Ryik

Yu-Gi-Oh GX RP

1A it is.

I've been putting together NPC decks. After I finish a few more for significant characters, I'll start typing up the main thread.

In the meantime, here's a character sheet for y'all to fill out:

CS

(Faceclaim, if you've got one)

Theme

An optional section for a character theme song. As in, background music that would play while dueling your character, e.g.

It's mostly just for fun, though it can indirectly describe the vibe your character gives off during a duel as well.

Name:

Gender: ♂/♀/?

Appearance: A description is optional if you've got an image.

Dorm: Slifer Red, Ra Yellow or Obelisk Blue. This is also meant to (somewhat) describe how competent your character is at dueling. (as well as test-taking) If there's a story behind their placement, you can put it in their History.

Personality: No need to get into specifics, just the overall demeanor/vibe your character gives off.

History: A brief overview of how/why your character is going to a Duel Academy. What inspired them to pursue a career in dueling? Stuff like that.

Spirituality: How talented your character is at communing with duel spirits, at least at first. Can they see or hear them at all? How long have they been able to do this? Don't worry about your character getting left out; zero spirituality is the norm.

Spirit Partner: A cute mascot within your character's deck. Your character need not know anything about duel spirits to have a Spirit Partner, and they need not have a Spirit Partner at all.

Ace Card: What is the biggest baddest card in your character's deck of choice? It need not actually be the strongest card, nor the one with the most attack points. Jaden's Flame Wingman, Kaiba's Blue Eyes, or Yugi's Dark Magician are some canon examples.

Waifu/Husbando: Optional; based on the running joke of the GX characters having "card crushes".

Deck(s): Pick a name for your character's deck(s). If you're having trouble building a deck, you can use a deckbuilder and its card database like this one.

Decklist

Include Asterisks by custom cards. I will (attempt to) balance your deck and custom cards afterward. If you want to save some time, I recommend hitting me up about them on Discord. Please avoid non-thematic splashable staples in favor of more thematic options.

Monsters (19)
3x Mokey Mokey

3x Mokey Mokey Adrift


(Simply posting a bunch of card images makes it way easier to get a grasp of your deck without having to click a bunch of links to know what each card does. This is optional - I don't expect everyone to go through so much trouble, all that is required is a functional text decklist. If you've made your deck on a deckbuilding website, (such as the one in the link above) they usually have an option to export it in text format to your clipboard, then you can just paste it here. Custom card makers are also optional, but are nice, if you've got the time.

3x Mokey Mokey Mokey*
3x Mokey Mokey Girl*
3x Yekom Yekom*
3x Mokey Mokey Wearing a Funny Sombrero*
1x Lonely Mokey Mokey*

Spells (18)
3x Mokey Mokey Smackdown
3x Dark Factory of Mass Production
3x Polymerization
3x Mokey Mokey Sombrero*
3x Mokey Mokey Mokey Mokey Mokey...*
3x He's So Alone x1*

Traps (5)
3x Mokey Mokey Corruption*
2x Orerboms Ynnuf S'yekom Yekom*

Extra Deck (3)
3x Mokey Mokey King

Custom Cards:
(For full descriptions of custom cards, if you didn't use a custom card maker. I also ask you put a text version here even if you made a custom card in case someone can't load the image for whatever reason. Normal Monster flavor text is optional)

Mokey Mokey Mokey - ⍟⍟⍟, Light, Fairy/Effect, ATK/ 900, DEF/ 900
If this card is sent from the field to the GY: You can Special Summon up to 3 "Mokey Mokey" from your hand, deck, or GY.

Mokey Mokey Girl - ⍟, Light, Fairy/Normal, ATK/ 300, DEF/ 300
Wait, isn't this just Mokey Mokey? How can you tell the difference?

Mokey Mokey Sombrero - Equip Spell
You can only equip this card to "Mokey Mokey". Increase the ATK of the equipped monster by 1000 points. When this card is sent to the graveyard, add it to your opponent's hand; During the End Phase of your opponent's next turn after this card was sent to the graveyard, if your opponent did not play "Mokey Mokey Sombrero", they lose 3000 life points for each face-up "Mokey Mokey" on your side of the field.

etc.

Also, here's the discord: discord.gg/UXymXyjMQy

Yu-Gi-Oh GX RP

@Darkmoon Angel Any preference on how duels would be run?

Yu-Gi-Oh GX RP

Checking how many people would be interested in a Yu-Gi-Oh RP taking place in the GX duel academy. For the most part, the characters and possibly episodic plot would be different from the original.

I've been in several Yu-Gi-Oh RPs before, but I've never really been satisfied with the way they were set up. So, I also want some feedback on how to run it. There's two aspects that really irk me and that's the "gameplay" of a duel and the deckbuilding associated with it. Some of the most fun parts of Yu-Gi-Oh RPs is taking innocuous, trashy cards like Shapesnatch and building a deck or even archetype around it with custom (or anime/manga/video game-only) cards, but that also means that a realistic simulator isn't really a viable way to resolve pvp. In place of that, most RPs just allow every single character to get every single card they need for a perfect combo like they've all been collectively blessed by the heart of the cards, leading to decks that don't really make any sense in the context of statistical probability and serve more as toolboxes stuffed with as many goodies as possible to whip out later. (In some ways, this mirrors the anime, such as how Jaden has used well over 100 cards despite never explicitly having more than one deck or taking any cards out)

As such I'm asking which among these would be preferred:

1A. Duels are simulated over discord and decks are realistic, where I PM people cards they've drawn, determined by a random number generator, and so on. People would describe their turns action by action in a discord channel and their opponent would react in real time to negate or not. This ideally ensures a feeling of fairness, because it's close to the actual game.

1B. Duels are simulated, and I implement tabletop elements (as in an entire skill tree) to simulate forum RP dueling quirks, such as players gradually unlocking the ability to pull some bullshit call upon the heart of the cards, become a psychic, or perhaps they're just Kaiba-rich and use rare misprinted cards (which would be legal in-universe) that are better than their originals. The intention is a sense of progression as a duelist for your character and the ability to go beyond the card game, although this would inevitably involve a form of "grinding". (Albeit not for wins; just any duel)

1C. Duels are simulated, and I implement tabletop elements (as in a perk system) to simulate anime dueling asspulls. Why does Jaden always have a fusion card ready? Why does Pegasus always have Toon World down on turn 1? How does Joey keep managing to draw Baby Dragon and Time Wizard together? Just say "it's a perk" and you can cover a huge hole in otherwise fundamentally flawed decks. This allows for more rule of cool in deckbuilding, and by changing perks between duels you can change the entire focus of a deck without changing its makeup. I'd probably leave such a system more open-ended to allow people to create their own perks, if none I come up with fit their needs.

2A. Duels are chiefly narrative-driven. Standard RP fare. It will mainly differ in that people will be encouraged to avoid realistic decks, and we might ignore quantity of cards in decks altogether in favor of stuffing them with more things to pull on narratively. Duels are more performative than suspenseful, and it is highly recommended that people decide who will win and lose beforehand OOC. Mentally announcing your plan in character is ideal, since it stops the need to retcon posts constantly. Your opponent always playing around your plan would not be ideal, and there's not really a good solution to this other than deciding the outcome in advance. Slifer/Ra/Obelisk placement might end up mattering for settling disputes, and if not, then coin flips may have to be relied upon.

2B. Duels are narrative-driven competitively. Each player presents a strategy they intend their character to implement and I pick out the one that sounds cooler as the winner of the duel. It is then written out performatively.

No matter which is desired, I have no plans on limiting overarching deckbuilding options, and a deck of nothing but custom cards is on the table. (Albeit highly discouraged for the sake of convenience) However, I do intend to scale the metagame down to better fit GX-era power levels. This is more or less impossible without banning most modern archetypes, so I'll be balancing based around specific decks rather than the specific cards within them. In other words, if you intend on rocking a modern archetype, expect it to be gutted, such as having a significant combo piece removed, depending on what most appropriately weakens it while preserving its playstyle. Hand Traps? Turn 1 full boards? Multiple turn 1 omni-negates? I'd rather not. It's going to be an inexact science so I highly encourage picking deck ideas based on flavor or even nostalgia and aesthetics, and trying to make it good from there, rather than starting at a powerful archetype and having to work backward. This RP is in part inspired by the idea I came across of Revived of Serpent Night Dragon being a quick-play spell card that can tribute any monster (including enemy monsters) to summon Serpent Night Dragon from pretty much anywhere. There's also Nightmare Sonic Blast. Serpent Night Dragon is an awful card with nice art and I like the idea of creating (or in this case, dredging up) support for old cards like it.

Rift Warriors X: An Isekai RP

Ren

Ren had a dumb smile on his face as the Rift Warriors X logo took over his screen. He watched the much-anticipated announcement live. The game was practically his life nowadays. He knew it might not last, as his parents both constantly reminded him, urging him to find a real job, but it made for a good, stable form of procrastination. He was just dipping his toes into monetizing his clout, so that he'd have more than just prize money to work with, and the results had been good so far. He didn't feel he was ready for streaming, but he figured he'd record his reaction to the announcement, and possibly start putting more on his YouTube channel than a single video playing auditory shitposts on Queen Morag's War Horn.

As Ryuichi Masada's verbal announcement of the game progressed, his smile gradually waned. It eventually came to an unceremonious end, with the crowd in an uproar. He rewinded the stream and rewatched it. He changed the language to Japanese to hear the original wording of the announcement. Rift warriors X would be the final entry. Only five players would get a copy. There was no doubt. He googled it, looking for miscommunications, or perhaps the publishers would overrule Ryuichi Masada, because it made no business sense. Would there be a Rift Warriors 9.5 with crossplay? Are there interviews with the other developers commenting on the situation? Who approved this shit? No matter where he looked, it all pointed to Mr. Masada meaning exactly what he said on the E3 stage, and nothing more. People were outraged. The uproar online was enormous. He joined in too, while his passion was ignited, but after spending hours writing up a fucking essay on how stupid the situation was, to go alongside the hundreds of other essays about it online, he shut his computer down and just stared at the black screen. The red light on his camera finally reminded him he had been recording, though he already knew there was no way the footage would see the light of day. He got up and crossed his room, just lying on his bed, willing his conscious thoughts away. It was still bright out but he wanted nothing more to do with the current day.

A fighting game is nothing without people to actually play it with. It was a competitive fighting game too. The single player modes weren't of particular interest, and it was unreasonable to expect X to be any different. There would be no competitive scene. IX's popularity would inevitably die down and soon he would have to go back to facing the problems that ruled his life. He thought back to his old, shitty job as a clerk and decided that maybe he should just give up instead of dealing with that day in and day out for the rest of his life. It's not like getting fucked by student loans for a decade for the right to be called overqualified by employers seemed any better.

He didn't really intend to, but for the rest of the day, he just lied there. A cacophonic whirlwind of thoughts paralyzed him. His future felt like a black void. He didn't want it. He didn't want this. "Fucking why, Masada?"

Well, it's not like this was anything new. This was always the case. He just got carried away procrastinating, right? It's not Masada's fault that the problem didn't go anywhere.

He hammered his pillow futilely with a tightly clenched fist. It wasn't fair. He felt his eyes moisten and it just made him angrier. He's old enough to drink and he's still crying over a video game like some idiot child. "God. GOD. FUckInG GOD DAMMIT."

---

When Ren next woke up, it was a quarter 'til 5 AM, still dark out. He washed his face, inhaled a granola bar, took a glass of water with him, and went back to his room to play Rift Warriors IX.

He had never taken the online rankings all that seriously, and neither did anyone else by his reckoning. Most people cared more about tournament results. He was still near the top of the online rankings, but that just meant he was vulnerable to being pushed down.

For the following days, he played like he was possessed, and in some ways, he was. If he didn't get a copy of X, then what were all those years he spent on the game? Fuck all, that's what. Maybe he was doing it to spite Masada, or himself, or what the fuck ever, he didn't care anymore. He wanted, needed to get his hands on a copy, because otherwise, how else was he ever supposed to find closure on this? How else could he just drop Rift Warriors and pretend it didn't matter to him anymore? How was he supposed to just abandon the ray of hope, the one singular chance he's seen, to be able to do something he loved for most if not the rest of his life? How was he supposed to just deal with that?

What if he couldn't?

What if he wasn't able to?

"Maybe..."

He couldn't stop thinking about it. He didn't want to think about it. He put it out of his mind and focused on online games of Rift Warriors, over and over and over. When he achieved the #1 spot, he wasn't satisfied. Nobody took the online rankings seriously precisely because of their volatility. He kept going and going. A certain Sitra player was a persistent thorn in his side, but otherwise his win streaks went on absurdly long. He wasn't the type to stick with one username, and his current one was just three letters, but it didn't take long for people to figure out who "dis" was.

Eventually, the deadline came around and the final results mostly mirrored the worldwide results. He knew all of the top 5 from tournaments, sans the previously unknown fifth place Spartan player. He had managed to hold onto #1, and he sighed as the stress of keeping his high position within the shitty online ranking system lifted off his shoulders. All that was left was to wait.

---

Ironically, when he finally received Rift Warriors X in the mail, he hesitated to actually open it. With it, Rift Warriors was finally going to be over. Sure, maybe the fans will keep up the IX tournaments for another year, but the year after that? The year after that? All games die eventually, and he was standing in the twilight of his favorite series. He searched online, trying to find news of the other recipients of the game, but there was nothing. None of the others had deigned to so much as mention that it had arrived. Maybe they were too excited and just played it. He felt something similar, though he wouldn't call it outright excitement.

He took his camera. There was a letter warning against publicly sharing the game before beating the campaign, but nothing said he couldn't record it and upload it after the fact. Maybe each copy was different, or maybe he would be the first to reveal the game to the rest of the world. They deserved to know, he thought. He know he'd want to see it if he failed to reach the top 5.

When he finally booted up the game, there was a pretty intro cutscene. It was, honestly, amazing. It was a flood of nostalgia, of all the characters he had grown to adore over the years, in a long action sequence over some of the most dramatic music he's heard in his life. He couldn't help but mentally compare it to a passionate kiss from someone about to break up with him. Masada is such a jerk.

When it was over, it didn't take him to a title screen. It instead took him straight to a character select screen with only one option. It was a blank square that hovered to reveal the name of his ol' reliable, Aster Wilde. He played all the characters well, give or take a couple. He would switch between them constantly, but there were none quite as comfy, nor any he would consider himself quite as competent with as Aster. Maybe it was because of that that he was Ren's favorite character, or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, it was the only choice, and he was interested in seeing how Aster changed in this iteration.

And then the screen went completely white.

---

When he came to, he was lying on the ground in the Hall of The Messenger. There were guns in both of his hands, with two more in shoulder holsters that immediately struck him as excessive. Then he looked at the ostentatious overcoat he was wearing and the ridiculously plunging neckline of his shirt.

Welp. He's lost it, guys, pack it up.

He doesn't really believe what he's seeing as he reaches to touch his own bare, chiseled abs. His hands are covered with fingerless gloves, and there's a shiny red crystal wrapped around his neck multiple times. He knows it's rule of cool, but why the fuck are Aster's clothes like this?

Maybe he should be more concerned about how he ended up in this situation, but honestly, he's read enough isekai to come up with 100 different plausible answers. Fuck it, beats the real world. This is his just his life now somehow. Maybe it will show up in the real world under some comically long title like "I reincarnated as a half-demon exhibitionist with a gun fetish".

Well, then again, Aster is more comically greedy than he is obsessed with guns, despite carrying around 4 of them for no real reason. Literally, nothing in his moveset uses four guns at the same time. He isn't Bayonetta. Ren has no idea what the character designers were thinking.

"What am I thinking, exactly?" It's so funny he forgot to laugh. He's entered the world of Rift Warriors, in the hyper-capable body of his main, and yet he's still getting caught up on some stupid details nobody cares about. Maybe if he was paying attention, he would have noticed the group of other people, which he recognizes from silhouette alone as Sitra, Ravager, Morag and The Spartan, or the conspicuous mirror shard inexplicably lying around by his feet. Before joining the others, he takes a good look at himself, and all he can see is Aster Wilde. He wonders if he should bother acting the part. Given that it's specifically those four characters, he doubts he needs to blend in, and given that he knows three of them, it'll probably just seem like LARPing. Still, this was a crossroads. A fantastic outcome he wouldn't have dared to dream of. Maybe he should try reinventing himself?

Haha, yeah right. As if he'll ever change.

He walks over, hearing their conversation.

"...And the devil shall appear."

None of them have said 'speak of the devil', but it felt fitting given his new pointy ears.

Finally, Ren realizes that the rest of them don't look quite right. HR's hair, Red Queen's freckles, And Lioness' eyes. They stood out in stark contrast to the character outfits they were all wearing.

He arrived nonchalantly, but knit his eyebrows as it dawned on him that he was the only one who now looks completely like Aster.

...but why?

And then he remembered. HR isn't on fire. Lioness isn't a furry at the moment. Both are transformations given to them by the Messenger. Aster was just always a demon. Or, half-demon, rather.

Maybe this was a good opportunity to change who he was. Nobody could say with certainty that "dis" was Ren after all. Why would he want to hide it, though? Ending in the #1 spot is maybe the only thing he has to be proud of. Or, at least, the only thing he feels proud of. Maybe this whole world is just some sophisticated technology indistinguishable from magic, and the game will inevitably come to an end. Barriers between him and the only people he has to share in this game just sound like they'd detract from the experience.

What did he want to change, anyway? It'd be stupid to pretend he didn't see his current self as a problem after internal monologues like that, but it's not like he wanted to interact with people more outside of Rift Warriors. Being an introvert wasn't a problem and neither was a preference for never seeing another living being. This was a belief he held firmly, so why...?

He shelves the thought. Maybe he'll come up with the answer later.

"I'm Ren."

Kingdom Hearts: So You Wanna Be A Hero, Kid?

Verik

Verik eyed the green man as he approached him. "This is the same man who accepted the queen's offer without hesitation, I believe. As Kalak said, I don't think he's got a problem 'killing pathetic creature for money.' I bring this up because I can save him, but if I do, and the same thing happens to one of you, I won't be able to do it a second time. If I help him, he could become our enemy, and even if he doesn't, one of us may unknowingly be trading our lives for his. It's not as simple as self-sacrifice. Any lives we would have saved and any lives he will go on to take will be doomed by this choice, but the alternative is leaving him to die when we didn't need to. We don't have a lot of time before the decision is made for us, so let's go straight to a vote. Raise your hand if you think we should save him."

Verik looks the others in the eye, one by one. It was quite sudden, but they needed to make a choice. He was quite reluctant to spend his only use of Raise on an enemy, but if they could make him an ally, or at least a friend, it would be worth it. He couldn't just do nothing, because when he uses it later, they'd ask why he didn't use it now. That being said, the idea of reviving the green man and being blamed for his choice down the line was scary, so he put it to a vote. This way, no matter what they decide, no one will hate him. It's the perfect plan.

"I will abstain."

Rift Warriors X: An Isekai RP

Bump because we could use another player.

Failing that, NoCo could always make a character of his own or one (or all) of us could submit a second character.

Rift Warriors X: An Isekai RP

Ren

Original Appearance

Theme of Aster Wilde

Player Name: Ren Kline

Appearance: When transported into the world of Rift Warriors, in addition to gaining the powers and wardrobe of Aster, Ren's physiology changed as well to match Aster's, resulting in gaining many aspects of his appearance.

Nationalities: Japanese & U.S. American

Age: 21

Personality: Ren is the quiet type. He's antisocial and suffers from chronic clinical depression. He has a tendency to overanalyze, and is a meticulous perfectionist. He has a proclivity towards sesquipedalian diction, and gets disappointed when he is forced to dumb it down. He spends a lot of time online, watching shows, reading novels, and playing games as both a form of escapism and, depending on the type of content, an attempt to feel something. Competition is one of the few things that can consistently get his heart racing, as well as one of the few forms of social interactions he enjoys and actively seeks out. He likes playing with all kinds of players, and will often switch to characters he has less experience with as a handicap to level the playing field. Unfortunately, he's done this often enough to improvise good combos for every character and now plays all of them at a fairly competent level.

Backstory: Ren's mother is Japanese and his father is American. They married, lived in the U.S. for a while, had Ren, moved to Japan for a while, had a fight, with Ren and his father moving back to the U.S. for a while, made up, moved back to Japan for a while, and eventually split up for good, with Ren bouncing back and forth since. He's always been an only child, though over time he came to grow more distant from his parents as they each, at least in his perception, prioritized their own problems over him. Ren is bilingual and has gone to school in both America and Japan. He hasn't made many friends at either place, and the few friendships he has made generally don't survive him moving away every year. He can't decide where he wants to live, and can't figure out how to make enough money to move out in the first place. His parents both work their own jobs, both keep unsubtly hinting that they want him to live near them, and both keep making promises they can't fulfill. For the last couple of years, he's been unemployed, withdrawn, and hasn't spoken much with either of his parents.

Enter Rift Warriors. It's a long-running franchise, and he's played the games since he was a kid. However, it wasn't until recent years, especially in Rift Warriors VII through IX did he really get into the series on a competitive level. He won his local tournaments often enough that he gained the confidence to try participating in bigger tournaments, and he was certainly no stranger to travel. By Rift Warriors VIII, he was a well-recognized player, and he managed to win his first nationals towards the tail end of VIII's competitive popularity. When Rift Warriors IX came around, he shot up the rankings, and is now regarded by many as the best Rift Warriors player around.

Rift Warriors Character: Aster Wilde

Debut: Rift Warriors V, though he's been a part of the lore since Rift Warriors II, mentioned in passing as the half-brother of another character who's been in since the first Rift Warriors.

Playstyle: Contrary to appearances, Aster is a sticky rushdown character with a strong neutral game. Although most of his attacks utilize his guns, and he doesn't have any ammo system to hold him back, his bullets don't actually go full screen, fizzling out at about half screen unless he spends meter. Nonetheless, the bullets still cover a huge area, travel fast, can lead into combos or blockstrings, and are very hard to whiff punish since they have little startup and end lag. It doesn't really matter where you are on the screen, you need to be prepared for him to flash step in and shoot you. His movement is quite excellent, allowing him to convert bullet hits into combos, which generally require his shorter ranged melee attacks for good damage. Several of these melee attacks are just gun shots that don't actually fire any bullets, merely creating a small blast effect out of the muzzle. His backwards action dive, where he leaps backwards while shooting above him, is generally considered one of the best anti-airs in the game, since it has a huge disjoint and can lead into a full combo with some meter. His flash-jump lets him do the opposite, appearing in the air (turned around, perfect for crossing up opponents) and firing off a series of bullets whose kickback somehow keeps him airborne, allowing him to drift forward to follow up for a combo or backwards to avoid retaliation. Finally, he also has demon magic, which solely manifests in game in one of his supers to summon flaming chains around opponents that "drag them off to hell" (for apparently only a second before they fall from the sky somehow) and in his taunts to establish demon contracts, which are more fun little gimmicks than a viable tactic. Essentially, by pressing various button combinations during his taunt, he can offer his opponent a magic contract, tossing it at them. It's unblockable, but does no damage, and prompts them to accept or deny the contract. Besides punishing mashers, he can also spend more meter than its worth to force them to accept the contract. Once accepted, a gameplay restriction is placed on both players, such as "no jumping" or "no supers". Naturally, he has ways of cheating all of the contracts, such as flash-jumps not counting as jumps, or being able to spend meter outside of supers on things like long range bullets. All but the newest of players know to decline his contracts, but then again most Aster players don't even bother using them because of that.

In terms of weaknesses, his biggest one is that he doesn't have a lot of defensive options besides his backwards dive, which itself is punishable if predicted. He has no meterless reversal, and he's rather meter-hungry, having to choose between dumping it into combo damage, using it for zoning, or using it to cover for mistakes.

Aster's Backstory: Aster is a half-demon hitman and bounty hunter living in a near-future pseudo-apocalypse brought on by climate catastrophe coupled with the aftermath of world war 3. His demon father was summoned by an unknown (dead) group of humans, and went on to manipulate certain characters and NPCs into conflict. Only about 1/4th of the original human population remains in his time.

Aster makes a living hunting down persons of interest and the many war criminals that fell through the cracks. His primary, if not only goal, seems to be to make a lot of money. He's superhuman, possessing great strength, (how much is never shown) capable of moving faster than the eye can see, (flash step trope) and has inherited the ability to use "demon magic" from his father. (which is vaguely defined besides the use of demon contracts) He is canonically an edgy, over the top, devil-may-cry-esque badass.

Aster's Powers: Aster was given the ability to control minds, though it's been shown to be short of absolute control in the lore, working best when its target is unaware, and has little impact on gameplay, besides forcing people to accept demon contracts. In the tutorial of Rift Warriors VI, he teaches his half brother, who had lost his memory, how to play the game with it, and calls his own ability "usually useless" in a fight.

Pokémon Knights

Alan Cross & Lillian Valecourt

Deep breaths. A pair of wooden swords. It was just a practice battle with pretty much zero stakes, but it got Alan’s heart racing anyway. He must have a wire crossed somewhere, because it seems to happen every time. It wasn’t quite excitement, nor fear. It didn’t feel like much of anything, really, or perhaps it was more accurate to say it felt like too many things at once. It was an odd mixture of anxiety and drive, a fight or flight reaction but with flight dismissed out of hand. He knew what getting competitive was like; he’s no stranger to friendly competition, but fights and fights alone always felt different.

For her part, Lillian was placid and poised to rip out Alan’s throat. Perhaps not literally, given the weapons, but the vibe was the same. Why she chose him as a sparring partner, Alan couldn’t imagine, but he nonetheless reflected her calm intensity like a mirror.

Lillian struck first. She lunged towards Alan, swinging the wooden blade with speed that was hard to track. Alan did his best to defend, and managed to deflect her strike, only for Lillian to spin with the momentum and kick Alan in the chest. He slid back, but didn’t stumble, recovering quickly for a counterattack of his own. A thrust, a slash, a wide swing, a low sweep. Lillian continued to dodge any attack he threw at her. A sidestep, a backstep, a duck, and a crouching leap back at him. She grabbed his shoulders and vaulted over him, then lifted him by the shoulders and tossed him overhead. He caught himself before hitting the ground, tumbling into a crouch, but Lillian was quick to follow up.

Lillian feinted an overhead swing, pulling back to slither around the sword Alan raised to block in response. She went for a direct stab, only to catch sight of blood blooming out along her sword. The wooden blades weren’t sharp, but they weren’t just sticks either. It was reasonable to expect the tip to break skin, but the resulting bruise should be of more concern than any shallow puncture wound. Likewise, the edges probably wouldn’t cause any cuts, unless someone was dumb enough to try grabbing the blade thrust at them with a single bare hand. Like Alan.

Despite the surprise, Lillian did not abort half way. Her sword was stopped solely by Alan’s grip, holding it tightly despite his hand leaving a bloody skid mark on it. If Alan was feeling the pain, he didn’t show it outwardly, simply staring Lillian in the eye before using the leverage on her sword to tackle her, shoulder-first.

She stumbled back a bit. It was refreshing, having a sparring partner who wasn’t afraid of taking things too far with a princess. Lillian gave Alan a smirk as he shook some of the blood off of his hand before going back to a two-handed grip on his sword, never taking his eyes off of Lillian as he did so.

They continued, trading minor blows, never able to get a decisive strike in on each other. Lillian was clearly the superior duelist, setting the tempo of the spar, but she couldn’t dismantle Alan’s guard, and whenever she took a risk, he’d pull off something crazy to turn the tables on her, if only for a moment. Eventually they were the only ones still sparring. Kaizer had long since returned, and it was starting to become clear that they were probably going to continue all day long if left uninterrupted. Since some basic sparring wasn’t the only thing on the agenda for today, Okido had to step in to stop the duel so that they could all get on with it.

Amidst the post-fight panting and bandaging, Alan broke the silence of their long spar. ”You’re amazing. You just dodge everything I throw at you, don’t you?”

”Well, you certainly didn’t fail to leave a scratch. Every time I thought I had you cornered, you’d hit me with a surprise. Really, you’re quite excellent for tempering my patience.”

If the compliment was meant to be backhanded, Alan didn’t notice in the slightest. ”Thanks! I try.”

”...”

Rift Warriors X: An Isekai RP

Discord when?

Rift Warriors X - Isekai RP

Tentatively. I've been having trouble finding a suitable image for the character I had in mind without just ripping it from the gameplay inspiration for their RW character.