trans_9 | Moment of Zen [OPEN]

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Moment of Zen [OPEN]

Tock, tock, tock, thud.

Danny stood in front of the wooden dummy, striking its arms with his own arms. Scarred, calloused, and hardened. He and the dummy were in a recreation of his work out room. The fake morning sun shined through the large windows, and outside was the New York City skyline.

Tock, thud, thud, tock-tock-thud.

Danny was going through one of the many Wing Chun sets he had learned, at a fairly quick speed. He did his best to keep his mind clear of thoughts, to keep himself in a state of focus without distraction.

Thud, tock, thud, tock, thud, thud, tock.

This is what it took to achieve great skill. To flow naturally with the universe and let each movement happen without force. Danny did not strike the dummy; his arms struck all by themselves.

Tock, thud, thud, tock...tock...thud...

But Danny wasn't quite there today. Every so often, his mind wandered back to his home, his friends, Misty, and the Immortal Weapons. He worried how they were doing without him, how Rand Inc. was doing, how Misty was feeling about him being gone.

The other Immortal Weapons were still looking for the eight city. Danny prayed that he would return before they found it. There were so many things he was responsible for, that he was taken from. Luke and Colleen and Misty could handle themselves, but if anything happened while he was gone...Danny simply could not forgive himself if anyone suffered because he was not there to stop it.

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Mia was watching. Oh yes she was watching. With a grin.

Perhaps leering would be a better term.

After a few warm-up stretches of her own, she started moving towards him when she picked up on a pause in his kata.

"Nice chops there, Danny." Oh-hoh, double-entendre much?

She addressed the computer. "Rotating dummy please." One appeared before her and she started feeling it out, memorizing it's points before her eyes started to drift shut. "So how's it going? Anyone you know in the latest pop?" She gave a glancing open-palmed strike to one of the arms, rotating the dummy slowly at first.

Mia's intrusion surprised Danny. Spacing out did not help one's awareness. Plus, he forgot the sensoriums didn't lock on their own.

"Hey Mia." Danny greeted her with a smile and tried to get back into his usual rhythm. Talking helped keep his mind from drifting, and Mia made for good conversation.

"Just the same old things. I did meet someone I know, actually. Her name's Carol Danvers. She's known as Ms. Marvel, another superhero."

Danny's pace quickened just a tad. If he forgot any moves, he either did not notice or improvised. Forms weren't meant to restrict.

Eyes still drifting open and shut, Mia circled her dummy, making sweeping strikes that met the 'arms' of the dummy. She made precise hits with the corner of her palm, right below the thumb but above the wrist. One strike after each step, covering about a fifth of the circle around the dummy. The wood creaked and whirled after each contact.

"You got one of your natives? Excellent. Seems like I'm spotting mine around every corner sometimes. No-one I'm really close with, but it's nice anyway."

She looks around to be sure, then lets out an almost childish giggle of delight. "We've got Luke Skywalker."

That last comment almost makes Danny fumble.

"Luke Skywalker? Are you kidding? I know some of the worlds these people come from are fictional in mine, but I didn't think Star Wars was one of them." Danny ponders this a moment as he palm strikes the dummy's center and kicks its wooden leg, being sure to keep his arms connected to the dummy's arms.

"Poor guy must be swamped by fans recognizing him."

"Yeah, that's what it looks like so far." Mia smirks. Her eyes are shut tight now, fairly certain she's got the dummy mapped out. "From what I heard another new guy babbbling about, he's from way past the end of the movies too."

She changes her stance and starts making faster strikes, but pulling them at the last moment, barely making the dummy move with each one. She circles more quickly, tagging each of the arms in sequence.

"Oh good, I don't have to worry about spoiling his life story then." Danny says as he does a double palm strike and snakes his hand around one wooden arm before doing another palm strike. He smirks when he sees how Mia is practicing without the use of her eyes.

"Is there a reason you're pulling your punches there? Somehow I doubt you're afraid of getting bruised."

"I wouldn't know enough to really spoil him anyway. Movies are all I know." Mia replies.

She slows her routine, making strikes from odd angles as she twists her body unnecessarily. "Memorization and control exercise, mapping out the points. Keeping up the mapping when hitting it hard enough to make it spin comes next."

She chuckles. "Green Arrow would make me memorize my surroundings by having me run at full speed blindfoled towards a wall or whatever. Lose points for stopping further than a foot away, kinda obvious what happens if I messed up the other direction."

Danny sighs quietly to himself. "First of all, remember to shift your stance. You're starting to get all off structure and off balance." He ends his form with a hard palm strike, leaving a small dent in the wood. He walks over to Mia and her spinning dummy. He grabs one of the wooden arms just as she strikes another arm, preventing it from spinning.

"I don't need to tell you that with no structure, you've got no power. And second, you're thinking way too much about what you're trying to do. You need to get out of your head and just react to what comes. Memorization helps, but I wouldn't rely too much on it." Mia's comment about her mentor's training stirs Danny's own memories of his years training under Lei Kung the Thunderer.

Mia opened her eyes, halting her routine. She looked at her feat and cringed as she saw what her stance had turned into. "Uch."

She listened carefully to Danny's advice, nodding, before taking a step closer to him. She tilts her head up slowly, making eye contact, and just holding it for a few moments; she licks her lips thoughtfully.

"Do you want to teach me?" There's a little smile at the corner of her lips, but her voice is controlled, befitting of approaching a potential sensei.

"Hmm..." Danny thinks as he looks at Mia. She definitely had the right stuff, and he could not think of any reason not to. He did miss teaching the kids at the School of Thunder. Danny crosses his arms and nods to Mia.

"Sure, I'll teach you. I haven't had much else to do since I came here. I think I might join the training staff and teach some of the others kids here." He smiles at Mia. "Don't worry though, you'll get plenty of private lessons, if you want."

Mia grins. "Awesome. Guess I better let you know where I stand then."

She spends a few minutes listing the different arts she's been mentored in, detailing what areas she favors, the areas she knows she needs work on. Next comes weapons training, followed by medical skills, tracking, survival training, and just for good measure, a rundown of how patrols with Green Arrow usually operate.

Danny nods to Mia as she lists off everything she's learned.

"That's a lot to have learned for someone your age. I'll just focus on teaching you kung fu, but if there's anything else you want to learn just tell me. I know some stealth and parkour too, but I don't think you need any pointers on either of those. What I can really help you with is weapons training." Danny walks back over to his wooden dummy.

"From what I can tell about you, you've had to learn a lot of techniques in a relatively short amount of time. You just need to iron those techniques out, really practice them and make them stronger. I'll be honest, being taught by several different masters is a good way to learn many different things, but if you don't stick with just one for a while, you won't learn anything too special." He takes a deep breath as he faces the dummy. Underneath his plant suit can be seen a faint orange glow.

"The techniques you know are more than just an arsenal of tools to choose from when you're in a jam. They're expressions of your body, mind, and soul, and when you use them, you must be one with the universe." Now Danny's fists begin to glow, growing brighter until the begin to smolder in orange fire. "One life, one strike. You must put your spirit into your techniques." Danny draws his fist back, focuses on the wooden dummy, and punches it square in the middle. The fist breaks the dummy in half in a shower of sparks, wooden chunks falling to the floor. Danny pulls his fist back and the glow subsides. He turns back to Mia.

"I don't think I can get your fists to glow, but I bet I can get you to punch through solid red wood. with some time."

Mia stands with her hands folded behind her back, listening attentively to everything Danny has to say. It's clear he's got years ahead of her both in martial arts and in crime-fighting, and she'll give him the due respect of both.

Then he made his fist glow and started tearing shit up like awesome.

WANT.

Mia calms herself again. "I will graciously accept whatever you can teach me."

"Excellent. When do you want to start?" Danny kicks some splinters off his foot. The broken dummy disintegrates and is replaced with a fresh new one, thanks to the sensorium.

The eager student in her wants to drag him off for a week or month of solid training, but she collects herself. There's other stuff on Mia's mind, and she can't make demands of someone already being generous.

"I..." The temptation is still there, but she stomps it down. "I'd love to start right away, but there's some stuff I need to give my attention to that I expect to come up any time now." She fidgets slightly. "Maybe in a couple days we can figure out a training schedule?"

Roxie has been slinking up and down the endless hallways of the ship, peeking into side entrances and doorways as the whim takes her--and so she has found herself here, leaning into the Sensorium pod Danny is in, her hands in two of the many pockets of the overlarge jean jacket worn over her plantsuit.

She'd intended to only stay for a moment, but the rhythmic, seeingly autonomous movements have lulled her into a half-trance.

Danny starts to get back into rhythm, striking the dummy even hard. He strikes the inside of the arm, catches it and pulls it in as he chops the body, strikes up on both arms, shifts to hit the low third arm, push steps around, hooks the arm, and palm strikes the body, making the dummy creak loudly.

Danny finally notices Roxie's presence and turns towards her.

"Uh, hi there," He says, waving a hand at her. "Need something?"

"I was just... watching," the girl says, adjusting her glasses a little as she mentally gets back up to speed. "I haven't seen many people do stuff like that before."

Danny raises an eyebrow at her. "What, you mean practicing kung fu?"

Roxie nods. "I've seen martial arts on TV and stuff, but not really in person." She sounds intrigued by the whole topic.

"Well, that is unfortunate." Danny says with a hint of sadness. "Interested in learning?"

"What... really?" the girl asks, looking up at Danny. To judge by her size and face, she couldn't be more than thirteen or fourteen at most, but there's something of an unconsciously coiled quality to the way she moves, as if she were expecting to have to lash out or run away from something at any given moment. "That would be cool."

Danny smiles back at her warmly. "Great. When do you want to start? If you've got no prior experience, then we should start at the basics." He thinks about this a moment. Danny has never met this girl before.

"But I guess we should introduce ourselves first. My name is Danny Rand, also known in my world as Iron Fist. What's your name? Do you have any powers I should know about?" Can never be too careful.

"Well, I don't really have anything but free time right now," Roxie says, adjusting her glasses a little. "My name's Roxie. I can fight a little, but it's not very--skilled. But I'm stronger and tougher than I look."

For a long moment, she studies the wooden dummy.

"That's good. You need to be strong and tough." Danny smirks. He notices he focus on the dummy.

"I guess you haven't seen one of these before either?"

"Right," Roxie says with a small nod, stepping forward to get a closer look at it. "It looks so simple," she says. She wouldn't have understood the point if she hadn't had that chance to see Danny practicing with it.

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Moment of Zen [OPEN]

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