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Post by Shark a' Pult on Apr 28, 2015 20:03:57 GMT -5
Hilda rather surprised to see Elvia did not just go flying, and as well that smacking her actually felt a lot harder than she would have remotely expected. It didn't seem to matter that much though, because already the small Princess was on the attack and running for her. Hilda didn't do much, but brought her arms back in preparation. As hard as Elvia could hit with the hammer, her boots were just too thick by comparison. When as she believed the attack would come, she would then have her chance, particularly since the weapon would be directed elsewhere.
She was a little surprised to see then, that Elvia did not swing at her with the hammer but instead just tried to make contact. She didn't know what to expect and so didn't do anything to stop it. With the Princess touching her boot though, Hilda took the chance to try and grab Elvia with both hands as she brought them down together. As before she was not trying to crush or kill the tiny woman, but instead just to grab her and hold her, to keep her from moving around. If she could get Elvia in her grasp, then she could do what she wanted, even threaten to just hold her underwater.
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Post by Kyubey on May 1, 2015 2:26:02 GMT -5
When Elvia's hand made contact with Hilda's boot, the giantess would likely notice something strange happening. The boot would suddenly increase in weight, growing heavier and heavier by the instant, getting to the point where it would feel as if it were made of iron, and then it just got heavier still. Nothing else unusual would have happened to it, and by appearances alone it would have stayed as a regular giant's boot, but Hilda would undoubtedly feel the difference. This phenomenon would continue for as long as Elvia kept contact, which ended from the moment she put her hands around the Princess.
As it seemed, Hilda's plan worked. Elvia, of course, thrashed and kicked in her giant grip, but couldn't do much. As much as she fought and screamed, and she did copious amounts of both, she was at Hilda's mercy, so it seemed. Elvia was struggling rather fiercely, however, and there was the chance that maybe she'd be able to break free, eventually.
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Post by Shark a' Pult on May 3, 2015 23:17:35 GMT -5
Hilda noticed her boot getting very much heavier, but she wasn't sure what effect it was supposed to have, nor was she wholly aware that Elvia was the cause. Obviously if she tried to get up or walk around she could hurt herself in the process, but she could deal with that after the fight. For now, she intended to maintain her grasp on the Princess and raise her up, and it was in so doing that she noticed her boot began to feel normal again. By that point, she was able to put two and two together. A dreadful thought crossed her mind as to what might happen were Elvia to touch her clothes, but she aimed to keep that from ever happening.
"Yield now. Or will to hold under water."
Strengthening the grip with her hands clasped around the Princess, it was her aim not to injure or even hurt her, but simply to restrict her movement. Shifting in place again, she moved her arms to hold Elvia over the water offshore. In the way she had tried to grab her, the idea was to leave her head poking out between her hands, so by doing what she did she tried to demonstrate that if she wanted to she could throw Elvia out to sea or even just drop her in the water below. As indicated by her actual verbal intent though, she planned to actually dunk and hold the Princess underwater. This was not motivated by any knowledge of possible devil fruit powers since she didn't know if Elvia had any, Hilda just knew she was a human and would drown if held underwater. A threat of this caliber, she hoped, would earn her victory. Otherwise she might just have to throw the Princess to get her point across.
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Post by Kyubey on May 16, 2015 23:42:42 GMT -5
"What?" Oskar Hallstatt murmured, far less quiet than he thought he was. "How could this be happening?"
"The duel is not over," Claudia said flatly.
"She got overconfident. We... I trained her better..."
"Well? Do you think Her Highness will yield?" Alaric mused.
"That is not an option."
"Yes, I suppose. Though I wonder, why even ask? A giant of that size could just easily cru..."
"Not another word." Claudia, for the first time since the battle started, took her eyes off the fighters, to make eye contact with Alaric. She then turned back to the duel just as quickly, just as the powerful, unexplainable chill was nestling into his spine.
---
Squirming wasn't doing much good, so it seemed. The only answer Hilda would have received would be Elvia's continued yelling, as she wriggled about in her grasp. She wasn't giving up, but she wasn't doing much to improve her situation. With how hard she was fighting against Hilda, she barely even heard what was being said, and didn't listen anyway. Surrender was unthinkable. Still, given the circumstances, she was now in grave danger. Not since the throes of the war, had the Princess of Galatae been so confronted with death. Still, just like that time, giving in or backing down would be no different from renouncing who she was. But she was not the type to simply die nobly, either.
Hilda would feel Elvia's weight shift, or more accurately, the armor the Princess was wearing would change suddenly and dramatically. First it would increase in weight, then become light enough for even a child to hold, then to a normal weight, then even heavier than before, and so forth. These changes all happened quickly and randomly, with no set rhythm or pattern behind them. Elvia, meanwhile, was still thrashing, specifically attempting to free her hammer arm. While not expecting to just be let go, the Princess was hoping that Hilda would be disoriented enough to loosen her grip, even a little, so that breaking out would be possible.
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Post by Shark a' Pult on May 17, 2015 3:14:21 GMT -5
"What to...?"
Elvia's ploy was perhaps more effective than she may have anticipated. Hilda, confused by the shifting weight, did indeed loose her grip. The differing mass probably had something to do with it as well, but the princess would certainly have more room to breathe. The problem was however, that because Hilda took it as a sign of continued resistance, without hesitation she plunged her hands into the coastal waters.
If there was a time to muster all her strength and wrest free of Hilda's grip, now was the time, or else she'd find herself with an abundance of drowning.
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Post by Kyubey on Jun 20, 2015 22:02:06 GMT -5
Elvia, even if she did manage to break free, would not have been able to much to escape her fate, being held so high above the water. As it were, the sudden and rushed drop prevented her from being able to do anything at all. With a cry, she was plunged into the water. As soon as she was beneath the surface, the resistance Hilda would have felt would have stopped. Shallow though the waters may have been, her Devil Fruit stopped her from even struggling for help. Effectively, save for some sort of miracle, the duel was over, with Brynhilda Irongard the victor.
As Hilda held the princess of Galatae under the ocean, a murmur fell over those watching, shocked and agitated. Already there were quite a few of them who had their doubts that Elvia would have been able to defeat a foe like Hilda, but none who were there thought that the battle would end in such a fashion. Drowning was not a warrior's death. While in Galatae, any means were acceptable to win in a trial by combat, death by a weapon was seen as the only truly honorable way to lose. This was not simply the giantess winning a battle through dubious means, this was the sole daughter of the Queen, and, following the war, a symbol of the island's strength, being denied such an honor. Slowly, all eyes turned to Claudia, waiting to see what she would do. But it was not Elvia's mother, but Oskar, trembling under his armor, who acted first.
"No... No!"
Without even knowing what he was doing, the knight stepped forward, battleaxe still clenched tightly in his hand, towards Hilda. By itself, the act was unthinkable, especially for him, but the look on his scarred face, filled with both fury and despair, explained himself far more than he might have using words. Before he could even step into the field of battle, however, he stopped. It did not seem as if his sudden halting was out of any sort of choice, or even done consciously, but like he had been frozen. The only thing that had changed around him, however, was a single hand, held in front of him by Claudia. In truth, it was not simply a hand that stopped Oskar, he barely even saw it, but a feeling, a presence the Queen was emanating, that could have stopped almost anyone, even momentarily. As for Claudia herself, after raising her hand she was perfectly still, inhumanly so. There was no cry of anger, no fear or sorrow for her drowning daughter, no reaction at all, not even blinking. The only indication that the Queen was still alive was her breath, heavy, seething, and low, the sound of a beast, restrained by iron bars, agitated and yearning to tear apart the first living thing it could get its hands on.
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Post by Shark a' Pult on Jun 21, 2015 3:10:38 GMT -5
Because of her size, and the ambient sounds of the scenery and the gathered crowd, Hilda didn't even hear Oskar. She did sense some motion however, and gave a quick wayward glance out of instinct really, but soon returned her attention to her hand submerged in the water. When about ten seconds passed, she lifted her hand out of the water, and ideally the Princess with it.
"Yield now?"
She kept her clenched hand above the water, with the intent of holding Elvia facing downwards. If she would not surrender, then Hilda would just plunge her into the water again for another ten seconds and repeat the cycle. It wasn't her intent to actually drown her, and if Hilda believed there was a risk of Elvia dying then she would stop, but she did want to stop the fight. If the Princess was unconscious or unable to answer though, then she would set her down on the beach, unsure of what was supposed to happen if she just incapacitated the opponent rather than outright defeating them.
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Post by Kyubey on Jun 27, 2015 23:43:53 GMT -5
Elvia, plunged under the depths and restrained both by Hilda's hand and the weakness of her Devil Fruit, which she was beginning to see as more of a burden to her than a benefit, could do nothing for the brief moments in time during which she was held under, and for a good few seconds she was back in fresh air. From all the water she was coughing out, it could be deduced that she had swallowed quite a bit of it, and needed some time to catch her breath. Winded and dazed from her ordeal, Elvia was not quite as eager or spry as she had been when she first charged at the giantess, but she made up for her lack of enthusiasm with sheer, unfiltered rage. Already trying her hardest just to breathe right, the Princess could not let out a proper battlecry for an answer, but her seething fury and continued thrashing, now more intense and focused than ever, would be the only reply that Hilda would receive. Whether she would actually be able to break free or not, however, relied almost entirely on the strength of Hilda's grip, but either way, it should be apparent that dying seemed like more of a viable option to Elvia than yielding. Or, more accurately, the concept of yielding was never a possibility in her mind at all.
From all the crowd, a single "What is this?" was the only reaction spoken aloud. Following Claudia's solitary action, it was as if every onlooker present was scared to speak further. In any case, their Queen wasn't about to, any time soon. Or, perhaps, they were simply too stunned to react. Their symbol of power was being broken. The warrior princess was helpless. Elvia, though she was fighting, was still showing weakness. The people of Galatae, for the first time, were seeing her as human. That is, aside from one particular member of the crowd, and Claudia still did not betray her thoughts.
And then there was the demand for her to yield, which not a single person present could make sense of, or even truly understand.
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Post by Shark a' Pult on Jun 29, 2015 0:10:28 GMT -5
"Hmmm? Too much?"
Even if it was a fight to the death, which she wasn't aware of it being, the last thing Hilda wanted to do was kill the Princess of the country she was supposed to be staying in for who knows how long. Even if the natives were completely accepting of it and had no actual problems with such an outcome, she would have found it much too awkward to spend time with them knowing what she did.
Thus, when Elvia refused to yield, the giantess thought it a result of the Princess physically being unable to due to her treatment rather than perhaps a refusal to do so. Rather than plunging her hand into the water yet again, she instead shook it quite vividly to get rid of any excess water. Once she felt satisfied, she moved her hand back over the shore and set Elvia down. She didn't exactly let her guard down, but based on how the Princess had been faring moments prior, her primary concern was to see if the human was actually drowned by mistake. With a single finger and some exercised care, she pressed against Elvia's torso with a few nudges to see if she was still breathing. The presence of armor would obviously cause some obstruction, but if she coughed up water then that was a good sign. Worst came to worst, she could always grab someone from the crowd and try to make them give her CPR. At least, she believed that was supposed to work.
"Still living?"
Either way, apart from the finger pressing against her, Elvia would find herself no longer constrained by a giant grasp.
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Post by Kyubey on Jul 13, 2015 0:52:02 GMT -5
The Princess of Galatae might have snapped back to her normal self and began her attack once again from the instant that she was freed, or even from the time that Hilda's grip loosened at all, but being shaken around before she was set down put her in no state to do that. When Elvia felt dry land, her mind was too warped from the ordeal to process it, for a brief second she even imagined she was already in the afterlife. However, human though she might have been, she was still a warrior, and she was able to fight through this sensation before too very long.
Or, more accurately, what snapped Elvia out of the daze was Hilda's finger. No matter how careful and gentle Hilda tried to be, it was still a giant finger pressing down on a much smaller girl through layers of plate and chain armor. With so much force, in such heated and dire circumstances, the Princess mistook Hilda's kind gesture for an attack, and reacted in kind. Springing upwards (or as much as she could with so much weight on her), Elvia swung her hammer sidewards at the finger, letting out another warcry, so that all present, her people and her opponent, knew that she had not fallen in battle just yet.
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Post by Shark a' Pult on Jul 13, 2015 4:13:34 GMT -5
"Ow! Very hurt!"
The hammer blow struck true, and there was a resounding thump of metal against flesh in a pain that Hilda felt to her bone. The sudden sharp sensation gave way to a dull throbbing pain that was most unpleasant since it was in such a small area, much like if an insect had stung Elvia on the finger. Initially her expression was much in the same way, startled shock, but her tone gave way to anger. The first display of it yet, though minor at best, a little more than annoyance. It seemed she didn't like the sudden and unexpected resistance of the Princess.
"This push harder than finger, I say."
Though she initially withdrew her hand sharply and brought it to her mouth to try and help with the pain, she just used her other hand to reach to the forest and ripped up the largest tree she could find. Her intent was to, rather unceremoniously, bring it down in a sweeping motion and swat the princess with the end of it. Much in the same way that a child might hit a bug with a stick.
Though, it was a giant swinging a tree and fairly fast, it was a sideways swing so the idea was to send Elvia flying away from the water rather than back into it.
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Post by Kyubey on Jul 17, 2015 1:43:01 GMT -5
Coughing out the last bit of water that she had swallowed, Elvia forced herself up to her feet, already pulling back the hammer for another strike. By the time Hilda could go to the tree and uproot it, the Princess was running forward again, not in the patient, circular way she had done before, but now focused purely on rushing and attack. Once the massive tree was torn from the ground, however, it seemed that an idea had crossed her manic, enraged mind, and she halted, simply waiting for the swing that was to come.
If it had been a downwards swing, it would have been even better for Elvia, but the Princess would be able to work with what she had been give. As if to even further show that she was unafraid of the swing that was to come, the Princess drove her hammer, head first, into the sand, and then released it, leaving the weapon propped up from the ground. Then, using both hands, Elvia motioned to catch the tree. This would seemingly be a foolhardy attempt for any normal human, but the look in her eyes was enough to show her confidence. As the makeshift weapon hit the Princess at full force, Hilda would find it significantly lighten in her hands, almost as if she was holding a giant pillow. Naturally, with an object of that size, the blow would still have a tangible effect, and she was indeed almost knocked over, but still, the Princess kept clinging onto the bark of the tree, and seemed to refuse to let go.
As for the spectators, they respectfully refrained from cheering, or any other such disrespectful display of enthusiasm before the fight to the death, but they were noticeably more engaged than they ever had been, once their Princess was back on her feet. That is, save for the Queen, who still kept her composed sense of indifference unchanged.
"So on top of intruding on our lands," Oskar remarked, "the giant is damaging them as well."
"It's only a tree, Oskar," Claudia said. "Just be pleased that we were able to grant our guest a weapon, after all."
"If only Her Highness did not drop hers..."
"'Our guest?'" Alaric mused. "Is that what you call her now, Your Majesty?"
Claudia did not say anything else, too focused on what was happening ahead of her.
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Post by Shark a' Pult on Jul 17, 2015 3:00:50 GMT -5
"What is? False tree?"
Hilda was rightfully confused at the sudden change to the tree. She didn't understand yet what it was exactly that had happened, only that it certainly felt different and that Elvia had not been sent flying farther inland. Indeed, she even tried to push back again, in an attempt at least to simply knock the Princess off her feet and then trap her under the tree. Again though she was baffled by the small human's capability to hold her efforts at bay from the other end of the branch. To be fair, Hilda hadn't yet the chance to grab the tree with both hands, move to a proper position of leverage (rather than just reclining on the beach) and push with all her might. She even might have just done so, had she not in trying to see if Elvia was using some kind of trick, noticed what the Princess had done.
"Fair trade, yes?"
As quick as her giant spare hand could, she leaned forward and reached under the far end of the tree where Elvia stood. Perhaps she could have just grabbed the Princess in her hands again and once more controlled the pace of the fight. She thought instead though to let her see what it was like having to fight at a disadvantage. She was not very graceful or precise in this effort, but her colossal hand from under the tree trunk grabbed at the ground in front of Elvia and raked back as she pulled much of it with her fingers.
Her intent was to take the hammer away from her and keep it to herself. If she was cruel she could just toss it into the ocean, but she had more honor than that.
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Post by Kyubey on Jul 22, 2015 1:24:57 GMT -5
After it seemed like her ploy was working, Elvia pushed back against the tree, attempting to counteract Hilda's efforts. After seeing the giant reach downwards, however, the Princess had a better idea of what was happening, and so adjusted her thoughts accordingly. However, she did not fully interpret the Warlord's actions correctly, thinking the giantess was planning on attacking her with her free hand, but her motions were the same. Moving as far back as she could, creating some minor distance from Hilda while still holding the same tree, she moved out of the reach of her opponent, letting her take the hammer. Meanwhile, she repositioned herself in relation to the tree, trying her best to maneuver it upwards so that it was right above Hilda's giant reaching hand.
"Fair enough."
If she was successful in getting it above Hilda's other hand, then the giantess would suddenly feel the incredibly light tree drastically increase in weight, like it had, without warning, turned into a giant steel beam, though outwardly it seemed no different. At the same time, the Princess ducked away from under it, so that it would, potentially, drop right onto Hilda's arm.
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Post by Shark a' Pult on Jul 22, 2015 1:55:54 GMT -5
"Aj! What's is this magic?"
As seemed to be a running trend for this fight, Hilda was caught off guard by the sudden change of the tree, causing her not only to drop it with her hand grasping it but also for her other arm to be caught under it when it fell. The manner in which she was leaning forward to reach yet still sitting, meant that it was rather painful because of the sudden strain it placed on her body forcing her to nearly fall forward, landing on her elbows more or less. Since she was unwilling to let go of the hammer however, she simply tried to yank her arm out from underneath the heavy tree. In truth she could have just lifted it up, but she wasn't sure what kind of trick Elvia would pull next so she just tried to avoid the tree altogether.
"Back! Will crush!"
She yelled as she pulled, mostly just threats to keep the Princess at bay and although it was only for a moment, Hilda was much lower to the ground than she had been thus far in the fight. Or more importantly, her head was closer to the ground than before.
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