LOG: Alison and Haroun - Testing Out a New Approach

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Haroun's made some changes in the ways he goes about his favorite pasttime. And, of course, his fiance gets to be the guinea pig. Likely she'll be feeling it tomorrow.



Haroun, thoroughly warmed up, bounced up and down on his toes while he waited for Alison to arrive. He was looking forward to getting back into the ring. Besides, Alison was going to be _shocked_ that he was bothering to wear a traditional t'ai chi outfit instead of his usual BDU pants and wifebeater. He had some things he wanted to test - new approaches, new ways of going about his lethal business. And Alison was just about the best person to try it against - he wanted to get at least a few bouts of feasibility testing in before he tried it against Nate.

He liked fighting, but not so much with the getting his ass beat into the mat by a guy a foot taller (give or take an inch or two) and a hundred pounds of muscle heavier.

Wandering into the gym, Alison blinked at the sight before her. Arriving to find Haroun utterly ready and eager to go was routine, really - she still had to warm up herself and he was used to waiting for her, when that happened. The outfit was another story though, although she wasn't complaining. It was nice to see him wearing that, and it showed off his slightly different new form tremendously well, she couldn't help but noticing. He was a bit leaner now, less bulky than before. And Alison had a feeling this session would result in a few changes thanks to his new flexibility, now that the jetpacks weren't centralized in his torso anymore. She wasn't, however, aware of the changes Haroun himself planned to implement.

"Hey there, eager beaver guy," she greeted him, dropping her gym bag on the floor and getting ready to get warmed up properly.

"Hey there good-lookin'" he said with a friendly leer. Then he popped his neck by the simple experient of rolling his head slowly in a 360. "Figure it was past time to get back in the saddle." he said. "You up for some light contact?"

She shuddered at the resounding sound of his neck cracking and shook her head at him slightly, starting through a series of exercises to warm up. "I am if you are," she replied easily, more due to the fact medical had indeed cleared him for this earlier, than because he was eager to do so - she was still used to a Haroun who tended to push too hard, though she had to admit that since the accident, while Haroun had pushed hard, he had yet to have pushed too hard.

Haroun watched her stretch out with an appreciative eye. "Looks like you're just as flexible as you were before it all hit the fan." he commented. "All that stretching and t'ai chi helped." He amused himself by doing torso-twists to loosen up his midsection a little more while she wrapped up her stretches. As soon as she stepped onto the mat and bowed, he dropped into a casual ready stance and waited for her to echo the movement. "You think you can land one on me this time?" he taunted her.

Alison shook her head at him, rolling her eyes a bit. "How about we just go through the whole light spar thing and see how things work before we indulge in the chest beating grr man thing?" she suggested, indulging in a last stretch before rising to her feet to take her place opposite him on the sparring mat. She grinned and winked at him then, settling into a ready stance.

Haroun settled into his own ready stance and looked at her. She was so beautiful at moments like this. It almost took his breath away. Finally he extended his ready stance out just a bit, and waggled his hand in a clear "come and get it!" invitation. He could attack, of course, but one of the things he wanted to do was to get a more balanced mix of offense and defense, of the soft and the hard.

Gah. Shiro was starting to rub off on him.

Instead of the usual circling or refusal to be drawn in (or outright attack) Alison didn't move, however, eyeing him pensively instead, a slight frown taking over for a moment as she looked his stance over. It wasn't... exactly his usual stance. Alison could see minute changes and shifts, not all of them easily dismissable as simply due to his better than before flexibility. "Huh."

Haroun grinned at Alison - she'd seen some of the changes, but not all of them. "Yes, I'm experimenting." he said. "And I need you to go on the offensive so I can test this fully."

"Oooh, so I get to be the guinea pig, hrm?" She kept herself from glancing at the ring on his finger and instead smiled, suddenly. "Okay!" And with no further ceremony, she went on the offensive, careful of his usual favorite leg sweeps, trading her usual style for a full out offense.

Instead of meeting force with force, like he usually did, he used the t'ai chi circular footwork he'd been learning and moved around the flow of the attack, meeting force with non-presence. As she came slashing in, he sidestepped and tagged her lightly in the midriff with one hand, then continued to move around her as she made her own adjustments. He didn't get more easy touches like that, but he also kept her from laying a hand on him. And she was very clearly trying -she'd learned a lot from cross-training with him, and it showed. She was fast, explosive, and reacted nearly instantly to changing circumstances.

He was so proud of her he thought he might explode.

That something had changed was obvious. Alison grinned as she shifted her stance to adapt to the differences in Haroun's style as it was now, compared to what it was before, glad that he and the general team sparring had always had an emphasis on not expecting an opponent to always react in a certain way, to avoid falling into comfortable patterns that might end up with one being hurt or worse. "Sneaky, sneaky Haroun," she murmured, tiny smile not going away, the challenge one Alison found herself enjoying more than she'd have expected. "Oooh. You did change things."

The realization of what he'd done didn't jar her out of her own stance, but her smile grew and Alison slid into another offensive, eager to see exactly how well he'd integrated those elements of her own style into his own.

Haroun grinned as she changed the way she stood, changed her attitude and her approach. He continued to use the circular footwork he got from t'ai chi, but now he'd added a new wrinkle - a page straight out of Alison's old playbook.

Traps.

She came in fast and hard, and her oomph as she hit the mat was quite impressive. Haroun straightened up with a grin - he hadn't hurt her, he was fairly sure of that, but he did have to rush that trap just a bit. She was even quicker now than she used to be. He was keeping his circles small and reactive, using the momentum to aid him in sending his opponent - Alison, in this case - where he wanted her to go with a minimum of effort on his part.

Chortling, managing to catch her breath in relative short order, Alison rose to her feet again, grinning despite the fall, cheerfully so. She liked what Haroun had done, was experimenting with and obviously intended to fully integrate to his style. It meant, of course, that to give him the chance to properly test it out, she'd have to give him a style that would allow him to test out the changes to the fullest.

Well. She'd earn more than a few bruises and certainly get a refresher on break falls, but it would certainly be worth the ride...