OPEN | so be easy and free,

[poleaxed]

WHO: Jone and thou
WHAT: jock stuff.
WHEN: Post Orzammar.
WHERE: The training yard & Tennis Court.
NOTES: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

a. FOR TRAINING.

If you need a sparring partner, Jone is at the main training yard during most daylight hours. She may have promised to work over some new techniques with you. She may have promised to assess your skills. She may have never spoken to you before, and you're just here to train.

For once, she isn't cajoling from the sidelines, trying to get new combatants. That doesn't make herself easy to miss, though. The self-described six-foot bitch, ginger hair shining in the sun, is always up for a go.

"Hullo, then. Let's get to it."

b. FOR TENNIS.

Or maybe you're here for another sort of skill. The Tennis Court is completed and ready, and Jone looks to be happily in her element. Shirt-sleeves peeled back to reveal solid muscle, she bounces a tennis ball against her racket, ready and waiting.

Maybe you were promised a match. Maybe you want a rematch. Maybe you're just curious. If you stare a second to long, Jone will wave you over. "Oi! We doing this or not, mate? If I stand out around much longer I'll start peeling."

c. FOR EVERYHING ELSE.

There's wildcard.

(I'm up for anything. If you're not sure, feel free to hmu.)

Comments

[poleaxed]

For Si's benefit, Jone is holding a wooden sword. She isn't as good with a sword, and more importantly, most folk in this world use one. It's a longsword, no seaxe, no rapier-- though the though of making that out of wood is a laugh.

She holds herself in a defensive stance, one hand open, sword currently serving as defense. She ought to have a shield as well, but she's worried she'd accidentally crush the poor bastard.

"Yeah," she says, "try'n kill me, Si."

[nonvenomous]

There is something shrewd about his continued pause once he’s put a bend to his knee and eased off his chokehold on the dagger -- the wiggling measure of a cat gauging the distance to an especially precarious perch. It’s unusual for him to square up against a martial combatant one on one, and even more unusual for it to be in a situation where they can see him plain, with dagger in hand.

He lunges.

To his credit, he is viper quick, the point of his dagger brought up in a fish hook pull for her armpit. He is also long, and wide open across the ear, the throat, the middle. He guards his groin and flank with his offhand -- the vestigial marker of a bad time had previously in that area.

[poleaxed]

It's pretty fucking immediately obvious Si's too quick to dodge. Not for someone of her skill, anyway. She refuses to loose ground by backing away, though, and per the unspoken rules of the game, she isn't a reaver. She can't just take the hit and see what happens.

But she is used to taking hits and managing them. He gets close with his dagger, and she catches his wrist in her armpit, wondering if, in a real fight, he'd have nicked her badly.

The momentum sends her scrabbling on the back foot. She isn't accustomed to his sort of fighting either, preferring everything to be pure strength and blood. This is... definitely not that.

[nonvenomous]

There’s a reactive sizzle and pop of green light from his far hand when he’s locked at the wrist, electricity stifled well before there’s any threat of a jolt to Jone’s person. There are rules for a reason. In lieu of that, he is clearly stymied -- that same hand twisted in cold to rake around her belt for a secondary weapon he might use to kill her with in close quarters.

[poleaxed]

Jone says she isn't afraid of magic, and that truth varies, but that all flies out the window when it's close enough to her heart to zap her tit. She yelps and releases him.

"Blimey, Si." It isn't accusatory, just amazed and confused and generally haggard. "Hate these bloody things."

Her palm flares, brighter than usual. She ignores it.

[nonvenomous]

“Force of habit.”

He is only half-apologetic. At her expense, the other half is intrigue -- realization of some innate advantage fueled by the lick of adrenaline in his bloodstream. His eyes are bright in the dark, a glance of green off the retinas when he looks down to track the flare at her palm.

“Would you have died in that scenario?”

Has he cheated his way to victory in round one?

[poleaxed]

"I'd be on me way, certainly." She doesn't have to take time to consider it. "Though normally I'd not be caught dead with this flimsy little prick," she waves her sword about. "Or worse, alive."

She drops the sword, picking up a long wooden pole. "Let's play for keeps, yeah?"

[nonvenomous]

He flinches at the drop of her sword, glancing to the Gallows, but there’s no one to alert, and certainly no one to care.

“I’m not certain what that means in this context,” he says, “but alright.”

It’s just a pole. It’s not like he has memories of her using one with a blade on the end to cleave people apart in the snow. He seems disinclined to attack first, this time -- the idea that he might be waiting for some signal or go ahead denied by him loading back, only to rock on his heel rather than dart in for a thrashing.

“I would normally flee in this instance.”

Just so they’re clear.

[poleaxed]

"Normally, I'd break me hand before hitting you," Jone says. "We've all better natures. Heave ho!"

She leverages the thing in a downward slap, intending to knock him on the shoulder. She's strong, and the pole is fast, but the combination is less than the sum of its parts. He's plenty of room to maneuver.

Jone's style isn't centered around knockouts in the first, or third, or tenth hit.

[nonvenomous]

There’s a satisfying thwack of wood on leather where the pole connects with him mid-duck and drops him off-balance, nearly to his knee. He doesn’t quite spring up so much as he catches himself with his free hand and rolls with that momentum, scrabbling to cut in low and close for her femoral -- all out for the kill shot every time.

Necessary, when your prospects for sustained engagement are at zero percent odds of survival.

He probably doesn’t weigh enough to bowl her over if he connects there, crow to cliff face.

[poleaxed]

They've hit right into the absurd fantasy training can take on. A man with a knife, his combatant with a large weapon: he should flee. But they both pretend Silas is cornered, and that means desperate, and that means everything becomes unbalanced. They train rarely used muscles and deploy strange tactics, stabbing the knife just to see it glint.

So he tries to stab her and she grabs his wrist again. "D'you reckon we might be going about this wrong?" She drops his hand.

It's all just a little too hypothetical.

[nonvenomous]

So caught, Silas sags to his knee in her grasp. Torsion through his wrist to his shoulder maintains resistance, but it’s trivial for her to outmuscle him at this angle, the wooden dagger just shy of her thigh.

“How do you mean.”

He sounds very reasonable —- if strained — in spite of their respective positions.

[poleaxed]

Without a thought about it, Jone sits on the ground with him. "You know how to sneak and how to run. Playing 'pretend I backed you into a corner so I can beat you to death' isn't really... playing to your strengths."

She says this while slowly scrunching up her face. Not a good look. Not what she's been trying to do; make a style of fighting for them, not her to back their brains in.

[nonvenomous]

“It could happen this way,” says Silas. “It has happened this way.”

To date, he’s always been rescued by someone with more martial capability. The thought draws a sigh up out of him as he sinks to sit opposite her, pressed out slow through his sinuses. Controlled.

He lets the dagger fall through his fingers into the dirt.

“Perhaps we should workshop my best approximation of a corpse.”

[poleaxed]

"Ha, ha." She says. "No, what I'm thinking is... we're assuming you'd fight linear. Knew a bloke, always going on about linear fighting and the other type... don't remember what it was. But d'you know what I mean?"

You know, this thing she's explained very badly?

"Use your magic, use your environment, use your bloody cat. I can take it."

[nonvenomous]

“That seems a little unfair.”

What, with her and her pole in opposition. He rubs his shoulder without thinking; the leather there is crossed by lines of fresh material where it’s been slashed and punched through by owl talons -- seamless slashes of lighter leather across the darker, dirtier stain of the older stuff.

Granted. It’s quite dark to see that kind of detail.

The sharp delineation between his pale hide and the skullish shadow hollowed in black around his eyes does make it easy to see the way his brow arches as he thinks it over.

“Are you willing to exert a little more effort in return?” As if she’s been going easy on him.

[poleaxed]

"Si, you saw me fight a dragon. Some knowledge worshipper you are."

She pushes his shoulder, playful, fraternal. "I won't do any serious damage. Maybe you'll end up with a limp, at worst."

[nonvenomous]

“You had some assistance.”

The push to his shoulder sees him dragging his heels in to stand, his dagger plucked from the dirt and swiped off along the side of his leg as he goes.

“A limp might save me from travelling back to Orzammar any time soon. I’m ready when you are.”

[poleaxed]

"Born ready," is all the warning he gets, before she lunges forward. If this were a real fight, if she was trying to fuck up a sneaky mage, she'd go for the head or the hands. Since she doesn't want to concuss Si, her pole (the axe, she imagines) swings down toward the wrist of his dominant hand.

[nonvenomous]

There’s an answering catch and jolt where instinct snaps him to react with movement too decisive to feel like a flinch: he utters something sharp between his teeth and her “blade” glances hard off an invisible barrier before it can close on his wrist.

The momentum of the blow is shed as if by the dish of a shield, redirecting down and away for him to riposte with another flashbulb snap of electricity.

This time he does not hold back: lightning cages through his fingers to leap for her core, acid green in the night and stung through with white sparks. It flashes cold in his eyes to lock her muscle over her bone, stripping control for an instant he intends to spend wedging his wooden dagger up beneath the jut of her chin.

[poleaxed]

"There we go!" Lightening sparks around her, and she feels lit up by it, like a metal rod in a sandy beach, just waiting. And it hits, and it's fucking amazing. Hurts like a Stormrider's kiss, her teeth chattering, but that pain is useful.

She staggers forward, still crackling, attempting another volley. This one meant to jab his legs out from under him, see what happens. She's testing the shield more than her endurance, but if he thinks she's thick, that's fine. Most do.

"You gonna give me another scar, Si? Never had one on me face."

Patter, distraction, that's good against mages, too.

[nonvenomous]

The shield is gone, so far as the point of her pole can find: it passes through unmolested and he lurches back to avoid it, watching her stagger with bright-eyed fascination: the sort typically reserved for watching creatures sprout wings or open a second, hidden mouth. Shocking Grasp is a spell designed to disable, to disarm, to create an opening.

He hasn’t actually tried it on anyone here.

“That seems like an oversight.”

He spins it up again with a flourish, tendrils of electricity sizzling, climbing his sleeve in wait for her to close the distance. Firing on her face feels uncalled for, even if she’s literally calling for it. The join of jaw and neck, however --

[poleaxed]

"Don't be a tease, luv."

The thing is, you get in close. Polearms are ranged weapons, meant to keep the enemy at bay, keep your options open. Jone has only ever used hers like that as a feint. Weapons with long reach are good for drawing the enemy closer.

She doesn't give him any space, still staggering toward him on jolting, jangling muscles. It feels like shit. Every moment is pain. It feels amazing. Every second is power.

She aims for the spell-casting hand again, thoughts of protecting Silas gone. She wants to see what happens, what new pain will rupture them both, caught together as they are in the most intimate confluence Jone knows.

[nonvenomous]

An uncertain huff is the only answer she gets -- he could keep backing up, and she could keep following to swing after him, round and round.

There is a switch.

As before, the pole deflects at the last second with a spoken word, lightning arcing over the shape of a spectral buckler as the charge of electricity in his grasp leaps from one casting hand to the other. There is no dominant side to this magic; he simply stands his ground into the push of her pursuit, and unloads a second whipcrack of electricity up into her at close range.

[poleaxed]

The crack, the pain, the tension, it's brilliant and all wrapped up in the sweet intimacy only family can give. It's real, it's really real, or it wouldn't hurt so bloody bad.

Energy crackles in her palm, and she thinks it's him. The pain of it certainly is. She reaches forward in an attempt to knock him off balance, and something other than his footing shifts. The wooden pole in her hand explodes as a percutient blast of green erupts from her hand, hitting Silas squarely in the chest.

"Fuck!"