[PVP Tournament R1] Through the Fire and Flames

Finally, they were here. Finally the fighting festival had truly begun. Jasmine was calm as she sat in her locker room, eyes staring at the ground as though she was trying to glare a hole through it. Her first opponent... Riley something. The American couldn't remember the girl's name. Only what they called her - Vandal. An interesting choice of names that likely spoke miles in regards to how the girl fought. This would be an interesting endeavor indeed. It had been a while since she last fought a quirk-wielding opponent seriously, much less being observed by so many people. The last time... the last time something like that happened was in the underground fighting arena in Kabukicho. 

She smirked; if this was going to be anything like back then, this would be a cakewalk.

Her outfit this time around was different. Due to the occasion, her 'tailor' had opted for a different set of colors than what Jasmine usually wore. The whites were replaced with gold and a short leather jacket was added into the mix. The short skirt was replaced with short-shorts, coupled with extremely elastic yet durable thigh-highs with her sigil emblazoned on the side. Simple, elegant, yet at the same time screaming character... was what she had said. Oh well. Jasmine didn't really care so long as it didn't restrict her movement, and this garment was perfect to move around in. Heck, she may actually ask to turn some of it into her actual hero outfit. This thing was great.

Before long Jasmine was already in the arena, face to face with the green-skinned Vandal staring right back at her with a certain glint in her eyes that the New Yorker too easily identified. Looks like she's rearing to go... good.

"Oh wow, they actually introduced me as Japanese. That's actually kind of funny," Jasmine spoke in clear-cut English, a little bit of her New York accent showing. When Vandal approached, Jasmine accepted the fist bump in kind, offering a challenging grin in return. "Yeah, yeah. Just make sure you keep up."

The haymaker was immediate as soon as the fight started. Jasmine saw it clearly, approaching her like a goddamn wrecking ball ready to bust through whatever stood in its way. The blonde lioness, all things considered, was more than capable to either evade or block it. However for better or for worse Jasmine's pride suddenly clawed its way into the forefront. Some may argue what she was about to do was tactical more so than prideful... if you were to ask Jasmine, though, she'd tell you it didn't matter. She needed to make a statement, and boy could the explosive Ember provide you with a show.

Instead of dodging, Jasmine simply tilted her head to the side so the blow impacted the side of her face. Her world shook for a split second, forcing her to bend her knee a little after the initial impact so she wasn't forced to back up too far. That... hurt. Yet it wasn't anything that she couldn't handle. She remained immobile, eyes shadowed by her long blonde locks as a grin slowly spread across her face, "That all you got?" She asked, her voice low and challenging as her fingers wrapped around Vandal's wrist, encasing it into an unbreakable death grip, "My turn."

Her other hand acted immediately, palm pushing against the Oni's stomach. The first shot was always the easiest. The one that cost nothing; the one that was a simple 'warm up' for her shoulders before the recoil actually started hurting. A statement. A declaration of war. A challenge and a dare. That's what Jasmine was issuing with her next maneuver. Within a split second everything went white before the stadium echoed with the sound of chaos. Within that mere moment, Jasmine unleashed one of her strongest explosions point blank at her enemy, intent on blowing her to smithereens.



Low-key inserting Jasmine's theme in this PvP tourney:

Her attack had connected quite... explosively. Jasmine was actually surprised how effective it had been given how durable the other girl seemed. Yes, Jasmine could be quite lethal when she wanted to be, but Vandal didn't look like a mere pushover. Frankly the girl seemed like a miniature Red Horn, if the American were to be painfully honest. So when her initial explosion managed to tear through skin and muscle the girl was forced to raise a brow, a shred of worry seeping into her mind; had she gone too far? 

Jasmine gave one glance towards the referee who was watching the scene unfold, bewildered and clearly unsure of what to do. Should he call it? Was it over? The blonde scoffed; you're really going to watch two teenagers beat each other to shit like this for sport? Society was, for better or worse, completely and utterly fucked. Yeah, sports like boxing and whatever the hell else have you had kids competing in it, but never did it get as bloody as this. She snarled at the ref who very quickly caught her gaze and recoiled. Fucking asswipe.

Yet, Jasmine's worries seemed to be for naught.

She hadn't gone far enough. Not yet, anyway.

The crowd had quieted down after the initial counter by Ember, a deathly silence filling the area with one thought and one thought alone.

Was she dead?

"Idiots."

Jasmine's eyes narrowed as she very slightly bent her knees, preparing herself.

"She's coming."

EMBER!

Within what anybody else would've considered far too fast, Vandal came out of the rabble, charging at her in all of her gloriously bloody grace. Jasmine simply watched as the girl approached, analyzing the situation and trying to come up with an explanation for what was going on. Her explosion had practically torn through the girl's abdomen; how the hell was she charging her with such ease and without a single shred of self-preservation? Could she have somehow lost control? Was that what her quirk was? Regardless of that fact, Jasmine couldn't let her get too close without a strategy in place. That previous hit to the face that she took was powerful - far too powerful to be able to tank too many of them. She was still feeling it and boy did it fucking smart. If her theory about Vandal's quirk was correct, that made those fist twice as dangerous as they were before.

As a result, Jasmine resorted to go on the defensive for a short while. Waiting until Vandal got close, Jasmine brought both of her hands together, clapping her palms with a sizable amount of force. The result? A small explosion brighter than a neutron bomb (yes, yes, artistic flair, not fact, sue me!) escaped her palms. It yielded virtually no force; it's only goal - to stun and block Vandal's vision momentarily. Whether it would affect the juggernaut remained to be seen, but frankly at this point Jasmine had too many questions and not enough answers about her opponent.

Within the same frame of time, the blonde American thought two steps ahead and collected some C2N14x into her feet, launching her into the air and over Vandal moments after her quirk's equivalent of a flash bang erupted from in between her fingers. Yet, despite the defensive-minded action plan, Jasmine was a fighter that fought in a style most would consider Blitzkrieg. Her defense far too often doubled as offense at the same time. As such, flipping in mid air, the blonde quickly turned and attempted to release several weaker explosions from her right palm at Vandal's back, at the same time readying her left arm to fire off an explosion into the ground should she need to immediately evade.

Quick maneuvers, stay airborne, maintain a distance, do not give her room to breathe, that was Jasmine Noir's plan going forward, at least until she understood her opponent better and had a weakness to exploit. Until then, she would play it safe.

This girl...! Jasmine grit her teeth with some annoyance when she saw that, while her explosions might've been damaging, they did very little to deter Vandal. Seeing her move Jasmine was almost positive her quirk had some kind of strengthening effect that went along with the visual mutation of Riley's body. It looked like the berserker mode that the girl entered was some kind of weird side-effect of her using her ability and it seemed like a high pain tolerance was something of a bonus. Whether it was a heightened tolerance or an all around immunity - Jasmine hadn't the foggiest. What the American hero-in-training was sure of, however, was the fact that it was trouble. Both for herself and for her opponent.

Jasmine was already somebody who very often went overboard against her opponents. Maxi and Ryuusei were two most vivid examples of this. The two boys had been utterly decimated each time they faced her, and they only had the willpower to withstand quite the bit of pain. Only when she was able to deem them unable to pose any kind of threat to her did Jasmine stop, and that usually entailed them being in too much pain to move. With that in mind... how did you deal with someone who couldn't feel pain? Where did you draw the line? If she could move even when everything in her body was broken and Jasmine wouldn't even be able to tell, what then...?

She shook her head; no, that was a thought that could bother her later. There was still the matter of even being able to get to such a situation. Considering how relentless Vandal was the lioness knew nothing of the sort would be easy. This girl, even without the green and the horns, looked like a monster that was out to get her. The glare, the grinding teeth, the snarl... it was potent enough to make Jasmine swallow down the saliva that she wasn't aware had been collecting in her throat. She felt a familiar chill run down her spine: a chill that told her that she was in danger. A chill that...

No! Not this time! I will not lose control again!

Jasmine herself barred her proverbial fangs when Vandal turned to attack her, charging her without a shred of hesitation. The blonde's now-crimson eyes widened in stark surprise when Riley leaped towards her at speeds quite a few times faster than what she had expected. Even if she should've expected that, especially because of her training with Red Horn, Jasmine had little to no time to feel sorry for herself. She needed to act and she needed to act now otherwise she knew there would be hell to pay. If she was caught now, it was very likely she was going to lose the fight... or have to kill Vandal to get her off of her as soon as the juggernaut began battering her. No, neither option was viable.

So when Vandal was close, Jasmine pointed her left palm directly at the charging beast, bracing herself by grasping at her wrist with her right. Sparks crackled along her left arm before she released another one of her strongest explosions right at the charging beast... almost as though it was a desperate countermeasure to get Vandal away from her. Yet this, too, was calculated. Jasmine was still above the ground. An explosion of this size, considering her weight and her position in the air, would generate enough force to get her out of Vandal's range... assuming the explosion wouldn't knock the beast out altogether.

Generate force it did. Jasmine was sent flying backwards at such speed that even she had surprised herself, having miscalculated how much strength she put into the explosion. Her heels dug into the ground as she braced with her hand, her fingers clawing at the pavement as she slid backwards. When she finally stopped at the edge of the arena, Jasmine glanced back for a brief moment as she huffed an uneasy breath; two or three joules more and that would've been a ring-out. She needed to be more careful.

Steeling herself, Jasmine got into a fighting stance once again, collecting herself and weighing her options at the same time as her eyes scanned the dust and debris that her quirk had just caused, waiting for Vandal to emerge.