Editing Tactics For Hosts and Guests (section)

==On Home Ground, Initiate No Action==
[[Mayhiros Xenon]] shook his head and sighed deeply.  "Is this why you're here?  To chastise me for a situation you don't understand?"

"You took a whole town hostage."

"They asked for my help."

"Lying dog!"

Xenon gripped his weapons, and his temper, tighter.  "To my shame, you provoked me to recklessness [[The_Crow_and_Cloud_Formation|at Madai]].  To my regret, you drove me from the field [[Strategies_For_Mountains_and_Valleys|in Yabu Valley]].  I'd hoped you wouldn't come here."

"Because you're afraid."

"I am a horselord of the [[The Marukan Alliance|Marukan]], oh Ivory Dragon, and that means many things.  'Coward' is not among them."

The Ivory Dragon, [[Choshu Ishi]], bent his head for a moment's concentration and specks of glittering mica began to rise away from his gunzosha armor, forming an Aura of Invulnerability around him.  "[[An Oathsworn Circle|My lords]], too, are Marukani, yet I do not shrink from any battle."

"[[Storm of Amber|One of your lords]], yes.  And a good man, by all accounts, no matter what [[Mayhiros Tesos|my uncle]] or [[Mayhiros Ruja|cousin]] have to say on the matter."  Xenon gazed past Ishi, out the gate and towards his village, full of proud, free horselords.  "But the rest are using him for their own ends."

"My lords are heroes!"

"No!"  Xenon shook his head.  "They each have dreams they would see fulfilled, and they would change my people into something else to see them come to pass.  They would use the souls of others to their own needs met.  Is that a hero's mark?

"You prize heroism, Choshu Ishi.  If you would be a hero to the Marukan, learn to ride as my people do, turn away from these Solars and help me drive them and their ambitions from this land."  

The Ivory Dragon seemed barely to listen to Xenon's words; he shouted, "I would be a hero to the whole Scavenger Lands!"  More white Earth Essence bled into his anima, and Xenon saw his muscles ripple with the Strength of Stone.

Xenon dropped into his own Lightning Hoof Form and grew calm as his anima called the waving grasses of the Marukani plain up from the ground beneath his horse's feet.  He held up his jade powerbow, Cloud of Pollen.  "I have learned new tricks in the weeks since last we fought, Ishi.  If you will not join me, you'd do well to turn back to your masters now."

"My lords will thank me, all of Marukan will thank me, for ridding the land of a coward and traitor!"  Ishi gave a final twist of his wrist, activating the Five-Dragon Blocking Technique.  Xenon saw and did the same.  And then, battle was joined.