[center][h3][color=C0392B]Rudolf Sagramore[/color][/h3][/center]

[@VitaVitaAR][@vietmyke]

[color=c0392b]"Friends of yours, Fey?"[/color] 

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTcPaBt_pFA]Blades crashed,[/url] painting the heavy shadows of the narrow alleyway in brief showers of orange as the trio of Kirins (nobody reasonably expecting Goug to fight) squared off with twice their number in soon-to-be unlucky highwaymen. Negotiations had quickly fallen through after it became clear that nobody intended to part with their gil so easily— Rudolf had barely the time to raise a smirk and an eyebrow at the thought of robbing people so heavily armed as they were before he was set upon by a pair of masked ne'er-do-wells. 

Silver lining was that they'd prove a fair first outing for his new recruits.

The seconds that followed were a cacophony of steel striking steel, as the heavy, curved Crane's Wings at his hip were set to work on their first sortie, turning aside the straighter, thrusting attacks made by his sudden opponents. His eyes narrowed, taking their measure while he had these opening moments of uncertainty. They darted to and fro between the figures, his companions, the narrow space and sturdy walls they'd walked themselves into. Something itched at the back of his mind, feeling like familiarity.

From the jump, it seemed like they at least had a rudimentary idea of how to maximize their advantages within the space— cramped as this back alley was, he couldn't completely open the Wings up the way they demanded. His new recruits were well-suited to casting oneself almost into a dervish, swinging the body through powerful arcs as one blade played off the momentum of the other, each strike lending some of its torque to the next— fine as a lone fighter, but when minding his comrades in such tight environs, he'd suddenly found himself kind of wishing he had brought along Valon's spear instead—

That, at least, would allow him to more than contend with his opponents, who had far less concern for the likelihood of accidentally striking an ally. Theirs were the classical form of cut-and-thrust, in keeping with the highwayman look, all in-and-out movement punctuated by needling tempo. He was penned in by the space, and forced to make his reads on the defensive— they would already be out of the way by the time one of his cuts would pass through where they'd been. Trapped at the edge of their range and with no way in, he most out of the three present would be suspect to a death by a thousand cuts once they wore him down.  In basic terms, this was what he intuited to be their gambit.

What they had failed to account for was to be a fatal gap in the theory. One they had no reason to know of, in fairness, but was simultaneously a load-bearing element of the whole idea that had been swiped from beneath them, one that made him probably the [i]worst[/i] to encounter, rather than best. He'd figured out what it [i]was[/i] about the feeling of each exhange that had been bugging him.

He watched the nearby man step in deep. The rhythm, the form, the openings...

He had [i]seen[/i] this before. 

A few times with his eyes from afar, but more importantly, once over the span of a moonlit bout behind his swords. The other half of that ill-fated eve was barely two steps to his right. The space was very different, true, he didn't have a whole courtyard to open up and apply pressure through—

As the masked mystrel man tried to retract his spada, he found it off-course and caught between the Crane Wings as they crossed over its length, catching his edge on the "featherlike" quillons on the spines. Behind the thin strip of black cloth, his eyes would go wide for the moment the pressure was relieved after a slight tug forward.

[color=c0392b]"Either way, if they're holding us up I'm playing rough."[/color] a cold voice intoned from directly in front, as a blur swelled through the gloom. Still trying to catch himself, the next instant saw the world explode into a field of white [i]pain[/i] as Rudolf's pommel smashed into the bridge of his nose. Blinded, he reared back only to find a boot planting itself into his stomach, sending him crashing into another.

—but with that revelation in hand, these guys were now an open book. Forget responding in time— by the end of sparring the better version, he was confident he knew how to break rhythm and regain initiative at a moment's notice. He could attack stance, wedge his cuts in between theirs, or leverage physicality in tight, just as he had here.

The time to sit and watch on the back foot was over. Now that he knew what he was dealing with, it was time to smash through their game the way he had the best of this archetype. Having bought himself a moment's space, the [i]Sagramori Auxilia[/i] decided it was his turn to use the terrain to his advantage.

As though channeling the spirit of the mighty sabertooth whose fang he had pried out four years ago, the young man surged forward and [i]pounced[/i], using the nearby wall as a springboard to launch himself clear over the heads of the highwaymen—

[color=c0392b]"Heads up, nimrod."[/color]

—Only to descend upon their rearmost like a falling buzzsaw, twisting at the hips and trunk into a whirling set of hews as his boot planted upon the wall opposite and launched Wings and Warrior both towards the earth. Now behind their lines, suddenly it was the three Kirins bunching up and entrapping the would-be robbers.

He had no intention of letting up his assault.