2019-03-24: Becoming the Fire
- Log: Becoming the Fire
- Cast: Loren Voss, Leah Sadalbari
- Where: Bledavik - Royal Palace
- Date: March 24, 2019
- Summary: Takes place before the transit to Spira. To change, sometimes one must surrender stability.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
To gain a skill, one must practice at it.
That's an essential rule in life, and a rule that Loren has broken over the last few months. Not by choice -- the return from Lunar upended a certain 'freedom to practice', and when assignments had taken him east and then beyond, there had been neither opportunity nor time.
But things have happened recently that have returned his mind to the matter of the sword.
First, though, he'd had to work out when the practice gym was typically in use, and organize his personal schedule (more difficult now, with his promotion) to minimize any chance of running into anyone else.
Possibly -- probably -- it was unnecessary, but better he not be seen at this, especially by any former classmates. Or, Emperor forbid, deVriese.
...Or the Commander, for that matter, for somewhat different reasons.
Stripped down the bare essentials of training wear -- sleeveless shirt, leggings -- he pauses only to wipe sweat from his brow before he proceeds to go through the base forms of the swordstyle he'd learned on Lunar with the reforged blade.
Again.
He knows he's still messing it up.
On this, he's right: as his teacher (ha ha) on Lunar had mentioned then, he's too stiff, too brittle. The gains he's made in force are compromised by the lack of flexibility.
He stops, attempting to once more correct what he sees as a misstep and tries again.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
That's the rule. Practice, exercise, teaching the muscles as well as the mind, teaching the mind until it moves farther than the mind--but then, a 'skill' is at least as much scar as anything. If looked at the right way.
Maybe Leah sees it that way, maybe not--but there is... one person whose schedule is sufficiently unpredictable as to make her impossible to really avoid. Particularly if she has a reason to consider it. But, he has mostly had that time on his own. There's no steps approaching, no telltale noise of doors opening, no walking...
Not until there is the quiet sound of breathing in the room, behind, and Leah is leaning against the wall, arms crossed--bionics visible, for once, given a sleeveless shirt of her own. This, itself, may not be enough to notice someone at first. If it isn't...
"Interesting," Leah comments, from the wall.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He stops just about dead, lowering his blade to tip point downwards towards the practice-room floor.
More notably, he doesn't turn around. "Leah. ...How long have you been here?"
He bows his head briefly, gazing at the blade, twisting it to look at his distorted reflection along the sword's edge. Right now, he doesn't really look like a newly-minted captain, he thinks. More like someone desperately trying to be something he's not.
...This again? runs the thought. Are you really going to do this again?
He wasn't promoted because he's inept. That would be an insult to the Commander's judgement.
He finally turns around to face her.
"Are you here to practice? Or..."
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
"Not long," Leah answers. "Just enough to see the last few motions."
And to remind him that she can be quiet sometimes, naturally. ...It's habit, being occasionally unsettling, if that's really the reason. But she does see a newly-minted Captain. ...She also sees, welll...
Little Ren. Among other selves of his.
"I am," Leah agrees, pushing off of the walk and stepping towards a rack of practice swords, rather than bringing one of her own. She lifts it casually in a mechanical hand, turning back towards him. "For the exercise, really. Sometimes, it helps me think."
"Why don't you show me the form you're working on?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He just shakes his head.
"Should I get a practice sword? This one is..."
He trails out, remembering what it had been sourced from. He glances away from her.
He should say something. He should explain. But it's...
It's a guilty thing to admit to having done, to his brother's widow.
"...Let me get a practice sword."
No. He can't use this one against her, even in practice.
This blade he leaves against the rack, taking particular care not to have it simply resting on the floor or similar. He's almost delicate with it.
"...This will do."
He draws free one of the practice blades, tests its weight before venturing back onto the gymnasium floor. Off the mat, the metal is cold underfoot.
"...Like this," he says, lifting the blade into a guard.
He feels self-conscious, now, demonstrating before someone else. Someone who is family. "The point is to change from a guarded stance to--"
He shifts -- stiffly, the sword as a consequence trembles in his grip -- into an advance, as if striking at an imaginary adversary.
Then directs the practice sword down, towards the mat.
"...I know. I'm too rigid," he admits, averting his gaze.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
"I know what it is," Leah answers simply. "I know what it's from."
She does not tell him not to get a practice sword, however. She does not tell him not to leave the blade carefully away--no, instead, she moves out of her slippers, steps to the side, and watches Loren begin the form. She offers no real reassurance to look at her; she is watching, neither pleased nor displeased, simply thoughtful, observant. She sees the shift of his stance...
"Yes," she says thoughtfully. "...You are. But, that isn't surprising--for this."
Leah extends her hand, lightly shifts her own practice sword through the air over her hand, rolling it in her grip until it points upward again, a little way of preparing her unusual form for something requiring dexterity. "For a student at Jugend... The element we favor goes farther than you would imagine, even having been there." A beat, "...That is to say, your mistake here is exactly the mistake an Earth adept would make. In a few ways... it's the opposite of the lesson he had to learn, back then."
Leah steps onto the mat, a distance away, and then shifts her blade in front of her, adopting the stance he demonstrated, more or less. "Stance, to stance... You can keep them in mind well. You know where you are... you know where you will be. You know the necessary form."
"...Don't think rigid. Think stable. This is your issue; it is not Earth's nature to flow. It is Earth's nature to be. So, bringing your Earth... there is no script, for the in-between places."
She lowers the weapon. "Whereas with Water, stopping was the difficulty--changing is simple, but holding in one place, returning to the same place each time? No. But you--you are stable... and you need to be able to become un-stable."
Leah turns her gaze back to Loren, her single eye looking for his face. "You need to find your Fire. Not Ether--its nature, within you. The thing that is no shape at all, that has no form or substance whatsoever, less even than the Wind."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
A description like 'Loren tenses' does not do the particular body language or choked-off sound Loren makes justice as he lays the blade to rest. He remains there frozen, rigid, as if awaiting further judgement from on high.
She knows. But...
It takes him seconds before he dares to move again. He doesn't meet her eyes. "I..." he starts to explain, before ultimately shaking his head.
I'm sorry, he thinks, desparately, for one moment. He can see her lying in a cathedral, unmoving...
But he can't bring himself to say it, not this time.
And instead he pads off across the mat, away from her, to demonstrate however awkwardly what he has learned of the blade. He still doesn't look at her.
Not when she rolls the blade in her hand. Not when she begins to explain what it is, precisely, that he's doing wrong.
That it's the opposite problem his brother had, so long ago.
This prompts him to lift his head. "But he... always looked like he knew what he was doing," he protests, meeting her gaze at last.
He's forgotten. The 'him' that looked at his brother back then was a different him. A little brother who -- while he saw his older sibling as a milestone to beat, also held him as that milestone for a very particular reason.
But his brother was a Fire adept, a sea change from Earth. From Water.
Even Wind.
There is no script for the inbetween places.
He makes a noise. It's something kin to a laugh.
"'Become unstable', huh..." He shakes his head, lowering the practice sword to the mat. "Sometimes, I..."
Sometimes he feels anything but stable.
"There's fire under the earth," he says, after a moment. "Or, I guess, it's where fire and earth overlap. It's why the earth becomes so destructive and stops merely 'being'."
Silence intrudes. He glances down at the mat, down at the tip of the practice sword.
Once, in a space deep underground, well in the arms of the earth, he had almost asked her something important.
He lifts his head.
"Leah... do you..."
He pauses, just for a moment. Just a moment before pushing on ahead.
"...do you miss him?" The 'too' is not said. Can't be said. But it weighs in the air, still.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Leah has some reaction. That is, itself, strange. She watches him, in those few seconds, and it is not with the utter distance and quietly placid calm. There is something in it that is not angry, that is not judging...
It's a different kind of distance. It might be sadness, if sadness were an old thing long buried in sediment, prepared for later study by scientists seeking insight into an ancient world. But here it is not anything so easy or obvious or simple.
It is best, not to meet her eye there. It may, or may not, be best not to explain. Instead...
Instead, she continues her assessment, which--naturally--is related. Naturally, they go together, because things in this world are not simple in that way. Just like--
The faint, brief laughter, perhaps the more dignified version of a snort, at Loren's protest. "Of course he looked like he knew what he was doing in front of you. How much practice do you think went into seeming perfect? He wasn't going to slack off with you to consider."
But there is no script for the in-between places.
Silence intrudes, after Loren makes his assessment. Leah does not answer him. Not his thoughts... Not his question. Not just then. That space, deep underground...
About as far from home, isn't it?
"...It's as you say," she says instead first. "The fire changes the earth... or you could say that it pushes it. The fire lends the earth direction, as the water wears away layers and carves it into something more."
She lets that hang, for a little while long.
"...Heh," she says finally, after that, glancing down--her hair falls over her shoulders, over her eye, then. "'Miss', they call it. Like simply noticing an absence--or like a little happenstance. Ah, you just missed him, they might say--he was here, moments ago. He will be again, if you wait, or if you find him. A trifle. A small, termporary thing."
Silence, again.
"...I miss him," she answers simply. "Losing a hand, a leg, an eye... They don't compare. They aren't the same."
"...But then, I'm not the same, either. I do. Even with all these marks he left for me to remember him by. Only half of my body left with him. ...The rest is still here."
"'Missing', as you say."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He doesn't look. He can't bring himself to look, to find whatever might rest in her gaze in that moment. To see whether it might be anger, judgement, sadness...
He, possibly, should have said something. Should have never let it go to that point to begin with. But it's too late for words or explanations, or much of anything.
And so he continues on, as does she.
He moves from stance to stance, just as she'd bid him.
Demonstrates there the flaw within his practice of swordplay.
"...Oh." He looks away, reevaluating here a small piece of his past, weighing it against what he had thought he'd known. "So all that was practiced..."
Did he really think his brother was just naturally good?
But more than that: his brother saw him as someone he had to show his best side towards? After all that? In spite of everything that had been strung between them, growing up? All the times Engil had hassled him, given him grief.
Encouraged him. Told him what he should expect next.
"..."
He doesn't look at Leah. He looks, instead, at the mat before him. "..."
It seems like everything affects earth, sometimes. Fire pushes it forward. Wind and water shape it, in different ways, by different means, for different results. But what does 'earth' do by itself?
In life, does he really...
That little chuckle tugs him gently away from such thoughts.
"I didn't... mean..." he starts to say, before trailing into silence.
It's a silence that maintains, sustains. Endures until she has spoken, fully, on the pain, the nature of loss.
It's just gone. A sudden gap where there had been something -- someone -- before. Now, nothing.
"The absence of a thing isn't cold or warm, light or dark. You get used to it, eventually. ...But the sense of what's missing is always there. You never forget what was, and what isn't anymore."
So she had said.
"..."
"...I'm sorry," he says, finally. What is he apologizing for, and for what reason? For being the sorry replacement, in a sense? For still being here? For...
"Sometimes... sometimes I almost feel like he's going to come back. But I know..." He trails out again, and shakes his head. For him, he just remembers one last message -- sent, not even face to face.
'Don't let them grind you down too much, Ren.'
Because he'd been about three weeks in at Jugend at the time and...
I hate you so much. You ruined everything.
But I miss you.
"...I know he's not coming back."
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Should have, possibly. But that's the past. Might have, maybe, but it's gone.
"You don't get as good as he was by virtue of a good smile and a set of expectations. We both practiced, then. ...We both got better than we would have, otherwise."
She doesn't need to go through the implications; doesn't need to make obvious some things. But then, there are things it isn't even hers to do that with. Their views of the past... Well, they were different, and are different, but they saw different sides, too.
Leah, really, isn't looking at Loren for a while, either. She doesn't appear to be looking at anything; past the walls, past the floors, down, down, down, through the earth...
Because that's just it, really.
The earth--the solid surface, acted upon by the others--is what retains memory. The earth is left, when all else is gone. The earth is the only thing that records the passage of the others.
"I know," she says, and she either cannot or does not say it with anything special but that same, perhaps discomfiting life, a certain roughness that is a reminder that her throat, too, was injured once, and that she may not even sound the same now as she once did.
He apologizes. She listens. She is silent, then. Silent, for longer, and longer...
"There's a certain way the mind plays tricks--the mind doesn't really accept loss. ...It does it more, when there isn't anything obvious to see, to prove it. When there isn't a body."
Finally, Leah turns to Loren again, and shifts the sword in her hand--until its point rests on the cold floor, her palm over its pommel. "...Thank you," she says simply, and there is little question that it is to his apology. The words are full; they area deliberate, and they are round, in their way.
She shakes her head, after that, and resumes looking back, long through the earth.
It may seem that it takes forever, before she speaks up again. But she does, and somehow it is still surprising, arriving on the wrong half-step, when she does.
"Everyone did a lot of assuming, for me. Assuming how I should feel, how I should react. The poor young widow--the disgraced soldier, betrayed by her commander's failings..."
"There were a lot of people eager, to tell me all the nasty things they had always seen in him, or how extraordinary I was, coming through that..." Leah shrugs, lightly. "That it was for the best, that I returned to my maiden name, that they didn't hold his shame against me, that it wasn't my fault."
She smiles, without looking at him, and it is not a pleasant smile. It is cold, like her hands are always cold.
"They don't say anything, now. They are as gone as he is."
"...My feelings were, and are complicated. I imagine that yours are, too. But in this matter... When everyone wants to use him against you--when they want to make it so that you should hate your name, should succeed despite him--"
Leah looks up, again. "Remember that it isn't you who's unworthy. The lying tongues of the elect can be removed just as easily."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"..."
So even he had worked hard. On an objective level, certainly, Loren had realized that his brother had worked to get where he had gotten. But... but wasn't it expected? They were First Class citizens. Wasn't it in their nature...
So what does that mean for him? Does it then follow that his failure to get anywhere meaningful in his life -- until recently, perhaps, and Emperor knew where or what he should do or go from here -- was because...
It's not enough to have talent or be 'blessed'.
He glances away, fidgeting with the pommel of the practice blade, his gaze anywhere but her.
There's a lot to apologize for. But will just saying the words make forgiveness appear?
"...yeah. They say... that's why there are rites." Even in Solaris, due is given to the dead.
Engil never got those.
"That's why Lambs burn or bury their dead. It's a means to let go of the past. I don't..." He trails out, lifting his head a fraction. Lan had called his brother's room his 'shrine', like it was some holy place. But it isn't, really. Not really.
He remains silent as she thanks him, for that one small gesture. Remains silent still as she says nothing more, just lingering, waiting.
The earth is patient. The earth endures. What passes on the earth's surface is meaningless. What passes on the surface means everything.
He lifts his head, shifts his grip on the blade. Begins to slide one bare foot backwards, as if he were about to try, again, to find the parts that fall between stability.
The parts that tend to slip from the world's memory.
And she speaks. He lifts his head, watching her now, the blade directed once again down between his feet.
She explains what she endured.
She explains...
'They don't say anything, now.'
Loren is not stupid. He knows precisely what she means when she says something like that. Something akin to a mute, crawling horror has begun to etch itself across his face.
"Leah, you..." The statement trails its way out into a pregnant silence.
He's a medic. As she had noted before, such solutions to a problem are anathema to him. Purge the Lambs, if necessary. Cut down those who stand in their way. But to sacrifice a comrade -- no, to outright kill a fellow citizen -- is something utterly unacceptable.
And the one who is telling him this is Leah. Tacitly admitting she's done this. And, due to her stance in the government...
He remains frozen in place but it feels in this instant as if the world has opened up beneath him.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
It's expected that they work hard, expected that they give their best--but, well, Leah's family makes a point of ensuring that it looks effortless to the lower classes, and not only them. How natural is it, for a child to see his elders as titans? How natural is it, for the anger of a nation to assume malice rather than mistake? ...Or mistake as failure in morals as well as judgement or luck?
No, words alone don't solve everything--but what solution can there be, without starting somewhere?
"It's true. They bury their dead; they transmute them in memory to grand tombs, or smaller headstones... Sometimes they cremate, and place the remains in urns, in a place of honor. They erect monuments. ...To let go... But also, to resolve. It's a fascinating subject, really--I've made a study, of surfacer funearary rites, as part of my broader study into their religions."
But there are other things she must say. There are other things, that she must say to the earth, on which they stand, and to the each with which she shares this room, for the moment. She waits... And ah, there--there is the expression, and she sees it, in his eyes, etched on his features. Her single eye is upon him, then, and there is something watchful there--It is not a smile, precisely, not a smirk. ...It is a look one gives to something in progress.
"It is my task, Captain Voss, to prune the Tree of Life." Are there even cameras down here at all? Is there recording equipment? "It is my role to judge, and to act. As our broader forces monitor the surface, as we in the capital monitor the lower classes... I, Grigori, watch the elect. The citizenry. And those who would bring down our grand order--those who would ruin our Great Work--"
"It is my task to eliminate them. This is what it means, to be the Watcher; this is my place in the Interior Ministry. This is secret even to the First Class, rumored to many but known to your Commander... to Hawwa... And now, to you."
"This is what it means, to serve. This is the source of my power, and of my resolve."
Leah finally shifts her stance--backward, into a one-handed stance. Her forward arm, the right, extends the practice blade forward at an angle from her body; her other hand, the left, remains at her side, fingers slightly curled, in a casting position. Every officer who has passed Jugend can recognize a variant of this stance--one of the stances of mastery of the Solarian Blade Arts.
"Now. Find your fire. Show me again."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
She finds it fascinating, the Surfacer practice of death and rememberance.
He finds it creepy, still. Wasteful, even. Isn't better to be recycled once you die, rather than lost beneath the surface, or cast out unto the winds or water? Or left to sit for eternity in an urn.
But this time, this time he lacks the impulse to say as much -- to repeat the sentiment he had expressed once, preciously. His silence will have to speak for him on the matter.
Now is not the time for flippant remarks.
Not when she looks at him like that.
He draws in a breath -- finds the means to breath, somehow -- when she explains it to him.
Explains to him precisely what it means to have her role. He glances, fleetingly, to the wall. ...No cameras. ...Because there are cameras outside, he realizes, finding he's unable in this moment to even take another breath.
As she explains to him what it means to be the Watcher. Grigori.
The ones she watches are the elect.
People like him.
He doesn't shake or tremble, though he halfway feels like he ought to. She was right about his element being stable -- whatever might run beneath the surface, whatever beats in his chest, he presents like the earth the illusion of stability at least.
And she imparts upon him at last...
...How few people know what her duty truly is.
"..."
His lips part, if briefly. Loren looks for the moment as if there is something he wants to say, only for this silence to persist. Without taking his eyes off her, he nods. He otherwise doesn't move.
Not until her position shifts, not until she takes up an offensive stance, not until she bids him show her again how he intends to fight. His grip on the blade shifts. Hesitantly at first he assumes a more defensive stance -- what he had learned from his teacher on the moon. Is this a prelude to... what does she now intend?
This is...
He has no choice but to trust.
As before, he shifts quickly -- one foot before the other -- breaking out into an aggressive form.
His teacher had stressed changing and adapting quickly. Keep the opponent on their toes.
But.
He's always been better at direct. Misdirection isn't his forte.
He comes in from the front, blade angled for a forward thrust.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
It may, or may not, begin to be clear; Leah can be morbid. Is it so strange, for a woman so changed by death? For a woman who has lost what she has, and whose task is what it is? But watch she does. She notices, when Loren shows discomfort, and frankly--that's not strange, it's not wrong, precisely. No, here...
No cameras; they are outside. Grigori--the Fallen Angel. An open secret, with the weight of the Interior Ministry. Perhaps, now, there are more reasons that it might be obvious, that she is clear. And maybe... Maybe, eventually--he will see that outward stability is worth something, too. That it is a beginning.
She doesn't ask, if he wonders why she has shared this knowledge with him. Not now, anyway. Maybe, another time.
Leah watches the defensive stance, first--and then his shifting. He moves forward, directly--
Leah's blade shifts barely a fraction to meet Loren's; when it does, her stance is iron. No amount of human strength, it seems, will move directly through it.
"This is the glimmer--movement, change. Directness can serve well... But not against me. My arm can exert more force than yours. See, the Earth stance I've taken; let the enemy break himself upon me."
She looks toward his eye, and has not counterattacked. "...To defeat me, you cannot attack where I am strong--you must jump the break, let your flame run up the place where there is fuel. You must outmaneuver me--this is what that means. Now... I will attack."
Leah shoves outward with her blade, and moves slowly, powerfully--the momentum forward becomes a shift, as--her hand still behind--she tilts her hand up, and swings down, vertical, with force.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He has an idea why she might have shared it with him.
If someone is brought into a conspiracy, after all, don't they become--
But in the here and now he hones his focus down towards a few singular points.
Someone else might have worried about an aggressive stance causing harm to their sparring partner. Loren, meanwhile--
He knows, in a sense, what her reaction will be. Which makes his forward thrust all the more perhaps questionable for the trying. An obvious attack will meet with an obvious defense--
And he knows he can no better beat Leah than he could beat the commander.
But this is practice, and one doesn't need to win at practice. Move from defense to offense, try not to dwell on the steps that go between. Try to flow, try to run free like a conflageration in the burning season.
And the practice blade meets with what may as well be an iron wall. He presses in, as if to test.
It is as he already surmised. He grits his teeth -- even if it is an expected failure, even if he had meant only to focus on the transition of stance to stance, a failure is still a failure. And he's never taken failure well.
"Your... weakpoint... huh--"
Around? Above? Where does 'earth' break?
From below, by fire. From above, by wind and water.
He has but a moment to reflect on that before she informs him she will attack.
And sweeps him back with a single swipe of her blade. He staggers a moment--
And remembering what he'd learned, plants one foot behind the other. Steps backwards once, reattaining a sort of stability.
Earth's answer would be clear. Hold your ground. Bolster your defenses. If he had a shield. If he used Ether--
Time's up. He hoists his blade in a shoulder to hip downward guard and
at the last second, steps sidelong, angling out of the way of her incoming strike.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
The here, and the now, on the stage of these revelations--this is the key, this is the thing that must be given attention, the focal point of the movements and moments that have led here. Someone else? Someone else would not be here.
There is a trust, required, in sparring. It would seem that Leah is as willing to offer it as Loren in this instant--maybe it's true she is unconcerned that she could really be hurt by him. She is a master, after all. ...But maybe it is practice, and this--
Dwelling on failure is the first step of rigidity; staying in the moment that was prevents the swordsman from moving to the moment that must be. Leah waits, to see if Loren will be trapped there, as he grits his teeth. And she sees him consider. ...Her attack is telegraphed, certainly, but no less powerful for it.
"My weak point," she agrees, and hacks down--
The sheer force of her strike, even without Ether enhancement, is enough to make a low sound through the air, and her blade very nearly hits the floor with its momentum, even her skill only able to arrest its movement when her blade is at an acute angle compared to the line she made standing from the floor. Earth's answer was clear...
"Good. Now--!"
She offers the instruction, but she is already moving; a medic of all things can see the muscle, synthetic or otherwise, rippling with the movement. Her blade is down--her other hand begins to move forward. Her motion is highly economical; her blade arm is beginning to relax, as she aims an open-palm strike for Loren's chest. ...But he is capable of being faster than this inexorable strike. If he can supply the answer again.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
At the end of the day, 'trust' just about underscores Loren's whole problem in life. One builds a wall for self-defense... but then has trouble bringing it back down again. What is the point of a tower with no doors or windows?
This is one step forward.
Leah makes her own advancement, telegraphing her attack. With a sweep like that, it's without question that she will deliver an overhead swing--
And there is no way a block like that would be a sufficient guard. Perhaps if he were augmented. Perhaps if he had summoned enough Ether to make his body as stone. But neither are true. Holding that guard would break his wrist.
...Which is, itself, a tell.
He's a medic -- he knows what the body can sustain, and what it cannot.
He moves, flowing away from her strike, twisting his body. He can feel the passage through the air, catch the reverberations against the floor through his feet. That... might have done serious damage had it connected.
Is she trusting him to not let himself get hurt?
It had been telegraphed--
'Now--!'
She doesn't give him much time to respond or react. This is likely another part of the training process.
The blade is hoisted in a basic guard--
Her sword. Her sword is held back. The muscle in her arm.
He begins to twist, narrowing his profile, angling his chest away from her.
Then drops, low, settling into a crouch. Forgoing the blade, he angles his torso back onto his left elbow and kicks out with right leg.
It might even have worked...
...If she didn't have artificial limbs.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Trust is dangerous... but who has the power never to risk it?
Leah, too, has some command of healing, though far more supplementary than a true medic's. It's assuredly the case that between that and her skill, she knew full well that she could have hurt Loren badly with that strike, and yet, made it regardless. It is useful, as far as a communication itself--a good game requires some stakes. A good lesson can operate on similar principles.
Leah gives very, very little time. She is already moving, already beginning to strike. Loren moves up in his basic guard, and still, Leah moves forward, apparently entirely willing to risk her hand against the blade directly in her strike. He starts twisting, and on its own, it is not enough--still, she is moving forward. In the span of less than an instant--
Leah's hand slams into empty air, her feet shifting to support her through the momentum of the strike that carries her entire body forward, the full weight of her many cybernetics behind the blow. But--
Loren is not there. Instead, he's dropped, at an angle, and his leg lashes out--
It hurts, naturally. It's like kicking an iron pillar--but her weight was not on that leg, and so rather than finding what would happen if it had been, it scoots back an inch. There's a mark on the floor, from its weight; her stance, the forward-leg now bearing her weight, is stable, as she adjust... and then pauses, turning to look down towards him.
"Yes," she answers. "You won't finish learning all in one day--but that is what is necessary. You must be willing to leave behind your successes and failures both, to become the Fire. This is a lesson they do not teach in Jugend."
She extends the hand that had been moving fast enough to break ribs towards him, on the ground. "But to become more than what you are, you have to first understand how to become other than what you are."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
A game without some level of risk -- however slight -- isn't much of a game. This, Loren knows. While he can take comfort in the fact that she wouldn't deliberately kill him--
This is real. This is as real as it can get in a training hall. This will mark him if he fails, more than his instructors ever did. Either of them -- in Jugend or on the moon.
Fortunately for him, that training -- in both places -- happened. He knows enough to narrow his profile in close circumstances. He knows enough to read her form, knows anatomy well enough to guess at her next strike. Knows that her followthrough after the failed strike at his chest may well be with the blade.
He knows that on a baser level, circumventing his tendency to stop and analyze. Instinct and reflex pick up the slack.
He drops, and uses the ground to his advantage.
Or near enough: it's like attempting to kick down an steel beam. The best he can hope for is what he gets -- the fact that she's mid-stride to start.
His shin smarts. It'll probably bruise, but that's a problem for a later him.
Though his expression will betray that that stunt was not without its price.
He hisses out a breath between his teeth slowly and glances up at her, his hand easing off the hilt of his blade.
"...It's not possible to learn anything in a day."
I've been an idiot haven't I.
His brow creases.
Leah... you... really...
"'To become the Fire'," he echoes, looking through her for the moment.
BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Heku0XZbxZ4
Like... you?
Or... him?
Whose 'Fire'?
There is only the flicker of hesitation. He reaches up for her hand. There are no words to have to that. He only nods.
I want to be... what I was meant to be.