Since I already had it ready and all, but I like it too much to wait on trying to write something else. ^_^
I'm not going to go all-out and give you a blow-by-blow of the fight - I don't have the energy and you don't have the interest - but even with half of what Miyu was doing lost to the camera's framerate it was interesting.
Miyu was faster and stronger, and certainly had the deadlier weapon, but having it fixed to the plane of her arm cost her a good deal of a sword's normal flexibility and emphasized the fact that any esoteric properties it may or may not have had did not allow it to simply cut through the tough plastic of a modern policeman's side-handle baton. Akane, I think, was actually more skilled, and had chosen her weapons quite well from a defensive standpoint, but seemed to be having a hard time generating enough force to do more than inconvenience someone so much tougher, physically speaking, than a normal human.
Overall, it seemed for a while that Akane was going to lose despite having done everything right. It was taking everything she had to stay ahead of the android, and even if she somehow, miraculously, managed to avoid a mistake she couldn't afford, she would still have tired, slowed, weakened long before she managed to cause some serious damage. The thing was, though, that she must have known all that would be the case going in, because this was just the first step. The judgement she and Miyu had gained of each other through their fight called for Akane to take a narrow loss, but it was predicated on the human girl's use of mundane, conventional weapons rather than her Elements... or Child.
Obviously she had chosen to use neither in light of the possibility of that sword being just as capable against an Element as a Child and the fact that preserving Harry's, and thence Kazuya's, life was the entire point of her actions, but in retrospect it was obvious that she really had nothing to lose by deploying them, since being defeated one way was much the same as another.
Twenty/twenty hindsight, and all that - I was completely shocked when a massive orange bulk dropped into the frame from above and lashed out with a paw that caught Miyu across the side of the head and knocked her tumbling across the room. When the replicant came back to her feet I could see that much of the skin - flesh - over the right side of her face had been torn away entirely, and inch-deep gouges actually driven into the metal and composites of her 'skull.' One of those deeper wounds crossed her eye socket, and the... organ? Sensor? within had been completely destroyed, and electrical shorts could be seen sparking in the shadows where it had been. It looked, frankly, really creepy, especially given how well the fluid oozing slowly from the edges of her torn outer shell mimicked human blood.
"So," Miyu said, for all the world as though she hadn't been injured at all, and attacked. Most of what happened next was lost to the camera, but from the situation when things slowed back down, what went down was this:
Miyu broke out into a running lunge that turned into a broad sweep when Akane ducked under and to one side of it, discarding her weapons as she did so and ending up in a crouch under the blade's arc for a split second before exploding straight up as her Element's materialized. For a long time I had no idea just how what happened after that had worked, but the way Akane explained it after everything was over was that she had focused a tight, powerful air current against the outer end of her Element's rotating outer bars, increasing their speed beyond that achievable by a conventional tonfa's whipping swing. When the tip was moving at the same speed as the fastest wind she could generate - which took only a split second and a small fraction of the total five hundred and forty degree arc - she had moved the focus down towards the bar's axle, turning it from a second class lever to a third and increasing the maximum speed of the bar's outer end. The spiraling contrail this process left behind confused the hell out of me, but the rest of the result was clear enough from deafening crack the bar's tip made as it broke the sound barrier and the way Miyu's elbow seemed to practically explode when the strike landed.
The silence that followed was broken only by the soft thunk the blade made as it fell, spinning to the floor and stuck in the polished hardwood tip first.
Miyu narrowed her remaining eye, then seemed to relax back into a neutral stance. "Is... is she next?"
Akane shook her head as Harry fastened his jaws onto the android's shoulder, then stepped forward and to one side - out of the reach of his intake. "Not if she gives me a choice."
"...thank you."
A moment later, with a howl of rushing air and a high-pitched buzzsaw snarl, it was over.
I'd say it's not bad enough to be problematical - I couldn't pick up on any problems until I took a third pass actually looking for them.
Ja, -n
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."
I'm not going to go all-out and give you a blow-by-blow of the fight - I don't have the energy and you don't have the interest - but even with half of what Miyu was doing lost to the camera's framerate it was interesting.
Miyu was faster and stronger, and certainly had the deadlier weapon, but having it fixed to the plane of her arm cost her a good deal of a sword's normal flexibility and emphasized the fact that any esoteric properties it may or may not have had did not allow it to simply cut through the tough plastic of a modern policeman's side-handle baton. Akane, I think, was actually more skilled, and had chosen her weapons quite well from a defensive standpoint, but seemed to be having a hard time generating enough force to do more than inconvenience someone so much tougher, physically speaking, than a normal human.
Overall, it seemed for a while that Akane was going to lose despite having done everything right. It was taking everything she had to stay ahead of the android, and even if she somehow, miraculously, managed to avoid a mistake she couldn't afford, she would still have tired, slowed, weakened long before she managed to cause some serious damage. The thing was, though, that she must have known all that would be the case going in, because this was just the first step. The judgement she and Miyu had gained of each other through their fight called for Akane to take a narrow loss, but it was predicated on the human girl's use of mundane, conventional weapons rather than her Elements... or Child.
Obviously she had chosen to use neither in light of the possibility of that sword being just as capable against an Element as a Child and the fact that preserving Harry's, and thence Kazuya's, life was the entire point of her actions, but in retrospect it was obvious that she really had nothing to lose by deploying them, since being defeated one way was much the same as another.
Twenty/twenty hindsight, and all that - I was completely shocked when a massive orange bulk dropped into the frame from above and lashed out with a paw that caught Miyu across the side of the head and knocked her tumbling across the room. When the replicant came back to her feet I could see that much of the skin - flesh - over the right side of her face had been torn away entirely, and inch-deep gouges actually driven into the metal and composites of her 'skull.' One of those deeper wounds crossed her eye socket, and the... organ? Sensor? within had been completely destroyed, and electrical shorts could be seen sparking in the shadows where it had been. It looked, frankly, really creepy, especially given how well the fluid oozing slowly from the edges of her torn outer shell mimicked human blood.
"So," Miyu said, for all the world as though she hadn't been injured at all, and attacked. Most of what happened next was lost to the camera, but from the situation when things slowed back down, what went down was this:
Miyu broke out into a running lunge that turned into a broad sweep when Akane ducked under and to one side of it, discarding her weapons as she did so and ending up in a crouch under the blade's arc for a split second before exploding straight up as her Element's materialized. For a long time I had no idea just how what happened after that had worked, but the way Akane explained it after everything was over was that she had focused a tight, powerful air current against the outer end of her Element's rotating outer bars, increasing their speed beyond that achievable by a conventional tonfa's whipping swing. When the tip was moving at the same speed as the fastest wind she could generate - which took only a split second and a small fraction of the total five hundred and forty degree arc - she had moved the focus down towards the bar's axle, turning it from a second class lever to a third and increasing the maximum speed of the bar's outer end. The spiraling contrail this process left behind confused the hell out of me, but the rest of the result was clear enough from deafening crack the bar's tip made as it broke the sound barrier and the way Miyu's elbow seemed to practically explode when the strike landed.
The silence that followed was broken only by the soft thunk the blade made as it fell, spinning to the floor and stuck in the polished hardwood tip first.
Miyu narrowed her remaining eye, then seemed to relax back into a neutral stance. "Is... is she next?"
Akane shook her head as Harry fastened his jaws onto the android's shoulder, then stepped forward and to one side - out of the reach of his intake. "Not if she gives me a choice."
"...thank you."
A moment later, with a howl of rushing air and a high-pitched buzzsaw snarl, it was over.
I'd say it's not bad enough to be problematical - I couldn't pick up on any problems until I took a third pass actually looking for them.
Ja, -n
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."