<div class="floatleft">(http://i.imgur.com/AMTRPXI.jpg)<br/></div><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 18pt;">Ralena Tharin</span><br/><strong>Location:</strong>Guild hall<br/><strong>With:</strong>Alice<hr/><br/>Ralena beamed with delight when she felt the side of her foot connect with Alice's head. Just like she had expected, all it would really take would be one single clean hit in order to tilt the fight in her favor. Doubtless when, and IF Alice got up, she would be so much weaker that it wouldn't even be a fair fight anymore. However, she was only allowed that brief half second of satisfaction before she felt a light stinging sensation hit her in the thigh. She flinched, and thanks to the special bullet, she ended up crumbling to the ground awkwardly when the strength of her arm gave in rather then enjoying the smooth, clean recovery that she would have had under normal circumstances. Okay, so that alone wasn't normal, and as she slowly started to get back to her feet, Ralena had plenty of time to think about what had happened and what she could do in order to mitigate the damage done. Okay, time to study...<br/><br/>She told herself to get up, her mind giving the command to her arms and her knees to get herself off the ground and back up to her feet. However, a process that normally would have taken her about a second at the most ended up taking nearly twice that long, at a resounding 2 seconds before she was back on her feet. Yeah, that didn't sound like a whole lot, but when you were in the middle of a fight, battling against an extremely talented mage, nearly every kind of weakness like this was devastating. Besides, this was just her getting back up to her feet, who knew just how sluggish she was going to be if she was trying to use her superior speed and reflexes to close out this fight? About this point, Alice was back on her feet as well, and was even polite enough to explain just what she had managed to shoot Ralena with. Yeah, that sucked a whole lot, because without her superior speed Ralena was going to have an extremely rough time getting in on Alice... Not only that, but countering Alice's own attack was going to be an absolute nightmare, seeing as how bullets were already impossible to dodge, so Ralena had to focus on reading and avoiding being in the right place in the right time to not get hit by Alice's shots, and that was thrown out the window entirely now.<br/><br/>Then again... It was just that<em>Ralena</em>couldn't move very fast... If Ralena herself didn't have to move, then perhaps... Yes, this could work.<br/><br/>She gasped a little as she took a small and awkward step forward, oh man this was going to be awkward. Her feet felt so sluggish, and her body felt like it was suffering from some insufferable lag. With a quick test of her abilities, Ralena conjured a small strand of aura across her wrist. Great! So it was her body itself that was more slow and laggy, not her mental reactions, and not her aura. Okay, so if she wanted to win this, her acting skills were going to be put on display every bit as much as her control over her aura. She took another step forward, groaning gently as she stumbled down to one knee and pressed her hands against the floor. Tiny streaks of blue energy would start to crawl along the ground. These streaks would slowly start to weave together and branch outwards, creating almost a spider web of aura along the floor. It was going to take a bit of time for her to branch out this web to the point where she wanted it, and she was going to have to bait Alice into stepping inside the net if she wanted it to work. It was a gimmick strategy, unreliable at best, and it<em>completely</em>conflicted with Ralena's fighting style, but at this point, it was her final gambit.<br/><br/>She groaned, the spider web branching farther and farther out towards Alice as she looked up with a weakened, frustrated look in her eye. "That's a dirty trick, Alice... What? Ain't got the guts to fight me fair? Kuuuh~" That's right, look weak, look vulnerable... Let Alice try to show off a bit. The connection from her hands to the aura web she'd created dropped off, leaving the trap fully in place. If she could get Alice to take just a few steps forward, or move towards the center of the battlefield, the trap would spring.<br/><br/>Big problem though, was that Ralena's aura was quite the finite resource, meaning that the aura web she'd made left her unable to summon the vast majority of her weapons unless she were to recall it.