trans_9 | Tightrope

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Tightrope

It had been a few days since the Outsider's gathering, where Hit Girl had finally been able to utilize her strength and talent to help others. All in all, it went pretty well: choices were made, friendships were had, blah blah and kumbaya. What SHE had wanted to show was that she was the type of girl who got the job done, and if anyone needed to be reminded, she would show that to them. Grabbing the flag had just been the start: now she wanted to make sure that whatever happened next, she would be ready, she would show people the type of person her daddy trained.

Which led to today's excursion in the Sensorium: she was doing tightrope walking, one of her weaker points, in order to maintain balance and poise. Jumping from rooftop to rooftop had demanded both, and while she had mastered that, she had not yet made her foray to really careful jumping in tight spots. To give her some energy, she had this playing in the background, and she jumped from rope to rope, her eyes concentrating, her tongue sticking out slightly in concentration.

Each step took courage, and the slightest imperfection would result in her falling, although of course it wouldn't be that big of a deal when you were in the Sensorium anyway. Despite this, Hit Girl demanded nothing less than imperfection: once she had this mastered, going to Negi and learning the delayed spells would be next, not to mention training Sasami.

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"Just a guess. Lots of people here seem to be from Earth - an Earth. And I visited the planet before I came to Stacy. Sorry, I never introduced myself, did I? Anwei Ayles, Vizsnunishne Mercenaries, clerical division." A hero should be impressed by a military background, right?

Anwei cast an exasperated glance at the ceiling. "Stacy, am I mumbling? Sorry, I meant free-fall combat. As in zero gravity, and your punches just bounce off the other person. Interested? We could do it later, if you want to stick with the ropes for today."

"Wow, really? That's pretty awesome!" She had to be, what, the second military person that she'd met on the ship? She didn't know exactly what she meant by her being in the clerical division though. "What exactly did you do, and who did you fight?"

Hit girl raised an eyebrow. "Free fall combat? Yeah, I'd be totally fine with doing that. Any chance I can get to learn a new kind of fighting style, I'm gonna take it!"

"Well, I was in the clerical division, so - I was an accountant. Computer and AI management, database design. Of course I did combat drop missions too, usually going in with a team to crack into some computer, sentient or otherwise." She shrugged, perhaps a little ostentatiously, letting the thick muscles in her shoulders and neck flex. "We fought who we were paid to fight, but we did other things too: protection, investigations, starship triage and reclamation, training, courier work even. It was - is - a big fleet."

"I can step you - excuse me - float you - through the basics, but even that can get rough. I burst this eye in training," she pulled down her lower left eyelid and stared, "and it was fixed fine, but partial fractures and dislocations are common. I just need to be sure what level of contact you're willing to start with."

"Wow, you kinda sound like a jack of all trades," Hit Girl observed, her minds swirling with all of that information. If the Major was around, this person was definitely someone that she would have wanted on her team. Not that it mattered to her at this point: the fact that she knew that the ship had spies to do things not on the up and up was information enough for her. She'd been a vigilante, after all: who was she to judge?

"I live for rough," she said, flashing the woman a grin. "I wouldn't be able to do what I do if I didn't get some scars and breaks in the first place. So just put me through the wringer. I can take it."

"You kind of have to be, you can't limit yourself to just one thing. Unfortunately right now I'm more like half a jack," she said sadly, fingertips going to her right ear in an absent-minded gesture. "I usually work with an AI partner, Horanckk, and he isn't here. Even if he were, Stacy's systems don't sound stable enough for him to be safe in them. And he knows a lot more about computer manipulation techniques than I do. I can only hope that he comes here eventually."

Anwei grinned back, and let her grin stretch a little wider than normal. "I'll take your word for it. Want to get rid of the ropes, or work out over them? Your Sensorium, so you set the stage."

"I hear ya," Hit Girl said, processing what she saying. She had an idea that if Stacy was stupid enough to allow someone like that here, they would likely be able to hack into the system. That would be pretty cool, but Stacy, she guessed, wasn't that retarded. "But I guess it would be good, to have your partner here."

She thought a moment. What would she be doing?

"Let's work over them. That could be interesting."

"It would be an incredible relief to have him here," she sighed. "We've worked together for a long time."

Anwei nodded and walked over to one of the poles holding up the tightropes. She climbed it easily, hand over hand, and then stepped out onto a rope parallel to Hit Girl's. She snapped shut the pockets on her denim shirt.

"If there's anything with you held on or in by gravity, now's the time to secure it. Turn the gravity off when you're ready."

"I sorta feel the same way about d-the person that trained me," Hit Girl said, nodding. "It's always good to have the person you know best at your side."

Hit Girl climbed the other pole: she was a little slower, but she got there nonetheless. She made sure to lose all of her objects though: the bow, the butterfly knife and the guns. To stare, she would do this without her weapons, first time out.

"I'm good," she said, and made sure the gravity was off.

"We know each other very well. I have good reason to believe he would have escaped the destruction of my universe, at least one of him. So I'll wait, and hope."

Anwei stretched and her toes floated up from the rope. Hovering just above it, she called up the memory of her combat instructor (small, red-furred and fierce).

"So. In gravity you pay attention to your center of balance, which is basically a straight line from your center of mass through the nearest gravity point. Here, there's just mass and inertia. So," she reached down with one toe, and drifted closer, "hit me and see what happens."

"Good luck then," she said. "It would be nice to have that happen in mine, but about the only one I think would be here would be somebody that was sort of my sidekick. I wouldn't mind having him here."

This actually reminded her a lot of when she was flying with Tavros that one time. She tried to recall what she did back then, and started with trying to make sure she balanced herself properly. It was still pretty difficult, considering that it was no gravity, but she was at least not flying all over the place.

She floated over to Anwei, palm outstretched, attempting a hit.

"Thanks. And hopefully you'll find your sidekick."

Anwei floated, waiting for the hit. She knew how transfer of momentum worked; the question was, would her opponent go for the center of mass, or an upper torso hit? Center of mass and they would both bounce away from each other; otherwise Anwei would spin.

"I have Ruffnut, so I don't really need a sidekick," Hit girl replied, and it was true.

She thought a moment, then went toward Anewi, knees propelling forward, for a hit to the chest, so she would have a chance of actually making the mark.

She nodded absently, her attention on the girl's posture. She could already tell she wasn't used to free-fall, but she was doing well anyway: knees forward and not stretched out behind her, attention focusing on Anwei's torso instead of her face.

She tensed her muscles, and reminded herself again: no biting.

She took a breath, continuing to concentrate on her descent on the woman. She knew enough that her movements needed to be tight as they could, because any movement that threw her off balance would result in her flying over where she needed to be. The next movement then was an elbow to the face, in hopes it wouldn't send her off too badly.

This was still as tough as it had been the last time she did it with Tavros.

Anwei just wanted to let the first blow land solidly, so she could demonstrate bounce-back and go on to grappling holds from there. She actually wasn't planning on letting more than one blow land, but if her opponent wanted to do some speed-learning, that was fine with her.

Hit Girl waited, expecting a parry, and when it didn't happen, she sort of stood there, curious. This was sort of what happened when she and Zouichi fought, and it degraded into chaos, so she waited.

"What now?"

"Well," Anwei paused, "I thought we could go through what happens when people who aren't used to fighting try it in zero-gee. But if you want we can skip that."

"OK, if you'd punched me I'd have gone flying, and so would you. In free-fall you need to hold onto a person in order to hurt them. You need two point of contact or pressure: one limb to hold, one limb to hit. So how about you try grabbing me, and I'll show you what happens next."

Hit Girl shook her head. "I only did something like this once, and it didn't really count because I was flying, not in a completely gravity free room. I'm actually playing this by ear."

She listened intently, then did as the women instructed, not hitting her but grabbing at her first, curious to see what was going to happen next.

"Well, I'll try to explain everything as we go along - and not break anything beyond repair."

She reached for Hit Girl's grabbing arm and got a firm hold on the wrist; then she pointed her toes and kicked backwards with both feet, hard, putting her legs and back into it. She shoved at the arm she held, trying to get as much of her body away from her opponent as she could; at the same time, she snapped her free hand in a fist at Hit Girl's elbow.

"Got it," she said, grinning. "I'll try to do the same." Not that she had much of a chance, since she was the veteran here.

The hit was unavoidable, but that was ok: she would take it for the moment to improvise. She bent down low and kicked her feet backward, her free elbow going for the girl's face.

"Awesome!" she shouted happily as Hit Girl mimicked her, moving her legs out of the way. She followed through with the hit to the captive arm - hard enough to bruise, but then she had to pull back and concentrate on the new attack.

She saw the elbow coming, and elected not to dodge. This was a good chance to demonstrate one of the weaknesses of free-fall. She simply let go of the girl's wrist, dropped her head, and took the hit on her upper scalp. It hurt, no doubt about it, but because there wasn't an anchor tying them together, the blow's was greatly diminished and they bounced apart.

Anwei slapped out and got a new hold on the back of Hit Girl's other arm; then she swung in for a kick, aiming not at the belly but at the side of her hip. Let's see how she handled being swung around the pivot of her own arm.

Cool. This was starting to make sense, at least, what she was doing so far. The hit to the arm sucked of course, but she was learning, so she chalked that up to a mistake she wouldn't make again.

And now she was beginning to see how her hit could be counteracted too: the girl let go of her and her force seemed to lose most of its intensity and threw her out of range for the moment.

Then the girl came back and had her arm, going for a hit to the side. She only had nanoseconds to think of counter measure and elected bending knees and Barreling toward her face now, that way putting her force behind barreling into her and getting more momentum.

This girl was learning so fast it was scary. She'd have a pre-hire contract in front of her by now, in different circumstances.

She shoved down on the arm, but let her kick go past the other girl's hip; she needed to pull herself downwards without getting in the way of the incoming knees. She wasn't quite fast enough, though, and Hit Girl clipped her on the side of the head, sending her spinning, arms and legs lashing out for purchase and not finding any.

Well, she had always sort of had to. It was that and her session with Tavros that helped her to try and compensate for what she didn't know.

Her arm was roughly pulled, but her barrel roll paid off and now the woman was off spinning a little. She had to anchor herself of course so she brought her legs back and propelled herself toward her trainer, going for another elbow hit, close to the body.

They'd both drifted considerably off the plane of the ropes, which was not totally realistic; free-fall rarely was in completely open spaces. But wallwork would be a task for another day of training.

She needed some purchase on something. She twisted nearly double and caught her opponent between both feet, heels digging in to her lower chest and back. She held her at legs'-length for a moment, then raised one foot and kicked back in, hard, digging in the heel, trying to drive the breath out of her. She was a little taller than Hit Girl, so she might be out of punching range.

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