Fighting Fortune
Tatterhood's arrow was like a shooting star as it flew straight on towards Donnie's airborne form.
"Oh shit! [Switch]!", Donnie exclaimed moments before the arrow hit him. Just as it was about to pierce his torso, Donnie suddenly disappeared. The star arrow that was originally going to pierce Donnie instead impacted into the iron tanuki daruma.
"Oh? Where'd you go, old soldier boy?", Tatterhood asked in surprise. As she fell back down to the ground, she changed her trajectory to a nearby tree and grabbed onto a branch. Tatterhood hung there for a moment, trying to figure out where Donnie had disappeared to, until she heard a voice cry out.
"Ay! Watch where you're swinging that thing!", the voice of Senior Hippie cried out from a distance.
"Oh-ho, now that's a clever trick", Tatterhood commented as she climbed onto the branch and used it to her launch herself towards the sound.
"I think this will make it the third time?", she idly mused as she soared through the air.
The sound of distant fighting filled the air.
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"Stop moving around so much!"Donnie roared as he swung the kusarigama's sickle downwards.
"Quit trying to kill me!", RJ retorted as he evaded the downward swing with a weird sweeping motion. Using the momentum, RJ fired a [Rock Shot] from a weird angle.
Unfortunately, the angle was a little too weird and barely grazed Donnie's cheeks.
"You missed!", Donnie yelled as he swung his chain again, "Now face the wrath of a true onmyōji"!
"Damnit", RJ muttered as he avoided the chain again, "where the hell did this guy come from"?!
As it turned out, Donnie did not disappear into nothingness, but had made use of a feature of his relic, [Diviner's Kusarigama],in tandem with his skills to teleport to RJ's position.
The [Diviner's Kusarigama] is, as the name states, a chain and sickle weapon that could double as a dowsing pendulum for those trained in the art of divination,like Donnie, with a one hundred percent accuracy rating. Donnie, however, was not just a diviner, he was an onmyōji.
Onmyōji are, in simple terms, practitioners of onmyōdō, a cosmological system originating from Japan that combined magic schools with natural sciences. Thanks to this odd combination of skills, Donnie was able to pull off some unusual tricks with his relic, such as being able to teleport between the weighted end and the sickle end of his weapon.
"Eat this"!
"Bwah! Freaky fish!", RJ exclaimed as he batted one way with a [Stone Fist].
And throwing paper talismans that turn into weird fish arrows.
It was a good thing that RJ learned [Qi Flow], otherwise he would've been dead a few times over by now. Unfortunately, his stamina could only last so long...
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While RJ and Donnie were having their dance of death, Senior Hippie was currently hiding behind a nearby tree trunk in an attempt to be inconspicuous.
{What are you doing?}, a familiar voice chimed in Senior Hippie's head.
"Uh, hiding for my life?, he said in a hesitant tone, "feels kinda right for me to do so".
{Why aren't you helping RJ fight this guy? It'd be two against one}!
"Technically it'd be two on two, he did have that weird weasel girl enter that freaky sickle earlier", Senior Hippie corrected for no reason.
{All the more reason for you to get in there}!
"But I can't fight, I'm just a skeleton. With a guitar"!
{That's the point! Oh for the love of, I'm not telling you to go in there and try to fight in melee like a moron, I'm telling you to play your guitar}!
"Huh? So is music gonna help here? Provide background music or make myself an obvious target"?!
{Just shut up, point the neck of your guitar at the old guy and play a power chord!}, the voice commanded in a more forceful tone.
"Ay! Fine! If it'll get you to shut-WHOA"!
Senior Hippie did as the voice instructed and the moment he played a power chord, a visible shockwave of sound blasted towards RJ and Donnie.
"Oh shit! RJ! Behind you!", Senior Hippie called out.
"Huh? Whoa"!
"What the fu-Oof"!
When Senior Hippie called out to RJ, RJ was about to launch a counterattack against Donnie, but when RJ turned and saw the incoming shockwave bolt, he immediately ducked. This action thew off Donnie's rhythm, allowing the shockwave to hit him in the gut and knocking him backwards. To put things in perspective, Donnie felt like someone had just kicked him in the stomach.
Taking this opportunity, RJ made his way to where Senior Hippie was to catch his breath.
"Why didn't you do that earlier?', RJ asked in-between breaths. Evidently, using magically enhanced instincts/martial arts takes a lot out of a guy.
"I, uh...was waiting for the right moment?", Senior Hippie replied with a shrug.
RJ gave Senior Hippie a rather deadpan stare at his response. He knew that tone, he had used that tone before.
Further away from the duo, Donnie had managed to regain his footing and he did not look happy at this sudden turn of events.
"That tears it!", Donnie yelled, "It's time for me to get serious"!
Donnie held his amethyst sickle in one hand while holding out his other hand. A visible aura of energy began to form around him as held this pose.
"Tony! To me!", he said in a strange voice.
The chain that was attached to the end of the sickle, that originally held taut this whole fight, suddenly began to slack as if something on the other end of it was flying towards him.
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"Well that's convenient", Tatterhood commented whilst standing on a branch.
While Tatterhood was heading back to where RJ, Senior Hippie and Donnie were fighting, she noticed some strange movement out of the corner of her eye.
Stopping her forward momentum, she saw that the chain the war veteran was swinging around was rapidly moving through the trees and towards the direction she was. Looking a bit behind her, she saw that the iron tanuki daruma that the soldier used to block her attack was being dragged along with it.
"Well then", Tatterhood said as she stretched herself, "Time to take the expressway".
With that said, she fell backwards off the branch.