[i]"I've seen weird ways to step into a fight…"[/i] Ichi-gou had turned his head towards the signal of someone popping into the Hall a short distance away, but he'd held off on flying through the rock wall and going for their throat to see just who it was and what they'd do first.

Having some guy come strolling out of a passageway and up to the bar like it was Friday night, that hadn't really been what he'd imagined.  He made pretty much a beeline for Ichi and the bar right when he showed up too, but he hadn't even originally been looking in Ichi's direction.  That would have made Ichi's eye-ridges raise, if they could move.  Had the guy in the costume sensed his presence despite his body's lack of much to sense?  Or was he one of the type that could pick up on souls or somesuch?

And he wasn't violent.

That was the other detail about the newcomer that stayed Ichi's claws for a few moments, and left him just eying the fellow as he settled down at the bar and floated himself a drink, acting all chatty.  The Warpy lichy guy from his first fight, that dude had oozed batshit-crazy violent from a distance.  Hell, he'd had an aura coming off his body that polluted anything it touched.  Ichi hadn't felt much need to pause when trying to kill him beyond just taking the time to figure out how to do it best.

And the dragon guy from his second fight, the one he'd just gotten done crippling?  He'd looked like an emo pussy at first, albeit a big one, but then had come roaring back onto the scene while throwing handfuls of fire.  He might have been mistaken for a passerby at first glance, but his return had cleared up any doubts on his intentions.

This twerp was saying that some old Greek wine was strong stuff, which Ichi himself had a glass and bottle on the marble counter that were close to  80 proof.  

“Luckily this isn’t poison. Otherwise I’d be in real trouble... don’t you think so?”

Ichi-gou didn't comment, or even so much as part his mandibles.  He just logged that little datum about poison being potentially effective against the guy.  He also didn't verbally tell the chatty fellow that he was oozing a lethal toxin from his shell that very moment.  How the fellow could tell the drink wasn't poisonous, but didn't seem to mind that he was a few feet away from some of the nastiest toxins ever made he didn't quite know, and couldn't quite tell if the guy was just bluffing on the matter.

“Anyway… I hope you’ll have some answers for me. Perhaps you’ll be able to enlighten me. Do you have anything to do with the vision I saw in the middle of the desert? I saw this place,” Ichi-gou primed himself to react the moment the talkative guy's hand swept out over the hall, but he didn't detect any sort of energy coming from him during the gesture. “But I never saw you amongst all the fighters that were there. In the vision, I mean.”
[i]"So does that mean he's got some sort of ESP ability?"[/i] Ichi-gou mused.  [i]"Or did the Hosts entice him here with a promise like they made me, but they did it with that annoying sort of vague vision that gets used as a plot device in tv shows all the time?"[/i]

But the next words he said…They were a damned bit more interesting than the little comments prior.

“Let us say you were my opponent for the final round of this grand tournament…"

Ichi-gou's thoughts focused on that line.  He watched the display of evidently magical talent with the glass and the wine alright, but this guy's words right then and there, those caught Ichi's attention like a bear-trap snagging a rat.

He'd posed it as a potentiality, sure.  But he had said the words 'opponent' and 'final round'.  Those were –big- words for Ichi-gou.  Those were monumentally huge words, considering the prize he was fighting this contest for.  His face was an expressionless insectile mask, so the real impact of the strangers words didn't show on his features, but what he'd said had way, way, way more of an impact on the android than his display of floating a cup and blowing it up in the air.  What he'd essentially said was that Ichi-gou could potentially be [i]this close;[/i] picture Ichi-gou holding up two of his claw-tips a fraction of a fraction of a millimeter from one another,  to getting to finally go [i]home.[/i]  He was just a step away from bringing back to life from nonexistence everything that had been taken from him years ago.

All he had to do was win this final fight.

There was a moment of silence in the Hall, following the stranger's words and the tiny tinkling of glass and wine falling to the floor.  Ichi-gou hadn't really responded or moved from his statue-like pose during the man's monologue, and he stayed that way just a bit more, looking him over.  He took note of his height, his probable weight, the length of his arms and legs, and the old-style look of his clothes.

The only really notable features he genuinely cared about was the aura he seemed to have when Ichi-gou had his antennae scan him for any magical signatures that matched up to anything he'd detected in the past.  The guy's sword featured a similar effect, so Ichi-gou tagged it as a magical artifact.

Then he was right in the guy's face a millisecond later, reaching for his throat with a clawed hand amid the shattered shrapnel of the bar he'd just plowed straight through to cover the several feet between them in the shortest path to his target he could take.

Ichi-gou had pulverized the entire structure with the force of his take-off, smashing through the solid rock, wood, and metal of the display stand and countertop like it had been made of little more than a sheet of foil.  His upper right arm was aimed straight at Vincent's neck ahead of the flying the flying rubble and the rest of his body, aiming to rip right into the guy's brainstem if it wasn't avoided.