[Finished] On the Way to the City

["Casimiro"]

Ah. a fight. It was one of the only two possible outcomes of their stand-off. The other was she just gave in to his demands and let him have her. Now, to Casimiro, she still only had two possible outcomes after she threw the first blow. She could A.)Run away and leave Casimiro in the dust or. 2.)Lose and just have a much angrier and hornier Casimiro to deal with. He was going to have fun figuring out which one she would choose.

Getting his weapon hands knocked, whipped, and stricken was something Casi was familiar with and used to. Benders especially liked trying to liberate him of his precious knives. A simple solution was found to this problem: a strong grip and a simple loop of leather that went around his wrist and connected his knife to him.

His hand got hit by the water whip, but the weapon remained steadfast in his hand. The follow-up attack was dodged by a quick duck, and countered by Casimiro extending his leg and trying to hook his foot behind the girl's leg and pulling towards him.

[Kiyei Zhayuk]

Kiyei was a talented waterbender, and one didn’t learn three styles of waterbending without picking up things about basic martial arts. In fact, she was a fair hand to hand combatant, and she wasn’t above choosing a good old fashioned punch up over a bending battle if she felt like it.
But right now she didn’t feel like it. It was late, she’d been travelling all day and she really wished this guy would just drop whatever issue he had and leave her alone. She just wanted to get into the city, and she didn’t expect to have to fight her way there.

Looping one’s foot around the opponent’s leg and trying to have their legs out from under them was a pretty efficient and therefore quite common move. Since her body was free to move around as she pleased, she shifted her weight onto her other leg and spun out of it, using the movement of the twirl to rejoin her two streams of water and direct the resulting ice shard at him from behind.
And right at that second the half-tonne Polar Leopard decided that he’d had enough of this man harassing his human and decided to run at the man, an array of claws and sharp fangs directed at Casimiro’s face and chest.

["Casimiro"]

Coming back around from his leg sweep, Casimiro spotted the girl's counterattack from out of the corner of his eye. It was another water knife-spike-thing, but this time larger and directed at his center mass. Crouched down low to the ground, there were only a few options left for Casi. He took the option where he dodge rolled away from the girl, putting more distance between them. Landing on his feet, his heel bumped into the still unconscious man while the snow lion made a leap at him.

Casimiro was a talented fighter, in a sense. He had no formal training of any kind, no master nor teacher, and certainly no particular style to work with. In a sense that made him unpredictable to a certain degree. Combined with his incredibly unstable nature, Casimiro was capable of things almost no one would think of.

Like doing a quick hop over the man's body, grabbing the back of his shirt, and lifting him up into a human meat shield from the snow puma. He took the extra step and put the man's arm into position to catch the cat's bite. Casimiro kept one hand on the man's back to hold him up as his shield.

In the moment that callous move bought him, he brought his knife hand up and tabbed right down for the cat's eye, smiling all the way.

[Kiyei Zhayuk]

Kiyei knew that although Xiao was a wild animal by nature, he was no killer. The giant cat knew that harming humans would lead to legal action and his own execution as a dangerous beast. The aggressive display towards Casimiro was one of threat and intimidation, the leopard had intended only to make him back off and distract his attention from Kiyei. The leopard had, in that sense, succeeded, making the man retreat and try to defend instead against the animal. So, when Casimiro used the unconscious man as a meat shield Xiao stopped in his tracks without attacking, content to just display his impressive set of fangs.

Threaten one, and for the other it got personal.

Kiyei saw his blade wink in the moonlight, and she saw his move flashing through her mind’s eye. He would aim to sink that into Xiao’s face, and whilst Kiyei’s healing skills were great, she was no god. Xiao, seeing the blade, leapt back, snarling. With the water from her ice shard returning into her hands, Kiyei flicked her wrists in opposite directions. Once again the water split into two, a water whip aimed for his wrist so that she could pull the blade in her direction and away from the Polar Leopard, the other going to his foot where she hoped to freeze him in place.

["Casimiro"]

The snow tiger was apparently smart enough to make tactical combat decisions independent of its owner, and distracted Casimiro enough for the actual fighter to try and get some more hits on him. Whatever, a small miscalculation on his part and something he could adjust to easily enough. All the ice cat got was a grinning maw in response to its own bared fangs.

His wrist got caught in one the girl's dumbass water whips, and was pulled toward her, but he resisted and pulled back against her. That, along with holding the man's body as his meat shield, left his foot open to be frozen over by, frankly, a piddly amount of water. His one foot was, more or less, immobilized and Casimiro dropped the body at his feet as he tugged harder against her, still smiling like nothing was happening.

"Nice job, bitch! Whatchya gonna do now? Bite me yourself? Hell, I'd like that."

His free hand hung lazily at his side as he continued to play water whip tug-of-war with the water bender, holding his own using his own raw strength. Looking over at the polar puma, Casi just nodded like he was saying "hey" to a friend.

[Kiyei Zhayuk]

She managed to get his knife hand away from Xiao’s face and freeze his foot down to the ground. As Xiao backed off from the knife and the grip that was now struggling against her waterbending, Kiyei held out a hand towards the Polar Leopard, inviting the giant cat forth. Xiao pressed his nose into her palm, and Kiyei stroked his broad nose and furry face fondly. She stepped back, but did not unfreeze the man’s foot.

She ignored his insults, seeing through them as attempts to provoke her into fighting. But she was not a fighter by nature. She would not fight unless she had to, and tonight the man had forced her and the Polar Leopard into defence. Climbing into the saddle of the Polar Leopard, Kiyei released the water whip and drew the water gracefully back into her pouch, replacing the cork as she stared at him in disdain. When he could no longer fight back he had once again resorted to foul language.

"No," she said simply, turning Xiao away from him. "I’m just going to leave you here. Have a nice night." And with a nod of her head and a wave of her hand she began to ride away.

["Casimiro"]

"So that's it, baby? Just gonna walk away?"

Being frozen by the foot and having one of his arms bound by a water whip did nothing to detract from Casi's apparent enjoyment of the whole experience. His smile was as broad and toothy as ever, if not more so, and his golden eyes did not stray an inch from the girl. Meanwhile, his foot was already starting to crack the measly amount of water that had been used to freeze it, and he was still trying his damnedest to yank the girl with her own whip.

When she let go, his arm flopped down to his side, like the other arm, knife still in hand. He stood there, quietly staring, as the girl turned on her snow tiger and started to trot off. She got about forty feet away before a glimmer of silent steel was streaking toward her back.

Casimiro was adept at throwing knives, more so than he was with just fighting with them. His aim was true, his throw was quiet, and his stare was even crazier now as he watched his handiwork, and gently worked his foot free.

[Kiyei Zhayuk]

Yes. That was it. She was walking away. She had no reason to fight him, nothing to gain by winning, and only time to lose by engaging him in the first place.

It was Xiao, and not Kiyei, who heard him throw the knife. The sound of his clothing moving, the swift flick of his hand, and the sharp projectile moving through the air was not picked up by her human ears, or if she had her mind would not have been able to process it in time. But the Polar Leopard leapt aside on animal instinct, lurching Kiyei sideways in her saddle and threatening to throw her off. But Kiyei held on. She saw the blade fly off into the darkness of the night, and she turned back to face Casimiro, steadying and calming the leopard with a soothing hand to his neck.

"Is that how you would fight an opponent? By attacking once their back was turned? You have no honour, coward." She did not intend for her words to affect him. She didn’t expect him to listen to her at all. But in her eyes he was scum. Kiyei had a questionable morality, she believed that killing was sometimes good, but she also believed in the sanctity of human life and allowing one’s opponent the opportunity to defend oneself was a noble thing. He was clearly no such man.

She stilled Xiao, her eyes flicking down to his foot as she saw him try to work it free of the ice. The ice would break soon if he kept exerting that kind of pressure on it, but Xiao could run faster than that.
"Run boy," she murmured to the Polar Leopard. "Let’s leave him." And once again she turned the giant cat towards the city and set off as fast as the leopard could carry her. Only this time she kept a wary eye on her back until he could no longer harm her.

["Casimiro"]

Honor. How many times had Casimiro heard that word, or the argument that he was somehow "dishonorable"? How many times had some idiot chastised him for fighting dirty or coming from behind? How many times had he actually cared?

Only the last question was answerable. Zero times.

Casimiro was hardly a warrior. Especially not one with honor or some other chivalrous code. He was a fighter, a beast, and an animal. He fought however he could to win or survive. A fight had no rules and no codes. It was win or lose at any cost and using any methods at one's disposal. Fighting any other way was a guarantee for loss and naive in most respects. Armies and generals did not go to war expecting that the enemy would fight fair, and neither should the people who fight Casimiro. If it earned him the title of "Coward", so be it. It would only earn his opponents the title of "Deceased".

"Oh yeah? Well, you'd be dead if it weren't for your polar leopard. You'd be dead! You're nothin' without that animal! You should suck it off as a reward for savin' your hide!"

With that last remark, Casimiro ripped his foot free from its ice restraint. By that time, the girl and the animal were long gone far down the path. He did not bother chasing after them, and he also did not bother pulling out his second knife. Looking down at the ground, he saw that the man was starting to show signs of life. Finally. That was his cue to start down the path as well, towards the city. Casimiro laughed when he noticed that he and the girl were heading towards the same destination, as he passed his knife and picked it up. They would probably meet again.

He would relish that moment.