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

Entry tags:

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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!"

"Oh, I practice violence, I just prefer it as a last resort. I'll hurt or kill if it's the only solution I can see. But if that's the case, it's a failing on my part for not being able to see a better solution."

He shrugged, smiling lopsided. "Want a suggestion for a spell? It's a popular one because of its raw efficiency. I can't tell you how to do it hermetically, of course, but if I give you the idea you can probably figure it out."

"Yeah, makes sense. I dunno if being here's calmed me a little. Of course, you know that I still have lots of targets to let looser my violence. I mean robots, Ohm, cultists. I gotta admire your gumption: sometimes its hard not to want to beat the shit out of everything, with all we go through."

Now there was something she could get behind! "Yeah man, I'm all ears!"

"The common name for it is Friction Curse. You turn the kinetic energy of an opponent's muscles to heat. The harder they try to move, the more they cook themselves."

Would've made their fight a lot more one-sided, wouldn't it?

As if reading his mind, Hit Girl shook her head. "man, its a good thing you're on our side: I'd hate to see what you could do to us if we were your enemy!"

And he could have ended their fight pretty quickly that way.

"How does it work?"

"I just told you I don't know how to describe it hermetically," he said, grinning. "Doing it with martial arts is just a matter of scrambling your opponent's meridians. Ask me to chant in Latin and you get Kinetus Becomae Heaticus."

"Scrambling your opponents...ok, you lost me a little bit," Hit Girl confessed. "I'm sorta following you, but I'm trying to understand how you would do that with martial arts."

"Do you want the simple answer, or the complicated one?" he asked.

This was a trick question. Had to be.

"The simple one, then the complicated one," Hit Girl said. "Might make more sense."

"Magic," he said glibly. Didn't get much more simple than that!

"It's mainly a matter of screwing up someone's flow of chi so badly that they can no longer move their muscles properly, and all their cellular energy becomes metabolic warmth."

The first explanation? Made her want to hurt him badly, even if she now knew that was totally impossible now. The second explanation took that feeling away though, as she pondered that a moment.

"Ok, that sounds like something I would definitely use in a pinch. I'm still starting to learn how to use chi to mu advantage, so that would help."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject