Great job to be had all around. The characterisation was amazing, the descriptions powerful, and it was just all around great fun. I also really love to hate Aquila; I love how you've made a character so unlikeable, and you do a damn fucking good job of it.

However, there were still points where things may have flopped slightly. For one, I think that the fight scene was too short and abrupt. You limited it mostly to wordplay, and the actual battle was very short. Whilst Aquila is probably more of an intellectual than a straight up fighter, I felt a little cheated by the lack of straight up combat, partially for my next reason.

The next reason is that I feel like you missed the vibe of Walden and Kaiban. From what I read, though Walden seems strict, he and Kaiban seem too connected together to just betray each other by the flip of a coin. Though Kaiban might've been in shock, and Abra be a master manipulator, I feel like you really just completely glossed over the bond between master and student. It probably would've been more accurate to leave it as an inconclusive skirmish.

Finally, I want to criticise something else; Kaiban seems to jump too easily from emotion to emotion. He's not a 'green' gladiator who hasn't fought before, he's spent an extensive period of time fighting ghosts and spirits with various powers. He'd probably be hard enough to take adversity. You haven't really shown any reason for his emotive shifts, and that sort of lack of clarity breaks immersion. I know that 'show don't tell' is an important concept, but in this case, in regards to the transition, you did neither.

All three elements basically lead to the fact that Walden's death, which should've been incredibly emotive and powerful, was deeply unsatisfying. You left only a nonchalant acknowledgement of its consequences, and it felt more like one of those phoned-in TV serial deaths that they throw in for high drama without reason. It can be done right, but it wasn't in this scenario; it felt like I wasn't given enough of a reason to care.

Don't get me wrong, you still did a great job. Every other aspect of the story was amazing. Just a few things I feel like you might've messed up.

Well, since this is technically your first battle, welcome to the circuit! I hope you get the success you deserve. :)

I'd first like to compliment you on your general writing style. It flowed well, went along logically, and had a satisfying three-act structure. I feel like you gave us a very interesting battle, with the gunplay and cardplay mixing together well. Not to mention, the battle was long, enjoyable, and logical. It made sense how everything melded together. Even the suprise ending, having gone back through, made perfect sense; Walden's abilities and the firearm at close range would definitely have had that effect. As such, it was the perfect by-the-numbers battle. This made a little bit boring, but because the battle worked so well, I had no problems.

However, I do have a slight issue with the way you characterised Abra. The way I pictured Aquila's character was in a far more suave light, something along the lines of a more destructive Jigsaw coupled with Lucifer. I feel like you just compressed his entire character into 'insane.' This wasn't exactly a satisfying reading of his character, and it sort of niggled with me as I read along. I feel like reading the demo would've shown that Abra was far more slimy and charming than you've presented him.

That said, its probably more accurate than Aquila's portrayal of Kaiban, since you nailed Abra's lust for performance art as Aquila presented it.

Finally, the opening felt like you'd just sort of sped through something that should've been longer. Why are the two transporting Wildfire? Why didn't they just banish his spirit? Why did they need to take him with them? How did wildfire escape? The opening was too fast, and full of plotholes.

That said, you also did great. My opinion is really just being picky. :)

Thanks Genericanon, your criticism is well received and well deserved in my opinion. I agree with you wholeheartedly about my flaws and do think I performed lacklusteredly on some fronts but here's my reasoning behind what I did.

I have never enjoyed long drawn out fight scenes, for me it's all white noise and what's important are the parts of character interactions, so I usually throw away fight scenes in a blur of sword clashing, card dodging, yaa daah yaa daah hooplah. Abra's fighting style is so mundane and limited I never feel like there's much reason to go in-depth about it. That's why I usually throw away the long bits in very short segments and very short bits in very long segments. Like I'm sure the sword dance him and Walden performed was twice the length of the conversation the three had together but because of where my priorities lie, it was half the length of the conversation.

While I do feel like yes I did gloss over their relationship as master and student, how I saw their connection was more that Walden was the old grizzled wolf, jaded and simply been around too long so he has seen things and knows how to deal with them as they come. However, Kaiban is the more younger pup, okay with some scenerios but still new to a lot of things so when faced with something he has never experienced before, in this case Abra, his actions are much more hesitant and timid.

I guess this is where your opinion and my intentions met at a bad crosswalk. While you saw it as Kaiban being a more experienced gladiator, I saw him as a complete greenhorn. Yes he may have dealt with your run-of-the-mill arsonists and perhaps a killer or two, but never in my opinion to the extent of Abra, to the magnitude of Abra so I felt completely justified completely limiting his palate of responses.

Now about the death scene. The fact that you saw it as anticlimatic, expecting one thing but getting another, satisfies me greatly. Because the death wasn't supposed to be super wired on emotion and power because to Abra, and from his viewpoint onto the reader, it wasn't supposed to be. Yes for Kaiban it's supposed to be and that means I have work to do to create this contrasting spectrum, to Abra it was quite literally just a game. It was a skit that Abra pulled that achieved the ending of the two dying. It lacks the anticipated emotion and hype because there wasn't supposed to be any and perhaps that's where I erred, I took a situation that's normally supposed to be dramatic and super powerful, and turned it into a simple charade pulled by Abra on a boy who doesn't know better.

Kaiban and Walden were 2D. While I get that there is very little time to actually form something out of them, they still feel like cardboard cutouts of what they are. I feel as if they could have been fleshed out better?

Fight scene is fine. I've read books who don't really go into detail on how the opponent moves or reacts and sometimes thats better. Wheel of Time describes typical swordfights by just stating the name of the move then what his opponent's response is, also by naming the move. Fight scenes don't need to be detailed. They just need the sense of danger and urgency. Aquila's piece accomplished just enough.

Abra felt off a bit. As I read on, the voice of Mark Hammil's Joker replaced what should have been something more refined, like Benedict Cumberbatch's Dr. Strange. How Abra was portrayed made him feel a lot more like Joker thats a bit more classy than a serial killer with class.

Fight wise, it was alright. It wasn't too brief nor was it too long. Dragging this kind of detailed fight on and on would have been bad so this is nice.

Finally made time to read Abra's piece. Enjoyed it a lot. Darker than mine, and I suppose we both had conflicting ideas about each other's characters. Abra, here, was much more Jihn-like, which I had initially gone down the route of but eventually just went off the more manic end, instead. I had a very enjoyable sense of menace and dread out of the piece written.

I'm amused by the points that we actually did agree on in the story. Some of the same beats in the stories really gave me some hope that I got some parts right. You made far greater use of the dead than I did. I could agree with the idea of it being a bit of a gore fetish, but given Abra's character, that seems rather fitting. Fetish and art can walk a fine line. And, of course, I thought it did a great job of establishing Abra as being a right-proper menace.

While I disagree with some of the characterization choices, I feel that they made the story very good. Abra was a wonder to behold, and if we ever do a rematch, I'm fairly confident I'll be able to catch his character better.

One particular sentence stood out to me as something that's in sore need of revision: From page 14, about halfway down the page, "Abra caught the man’s arm but Walden dissolved into mist that reformed back into a wolf which dashed back."

The image gets slowed down by all the clauses, and here, for me, the flow of the image broke down, and I started seeing it in slide-show style. Unsure how I'd revise that, at the moment, but it was the most noticeable stumbling block, for me.

Although I don't think much would be lost if the Jeden intro were cut out, I was actually a fan of the coffee shop introduction. And to the Jeden intro's credit, the time spent really grounded me in his perspective. Jeden's PoV is probably much more identifiable than Abra's. Reflecting on it, the piece would have felt very different if you hadn't done the intro, and since I really enjoyed the piece, that may mean that changing it would make the piece worse for me.

I was writing a sentence about how I would have liked Kaiban meeting Abra before the spirits encroached, but...given what I wrote just above, that also may be a suspect choice.
Play around with drafts, if revising these is a thing you do. I think having a before and after kind of moment, for Kaiban's perspective on Abra, could have some decent payout. At the same time, letting Abra be a menace for all of his screen time really does help to lock in that dread that comes off the digitized page.

Pretty sure I rambled. tl;dr: There's a sentence I didn't like. Although I would say I disagree with your characterization of Kaiban and Walden, I don't think that it was "wrong." Especially not for the piece, which I thought was very well done. It was all the better for the differences. I like the idea of Kaiban as the wet behind the ears amateur, and I thought you did it quite well. Abra was a delightful menace to read. I thought the coffee shop intro had an integral purpose to the way the story came together.