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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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?"

"Breather!" She said, and though it was usually not the way that Hit Girl would have chosen, she knew all too well this was the kind of thing that could come to actually causing some harm if she really got into it. It may be the Sensorium, but Hit Girl was very familiar with how her instincts worked when it came down tooth to nail.

"Hey, I don't think I got your name."

Anwei gave her opponent a thumbs-up gesture, which oddly enough meant just the same in her sign language as it did on Earth. "Thanks. You are a really fast learner. I'm glad that you're on our side." Whatever that side might turn out to be.

"Anwei Ayles, Vizsnunishne Mercenaries. And I don't think I got your name either." She was still breathing a little heavily.

She made an attempt to try and repeat the name she had just heard..which turned out to be her made of fail. "Anwei Ayles, Viszs-nun-shi...Fushigi Yugi...ah, I think I'll stick with Anewi for the moment, Latin is already kicking my ass, ok?"

No worries, she was on the side of good! Sort of. Chaotic good. REALLY chaotic good.

"I'm Hit Girl," she said, extending her hand.

"Anwei's fine, and for Vizsnunishne you can just say the Sissies. Plenty of people call us that."

Anwei called up a little kinetic shove that pushed her towards the hand, as shaking feet wasn't a common gesture here. "Pleased to meet you, Hit Girl," she said, taking the outstretched hand.

"I'll stick with the Anwei, but maybe I'll throw in Viz. 'Sissy' is usually not the best word where I come from. But its kinda need to say. I like that."

She shuffled over, a little easier than before and took the hand. "The same. So what's your deal Anwei? I mean, what did you used to do before being pulled into this little slice of heaven?"

"No, Sissies is correct. Other mercenaries call us that, because we don't take hostages or slaves. But we don't care. We're the best, we don't need to do any of that." She grinned, a little too bright and wide.

"I do computer and AI management, and database design. I worked pretty closely with the Medical department, creating a cross-species medical database. Combat drops, some hacking, headhunting, project proposal writing. A little bit of everything."

"That's supposed to make you a sissy?" Hit Girl made a face here. Her enemies were dispatched of quickly, she never did anything like hold anyone hostage or, worse, keep a slave. The idea made her pretty sick, actually. "Sign me up then."

Well. That at least made a little more sense. She always figured that Stacy chose people for a reason: it looks like this women had several. "I'm kinda envious. How old are you?"

"Oh, believe me," Anwei tilted her chin down a little and smiled, "if I could sign you up, I would. Your talents are undeniable."

"Well, I actually lost my thirty-eighth birthday in a time travel accident - it was terrible, really. Hours in sickbay lying there wounded, with myself standing over the bed, yelling exactly what I needed to do to keep from being hurt - and then I switch, and I'm yelling at myself hurt in the bed. By the time we were out of the loop, my birthday was over. I kind of took that as a sign, and stopped counting there." A shrug. "I'm probably about forty now."

She couldn't help but smile a little at this. It looked like dad had trained her pretty well, and the overlord's training had been a good follow up. "Thanks," she said. "You're pretty amazing yourself."

Hit girl looked a little thrown off by that. "I dunno, you don't look forty somehow. Maybe you look younger than that. Not that I'm saying you're a MILF or anything, you just definitely look pretty youthful. Maybe its all that training, I dunno."

That sounded pretty amazing though. Confusing as all hell, but then, that was time travel, wasn't it?"

"Comes with the job - you had to stay fit and keep up with the mandatory training." It helped that she had always enjoyed carrying a little extra muscle - it let her eat more.

"Oh, sorry. I didn't mention that I'm not human," she apologized, reaching up and pinching one of her cheeks. The skin and muscle stretched alarmingly under her fingers. "My species just have really rubbery faces. But yes, training helps. No drugging to excess, plenty of sleep, and stay happy. Nothing keeps you younger than happiness."

She nodded. "Yeah, I'm still gonna keep doing that. I may not have dad but I do have the scenarios by the Overlord, and any other training I can get from whoever will give it to me.

She blinked, looking at her crookedly a moment. "That's really weird," she said, not believing that for a minute: if anyone knew anything about Mindy, they would realize the weird actually attracted her. "That is pretty awesome at the same time though. What sort of species are you?"

She definitely had no problem with her not being human: if anything, that might make her like her more.

"I'm always happy to share what I know." And she was; if she preferred not to fight herself, she would best serve this crew by helping them fight.

"My species isn't related to humans at all: this," she gestured to her humanoid shape, "is just parallel evolution, I guess. The Living People are - were - from the planet Fle. As a species we were - vicious sums us up pretty nicely. Especially as children.

"As a culture, we were very decadent, tried to dominate every culture we met, lots of politics and power-plays and gossip and scandal. Heavy media saturation - any time you were out in public, everything you did was recorded. We were the leaders of the Ninth Empire, which was going to last forever - until the Ohm came."

Hit Girl could certainly respect that: while going out of her way to help the crew was a little bit of a pain, it didn't mean she would b willing to go and let people needlessly die unless they sought that end themselves.

"Parallel evolution?" She wasn't really sure about what that meant, nor who the Living People were, unless that was what her species were called. how she was describing her own species wasn't all to surprising though: weren't her
own species just a hop-skip-jump away from ending up like this?

"So the Ohm came and destroyed all that," Hit Girl said. "So that would make you, what, the last of your species? And the way you describe them: I'm assuming you're trying to change that for the better?"

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