Makhus looked at the stick in his hand, spun it around in his grasp a few times to get a feel for its center of mass, and let out a resigned sigh. He looked at Zel again, and though his words spoke reluctance, his eyes couldn’t have conceivably been more eager.

“I- Yeah, alright. Don’t expect much,” he said, slipping it behind his belt in place of a war-knife and taking up a similarly low, albeit far more rigid swordsman’s stance. Left foot forward, right foot back, both knees bent so far his legs nearly formed a rectangle with the ground. His hands hovered over the stick much in the same way Zef’s hand tended to hover over Pentacle, the index and middle finger of his left tucked into his belt to yank it loose when he went to draw the stick.

And then the invocations came. One after another, Makhus murmured invocations in rapid succession, exhaling long ribbons of Fog all throughout that swirled about him. His pupils dilated, eyes grew bloodshot almost instantly, veins bulged from his neck and forehead.

The stance was stiff. Well-practiced, but stiff, lacking the effortless presence that by all rights should’ve been there. She could tell at a glance that Makhus relied on some third sensory enhancement technique to fill gaps. He stared at her unblinking, tense, like he was reluctant to lash out. So, making the choice to not use Engine Breathing, Zelsys went at him, burning a third of her lung capacity for a wild, beastly swing at his head with the cleaver-paddle.

Thok. 

With a quick exhalation he had pulled the stick upward, blocking her swing… And she just kept wailing on him, putting more and more behind every swing. There was aggression behind his eyes, and she wanted to see it, to feel it, to draw it out - for her own entertainment and because she genuinely believed this was for Makhus’ good. 

Thok. Thok. Thok. Thok.

Again, and again, and again, breath by breath, swing by swing, she assaulted his well-practiced defense, knowing that his soul wasn’t in it. Makhus was leaning all too heavily on that arcanely-amplified reaction time of his, his technique was consistent to a fault, predictable. 

So predictable in fact that when she grabbed his attention with a paddle-swing, he utterly failed to defend against a punch from her off-hand, which she had intentionally had hanging loosely up until now to keep his attention away from it. Ignoring the fact it had likely hurt her more than him, the alchemist nevertheless grunted in pain from the unexpected strike. 

She backed off for a moment, both to replenish her breath and to give him an opportunity to attack.. And he did stab at her - once. A stab which she dodged without issue. The next moment he reset, also drawing in a deep breath and holding his stick high in a defensive stance. Moment by moment his eyes grew more visibly bloodshot.

Once more she set loose an unhinged, chaotic assault at him, and in spite of its true unpredictability, Makhus blocked it. Most of it, anyway. She got one good hit on him that hooked the back of his neck and scraped the skin, to which he responded with a strike of his own, one that she herself blocked by forcefully pulling back the paddle and turning it on its side as a shield, catching his stick between the paddle’s dull teeth. Zelsys grinned at him, pushing against his wooden sword with sheer force, watching his grip waver and a splinter begin to form on the battered hardwood.

“Come on, what’s with those wimpy counter attacks? That overfocus on defense? I can tell you’re not a defensive fighter at heart. I have a reason to go on the defensive to build up for a single overwhelming assault, but what is your reason? You can do better than a stilted defense held together with sorcery,” she pushed, breathing Fog into his face.

Makhus knew that she was right. He knew, and he hated that it took someone pushing him to draw out his true violence. The Pursuer, the Sleazebag, now Zelsys - it was always someone pushing him that made him set loose the violent tendencies that he knew he had within. He didn’t know why it was so - perhaps he had subconsciously latched onto the teachings of the Sanger Family, or he wanted to be the good soldier, not the aggressor.

All he knew that it would take more than his own efforts to break the barrier down, and so he gladly took hold of this harpoon in his mental dam to wrench it open and release the deluge.

It was like a sputtering flame in the swordsman’s eyes had suddenly been given new fuel, and with a prolonged exhalation of Fog he ducked down so quickly that he actually dodged Zel’s downward swing, catching her off-guard. She only felt a weak ping of danger from behind and to the right, whipping around just in time to feel the wooden sword’s sharp sting upon her arm, followed by its structure failing and it exploding into myriad pieces from the impact.

Makhus had already pulled back for a thrust, but seemed to notice the distinct absence of length his weapon was currently struck with. 

“Nice, that actually hurt! What’re your ratings again?” she chuckled at him, lightly rubbing the point of impact. That’d leave a mark, at least for a little bit.

Pupils constricting, he blinked rapidly and rubbed his eyes, murmuring the answer: “Back in the E.Z. your tablet showed them as D plus in Force, C minus in Precision and Hardness, C in Aether.”

“That right there didn’t feel like a D plus in Force, that’s for sure.”   

Truthfully, she was exaggerating how hard he had hit - but not by much. Certainly, that one strike had an energy that would doubtlessly have been a serious wound with a real sword if aimed properly. 

“Attribute readers are… Oftentimes lacking in precision,” sighed the swordsman, tossing his broken stick aside.

Akaso

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