Space Odyssey: Spectre

"So how are we going to do this?" Jace asked as he spun his knife in his hand. Rather than get a response his opponent jumped forward with her sword. She swung at a downward angle. Instead of blocking or fully moving he just leaned to the side and moved to her side. He brought his knife up, but flipped it in his hand.

Before he could attack she managed to dodge backwards. She then went into a stance and walked around him. It gave Jace a chance to think.

A test like this would have rules where he would fail if he broke them. He first needed to figure them out. At the same time he needed to make sure he did not lose the fight. So now he needed to find out a way to win within a set of rules he did not know.

Jace's arm whipped forward on instinct as his opponent dashed toward him with the intent to impale him. His knife grinded against the side of the sword and redirected it away from him, throwing his opponent off balance.

As she was off balance he brought his leg around and kicked her side, sending her a few feet away where she managed to reorient herself before landing on the ground. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a few of them tense when he was about to hit her, but they relaxed when she only flew through the air. If she was injured they might have had a different reaction.

This is a non-lethal bout. It is a test of prowess in the face of possible danger. Understanding that, Jace had decided on a strategy to win this fight and hopefully win the centuria's favor. He would have to make his opponent willingly submit.

As she came back toward him he decided he might as well see how this species fights. He might learn a few useful techniques.

This time when she went to do a horizontal slash he prepared his knife to block it. But she switched it up at the last moment and went for a leg swipe while stabbing her sword into the ground so she could get a farther reach with her legs. Jace had to lightly push himself off the ground and backwards so he would not end up hurting her legs.

Although it might have hurt him more, he was not completely confident he could take one of these strikes without being injured. With that being said he had to block another strike this one had more force behind it.

There was a screech of metal as she moved forward and their blades rubbed together. He used his free hand to reach forward and grab her by the helmet. But as he did so she reached forward with her own hand and grabbed his wrist.

He spun his hand and grabbed her arm. Then with a kick off the ground and a twist of his arm he was flying over her. Their weapons only stopped meeting for a moment before she attacked again, her sword meeting his knife in the air. They were quick strikes that caused sparks to fly.

As he landed back on the ground she went to slash at him again, this time aiming for his arm where they were joined. He pulled her forward, throwing her off, but she immediately used the force to flip over him. When she was behind him she used their joined arms to try and choke him. While her feet landed on his back so she could keep them stationary. She then aimed her sword for his neck and went to stab him.

Before she could make contact he sent a small jolt of electricity that caused her hand to loosen from his wrist. Then he slipped out of her hold and leaped forward while spinning around. He glanced at the observers but all he saw was the leader slightly tilt her head. Which meant she likely noticed something.

He focused back at his opponent who was looking at her own hand in surprise and was opening and closing it. After a few seconds she looked back at him and began growling. Then she got in her stance again but this time she began disappearing a second later.

She had a form of invisibility for her armor, or it might even be part of their species biology. But he could tell that it was not against the rules since he could hear chuckling and could almost feel the mocking stares.

Jace chuckled himself and walked quietly forward while watching the coarse material that was on the ground. He could see it was only slightly shifting, almost imperceptible to normal people. But it was still noticeable to him.

He relaxed his stance to draw her in, then a moment later he was tilting to the side as he noticed the attempt to impale him. His arm whipped forward and he hit something, sending it flying back and digging up a bunch of the coarse material as they went across the ground.

He could hear them suck in their breath in surprise. "Yeah… I have fought with so many enemies that turn invisible I know almost every trick to spot them." Jace decided to explain as he manipulated his heads up display to bring up a particular feature of his armor that he decided he might just keep equipped all the time. "But I am curious to see how you will fare."

Jace then began turning invisible, unlike their version that looked like they were slowly covered or uncovered. His version of invisibility looked like several small hexagons flipping over. An effect that coincided with his armor's shielding.

He could hear gasps and whispers as he turned invisible. At the same time he began cycling through the various visions his helmet had. Infrared, night, radiation, just about all types of scanning that had been developed over the years. He stopped on one that was called electro wavelength.

He could see the electricity running along her armor as she prowled slowly forward, trying to make as little movement as possible. Jace calmly walked to the side, going away from her as she moved. Not caring as much about the noise he makes or the indentations in the sand.

Then he leaped toward her, the only sign of him doing so being a slight turn in the coarse material. He watched her spin into a position to block an attack. But Jace landed just short of her and dug his hand into the coarse material and threw a large handful of it up into the air.

He watched her body tense in what was probably a moment of surprise. Then he could hear her yelp as he grabbed her leg and pulled her feet out from under her. He then moved forward as her sword arm flailed through the air and hit her sword out of her hand, sending it flying through the air and turning visible until it embedded itself in the coarse material that the ground was made of.

Jace brought the back of his knife to her throat and held it there. While he had her body pinned to the ground with his other hand that was forcefully pushing her breastplate down, pinning her. He then disabled his invisibility and there were more gasps and murmurs.

She disabled her own invisibility a moment after that, revealing her position as having lost. "I surrender." She told him.

Jace stood up, and spun his knife in his hand before he put it back in its sheath. He then looked at the leader of this group who walked forward toward the center.

"It has been a hundred years since we found ourselves another race we could ally with! Now that we have one, we should celebrate before we tell our sisters across our hunting grounds!" She announced and it was followed by a cohesive chanting in excitement and agreement.

But for some reason Jace felt he just stepped out of one problem and right into another one.