The battle began. Tifa swung the long piece of metal around, trying to draw blood from the man in black. He had immediately taken the defensive, dodging her expert blows with amazing speed. She was slightly startled after a few minutes of this, no one had survived her attacks this long for three years. It was an exhilarating experience. She flicked her blade through once, grazing his wrist. Surprised, the man in black reversed the battle, attacking her now with the huge blade. Tifa nimbly avoided his blows, but he was driving her back towards the ledge.
Tifa was slightly nervous now. The man kept attacking, and she could block a hundred thrusts, but not the hundred and first. She could thwart fifty slashes, but the fifty-first came through. And now she was up against the low rail around the platform, trying not to slip and fall.
"I admit it, you are better than I am!" she called out.
"Then...why are you smiling?"
Tifa was indeed grinning. "Because I know something you don't know."
"And what is that?"
"I am not left-handed." And with that she switched hands, and turned the tide of battle.
The man in black retreated hurriedly at her sudden advance. Tifa's blade flashed in the rising sun, swishing with blinding quickness. Once again, the man was wounded, and he hastily ran towards the wall of the entrance, but Tifa drove him around and back, and the ledge was again a factor in the deadly fight.
The man in black was at the ledge, bent backwards over the barrier. "There's something--I ought--to tell you," he grunted, trying with all his might to regain his footing.
Tifa was smiling with the exhilaration of the coming victory, holding her blade at his throat. "And what's that?"
The man shoved her back with a sudden burst of strength. "I'm not left-handed either." The mammoth blade switched hands, and the battle was finally joined.
Tifa could hardly block the man in black's attacks. He kept coming! His blade flew, seemingly on its own, attacking her and pushing her back, back, as she did her best to avoid injury. With a final heave of the sword, the man in black disarmed her.
Forcing her tears back, she dropped to the ground. "Kill me quickly."
"I would as soon destroy the Planet as an artist as yourself. But, since I can't have you following me either..." He hit her over the head with the handle of his weapon, and she fell over, unconscious. "Please understand I hold in the highest regard." He ran off through the entrance, finding the trail Fezzik and Palmer had left, and running through the doorway labelled "Ghost Square."
Palmer and Fezzik watched the man in black approaching from the graveyard of the Gohst Hotel. "He beat Tifa! Hey-hey! He must be somethin' with the sword-thing!" Palmer exclaimed. "Look, Fezzik, finish him when he comes up here. Your way."
"Oh, thank you, Palmer," agreed Fezzik cheerfully. Then, after a moment's thought: "Which way is may way?"
Palmer exhaled impatiently, and gestured to the ground. "Pick up one of those big rocks. When he comes out of the airtube, hit him with the rock!"
"Right....it just doesn't seem very sportsmanlike, does it?"
Palmer growled as deeply as his high-pitched voice allowed him to. "You think I care about sportsmanship?!? Kill the man in black!" He then pulled Aeris to her feet, and carried her further along the path, out of sight.
Fezzik threw an experimental rock at a shadow fifty feet away. Swoosh. Dead center. So he readied his arm, and waited for the man in black to appear...
The man in black was flung out of the airtube into the false graveyard. A rock smashed behind him, missing his head by mere inches, and a huge shadow emerged several yards away from behind a gravestone. "I did that on purpose; I didn't have to miss," it said.
"I believe you," said the man in black. "So what now?"
"We face each other as God intended. Sportsmanlike. No tricks, no weapons, just skill against skill alone."
"So.......you put down your rock, and I'll put down my sword, and we'll kill each other like civilized people?" The huge shadow nodded, moving into the light. It was an equally huge man. "I think the odds are slightly in your favor at hand fighting..."
The giant shrugged. "I can't help being the biggest and the strongest. I don't even exercise."
The man in black nodded weakly, dropped his sword to the ground, and got into a fighting stance.
A/N: Fight comes next chapter. Too tired to write the rest of this. - Desdemona