Game 3: The Lesson II
789 Words
The battlefield is a flat surface with a few natural obstacles like rocks and trees distributed around the map, with a large horizontal divide along the middle which separates the teams' territories, only connected by 3 bridges that close the gap, one in the middle where the first flag spawns, and two others that are bigger than the one in the middle, placed at the two opposite ends of the divide.
One of the side bridges is near the falls where water comes from, and the other near the out-of-bounds lake area where the water streams to.
The large horizontal space in the middle is a flowing river, along which are two ladders to climb back up from between the bridges, and four entrances that lead to a network of an underground tunnel that leads to both of the teams' spawns.
Naika had just spawned in and notice in the distance that Rico is already rushing directly towards the flag, his eyes on the prize.
They both halt to a complete stop just a step away from the bricks that compose the bridge, studying one another's characters and sizing their possible capabilities.
Rico wields two small axes, and as he erupted a rock-shaped talon from where he stands, suspended mid-air and aimed at her, she figures he harbors the earth aspect.
The obnoxious spike slowly flies towards and past her as she effortlessly dodges aside, she wonders what that was even for.
She dare not risk revealing one of her abilities and element just to show off like that.
She then realizes after dodging that Rico immediately attempts a capture taking advantage of the time she wasted focusing on dodging the spike.
She steps into the radius of the flag on the bridge to stop him and steels swiftly exchange in their combat.
Blow by blow they attack and guard as the situation required them to as if they're following a choreography.
After they're convinced that they are quite even at exchanging blows, they stood back, just a little outside the capturing range on either side of the bridge, eyeing each other for sudden movement while recovering stamina.
"Your combat needs a little more work on the guarding part. You're open chin-down. Again", says Rico, as if he's reminding her that this was just a lesson to her and he's not taking this seriously.
Naika, however, takes this advice albeit having deflected all his attacks the previous skirmish perfectly.
A moment had passed and another clash of weapons had begun again and Naika sneaks in the action to cast windslash.
Rico, all too familiar with this movement pattern, catches the form and instantly uses his own ability that cancels ability casting for 1 sec, rendering Naika's ability on cooldown while canceling the ability altogether.
She then attempts the traditional method of a frontal attack and Rico dashes away from the bridge.
"You'll need to put more flash, you know?" Rico comments.
Naika, although annoyed by these comments, was willing to show him what he had wished for.
She dashes into cloaking, her ability that makes her invisible.
"My my, aren't you lucky to be given invisibility", Rico says, hiding behind an old beat-up wall of stone bricks and casting his own invisibility-like ability, creating a sandstorm that conceals him.
"Just try to come here, this blinds me too, but earth-type attacks are stronger in a sandstorm" Rico warns.
It could be a bluff to stop her offense, but she would not dare to risk it.
He laughs as if he had achieved some goal, but Naika knows she's won this trade by staying away.
She used up all her remaining stamina to speed up back to the middle bridge, as she knows that before Uber Helion could even touch her, she would have recuperated all of it and he would have lost most of his, which would most likely put him at a disadvantage in the next confrontation.
As she was put in an exhausted state while capturing the flag, her invisibility fades. The capture bar almost fills up at the same time another rock talon blitzes towards her direction.
One can only move sluggishly during the exhausted state, and this wasn't enough for her character's hitbox to move out of the way of the empowered rock spike.
[Hitbox - is an invisible box-like area around the characters that when penetrated, counts as a "hit", registering damage input, thus, hitbox]
A chunk of her aura flies along with the giant talon as it hits. She is blown sideways and off the bridge, nullifies her capture progress, and makes a heck lot of distance between her and the flag, which would also mean that Rico would get his turn to capture, and she probably won't be there to stop him in time.
"Well played," she thought out loud.
"Don't flatter yourself, this is a lesson, not a game" Rico responds.
- Writer
