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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"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.

No sooner had they floated off that the girl came back at her, and she meant business. Hit girl cursed herself silently: she really should have taken more stock in what would happen next, she should have never been caught in the first place. She was faster than this, after all.

But the kick hit home, hard, and Hit Girl winced, unable to really get out of her grip at the moment, then gasped as the air was definitely drawn out of her. It was hard for her to get out now.

She actually didn't believe in hurting people to unconsciousness during training; that was reserved for people who had never felt the feathers of Death's wings on her neck, and she was fairly certain this girl had felt that touch.

However, every time she raised her foot and kicked in, her opponent would have a chance to haul herself loose. She could try jerking her closer to her torso, get her in a knee-lock; she'd be able to stop her breath more efficiently, but would then be in range of an elbow-blow to the kneecap, or a strike to the face.

She raised her foot for another kick, a little slowly than before. She hadn't been exercising hard enough, obviously, if she was slowing already.

That last hit had been because Hit Girl was still getting used to the way this worked: now that she was watching the movement, she was starting to see how one movement directly affected the next. The worst thing about this kind of fighting was really how slow it was: it forced her to think slower than she was used to, and that threw her off.

But not anymore. The last hit happened because she was unsure what to do: that wouldn't be the case now. Now when she raised her foot she jerked herself legs upward to blck and this time catch her feet. Her fists were ready to do some damage themselves.

She shouldn't have slowed: Hiit Girl would take every chance she had now.

Unanchored free-fall combat was slow because you had to call on every muscle in your body to get any movement going at all. Combat in an enclosed environment could go shockingly fast, until the fighters either bounced themselves unconscious off the walls or broke too many limbs to move.

Oh, well done. Now Anwei had to get away the leg on Hit Girl's back, or it would be vulnerable; and her other foot was trapped between Hit Girl's legs. She tightened the muscles in her upper thigh, doing her best to pull her trapped leg free and keep the knee from being twisted, while her other foot aimed for her opponent's head, just behind the ear (not the temple, not in training).

Had Hit Girl realized this, she would have seen the sense it made to train in this way The challenge was always something that she was after, so it naturally made sense that this would be an activity she would have to muddle through.

She could feel that the woman was trying to wriggle free and knew that once that happened she was free to have the upper hand again. She locked her legs together and started to turn, making sure that there was added pressure in that leg, and shifted her head so it wouldn't be so easily vulnerable.

Now she was up for it. Hit Girl could apply all of her torque to the trapped leg - if she'd known to place her two legs at just the right angle, she'd have broken the knee by now - and in her current pose, she would have no trouble throwing her entire body's inertia against Anwei's one limb.

Her tactic now had to be escape, not harm. She needed to deliver the most amount of thrust, in a straight line and as close to her own leg as possible, to be able to pull straight away. A blow to her head or torso would just cause her to rotate around the point of entrapment, and probably torque the leg even more. Without hesitation, she jerked her kicking foot back and sideways, aiming to stomp as hard as she could on Hit Girl's lower stomach, as close to her pelvis as she could manage. That would either force her away, or the next thing she would hear would be something popping.

Oh, she was getting the hang of it now: it may have been hard at first, but now she was seeing that in order to really be functional in this space, she was going to have to improvise with all she'd learned. In a lot of ways, it was like the training she'd done with her dad, except slowed down.

And because of this, Hit Girl could see exactly where this was going to be a give or break here: the force she levied could definitely hit her in her hip, and Hit Girl was aiming that to not happen, not this time. She turned again, applying some force all her own, unwilling to lose her upper hand.

But she was definitely not giving her the death grip she could have mustered, or there would certainly be a break and she knew it.

Her captor turned, which defused the blow - not quite enough. She pulled with all her strength against the just-barely-not-tight-enough grip and her leg was free.

But in pulling she had killed the momentum that her downwards kick had given her. Now she floated above - or below or beside, however you wanted to perceive it - anyway, she floated just out of attack range, legs drawn up against her body, and arms out to her sides.

"Stalemate!" she said, cheerily enough. She flexed her calves, making sure nothing was too strained for her to call a permanent halt. "Do you want to take a breather, or figure out how to go from here?"

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