trans_9 | I don't know what you're going to do, but I have work to do.

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I don't know what you're going to do, but I have work to do.

People dealt with things in different ways. In Mindy's case, she had continued severing people in the cafe. The hours were rough, her sleep patterns shifted, and she had told herself to take it easy after the ejecting from the Sensoriums by Overlord Zetta. Much like a bartender though, working in the kitchens meant hearing people's conversations, and that led to the topic most people were talking about: the Daligig, the former crew and the inevitable fight for the ship. This wasn't just gossip: it was legit information, and while she could skim over Howard's really long summary, it was Allenby's that hit home. Sure, she had that dumb phobia about tech that was irritating, but she was truthful.

And that meant training time had to happen. NOW.

She didn't waste any time either. Quick to the Sensoriums, Hit Girl costume on and the simulation began ten minutes after intense push ups, stretching and a little running.

She learned something in the past few weeks: the only way to really train yourself was to push, and that push had to keep going and going and make you better. So now she was back again against the Daleks, testing her ability to dodge and run and make things fall on them. Then came that duel with Aqua, where she got much, MUCH better with a blade. Then she was back to attacking SAINTS and the hark robots, making sure there were twice as many.

But the grand finale? Shadow Zetta, unstoppable, merciless, and constantly coming at her. Even in the aftermath of broken robots and a beaten Aqua, she couldn't come close to landing a hit on shadow Zetta that mattered. Yet here she was, going at it again and again, and somehow, the audience were smug looking members of the Daligig, looking like Ceasars at a lion feeding.

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Better believe that hit Girl had no intention of being hit with her staff like she was a baseball. She knew well enough when it came to working with the staff it was far more useful for its blade at the end (not on now) and its versatility. The way Morgan was using it now was like a bat.

What was more, she would use that miss (and she had to be quick or he WOULD get her with the staff) to dance away and then close the distance, going for a low body kick to knock him off his axis.

When the staff missed, he just kept turning with the motion, spinning his coat up and around to foul her leg as she lashed out at him. As heavy and tough as metal, though it flowed like cloth, it was enough to buy him a moment's time as he spun the staff around behind his back to bull her back.

Now was the time for Hit Girl start using her footwork. While the initial flap of his coat was unexpected and certainly tripped her up, she realized quickly this was just another way for him to knock her off guard. At this point, he would just use this opportunity to hit her with the staff She was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

So she just poured on the speed at this point, looking for an opening to where the coat did not protect him and narrowly missing the staff.

Morgan laughed, in delight and amusement that she was continuing to pressure him, but now she was over-relying on her raw physical ability again -- which was the opposite of the message he was trying to get through here. Which meant he had to be a bit less subtle to demonstrate the point.

So as he dropped into a low, balanced stance, he simply twisted one hand -- and what followed might be best described as one hell of a Force-push, except that the Force wasn't at all involved. Just a seamless interaction of his chi and hers, producing a massive shove backwards.

The laugh, as Mindy took it, was either him enjoying himself or him laughing at her, and likely it was the former even though the latter was what she immediately jumped to. She grit her teeth when she felt the push back, but got the message nonetheless: it wasn't just about her physical fighting.

So she took a breath and this time projected a push back: no aggression, no staff, no weapon on her part, just her energy.

Good effort, and Morgan approved... though tactically it might not have been the most sound decision. At this moment, he moved with the cosmos, and the cosmos with him; there was, in fact, little distinction between Morgan and existence in general. Harmony and balance.

So pushing back against him might just be a bit of a losing battle.

Mindy was already wracking her brain. She may have been strong when it came to her own size and strength, but with Morgan he was well versed in what he was able to do, and the strength was on him. No, she wouldn't be able to do defeat him, but she wasn't going to defeat him anymore than she was going to defeat the Overlord anytime soon. She just needed to get one hit.

Which meant she had to use her own guns, so to speak.

"Practe Bigi Nar "Ardescat!" She channeled her chi into the tips of her fingers, creating a tongue of flame, and hurled it toward Morgan.

Just one tongue of flame? To the more Hermetic mindset that Mindy used (which, by the way, baffled Morgan), this would fall under the category of 'countermagic', though from his own point of view he was simply matching chi to chi by raising his hand, then twisting with his wrist. The fire splattered as if it had hit a barrier.

Oh, it was just for show: Mindy had actually a much bigger gamble in mind, one that required her to be quick, precise, and challenge what she was already able to do. She knew that she would be doing this on a lark though, and that it was likely it might not work, but a shot was a shot.

The flame was just a diversion: Mindy could make much bigger ones by now, and anyway she needed her chi for her attempt to take down Morgan here. When the flame went toward him, she took the few precious seconds to look as of she were genuinely coming at him, bringing an arm back to go for a midsection hit-

And the she BROKE from that, leaving an after image, and went for a solid hit to the back. The image lasted maybe a second, but it was all she needed.

She'd almost had him. The only thing, only thing, that saved him was the fact that he'd never let up on that pressure against her, which followed her rather than hanging with the image. She came close enough to touch the back of his coat as he jumped, straight up, about a dozen feet. Which wasn't the best response here, but it had prolonged the game that much more.

The Pressure from his coat had stopped her, and now he was already airborne, which now left her with two choices: attack him as soon as he got on the ground, or find a way to catch him off guard. She figured the best way to do THAT was to stop an easy descent.

" Vinculum facti inimicum capient. Sagitta Magica, Aer capturae!

And now was a stronger version of the wind spell, much as she had used with fire and ice before. This was to shove Morgan back and make him losing his footing, thus letting her step in for the kill.

That was when Morgan's feet hit the air like ground about a dozen feet up, and, upside down, he looked up at her -- or down, depending on whose reference point you were referring to. He was obviously cheating in some way, since his coat was hanging down his body rather than sagging towards the ground like it should have been.

Oh come on, seriously?! Hit Girl grit her teeth. Apparently he was going to make this hard on her, exactly as he stated he was going to in the beginning. Granted, she could have complained this was cheating, but even she knew he could say the same thing about her using the magic Negi had taught her.

Anyway, she wasn't done yet.

Now she would repeat the spell, but with ice missles headed toward Morgan, and she was moving again.

From Morgan's perspective, of course, it wasn't cheating. To his mind, there was little difference between throwing a punch and standing in midair; both were perfect extensions of harmony with the cosmos, applications of his training and practice. Of course, rationally Morgan understood that balance of that level was functionally no different from, or was, magic, but that didn't slow his perception and understanding one bit.

The ice missiles he simply reached out to bat aside, the way a monk might swat away an arrow with his palms and forearms. He still insisted on stubbornly standing upside-down in midair.

To Hit Girl's mind, it was something she needed to overcome: and the truth was, even as she seemed to hate having to compensate for something her opponent had over her, she really didn't. All that did, in her mind, was force to her to go to attempts to even the playing field, though in this case she was going to have to push herself.

She raised her hand, and, channeling her chi, the staff came back to her: a trick she'd learned in case she ever had to actually grab a weapon quickly, although she had hoped she wouldn't need to too often. Unfortunately, here came the hard part: the spell she'd been working on and only got right about half the time, and still shaky at first.

"Volatio! Levitatio! Baculum Volent!"

Oh, it had been a BITCH looking up the Latin word for staff, and even more of a bitch mounting the thing without feeling obscene. In any case, she mounted the staff and went straight for Morgan, rather shakily but at least in the right direction.

If he hadn't vowed to teach her without words, he'd have been making jokes that wouldn't have helped. So, in retrospect, good call on his part.

He flipped right-side up to simply float in midair, and in this the playing field was level -- Morgan wasn't a stellar flyer by any means himself. Still, at the moment, he was holding still while she was moving, and he intended to keep it that way for his own advantage.

Hey it was hard enough doing this, she felt like a reject from the Harry Potter series! As it was, keeping her balance was a pain and it was why she never liked doing this spell and failed at it fairly frequently!

In any case, she had to be able to get this shot in, because while he couldn't fight, he could float and she couldn't. She had to be quick enough to try and land a hit before falling to the ground: her staff was just a staff, NOT a flying broom. She moved closer, hanging from the staff as of it were a hoverboard, and dropped upon Morgan with her speed again, going from the face to the mid section to the hip in one fluid movement.

She had actually not done something like this in mid air before, so even she was a little surprised.

Well, all good things. Morgan was not particularly able to manipulate force to redirect her, and not willing to do anything directly to her to counteract her attack. So two parries, but he couldn't redirect her force with all of gravity behind it and no balance of his own against the ground... so that third blow caught him in the hip at last.

Yes! She finally did it! Awesome! And...now the spell wore off since she couldn't really maintain it when she was hitting someone, so she plummeted down immediately, the least she was able to do was roll for a bit on the ground. This was fortunate, as a fall without that would likely have broken something.

Hit Girl sprung up, slightly bruised and wincing, but proud of herself for finally landing a hit!

He landed lightly a moment later in a three-point stance that was needlessly dramatic, then rose.

"Well," he said. "Learn anything?"

Hit Girl was checking herself, making sure that she hadn't bruised anything too bad or that she needed to go to the medbay anytime soon. Once that was done, she turned to Morgan.

"Lots," she said. "But the best thing was learning what I could do without having to rely on strength. I already knew you were strong, but I didn't know you could block rings around me without even really breaking a sweat. And I got stupid and forgot to use my magic and chi...I have to get back to that. Negi said once if I did, it would be amplified if I used it with my barrier jacket."

She paused. "And you were right: this was way more informative than just fighting a simulation of Zetta."

It was a good start. Not anything profoundly deep and philosophical, but then, Hit Girl wasn't the sort to come to that sort of realization easily, if not at all. "You didn't miss anything by forgetting, I could've stopped magic easily enough," he said, reaching over his shoulder to pat the hilt of his sword. "Though put some consideration into why I was able to block almost everything."

No, even Hit Girl knew the profound and deep wasn't something she felt comfortable talking about, not completely. Magic at least seemed governed by a set of rules: what she had done today she was going to have to think about for awhile.

"I was thinking about that," she said. "And I'm thinking it might have been easy because I was using more force and strength, and you were using a kind of martial art that defends against that. I've at least heard how defensive martial arts can be used against someone who uses too much solid movement. but I feel like there's something more to it too, like you were able to predict my moves."

"There's nothing inherently superior about a hard style or a soft style. I prefer soft myself just as a matter of training and experience, but if I'm fighting in my personal style you'll see me use both without caring which is which. In general, fighting defensively can be very effective, if you're willing to commit to it and give ground if necessary. And predicting your moves?"

He shrugged mildly. "If I was going all out, I'd be reading you as much as I possibly could, both mentally and physically. I wasn't here, and if it seemed like I was, that's just a factor of experience."

"Ok, so some have advantages and disadvantages to each other," Hit Girl said patiently. "So you're telling me that you can actually take me out easily if you were actually trying? Heh. I think you definitely have an advantage over a lot of people...though you practice no violence. it still boggles my mind."

She shook her head. "Man, that was invigorating though! That was better than any fight I ever had! It was better than s...well, maybe not better than that, but you get the idea!"

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