There was a moment of silence at Vanitas' words, and then a low rumble of a growl as he turned to look at the interloper. He had no idea who this strange person was, much less whether they were program or user but he was no forgery. He was the enforcer of the grid. Clu's greatest success. Nothing about him was forged.

Besides, it wasn't even like his armor was all that similar to this stranger's, with the possible exception of the helmet and those were everywhere on the Grid. All you really had to do was look at the Black Guard to see that.

There was a moment of silence at the first comment. Cat. He knew the definition of that word, although he wasn't sure how he knew he knew, or why. Still, after a brief moment of digging through his memory, he found it. A small four-legged creature Users sometimes kept as pets. Why it should have his tongue, he didn't know, but he knew that he would be able to take one down in the extremely unlikely occasion that one managed to even qualify for the preliminary Games.

Still, he said nothing, although he let his growl fade away to a background sort of rumble as he watched the other look him over. He wasn't worried about what the other would see.

The second comment, on the other hand, was something he wasn't about to let pass by. He was never unarmed, and he wordlessly - and not once breaking 'eye' contact - reached behind him for his disc. He didn't split it this time. No need to let all his secrets go. Instead, he brought it humming to life before turning and slicing neatly through a bit of twisted metal in a single smooth motion. He was not unarmed, and the flat look he seemed to be giving Vanitas as he once again turned to face him as much as said so.

The word 'frisbee' barely registered in Rinzler's data banks. Some obscure User term no doubt. Probably not a complimentary one either, given the tone. But if he wanted to assume his discs were something less then they were, that was perfectly fine by Rinzler. Not that he liked the idea of being underestimated, of course, but he could at the very least prove that doing so was a bad idea. There was a reason no one tended to survive the Game Grid for long, after all, at it wasn't all due to Clu's prowess with a lightcycle.

Still, the question was met by nothing more than silence. If Rinzler was going to speak it certainly wasn't going to be just yet. Instead, he merely split his disc, before settling into his own battle stance. Yeah, he had what it took to play.

Fire was a rare thing on the Grid. The very fabric of the world wasn't made for it. But that didn't mean that Rinzler didn't recognize it for what it was. This wasn't something he could block with his discs. Or not successfully anyway.

But that didn't mean he was out of ideas. He'd have to recalculate things, recalibrate to not being in the enclosed space of the Disc Wars capsules, but that was easy. He hadn't always fought in enclosed spaces. It wasn't something one forgot. It was just a matter of waiting for precisely the right moment (duck under the fireball as it came whizzing over his head) and reacting (turn the duck into a roll as it began to track) appropriately (jump over the nearest fireball, turn, and throw disc).

Nothing to it, really, and he smiled underneath the helmet as he landed once again.

The fact that his disc was swatted away meant little to Rinzler. It was a rare enough occurrence that the first throw made any mark, and he'd simply need to watch for it on the return trip. It wouldn't do to have his own disc end up derezzing him.

For now though, he simply brought up his second disc to block the blade in a motion that had long since become second nature, sparks yet again erupting as he did so. But he wasn't worried. Discs were meant to hold together under even the most unbearable of pressures. A weapon was nothing, and he turned as his opponent launched into a flip, noting the effect left behind by the slash - a light ribbon, perhaps? It certainly looked like nothing else that he'd seen before and even a small light ribbon could derezz someone. So instead of trying to bring up his disc to block yet again (no one could block a light ribbon) he simply turned into yet another a dodge, catching his returning disc on the way out of the strike range of Vanitas' blow.

Of course he hadn't attacked. There was more to the games then just attacking. A good player knew when to hold back, when to defend, and when to hold his ground. It had taken him cycles to learn that, and yes, it very rarely saw use in the Games. But in a world were one hit alone could be deadly it was a very useful skill.

And now he had both his discs yet again.

The lightning, on the other hand, did absolutely nothing to stop him. If anything, it gave him a slight burst of energy as he came to meet his foe once again, one disc spinning out across the distance between them on a curved path that would hopefully catch his opponent in the side, while the second was held to block the oncoming weapon. Time to test his opponent's reaction speed.

Rinzler wasn't surprised to his disc going wild again. Even if it hadn't been for his opponent's agility it wasn't uncommon for opponents to dodge the first few blow anyway. But that was for the better. The more they dodged, the more he was able to focus in on their strengths. And for this fight, it was looking a lot more like he'd need to rely on hand-to-hand maneuvers. No problem there. It was just a shift from one line of processing to another, and he made it all but instantly as he brought the disc still in his hand up to block the blows.

More interesting, perhaps was the way the almost persistent low rumbling hitched for a moment, before rising into a growl, and then into a single word. "No." His voice was a low rasp of a thing, shattered and twisted nearly as much as the growl itself had been, but still. A word was a word and it was at the very least still recognizable as such.

He wasn't about to let on to what he really was though. Anyone who was so willing to fight him didn't need to know that, and instead Rinzler took that moment and used it to launch himself into a jump of his own, twisting to aim a kick at his opponent's midsection - and neatly catching the flying disc on it's return journey in the process.

Of course he could. He didn't see much use to most of the time, but that didn't mean he was incapable of it. He was, after all, a fully functioning program. Still, he didn't make any further comment on the matter. There wasn't anything to add to the comment that wouldn't simply be useless lines thrown in as if they were padding.

The kick that was sent his way was easy enough to dodge, and he rolled easily out of the way of the blow. The ice shards, on the other hand, were another something he wasn't quite familiar with. The disc had never had anything like seasons. Still, he had every reason to believe that it was some form of attack, and he brought his discs to deflect the ones he could.

It wasn't quite enough, as one slammed into his shoulder, leaving behind a vague feeling of not-quite-there that he hadn't felt before in his long cycles.

There was another low rumble from Rinzler as his opponent came gliding past. Glitching or not, there was no time to stop and scan his code for errors that might have cropped up, no time to see how easy the fix would be to make. He'd just have to fight on. After all, if it had been intended to derezz him, it already would have.

But he wasn't about to let more of the shards hit if he could help it, and this time he raised a disc to deflect them away from his body. The other disc took care of blocking the swipes as he took a brief moment to see what was around them - and he found what he was looking for not far away. It would take precision, but he knew he was good for that and instead of returning an attack he stepped back and sideways, as if he was retreating just far enough to put a wall at his back.

Unsurprisingly, Rinzler refused to answer the question. It had likely only been meant to try and get a rise out of him. But in a place where there wasn't the advantage of sudden gravity shifts, he was going to move to take every advantage he could.

Not that he was about to turn his back to his opponent now. That would have been courting disaster, if that swing was any indication. So instead, he let himself be pushed back. Once, twice, and then on the third swing he moved, leaping back out of the way of the blow, twisting in midair to push off of the wall behind him. Time to see how well his latest opponent dealt with with attacks descending from above.

It wasn't the temperature that bothered Rinzler, nor the mist condensing around him. There was nothing to him that could freeze quite like might have been expected, and nothing to fear from the freezing mist coiling around his armor. The sharpness, on the other hand, was, and while he managed to avoid a few, there were far to many to avoid them all, sharp spikes cutting harsh lines into his armor. Lines that glowed in faded echoes of the circuit lines of his suit, sparks of light tracing squared-off lines for a flicker of a second before dying away.

It wouldn't derezz yet, but it was an irritation all the same, and there was a cold calculating stare as Rinzler's estimate of his opponent slid gracefully from where it had been down into Threat : Eliminate. No more playing. Now things were serious, as Rinzler's motion slowed for a half a moment, then went still. The stalking predator, calculating the options. Looking for the right angles, the right way to move, the way to best take advantage of how the opponent might move.

Still, it was only a second of pause, and then he was moving, throwing his disc once more as he came at his opponent, not so much out of the hopes that this time it would hit but so that he could have a hand free for whatever came.

More technologically advanced then a robot, although either would technically work by way of explanation. Not that Rinzler would offer that selfsame explanation, of course. It was bad enough that he'd let himself get wounded, had let on to some of his nature. Worse still for it to have been his own fault.

But while it cut past a sense of security, that was good. The games were static, dull. Most were derezzed as a matter of course, not really even worth the challenge. This though, this was something else. Something that called to deadly fighter lurking in his circuits. The terror of the Grid and he wasn't going to be so easy to wound next time.

Case in point: the fact that this time he dodged the arcs of the Keyblade as if he didn't even need to think about it. For all that he came rushing, Vanitas might have been swinging at water for all the good it did. Nor was Rinzler content to simply avoid the attacks. He hadn't been from the start of the fight. Instead, he waited, watching as Vanitas drew nearer before launching himself into the air yet again. There wasn't any wall to push off of this time, but it would do, he told himself, as he struck down with the disc still in his hand.

Even with the source of the damage being less than clear, it told Rinzler two very useful things. First, it served as confirmation of the fact that Vanitas wasn't a program. Second, and perhaps more important, was the fact that it also indicated that he wasn't a User. What he actually was was something Rinzler couldn't even begin to classify, but he knew that an injured User wouldn't have reacted so and that was enough.

If this one happened to die, so be it. Clu wouldn't care about the continued existence of an anomaly.

Still, even though he'd managed to get in a solid hit, he wasn't about to leave one of his discs simply lying on ground. Even one might well be enough to let an enemy at the very code of his being and he wasn't about to risk that, assuming he could even understand it. As a matter of fact, he didn't even wait until Vanitas was done speaking before beginning to move, keeping an eye on other other as he went. He had nothing to say, and only the tone of his rumble let on to his irritation at the description of his weapons as frisbees.

Besides, given the look of things, his opponent wouldn't have waited for a response either way, and he slotted his discs together again as he watched the cloud come his way. He doubted the lightning would be enough to hurt him, but how did you hurt a shadow? In lieu of a proper answer, he decided that best course of action would be caution, as he carefully stepped away from the dark cloud.

If there was one thing that Rinzler didn't know how to fight, it was a shadow. True, there were plenty of shadows on the Grid, but none of them fought like this. Even the gridbugs were physical enough that you could actually touch them. This though... short of finding a way to flood the ruins with light he couldn't think of any way to draw out his opponent.

But as long as he was ready for it, that would be a problem. Sooner or later, his foe would reappear. For now, he'd make the most of what he could, eyes scanning over the twisted ground to find the best place to make a stand, the best place to arrange for something.

And in the meantime, he simply left a portion of his processes to monitor for his opponent's reappearance as he stalked carefully across the ruins.

In that much, at least, Rinzler and Vanitas were the same. As long as it got the job done, it didn't matter in the least how a renegade program was derezzed, and the fight style he'd developed over the cycles was one of brutal efficiency. Whatever got the job done, was done, and he could no more ignore the flickering shadow then he could leave a process half-finished. And yet, there was a sharp tension to his motions as he stalked over to the other side of the rubble, as if he couldn't quite convince himself that it was right to leave himself so unprotected - he'd seen the color of the wisp of darkness - but also as if there was a deep seated urge in him to strike out at whatever was wrong. Something so deep-seated, in fact, that he barely thought about it.

What he found on the other side of the rubble did little to improve his mood. An irrelevant enemy, barely even worth the time it would take to derezz it. He hadn't thought to see something the equal of the gridbugs here, and there was a snarl in his nigh-eternal rumble as his disc flashed down to put the wayward Unversed out of its misery. What had been the point of sending him after something like that?

It would have been a lie to say that ambushes didn't have their place on the Grid. There were, after all, any number of places to hide, especially in the Outlands. It was merely that as far as Rinzler was concerned, an ambush came at the beginning of the fight, not during the middle.

(There weren't really a lot of things he had fought lately that had a habit of vanishing in the middle of the fight.)

It was only thanks to the fact that he'd been expecting his opponent to return from wherever he'd vanished that he was able to react as quickly as he did, as he brought his disc around just in time to keep the Keyblade from striking true. The crystals of ice, on the other hand, were more difficult, and try as he might, he couldn't steer clear of all of them. It was maddening really, feeling the effected places hitch and stutter as he tried to move. But glitching or no, Rinzler had noticed the patterns on the ground and he wasn't going to let this chance go to waste. Bad enough that trying to move felt like he was trying to force commands through a server crippled by too much activity simple to get his body to move like it was. Leaving the possibility open for another attack of that magnitude was something he would much prefer to avoid.

There was the slightest of pauses as Vanitas moved to stand somewhere where the floor wasn't cracking, and then Rinzler moved. It was less fluid than his motions had been before, hampered as it was by the aftereffects of the ice crystals, but he didn't seem to have lost any of his agility, as he leapt into the air, bringing his discs crashing down onto the cracked part of the floor. Forced to bear the weight of not only Rinzler himself but also the force of his momentum, the ground quite naturally broke at the point of stress, as the crack widened. The ground was no longer stable, and even if he fell first he would have the satisfaction of knowing that what his opponent had thought was safe ground was now shattering under his feet.