nexus_sages | (no subject)

"Still trying to figure that out," he admits, not wondering how she'd know how rough they've had it. Anyone familiar with his universe, his timeline, would find it obvious. "I used to go get really wasted and find someone to fight over something stupid and trivial, but I'm a captain now, so it doesn't really work." There's a somewhat self-deprecating smile attached to that statement.

*She doesn't need to be familiar with his universe to recognize the signs of trauma.*

Well, I'm not one for drink, but I've got time to spar.

*A smirk touches her lips, and a teasing note enters her voice.*

And it'd hardly be fair of me to fight you anything less than sober.

He perks up a bit at that. Getting a straight-up offer to spar, and from someone this easy on the eyes? Sold. "I thought this place doesn't allow violence."

It does if all parties consent. There's a good spot in the Gardens, not far from here, if you're up for it.

"Absolutely. Sign me up." He grins at her, and even though he knows damn well that he won't be able to really tell how strong she is until they start the actual match, he can't help sizing her up on reflex.

This way.

*Her skin-tight garment does Jim a favor there, highlighting a lean, athletic build that flows with a grace usually found in professional acrobats and predatory cats. Slight movements of her head give signs of the constant track of her gaze, side to side, up, down, steadily assessing every part of her surroundings. Her stride is quick and confident, but her feet seem to avoid noisy obstacles almost by reflex--even strolling a thoroughfare she seems almost to stalk, crunching on the occasional piece of her snack as she goes.*

*The shops and bustling streets soon give way to wide lawns and groves of trees, gardens of statuary and arranged flowers. Samus' destination is a grassy patch shaded by several trees, including one with a bench encircling its trunk. She places the remains of her toasted grasshopper there before stepping away to limber up.*

So. I'm guessing you've got some kind of training?

Jim strips off his gold uniform top, though he decides to keep the long-sleeve black undershirt on, and begins a few warm-up stretches himself. His motions aren't quite as predatory as Samus', but he's not a complete amateur either. "Some. I've done a bit of boxing and Spock's been teaching me some Vulcan moves. No teacher like experience, though," he adds.

From what he's seen so far, he's fairly certain he'd be outmatched in a fair fight. She walks like she does this a lot, compared to him anyway. But far be it from Jim to turn down a challenge this interesting.

That depends on how closely the student pays attention.

*When she thinks Kirk has had enough time to stretch, she turns to him, taking a casual ready stance. Is she teasing him? Underestimating him? Time will tell--but she seems to expect a conversation while they spar, as she poses a question.*

You went to a military academy, and they didn't teach you how to fight?

Jim easily slips into his own defensive stance, hands loosely curled and up near his face, and he smiles a little, showing teeth. "Like I said. No teacher like experience. I was the assistant instructor in advanced hand-to-hand my first year."

Whether or not that'll help him has yet to be seen, but no matter the answer, he's keen to find out.

"Assistant instructor," is that like "ambulatory practice dummy?"

*She flashes a smile of her own and throws a couple quick jabs--testing his guard, his reactions.*

"Could be," he agrees. He ducks and weaves, his moves very much like a boxer's, but the open-handed palm strike he throws her way is most certainly not. His reactions are nothing superhuman, but he knows how to protect the vital bits and he doesn't stop to think about his next move, just reacts on instinct.

*Reaction and instinct? Her lips curl in a smile. Oh, she is going to eat him for lunch. Or she would, if this were anything more than a light sparring match. As it is, she's going to throw out a series of strikes, testing those instincts of his--leading his guard toward one particular place, so she can snake an arm around it and poke the tip of his nose with a fingertip.*

Granted, Jim likes to make people underestimate him and then surprise them later, but even then, her skill is a bit above his. He's been learning to better spar with a more physically powerful opponent, thanks to Spock, but there are downsides to skipping an entire year of training at the Academy, as it turns out. Go figure.

The nose-poke is a bit of a surprise, though, and he steps back out of reach, re-evaluating his approach. "That an official move?" he asks, watching her a little more warily, more seriously.

Edited 2017-05-27 14:45 (UTC)

*She smirks, seeming to drop her guard as she shrugs.*

You going to complain to the referee?

He doesn't take the bait, figuring she's got a nasty surprise up her sleeve if he does. "Just trying to figure out what martial art uses nose-booping," he answers, and feints an attack towards her side, watching to see how she reacts. He hasn't often gotten the chance to actually study an opponent, given that probably eighty percent of his actual fighting experience has involved broken glass and being bodily thrown over bars.

The instructive sort. Or the merciful. I imagine you'd prefer either of those to just being beaten bloody and left for your crew to find, hmm?

*She barely reacts to the feint, shifting her weight just enough that, had it been an actual strike, it would have missed--a minimal effort to let him waste all of his, it could say interesting things about her combat philosophy, if Jim is the sort to read philosophy into combat. She does accept that Jim isn't taking the bait, and raises her guard again, throwing a light mix of feints and strikes. She's not trying to trick her way around his guard again, yet, just trying to get his blood moving, and make him work to keep from getting hit.*

He barks out a short laugh. "Wouldn't be the first time. But sure, let's go with that."

Vulcan martial arts quite often focus on evasion and redirecting attacks, and while Jim's not an expert, he's picked up a few things from Spock so far. He mostly abandons the boxer's stance, trading it for the defensive posture of kheile'a, a somewhat more fluid technique of dodging and moving out of reach, forcing one's opponent to reposition themselves if they want to attack.

As you like.

*She reads the change in his stance; it's an unfamiliar style, neither something from her Facet, nor one of the martial arts of Earth that she's had a chance to observe, but form follows function, and it isn't hard to recognize the shift to evasive defense. If Kirk wants to play defender for a bit, then she'll oblige him by taking the role of aggressor. Her own stance shifts as well, and she'll test his new stance with a few strikes and combinations--she surges forward, driving with fists and elbows, each movement both a strike and the setup for the next one. When she thinks he's starting to get used to dealing with her arms, she changes it up again--dropping back for just a moment, all the warning she'll give him before charging his position with a series of scything high kicks.*

He doesn't manage to evade all of her strikes, of course, but part of kheile'a also involves learning to ignore pain and channel it into something more useful - like a renewed determination not to get hit again. And when she changes her attack strategy, he decides to take a chance, and drops low, aiming his own sweeping kick at the leg she's still standing on.

*The grin isn't conscious--Samus' attention is on more immediate things, but it's just so nice to be surprised once in a while. Someone else might have fought the sweep, and fallen hard; the Chozo warrior moves with the momentum Jim imparted, turning it into a kick that helps control her fall. She catches herself on bowed shoulders, legs poised above her, she twists to bring them down in a strike at where Jim should have ended up. If he's ready to turn things up, she'll certainly oblige.*

Had this been a year ago, Jim might've celebrated a successful takedown of his opponent, quite prematurely and arrogantly. But after a year of active service in Starfleet as a commissioned officer, he has at least a little more restraint than that, staying focused on the fight that is not yet over, well aware that his footing is going to leave him vulnerable to counterattack if he doesn't get his ass in gear.

He hurries to roll out of the way, but she still clips him hard, eliciting an involuntary grunt from him. That's definitely going to bruise.

But he's got no time to evaluate that either, because she's surely coming back at him with another strike, and he continues to put space between them, long enough to get back on his feet and close the distance again as quickly as he can, aiming a series of palm strikes towards where pressure points would be on a run-of-the-mill human.

*He's pressing his advantage while it lasts--she approves. It didn't take her long to kip up while Jim was regaining his own feet, and his targeting of pressure points gets raised brows--and deft deflections. She knows how to defend her tender bits, and is close enough to human that some of those nerve strikes would really hurt.*

Targeting pressure points. We're a little outside that boxing training you mentioned.

*If Jim isn't going to use those strikes to lead her guard away and create an opening, then she'll see if she can't engineer a reversal, catch his wrist on one of those strikes and use his own momentum to pull him off his feet. It might cost her a bruise or two, but it's worth a try, at any rate.*

"That's like rule one, always keep something up your sleeve."

Rule two, of course, is bluff your ass off, and use the shit out of whatever you do have. Most of what he's got left is based on things he's had done to him in countless fights over the years, a self-taught mishmash that could hardly be called a fighting style.

It's that inexperience that means her bid to yank him off-balance works just fine, but he has the presence of mind to try to grab her back, hopefully before she can finish throwing him completely.

*He reacts quickly, even if it's just on instinct. That's a good trait. She reacts quickly, too, and has training to back it up. Rather than being dragged off-balance by the throw that won't disengage, she rolls with it, taking the momentum Jim gave her with his counter-throw and adding to it, rolling and slinging him over and down again, for a harder landing this time.*

Nice sleeve.

Ouch, that one hurts. Damn near knocks the wind out of him, too, and if he was just sparring with Spock, he'd feel safe calling a brief time-out to get his breath back. But with Samus, he has this funny feeling that if he does that, he'll be seen as weak, and if he just lies here, she's going to bring down a world of hurt on him. So he forces himself to at least try to get the hell out of reach for a moment.

"You're really good at this," he wheezes out, and there'd be more of an appreciative tone to his voice if he wasn't short on air at the moment.