Round 1: Montare Lupo vs. Jarod Hudson

Montare stood idly with a shortsword in both hands, looking around at his surroundings. This wasn't the best enviroment for him to be fighting in, but as long as it wasn't particularly beneficial to his opponent and their gift it shouldn't be a particularly difficult fight. After all, Jarod didn't look like he'd be much of a threat to someone like Montare; he couldn't help but wonder if he'd even put up much of a fight. Then again, his gift was unknown, and it could easily be something very dangerous. Or not threatening in the very slightest. Montare would have to see.

Jarod could feel his heart throbbing in his chest, blinking as he took in the beach he and his opponent stood on. He felt his long blowgun touch the side of his legs as his hands trembled, but he began calming down seeing the large ocean water to his right. If he could get out far enough where Montare would have to swim in it, he could infect it. The boy was a fair swimmer, learning from a young-ish age how to do so with the hot Kansas summers as a large motivator to get in the water early on. He swallowed a wad of spit to get his throat hydrated now and inhaled and exhaled, silently praying before the time came when he'd see what the boy standing across from him could do. With a plan forming in his head and his empty hand ready to grab a poison dart from their holders on his hip, Jarod gave a nod he couldn't understand the meaning of. Okay, he said in his mind. Win or lose, you tried? Shit. Why didn't I research better inspirational quotes or something before this? Shaking the thought off, he looked straight at Montare and let out a sigh, nodding again. Please, let me win. Please.

Waiting for the fight to start, Montare had been examining his opponent carefully. A blowgun, huh? He'd have to dodge or deflect darts if he got used, but that'd be a hell of a lot easier to do to darts than it would be with arrows or bolts. He still didn't know this guy's gift though, and that could be a problem. But he had a ranged weapon, so Montare knew to close the distance between them as fast as possible. Only other thing he'd need to remember was that this wasn't real. It was okay to go all out and "kill" his opponent. Well, here goes nothing. Montare went full sprint towards Jarod when the fight started, a shortsword in either hand.

All Jarod could do when the fight started was run behind him at a sort of angle so that he was running along the water, too afraid to try and fight the other boy with his darts before he had established a wide gap between them. Looking back over his shoulder while he took a short break, he could see Montare catching up to him, motivating him to reach for his blowgun and bring it up to his face as he began to run again, the waves tickling his now bare feet--his shoes must've come off. Shitshitshit, he screamed in his mind, his free hand grabbing a random dart from the pouch on his waist, loading it in his gun as quickly as possible. Jarod turned his head towards his opponent, aimed his blower for his torso-area, and blew, turning and running deeper into the already ankle-deep water he was in, not bothering to see if the dart had successfully hit his target. "Holy hell," he said softly, the pounding of his heart louder than the phrase. The poison should slow him down if it hit him, he knew. But that wasn't a risk worth taking. And with that, he loaded another dart as he ran, this time his pace a lot slower than before, but that didn't matter. All that mattered now was surviving.

{Yo. I'm in Colorado and typing all of this on my phone, so it's not nearly as good as I could do. Sorry! <333 Also, because of this, //please// don't reply for s bit so I have more time to post and hopefully be home before too much happens. We leave here Thursday, if it's okay to keep this going on until then. Thanks, and so sorry again. :) }

Montare was careful to keep his eyes closr on Jarod as he pursued him, paying extra attention when his opponent turned to face him, seeing the blowgun at his mouth. Focusing on it as he ran, he watched as the dart came shooting out. Sidestepping while turning his body, Montare dodged the dart before resuming running straight for Jarod. He was able to keep his pace fairly easily; constant and vigorous training did wonders for stamina. With Jarod slowing down he began to gain on him, but Montare also noticed as another dart got loaded. It'd be risky to close in on him; at close range dodging wouldn't be so easy.

Jarod blinks, stunned for a moment as Montare ran towards him. He cursed under his breath, fired agakn, and waded into the water further, now knee-deep in the stuff that would hopefully help him.

This time Montare at least had to stop for a short moment to dodge out of the way of this dart. He noticed that Jarod wasn't putting in a fresh dart this time. He also was wading through water now; that would slow him down. Wanting to take advantage of this opportunity, Monty sped up to a full sprint towards Jarod. It would be a bit harder to fight while wading through the water, but if he needed to he could probably just drown his opponent as opposed to slashing or stabbing to kill him. Montare still needed to be at least a little careful though. After all, he still hadn't used his gift.

He began to panic a bit when he looked back and saw his opponent not that far from him. Jarod picked up his pace a bit, trying his best to run in the water. He knew if he was going to hurt Montare, he had to contaminate the water while the boy was still on--or close to, Jarod couldn't tell--shore. He spit a thick was of saliva off behind him and to the left, followed by another to the right and one diagonal from him, and continued to swim. Spitting in the water was one of the fastest ways he knew to spread the disease he wanted--some paralytical flu; he forgot what it was called--without cutting himself. Praying the spit worked as well as using a great amount of strength focusing on the ocean and accelerating the contamination, he swam on, holding his blowgun above his head with one hand. "Please work," he said to the water he pedaled his feet in.

Montare noticed that Jarod was now deep enough to be swimming in the water instead of just wading through it. He wasn't facing towards Montare anymore, either. Pausing for only a moment, he took aim at Jarod's torso before throwing his shortsword at him, making sure to compensate for that fact he was moving and would be somewhere else by the time the sword reached him. As the shortsword arced through the air, Montare realized that there would be no dodging this. Even if he turned around to see it before it stabbed him, the water wouldn't let him move fast enough to dodge away from it. Grinning, Montare continued through the water, and before long he was swimming and catching up to Jarod again, and fast.

Blood. So much blood. Jarod didn't feel as much, thanks to the adrenaline rushing through his veins, but he sure felt this. He didn't know where he was hit, but he knew it A) it hurt; B) Montare would be catching up soon with his other blade, so C) if Jarod wanted to live, he had to swim away, no matter how much pain it caused him.

When Jarod could see clearly, around a couple minutes after he the sword stabbed him, he found where he was hit: his shoulder. Thank God, too, seeing how had it been another 5 or 6 inches, he'd be long dead by now. The wound still hurt like hell, but the salt in the water helped heal it quicker than it would've. He continued to swim, not bothering to look back behind him, too afraid to face reality. With all of his strength, he pushed forward, his only other thought on the lost blood and the disease.

The blood. Jarod had almost forgotten. His blood was now in the ocean, spreading much quicker than the spit or his body swimming right now. The blood, with the disease in it--which disease, he didn't know exactly. It might've still been the paralysis, or it could've been cancer. Either way it was something very harmful and it was very fast, so fast maybe it could save Jarod's life. He continued to swim on, now picking up speed even more to the best of his ability--now quite fast, of course, but not a snail, either, mind you--and let his blood flow through the water that hopefully would get inside Montare.

While the sword had missed Jarod's torso, the amount of blood that was seeping from the wound showed that that would not be an issue. Montare noticed Jarod's blood in the water. He still wasn't sure of his gift, but seeing as he had previously been spitting in the water so much, Montare figured it'd be for the best to avoid contact with Jarod's bodily fluids. Unfortunately, this meant Montare would need unable to get close enough to Jarod to attack him again unless he wanted to expose himself to a lot of his opponent's likely harmful blood. Then again, would he even need to attack him again? Jarod was going to bleed out unless the stab wound was properly treated, and it still had the shortsword in it. All Montare had to do with stick on Jarod until he passed out or died. Speaking of which, the blood loss was probably not doing great things for his stamina...

Jarod turned his body so that it was facing Montare when he heard nothing from behind him showing the other boy was following him. He began to slowly swim back, moving an inch every 30 seconds or so. The end was near, the fifteen-year-old knew. It was inevitable. He wasn't going down without a fight, though. Not without seeing this son of a bitch with a poison dart in his neck.

He took out a few darts from his side pouch, along with the blowgun. He loaded the first, aimed for Montare's upper chest, and shot. Jarod didn't bother checking to see if it hit him before loading a second one, now aimed at his stomach, and blew hard. The last dart he dipped in the slowly healing wound filled with his blood and loaded it. He aimed for the boy's crotch-area, hoping he'd be too distracted from the other darts to notice. Lord, Jarod prayed softly. If he wins, let it be nice and quiet and peaceful. Jarod knew this was just a sim, but respect was respect, even if it was for some random not-even dead body.

As soon as Montare saw Jarod going for darts again, he drew his remaining sword and started keeping himself afloat in place. When Jarod fired the first dart, Montare swung and deflected it. Seeing that Jarod wasn't done, he readied himself in the brief moment as the second dart was loaded and then fired, only to be cut out of the air like the first. He still isn't done, is he? He still has one more dart in his hand Following Jarod's eyes as he bloodied the third dart before loading it, Montare noticed it was gonna end up going under water. Knowing damn well he wouldn't be able to deflect this one, he took advantage of the fact the water would slow the dart once it went under to have enough time to move his sword to block it. But... it was bloody. Not wanting to take any risks, he quickly backpedalled away from the dart, keeping his eyes on Jarod.