Round 1: Through the Fire and Flames [Elliot vs. Marshal]

Stupid.

Elliot could barely remember the distant haze that lead to him registering for this tournament. He knew that for the past few days he had been seeing red. Isaac betrayed his trust, ran off, and did something completely idiotic, and all the while he just stood by and did nothing. He was too weak, and he let his dependency on others get three people of the utmost importance to him hurt. Was it him or Isaac he was more furious with? Frankly, at this point, he couldn't even tell. The nauseous pit in his stomach, however, stayed the same.

Isaac couldn't be helped, though. The only improvement Elliot could make would be to himself. That was why he was here, wasn't it? He needed to get into the spirit of a hero again, and to get to that point he would need to get stronger. He had spent far too long away from the Digital World, and if he tried to get right back into the thick of things he knew he'd be torn apart. This was a world where might made right, and Elliot wasn't sure if he had nearly enough to work with.

Or, perhaps, he just wanted to hurt somebody. Just like he did when the D-Reaper was trying to kill Maia and Kuu. It was a thought he had for only a split second, and he swallowed it down in a panic just as quickly as it came, but the fact that such thoughts returned to him still left him deeply uncomfortable.

He stood across the battlefield from his opponent, currently trying to keep his breathing composed. The nerves going through his body came both due to them and due to himself. Nevertheless, despite his haggard-looking eyes, he worked up a shaky smile for Marshal. "Best of luck," he said, the softness in his voice slowly hardening up. He was here, and he would need to be strong. There was no more time for regrets.

Elliot held his Digivice close to his chest, squeezing his eyes shut as he focused on his Digivolution. MagnaAngemon may not have been much of a fighter, but he was the current strongest form that Elliot could access. It would have to do, right? However, it seemed like the spirits of Order had different plans for Elliot. A familiar energy, one similar to Gargoylemon's yet not quite, started to flood through Elliot's body. A purple shell of energy started spreading around him, widening near the bottom until it looked like a turtle shell. A thrashing white tail, growing every longer, shot out from the back of the shell. Near the front of the shell, a snake-like head with several razor sharp teeth popped out. The Spirit Fraction of Order, Sanidramon, had reawakened for the first time since Elliot had left the Digital World.

Slowly Elliot rose into a fighting stance.  He then turned to Marshal and Coronamon and nodded, the smile spreading across his face somewhat more confident now. "Ready when you are," he said, taking advantage of making the first move to keep a defensive brace.

Elliot blinked as he watched the attack come closer. It wasn't a very surprising move. A ranged attack at the right time could lead to an opponent overextending into a dodge, and that would open up the door for a melee attack that might not have landed otherwise. It was a strategy that Alicia and Iko had used against him and Isaac in quite a few sparring matches before.

Fortunately, this wasn't Elliot's first rodeo, and he was in just the right form to make the best of a situation like this. He waited for the attack to approach closer, counting down under his breath, before lunging down towards the dirt before. Sandiramon was a natural digger, capable of tearing through dirt as if it was water, and an attack like this marked the perfect opportunity to take advantage of this trait. Any dirt he kicked up as he dove would be burned to cinders in the face of the lion-shaped wave, and the sheer size of the attack would make it difficult for his sudden disappearance to be noted. Ideally, Flaremon wouldn't even notice Sanidramon's escape until the dust from the attack had settled.

When Elliot finally ducked below ground he finally let himself wince. He had avoided the attack, true, but with how near of a miss he needed to engineer he had felt the attack's boiling heat firsthand. If even a miss stung enough to make him buckle, he knew he'd have to keep careful to avoid a direct attack like that in the future.

A slow and steady approach would be the priority here. Elliot crawled forward into the darkness, keeping his pace measured so that Flaremon would have a far harder time picking up on the sounds and vibrations of churning earth. He swerved down and to the right as he tunneled, hoping a change in direction would throw off any attempts at tracking him down. Then, after a few seconds of travel, he started turning his focus back upwards. It was time to go back on the offensive.

At the mental count of fifteen Elliot leaped out from the dirt, arcing like a dolphin in mid-leap. As he hit the air he unhinged his jaw widely, firing a wide spread of light javelins at Flaremon. Then, after hitting the peak of his leap, he aimed himself right back down at the ground. If he could burrow again before Flaremon had a chance to retaliate, he could keep the pressure up at little personal risk to himself.

• Elliot dives into the dirt to avoid the Crimson Beast-King Wave, stung by the heat but otherwise unharmed.

• Elliot diverts away from Flaremon, then crests into the air to launch off a Rain of Pain.

• After firing his shot, Elliot aims to land and tunnel back into the ground. Don't let him!

Elliot's eyes widened in shock as Flaremon clutched his tail. It took some really fast reflexes to be able to catch a snake darting into its burrow. Clearly, the Flaremon's bulk didn't detract from its speed any. Elliot would have been very impressed, were it not for the fact that this meant he was now at his opponent's mercy. From this position there was quite a bit that Flaremon could do, considering that Elliot didn't exactly have a lot of limb to work with here.

Fortunately for Elliot, Flaremon seemed to be taking a rather flashy option. There was little more of a crowd pleaser than lifting someone's opponent high in the air to break them against the ground. What it had in flash it lacked in practicality, though, especially considering that Elliot was basically a giant, angry noodle. All he had to do was wait until gravity was in his favor so that he could strike back.

At the crest of Flaremon's pull, Elliot bend his head back as far as possible. With the heavy purple hood mounted to its back, and the way his upper body was far bulkier than the tapered tailtip Flaremon was clutching, it would be a trivial effort to loop back around towards Flaremon, especially with the sheer length of its fully-uncoiled body. Upon bending back Elliot then lunged to the side, trying to get one of his coils slung around Flaremon. At such close range, Elliot knew this would lead to both him and Flaremon being in prime position for a clobbering. This could get quite messy quite early on.

That was why it was all the more important that Elliot struck first. Whether successfully able to coil around Flaremon or tugged away before he could get his bearings, Elliot unhinged his jaw as wide as he possibly could. A light started to shine in the back of his throat, and mere seconds later a gilded lance came shooting from it. The Bao Kui of Sandiramon had made its first appearance, and it was heading towards Flaremon for as point blank of an impalement as possible.

• As Elliot is hefted into the air, he takes advantage of his snakelike physiology to try and wrap around Flaremon.
  
  Whether successfully wrapped or not, Elliot goes for the Fatal Lance.

The Flaremon immediately dropped his grapple to raise his guard, a possibility that Elliot believed himself to be quite prepared for. After all, he currently had the advantage in this engagement, and he was fairly certain that the crushing force of his coils would be able to put on enough pressure and snap the guard. Without having to fight against Flaremon's grip he hastened the speed and tightness of his coiling, hoping that he could get himself in position for the Fatal Lance sooner rather than later.

Maybe if he wasn't so focused on his offense, he would have noticed the shimmering orbs on the wrist guards of Flaremon's gauntlets. Instead Elliot applied his vice as harshly as possible, only to experience a rather rude awakening when an orb of fire came shooting from below, forming a bubble of rolling fire that left Flaremon surrounded. The force of the shield's emergence left Elliot's grip on Flaremon compromised, and the rolling flames left the right side of his body rather singed. It was a primarily defensive technique, so Elliot wasn't in dire straits just yet, but from the hiss of pain that escaped his throat it was clear that he was feeling the force of that blow.

He turned to Flaremon and Marshal, muttering something nearly inaudible. Then he promptly realized why: the lance that he had brought up to his throat was still blocking the way. He promptly turned to spit it into his tail, turning back to the duo with a sheepish smile on his face. "Nice thinking," he said, his voice a far more warm than the initial tension at the start of the fight might have indicated. Elliot was starting to come alive a little, which was rather ironic considering the red tone of his still-smoking scales. "I'm gonna have to step it up, huh?"

And surely enough, Elliot did step it up. Once more he surrounded Flaremon, but this time rather than actually wrap around the Digimon he instead kept a very healthy distance. He also made sure to keep his uninjured flank facing Flaremon, the audience now getting a view of his more injured side as a result. Right now, his goal was more to size the fire lion up than anything. Every so often he turned his head as if to lunge at the lion, only to pull back just as quickly as he pounced. When not doing that he made flurries of jabs with his Bao Kui lance, poking at every spot around Flaremon's shield to try and see how he would react. If he could get a sense of how Flaremon fought when backed into a corner, maybe he could leverage it to his advantage later.

• Elliot tightens his grip as harshly as possible. However, he is singed by Flaremon's shield and promptly breaks the grapple.
• Elliot takes advantage of this downtime to summon his Bao Kui lance, poking at his opponent's shield with lance stabs and jaw snaps to see whether he keeps his guard up or lowers it.