Lina runs directly at Messa, activating her ability in the process. She's able to evade Messa's low swinging attack by jumping and slamming him in the face with a mentally charged punch in the process!
But, something was strange. After the punch connected, Messa didn't take anything resembling damage. But Lina didn't let up. She followed up her previous attack with a physically enhanced knee to Messa chest. But again, he blocked it. Unfortunately for Messa, only a moment after he blocked that attack, as Lina was winding back for another physical hit, his head was smacked down by a sudden burst of mental energy! Messa, thinking he's being attacked by another flurry of mental attacks, quickly raises his mental defenses, exactly what Lina was banking on! With another physically enhanced knee to Messa's chest, he drops his ring blade, and she's able to continue with a three kick combo while he was in the air!
Messa's taken two hefty strings of hits so far. I respect the guy, but can he make the comeback? I can't help but feel a little obligated to help him, but...
"Ah, so it's a delayed hit, then?" He says, whipping a but of blood off his lip. "Your ability, that is. Now that I know that, I can defeat you easily."
"Don't get too cocky." She jabs back. With her words, of course. Her mentally enhanced fist came just after though.
Messa blocks with his right arm, and then holds his arm up in a really weird way. He dodges the next physical attack thrown at him, while mentally enhancing his body. Suddenly, his arm almost launches itself at Lina's head, resulting in a direct hit! Messa doesn't let this opportunity go to waste either, as he kicks her in the leg, resulting in her starting to trip, but Messa just wanted her to lose her footing, as he then uses his other arm to uppercut her into the air!
Lina tries to swap her defences to mental, but Messa already took that into account! As she's falling back down, Messa swings his arms upward, and summons a new ring blade, with the edge slicing her chin open! As she slams on the ground, barely keeping her footing, she clutches her open wound with both of her hands.
With another swing of his arms, Messa throws the ring blade into the air, and charges an extremely powerful mentally charged punch! In response, Lina focuses as much energy into mental defenses as she can, and uses both arms to block against Messa's attack!
But... even though she succeeds, his fist stops directly at her arms. Is it possible that the pushback from defense is delayed as well. But there's a far greater danger to Lina than Messa's punch! The spinning saw blade of a ring blade that's about to fall on her shoulder! If she doesn't block it with a physical forcefield now, a wound that impactful will end the battle for sure! She could even lose her arm in the process!
But... there's no time! She literally blocked Messa's mental punch!
"For what it's worth, I'm glad you helped me teach Isaac the ropes.
"
But suddenly... The grass on her tattoo stops glowing... But the bird starts to glow yellow instead!
She's barely able to physically enhance her shoulder to prevent the blow from being devastating. It's not like she came out of it without a moderately large cut, but she can keep fighting, by all accounts.
Lina tosses the ring blade to the side, lodging it inside a nearby tree, far out of Messa's reach. Doubly so, since the delayed blowback from Messa's attack finally kicked in, launching him far backwards, back where he dropped his first ring blade. At least he got that one back.
"Ah man, I figured you had other abilities, but I didn't think that you'd have the perfect ability to defend against by improvised pincer attack." Messa says, scratching his head. "One thing you may have not noticed, Isaac. Is that if someone has Psynesis specialty in a mental technique, then they're fundamental mental techniques will come out way faster than their fundamental physical techniques. So they're slower at attacking with physical attacks, and defending against physical attacks."
I have to remind him, "You already said that."
"I did? Well, the point is that you shouldn't have been able to block that. So I'm assuming this "Yellow Bird" ability is able to make you use your fundamental physical techniques at the same speed you can use your mental techniques."
"You're a fool if you think you have my ability fully figured out." Lina says, crossing her arms.
"You're right, you still have one more ability in the night sky depicted on your tattoo. But I do know that each ability uses their own individual resources, since that entire time, the green glow on your tattoo slowly started to fade."
"Looks like I better speed this up, then." She says, wiping some of the blood off her shoulder, before charging back in!
But Messa was not going to have it. He uses his far superior range to zone her out for as long as possible. With him constantly backing up as well, Lina kept trying to approach, while constantly blocking Messa's long range attacks. Despite having to constantly use physical defenses for the ring blade, it's clear that she can almost instantly, since she constantly throws out mentally charged punches, even if it's clear that he's out of her range.
After a little bit of this defensive play, eventually, when Lina was trying to hit Messa with an uppercut, she got her arm on the inside of the ring blade. She quickly gets a hold of the other end, and tries to yank it out of Messa's hands!
So, the two start to have an intense tug of war game. Although Lina is at a huge disadvantage, since she can't put her fingers on the sharp edge of the ring blade, whereas Messa has a proper handle. Even still, the two try their hardest! I thought Messa would win this easily, but it appears to be way more evenly matched than I thought.
...until I see Messa make a slight smirk. Turns out he was just making a front, as he purposely lets go of the ring blade, causing Lina to stab herself in the chest from pulling it too hard! Again, she only got moderate cuts, but what's more concerning it that Messa immediately dashes away again.
Unfortunately for Messa this time, she very quickly catches up, and immediately starts a nasty blockstring. Since she could swap between mental attacks and physical attacks so damn fast, he couldn't go a second without blocking an attack incorrectly! Although she wasn't able to convert those hits into long combo strings, which I can't tell is something I should praise Messa's defense for, or if it's just a weakness of Lina's offense.
Eventually, Messa's power starts to drop. I can feel it. It's dropping at a really fast rate actually... Hey, hey, are you okay?!
I can't sense anything from Messa anymore, and since I'm slowly falling behind with the two constantly moving around. I try to run and get a better view and...
He's dodging all her attacks? With him even really trying that hard, every hit she's throwing at him he's moving out of the way, with a stone cold face. Ah-!
He's using Body's Mind! He can dodge so easily because of the greatly increased reaction speed. Since her abilities only change how she uses the fundamental techniques of Psynesis, there's nothing that she has that can trick the rigid conditions of the fight or flight response.
...Or so I thought. Because then all of a sudden, the glowing yellow bird is very clearly not glowing, when in return, the stary night sky on her tattoo starts to glow a nice velvet.