up it on all fours until she got high enough. Leaning out, she hung freely, leaning off the pole with her tail anchoring her. Bending at the knees she timed her release and leapt from the pole, coming an immense distance to another. Hands out, she grasped one of the bars and used it as a stop-off, keeping her momentum preserved by flipping a full rotation around it before the next.

From pole to pole, she launched, sometimes from a bar, others from jumping into the pole itself and immediately kicking off. Her acrobatics were on full display and the path she took was a dizzying zig zag that drew no direct path towards Raynare at first. Eventually, she would come flipping off one of those monkey bars, somersaulting through the air as she flew directly towards the fallen angel, aiming to bury a flying kick in her face.

Raynare could see the asburd situation going on in Tams head, before seeing Tams projection of a cartoonishly disproportionate Raynare with an "I'm with stupid" necklace that had an arrow pointing at herself. Raynares face didn't show it, but her feathers ruffled, the only indicator of her being extremely annoyed right now. The squirrel was figuring out how to communicate to her without looking like a total dweeb to the audience. If she kept this up, she wouldn't be generating as much hype as before, and Raynare wanted to feast on that sweet sweet cheering.

Nevertheless, Tam took off at lighting speeds, and Raynares head tracked her whereabouts. She kept a close watch on her movements, right up till until she came flying right at her in an attack!

Raynares wings flapped, blowing her backwards as she sailed through the air, before her feet grabbed a monkey bar, causing her to spin. She spun on it a bit before throwing herself upwards and onto another monkey bar, her feet again clinging to it and spinning, revving up and gaining momentum, before launching herself back at Tam with a superman fist stuck out for trying to hit her!

The heel of her boot hit the solid pole, digging into the wood to the point it split and splintered at the point of impact. Raynare had taken flight, leaving Tam to briefly clutch the side of the pole to keep from falling. She watched the fallen angel, familiar with her method of drumming up speed before her hit-and-run style attacks. Chasing her now would be a bad move, especially if she was caught in flight. So she watched and waited, eyes watering a bit as she refused to blink out of necessity. With how fast she moved that split second mattered.

When Raynare fired off, she was ready. Kicking off the pillar she threw her arms wide, somersaulting backward to flip. herself gracefully out of the way of the punch. She remained upside down in the air, following the same path her opponent's momentum would have taken her, waiting for just the right moment when she caught up to however far she had traveled and was above Raynare.

A quick incantation illuminated the runes of her foci, the flick of a Tonfa behind her and she had made another small disc of pink light in the air. She tucked her legs in to push up against it then kicked off and sent herself hurling down at the fallen angel from above. A glint flash of metal as she twirled her tonfa and thrust out one in front of her, looking to bring it down at her opponent. All the while she focused, visualizing battering Raynare with the strike in her mind, seeing if she could flood the other woman's mind enough to mess with her sense of what was actually real.