Prompt #2: Your MC has found themselves in a battle of fists or sword (or lance, or mace - physical weapon of choice). Describe the fight. Just the physical fight. Keep it to under 500 words.
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Don is a thinker, used to multitasking and solving problems by analyzing every possible angle of a situation to figure out what will work and what won't, but right now his vision shrinks to encompass only Raph. In the middle of the dojo, weapons drawn, they circle each other. Spar or not, in a fight there's no room for conscious thought. It's all action and reaction. Don is on the reactive. He lets Raph make the first move.
Raph initiates by tossing a sai. It sails through the air at Don's head. When Don uses his weapon to whack aside the sai the impact travels down the staff and rattles his joints. He can't waste time tracking where the sai might land or waste energy fixing the grip on his staff because Raph is already rushing him. No way to block a tackle from someone as strong as Raph so Don pole-vaults out of the way. Midair he readjusts his grip on the staff, sliding his fingers into a better position on the rough wrapped fabric, and lands behind Raph's shell. Now is the time to counterstrike.
Don spins into a deeper stance and swings the staff toward the side of Raph's shell. He's aiming for the softer bit, the bridge between Raph's carapace and plastron. With a quick step Raph evades and snakes his arm around the staff to catch it before Don's hit can land. Staff trapped under his arm, Raph torques his hips to shift his weight—Don can feel that twisty motion through the weapon—and hooks the staff under his remaining sai for better leverage. Then with both arms Raph yanks. The force of the pull throws Don off balance and before he can contain the automatic fear flipping his stomach he makes a mistake. He trips.
With the way Don falls he knows he has to let go of the staff. But the panic is gone and he's got his head back on straight. He can use the fall to his advantage.
He lets Raph disarm him. As Raph's expression turns smug and his stance straightens out, Don drops low and scissor-kicks him in the legs. They both go down, but Don is the one who planned for this. In an instant he turns the tables on Raph, brings him down sideways to grapple, and they struggle against each other in such close proximity Don can smell the sweat and feel Raph's muscles tense and stretch and spasm. Raph is about to counter so Don takes preemptive measures. As their limbs knock against each other each strike, each block, each dodge, each grab is a war for control.
And at the end of it, for the first time in weeks, Don comes out the victor.