nexus_sages | (no subject)

*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.

If I wasn't, I'd be dead.

*She focuses on regaining her feet, letting Jim get out of reach and back up, himself. She flashes him a smile, tossing her hair back with a flick of her head before the next rush--a short charge that seems to be leading with a high punch of some kind, only to drop into a leg sweep at the last moment.*

You're doing better than I expected, yourself.

The only reason her leg sweep doesn't take him down is because his reaction to being charged is to sidestep, rather than hold his ground and try to block, but it's a narrow thing and leaves him pretty badly positioned to counterattack. He takes another step away and turns, watching for an opening.

Jim manages a laugh at her compliment. "Me too." Already this match has gone on longer than most of the real fights he's been in, though that could be because often times the others were cut short by security.

*Back on her feet, she gives him a thoughtful, measuring look and another smile.*

Should I try harder, then, or are you comfortable like this?

*Is that an opening, when she relaxes while asking him that? Or is it a trap designed to look like an opening? Is anything about this woman not a trap?*

"Depends on if you just want to beat me bloody and leave me for my crew to find," he answers with a roguish grin, using her own words. It's pretty obvious she's holding back on him, but while Jim is headstrong and reckless, he's not flat-out stupid. Most days, anyway. So he's not about to ask her to turn up the heat too much. Either way, he's under no delusions that he's going to legitimately win this one, and it seems bad form to cheat during a friendly sort of sparring match, especially with someone he just met.

But he's also terrible at throwing in the towel. Whether it's pride, persistence, or just plain bad at acknowledging his limits is up for debate.

He closes the distance between them again, as if he's going to try the palm strikes again, but it's a feint to cover the right cross he's throwing at her instead, ready to follow it up with another strike. Assuming she doesn't put him flat on his ass again.

Ha! Good answer.

*Persistence has stood humans in good stead since they were chasing their meals across endless miles of wilderness. A winning strategy with a pedigree that long is hardly going to become otherwise in the course of an afternoon, surely. When Jim comes in with the right cross, Samus spins aside on one foot, aiming an answering strike at his ribs while his arm is extended and gives her some cover against other reprisals.*

So, what happened?

He's hardly surprised at her counterattack, though that doesn't do much for being able to avoid it. He grunts at the impact and circles, mindful of his feet, his followup strikes deflected by her. He's certainly going to have some bruises when all is said and done, but he's had way worse.

"You know about the Kobayashi Maru but not Vulcan?" That doesn't entirely make sense to him, but he knows from Ambassador Spock's somewhat leaky mind meld that the other Jim Kirk cheated on the test, too, and Nero wasn't there to screw things up for him.

*Her shoulder rolls in a half-shrug that presages another set of strikes, a distraction for the foot that snakes out to try to hook his knee.*

I know Vulcan is a planet in your Facet, and the people from that planet, but as far as I'm aware, neither of those facts is connected to your relative infamy. Or did something happen to Vulcan in your Facet?

He's about to answer, but that's when she gets his knee, pulling him off-balance, and he knows he's about to fall so he tries to turn the tables and get his leg around hers, so he drag her down with him. It's not really an official, formalized move so much as a trick he's had to pull in half a dozen bar brawls across the Federation.

Oh yeah, there was a question somewhere in there. "Planet's gone," he says, once he has the time and presence of mind to do so.

*Having her leg snagged is a mild annoyance, and she tugs and twists to try to free it. Jim hasn't brought her down with him, but he's caught one of her limbs for the moment. His explanation of Vulcan, brief though it is, gets a sympathetic wince.*

I'm sorry. I know what it can be like to lose a planet.

Much like someone who's caught the tail of a tiger, Jim's put himself in a bit of a bind now. He can't hang on forever, but if he lets go, she's at a greater advantage than he is as far as striking back.

Eh, screw it. Jim's always been a risk-taker.

Still on his back, he releases his hold on her and snaps a follow-up kick at her kneecap as quick as he can, and all the while it feels surreal to be having this conversation in the middle of the fight as opposed to over drinks. Especially when he's in the middle of trying to hobble her. "Sorry to hear that," he says sincerely.

At least pain of the body is temporary.

*Samus bites back a curse at the kick to her knee, jumping back a little before lunging forward again with a stomp.*

Thank you.

*It may seem incongruous, given the combat, but her sentiment is genuine.*

Was it natural disaster, enemy action, massive accident, or... necessary sacrifice?