#sierra104

With that the countdown in his mind's eye hit zero, as his opponents sprang into existence, and his hands closed around his blades, drawing them as the first lunged in for the attack. Fred met the first head on, weaving around the lunging strike with ease as he gave a short, sharp kick to the hardlight enemy to send it sprawling even as the second made it's move, it's attack blocked by one of Fred's own blades as he whirled to dispatch it with his second knife. One down. 

Divide and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence. Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemies' resistance without having to fight.

The music was loud, it's beat resounding pleasantly in time with his heartbeat as he caught the faintest sound of his first and third opponents approaching, knowing that the fourth and fifth were en route. He spun his blades between his fingers, as his lips quirked in a slight half-smile and he shifted his weight from leg to leg waiting for them, unconsciously moving in time to the song. While on the battlefield he was stoic, still as a statue until the time to spring into action came, off the battlefield he was an eager, energetic dynamo waiting to be released. 

If you know the enemy and you know yourself, you need not fear the results of 100 battles. 

Within range, he went on the offensive rather than the defensive this time, meeting his first and third head on. The hardlight opponents, run by combat deck AI, weren't expecting it, and it gave him the time he needed. A well aimed blade soared end over end, hit it's mark only seconds before his arm struck the other across the throat, clotheslining it. A quick dropkick to keep it down, and he turned the bounce of impact into a quick pivot in the air to turn, dropping into a crouch on landing to retrieve his thrown blade from the one he'd downed. 

Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory. For it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated.

The opponent he'd downed with the strikes stirred just to his right as he watched the approach of the fourth and fifth, and absent-mindedly he brought his blade down into it's chest hard enough that the hardlight fractured away and the tip of his blade hit the floor. "Step it up a notch, I'm getting bored here." He chuckled - hardlight opponents with human limitations were only so interesting. "Five second queue then start routine seven." 

Speed is the essence of war.

Five seconds to finish one routine and begin the next with a clean slate. Fred-104 pushed off, sprinting the short distance between himself and the final two targets without a noticeable rise in his heartbeat, throwing himself into the air at the end to pivot mid-air over the heads of his two targets, sinking blades in as hard as he could into the tops of their heads and letting their defeated forms steady him as he brought his body over and stuck the landing, their shells remaining just long enough for him to regain his footing before they vanished.  "Routine seven, engaged."  Sangheili, strong and agile, armed with their long plasma blades, striding towards him at the outskirts of the ring, earned another tight smile and there it was, the tiny surge of excitement that made his heartbeat quicken and the blood rush through his veins so that he could hear it in his ears even over the music. There it was, that feeling that he'd missed so much these past several years.  Feeling alive.  "Come on, give me a challenge..."

The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemies not coming, but on our own readiness to receive our enemy.

As the music played, Fred-104 laughed as he engaged his only worthy adversaries.