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xp_logsBackdated to September. Doug and Marie-Ange spar in the Danger Room, and are joined by Shatterstar, who starts out observing but then joins in.
Marie-Ange could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she had been in the Danger Room in the last year, between running around Symkaria and driving cross-country and doing most of her workouts in the gym rather than in the sci-fi holodeck, but it had safety measures, and she had skipped enough hand to hand practice that her own reminders were yelling at her that she'd exceeded a limit.
To be fair, it was a self-imposed limit, but a limit none the less, and a text message with more emojis than words meant she was heading for the Danger Room in time to catch Doug coming out of the control room with his own sword on his back.
"I want to try to make a solid one, instead of the spear but." She patted the duffle bag she'd set down a moment before. "Just in case, I have a real one, and an armoured jacket."
The scabbard across Doug's back was well-worn and cared for, and he wore it easily. Being able to carry it around and practice with it again after quite a while without was a nice feeling, he had to admit he was looking forward to this. "We might have a visitor-slash-observer," he told Marie-Ange with a grin.
"One of our new residents?" Marie-Ange asked, as the Danger Room door irised open, and they walked through. For once it did not close, and the floor rippled into polished wooden planks, and the walls into ricepaper. "Let me see if I can guess, not Amanda's new duck, she would have told me. The fire one and the purple one are anti-social, so either Ms Smith, or Mr Russell, yes?" She set her bag down, unzipped it and pulled out the deck of tarot cards that were on top of the wrapped sword, the jacket, and the gloves. "Imaged first?"
"Young Ben likes swords, maybe even more than me," Doug confirmed as he took a few moments to limber up, twisting at the waist, rotating his shoulders forward and back. "He had a go at training with Madin under my supervision, but it didn't go all that well." He unslung his sword as he talked. "So I figured I'd give him the chance to watch something a bit more fun." He nodded at Marie-Ange's question, to start with imaged weapons.
Marie-Ange let out a sharp snort at Madin's name, and shook her head. "That reminds me, professionally I should speak to you about that one. I know we have their background checked, but my cousin has a theory about them. Nothing dangerous, just former associations." She waved off the rest of the topic, and started pulling her hair into a set of twin braids. "We are old, you just called a teenager 'young'. You were sixteen when someone gave you a very real, very sharp sword and let you play."
The deck of cards was already cut to the Two of Swords, and a moment later, Marie-Ange had both in her hands, and passed one to Doug.
Doug snorted as he whipped the imaged sword through a pair of quick moulinets before settling into a ready stance. "Angie, we're in our mid-thirties, I think the 'old' ship has sailed," he informed her teasingly.
Marie-Ange stuck out her tongue, and settled into a comfortable stance, weight on her back foot.
Shatterstar hadn't meant to be late, but with September starting, so did a new schedule including things like "school" and "shooting lessons". His internal clock needed to be rewound. He had his duffle bag of sword equipment over his shoulder when he entered, even though Doug had said that it would just be observation. A boy could hope. He was about to apologize for his tardiness when he realized they were starting their swings. Instead he found a corner to watch from, taking careful watch of their movements.
The hilt of the sword was just the slightest bit tacky in her hands, but Marie-Ange guessed she had several good strikes before it would become a problem. She stepped in for a strike that Doug easily parried, and then twisted to angle away from him, and brought her sword up to meet his, and was blocked again. She ducked under his arm, spun, and then kicked with one foot to sweep Doug's knees out from under him.
Doug hopped nimbly backward, sweeping his sword in a pair of low strikes to keep Marie-Ange from advancing further, then closing with her as she came upright. He'd noticed the slight movement that indicated someone entering out of the corner of his eye, and he was sure Marie-Ange knew as well. His mouth quirked slightly. There was a definite temptation to put on a bit of a show. And since Angie was already working with her powers... ::friendos, buckler?:: he inquired mentally, passing his sword from the right hand to the left at the sense of affirmation he received. The nanites in his forearm shifted, narrowing and widening the surface area from just behind his knuckles to several inches past his wrist.
There was a moment of hesitation as he lifted his arm to block the incoming strike - this wasn't the first time he and the friendos had experimented with changes like this, but it -was- the first time risking a potential injury by doing so. But the structure held, and Marie-Ange's blade skated along the surface of it as he swung at her right side.
Spitting out a sibilent phrase in French that told Doug exactly what he could do with his arm, Marie-Ange 's sword actually wobbled like gelatin, and she instead dropped to one knee, and drove the elbow of her free arm up. It did not meet with the squawk and profanity she'd hoped for, instead a plastic thud, and a light grunt. "You wore a cup? Rude." She muttered, and then slid under his leg, and slammed the slowly disintegrating hilt of the sword into the back of his thigh and kicked at his ankle.
The strike to the back of his thigh bent Doug's knee just enough that this sweep managed to connect. With the sword in his left hand, he threw his right out to the side in an instinctive breakfall. However, the narrowness of his resized forearm meant that his center of gravity had changed, and he hit the floor of the Danger Room much harder than intended. Breath whooshed out of him and he slapped the floor twice with his hand to call a break. The nanites began shifting back to their usual configuration, and Doug rolled to one knee. "Because I feel like giving you a free pass to make me want to vomit?" he asked Marie-Ange rhetorically in response to her question. A couple more breaths and he looked toward the ceiling. "Note for self - the reconfigure works, but need more practice in how it changes my balance."
As he got back to his feet, he nodded at their observer. "Enjoying the show?" he asked Shatterstar with a grin.
Shatterstar had been watching with rapt attention, tracking their movements carefully and mentally taking notes. It seemed to him that they were relatively evenly matched and he enjoyed watching them use their powers while they fought- he didn't know why it had never occurred to him that you could combine your mutant powers with swordsmanship. After all, they were just another tool or weapon. If he had to guess, Marie-Ange had more mastery of hers.
He was slightly intimidated by her.
"How did you do that with the buckler?" he asked Doug, even though he was sure it had to do with Doug's powers. He wasn't actually sure what Doug's powers were. He looked to Marie-Ange but avoided eye contact with her out of respect. "How long can you keep a sword up without it fading away?"
Marie-Ange swiped sweaty bangs out of her face before answering - they were sticking inside the eyepatch. "That depends on what I am doing with them." she answered, and glanced over at her deck of cards, sitting on top of her bag, and her modified fencing jacket and the very real short sword in it's case. "In a fight, usually not much longer than I did here, but it is a new skill. I never used to be able to keep them solid on impact." She summoned another, and it was already sticky - she flipped it out, hilt first to show Shatterstar where her fingers had left indentations in the hilt. "Doug and I both had ... what is the word in English, when you change but do not increase or decrease something?" She glanced at Doug. "I do not remember the word, but powers changes. His, the arm. Mine, images that can be solid but only weapons. Spears, swords, knives. I still need practice."
"Simple weaponry only or can you do stuff with moving parts?" He asked, the words falling out of his mouth as he thought of his shooting lessons with Mr. Sydney. He moved like he was going to touch the sword but thought better of it. Instead he moved to inspect Doug's arm with his eyes. He didn't actually know Doug's power- was he born with his arm like that?
Doug was shaking his nanite arm a bit even after it had gone back to 'normal'. "Okay, other note - that feels weird as heck. Like...I dunno, not quite pins and needles, more like I hit a million funny bones all at once. You're not the only one that needs practice, Angie." He levered himself back up to his feet. "Moving parts?" he shook his head. "Nah. Simple weapons, and temporary at that. But it means she can carry a weapon in plain sight that no one even knows about," he said, pointing at the tattoo on Marie-Ange's upper arm.
"I can make, ah, linked batons, but the chain still causes problems. It sticks to itself." Marie-Ange said. "Plus I do not know how to use them, so it is not very useful." She dismissed the sword, it was already half dissolved anyway, and gave a quick glance at the tattoo on her arm, and a staff appeared in one hand, that she held out to Shatterstar. "They are solid until they are not, but the more I make the less solid they are. Fatigue. This one is solid enough for you to test if you would like."
Shatterstar recognized the staffs on Marie-Ange's armband and of course the swords but he couldn't put together what they were doing with circles or cups- or what those had to do with weaponry.
He took the staff from Marie-Ange's hands and was surprised with how real it felt, even if he tried not to let it show on his face. "It has a good heft," he told her and moved through a kata. He didn't know staffs as well as swords but he did enjoy fighting with them.
"Does your arm do moving parts?" He asked Doug, unsure if he should strike at him.
"Nope. This is one of the first things I've really tried with the 'friendos'. They spent a while trying out aesthetics for my arm-" Doug spent a moment concentrating, and the nanites briefly ran through a cycle of eye-popping color combinations before returning to the 'base' black and copper look. "The reshaping needs practice, I think."
"The entire arm is made of two billion microscopic moving parts." Marie-Ange explained. "You do shooting practice with Kevin, yes? Doug can change some of his arm's shape, because he has been consulting Kevin, but it is not rather at all like Kevin's shapeshifting.' She made a little gesture at Doug, and then plucked another staff from nowhere and tossed it at him. "Here, you have fun. I need to see how long I can keep these solid, and it is harder to do when I am fighting."
Plus she still. had sweaty hair in her eyepatch, and any excuse to get to take it off and wipe her face without anyone actually paying close attention was a good excuse.
Doug caught the staff with a raised eyebrow. Marie-Ange might be fooling other people with a distraction, but he knew her well enough to know her occasional desire to not be perceived. He flourished the staff briefly then assumed a ready stance, the tip of the staff angled toward Shatterstar. "Shall we?" he asked with a grin.
Shatterstar threw his staff up and caught it to get fully used to the weight of it and to get used to correctly positioning his hands again. It was strange to know it had been over a year since he's fought with a polearm. He had a tight lipped smile at Doug as he nodded, footwork just on the side of choppy as he went to hit Doug with the butt of the staff. He hadn't realized he had missed the slide of wood- or whatever Marie-Ange's staff was made of- in his hands.
A few tentative strikes back and forth, each man getting the measure of the other, and then Doug and Shatterstar were off in earnest, staves whirling and twisting hard enough to cause brief bursts of air as they struck. Lost in the dance of sparring, Doug actually lost track of how long they had been fighting before the ectoplasm of Marie-Ange's constructs began to wilt in their hands.
The constant thud - and eventual damp smack - of imaged stave upon stave started as oddly soothing, a percussive beat in her mind. As the staves started to dissolve, it rapidly became a wet smack, not unlike being hit in the face with a towel, and in one gesture, Marie-Ange dismissed both, calling a "Non, stop, merci." out as the staves disappeared. "Apologies, it became uncomfortable to keep them." She seemed triumphant though, and glanced at her phone. "Four minutes, constant impacts. Thank you both gentlemen, that is a full thirty seconds more than my last attempt."
Having a stave go flaccid in his hands was something Shatterstar never expected to have happen and he was sort of glad when Marie-Ange called them back, uncomfortable with the wet, melting popsicle feeling of the ectoplasm dissolving. He stretched out his hands, surprised that absolutely nothing was left on them. "That was... fun. Thank you both," he said, nodding to each in turn. It was also good to see that even people as experienced at Marie-Ange still trained their powers.
Doug nodded in reply. "Getting a fresh perspective is nice. Angie and I have known each other so long it's hard not to fall into patterns. Thank you for joining us."
Marie-Ange nodded. "I am geniniely surprised no one adopted you into the unoffical sword club." She tapped out a few texts on her phone. "I am remedying that now. No formal meetings, it is not really a club, just a group text, but sometimes it is fun to play, yes, and sometimes good to practice practical skills. Good for exercise, good for a sort of meditation."
Marie-Ange could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she had been in the Danger Room in the last year, between running around Symkaria and driving cross-country and doing most of her workouts in the gym rather than in the sci-fi holodeck, but it had safety measures, and she had skipped enough hand to hand practice that her own reminders were yelling at her that she'd exceeded a limit.
To be fair, it was a self-imposed limit, but a limit none the less, and a text message with more emojis than words meant she was heading for the Danger Room in time to catch Doug coming out of the control room with his own sword on his back.
"I want to try to make a solid one, instead of the spear but." She patted the duffle bag she'd set down a moment before. "Just in case, I have a real one, and an armoured jacket."
The scabbard across Doug's back was well-worn and cared for, and he wore it easily. Being able to carry it around and practice with it again after quite a while without was a nice feeling, he had to admit he was looking forward to this. "We might have a visitor-slash-observer," he told Marie-Ange with a grin.
"One of our new residents?" Marie-Ange asked, as the Danger Room door irised open, and they walked through. For once it did not close, and the floor rippled into polished wooden planks, and the walls into ricepaper. "Let me see if I can guess, not Amanda's new duck, she would have told me. The fire one and the purple one are anti-social, so either Ms Smith, or Mr Russell, yes?" She set her bag down, unzipped it and pulled out the deck of tarot cards that were on top of the wrapped sword, the jacket, and the gloves. "Imaged first?"
"Young Ben likes swords, maybe even more than me," Doug confirmed as he took a few moments to limber up, twisting at the waist, rotating his shoulders forward and back. "He had a go at training with Madin under my supervision, but it didn't go all that well." He unslung his sword as he talked. "So I figured I'd give him the chance to watch something a bit more fun." He nodded at Marie-Ange's question, to start with imaged weapons.
Marie-Ange let out a sharp snort at Madin's name, and shook her head. "That reminds me, professionally I should speak to you about that one. I know we have their background checked, but my cousin has a theory about them. Nothing dangerous, just former associations." She waved off the rest of the topic, and started pulling her hair into a set of twin braids. "We are old, you just called a teenager 'young'. You were sixteen when someone gave you a very real, very sharp sword and let you play."
The deck of cards was already cut to the Two of Swords, and a moment later, Marie-Ange had both in her hands, and passed one to Doug.
Doug snorted as he whipped the imaged sword through a pair of quick moulinets before settling into a ready stance. "Angie, we're in our mid-thirties, I think the 'old' ship has sailed," he informed her teasingly.
Marie-Ange stuck out her tongue, and settled into a comfortable stance, weight on her back foot.
Shatterstar hadn't meant to be late, but with September starting, so did a new schedule including things like "school" and "shooting lessons". His internal clock needed to be rewound. He had his duffle bag of sword equipment over his shoulder when he entered, even though Doug had said that it would just be observation. A boy could hope. He was about to apologize for his tardiness when he realized they were starting their swings. Instead he found a corner to watch from, taking careful watch of their movements.
The hilt of the sword was just the slightest bit tacky in her hands, but Marie-Ange guessed she had several good strikes before it would become a problem. She stepped in for a strike that Doug easily parried, and then twisted to angle away from him, and brought her sword up to meet his, and was blocked again. She ducked under his arm, spun, and then kicked with one foot to sweep Doug's knees out from under him.
Doug hopped nimbly backward, sweeping his sword in a pair of low strikes to keep Marie-Ange from advancing further, then closing with her as she came upright. He'd noticed the slight movement that indicated someone entering out of the corner of his eye, and he was sure Marie-Ange knew as well. His mouth quirked slightly. There was a definite temptation to put on a bit of a show. And since Angie was already working with her powers... ::friendos, buckler?:: he inquired mentally, passing his sword from the right hand to the left at the sense of affirmation he received. The nanites in his forearm shifted, narrowing and widening the surface area from just behind his knuckles to several inches past his wrist.
There was a moment of hesitation as he lifted his arm to block the incoming strike - this wasn't the first time he and the friendos had experimented with changes like this, but it -was- the first time risking a potential injury by doing so. But the structure held, and Marie-Ange's blade skated along the surface of it as he swung at her right side.
Spitting out a sibilent phrase in French that told Doug exactly what he could do with his arm, Marie-Ange 's sword actually wobbled like gelatin, and she instead dropped to one knee, and drove the elbow of her free arm up. It did not meet with the squawk and profanity she'd hoped for, instead a plastic thud, and a light grunt. "You wore a cup? Rude." She muttered, and then slid under his leg, and slammed the slowly disintegrating hilt of the sword into the back of his thigh and kicked at his ankle.
The strike to the back of his thigh bent Doug's knee just enough that this sweep managed to connect. With the sword in his left hand, he threw his right out to the side in an instinctive breakfall. However, the narrowness of his resized forearm meant that his center of gravity had changed, and he hit the floor of the Danger Room much harder than intended. Breath whooshed out of him and he slapped the floor twice with his hand to call a break. The nanites began shifting back to their usual configuration, and Doug rolled to one knee. "Because I feel like giving you a free pass to make me want to vomit?" he asked Marie-Ange rhetorically in response to her question. A couple more breaths and he looked toward the ceiling. "Note for self - the reconfigure works, but need more practice in how it changes my balance."
As he got back to his feet, he nodded at their observer. "Enjoying the show?" he asked Shatterstar with a grin.
Shatterstar had been watching with rapt attention, tracking their movements carefully and mentally taking notes. It seemed to him that they were relatively evenly matched and he enjoyed watching them use their powers while they fought- he didn't know why it had never occurred to him that you could combine your mutant powers with swordsmanship. After all, they were just another tool or weapon. If he had to guess, Marie-Ange had more mastery of hers.
He was slightly intimidated by her.
"How did you do that with the buckler?" he asked Doug, even though he was sure it had to do with Doug's powers. He wasn't actually sure what Doug's powers were. He looked to Marie-Ange but avoided eye contact with her out of respect. "How long can you keep a sword up without it fading away?"
Marie-Ange swiped sweaty bangs out of her face before answering - they were sticking inside the eyepatch. "That depends on what I am doing with them." she answered, and glanced over at her deck of cards, sitting on top of her bag, and her modified fencing jacket and the very real short sword in it's case. "In a fight, usually not much longer than I did here, but it is a new skill. I never used to be able to keep them solid on impact." She summoned another, and it was already sticky - she flipped it out, hilt first to show Shatterstar where her fingers had left indentations in the hilt. "Doug and I both had ... what is the word in English, when you change but do not increase or decrease something?" She glanced at Doug. "I do not remember the word, but powers changes. His, the arm. Mine, images that can be solid but only weapons. Spears, swords, knives. I still need practice."
"Simple weaponry only or can you do stuff with moving parts?" He asked, the words falling out of his mouth as he thought of his shooting lessons with Mr. Sydney. He moved like he was going to touch the sword but thought better of it. Instead he moved to inspect Doug's arm with his eyes. He didn't actually know Doug's power- was he born with his arm like that?
Doug was shaking his nanite arm a bit even after it had gone back to 'normal'. "Okay, other note - that feels weird as heck. Like...I dunno, not quite pins and needles, more like I hit a million funny bones all at once. You're not the only one that needs practice, Angie." He levered himself back up to his feet. "Moving parts?" he shook his head. "Nah. Simple weapons, and temporary at that. But it means she can carry a weapon in plain sight that no one even knows about," he said, pointing at the tattoo on Marie-Ange's upper arm.
"I can make, ah, linked batons, but the chain still causes problems. It sticks to itself." Marie-Ange said. "Plus I do not know how to use them, so it is not very useful." She dismissed the sword, it was already half dissolved anyway, and gave a quick glance at the tattoo on her arm, and a staff appeared in one hand, that she held out to Shatterstar. "They are solid until they are not, but the more I make the less solid they are. Fatigue. This one is solid enough for you to test if you would like."
Shatterstar recognized the staffs on Marie-Ange's armband and of course the swords but he couldn't put together what they were doing with circles or cups- or what those had to do with weaponry.
He took the staff from Marie-Ange's hands and was surprised with how real it felt, even if he tried not to let it show on his face. "It has a good heft," he told her and moved through a kata. He didn't know staffs as well as swords but he did enjoy fighting with them.
"Does your arm do moving parts?" He asked Doug, unsure if he should strike at him.
"Nope. This is one of the first things I've really tried with the 'friendos'. They spent a while trying out aesthetics for my arm-" Doug spent a moment concentrating, and the nanites briefly ran through a cycle of eye-popping color combinations before returning to the 'base' black and copper look. "The reshaping needs practice, I think."
"The entire arm is made of two billion microscopic moving parts." Marie-Ange explained. "You do shooting practice with Kevin, yes? Doug can change some of his arm's shape, because he has been consulting Kevin, but it is not rather at all like Kevin's shapeshifting.' She made a little gesture at Doug, and then plucked another staff from nowhere and tossed it at him. "Here, you have fun. I need to see how long I can keep these solid, and it is harder to do when I am fighting."
Plus she still. had sweaty hair in her eyepatch, and any excuse to get to take it off and wipe her face without anyone actually paying close attention was a good excuse.
Doug caught the staff with a raised eyebrow. Marie-Ange might be fooling other people with a distraction, but he knew her well enough to know her occasional desire to not be perceived. He flourished the staff briefly then assumed a ready stance, the tip of the staff angled toward Shatterstar. "Shall we?" he asked with a grin.
Shatterstar threw his staff up and caught it to get fully used to the weight of it and to get used to correctly positioning his hands again. It was strange to know it had been over a year since he's fought with a polearm. He had a tight lipped smile at Doug as he nodded, footwork just on the side of choppy as he went to hit Doug with the butt of the staff. He hadn't realized he had missed the slide of wood- or whatever Marie-Ange's staff was made of- in his hands.
A few tentative strikes back and forth, each man getting the measure of the other, and then Doug and Shatterstar were off in earnest, staves whirling and twisting hard enough to cause brief bursts of air as they struck. Lost in the dance of sparring, Doug actually lost track of how long they had been fighting before the ectoplasm of Marie-Ange's constructs began to wilt in their hands.
The constant thud - and eventual damp smack - of imaged stave upon stave started as oddly soothing, a percussive beat in her mind. As the staves started to dissolve, it rapidly became a wet smack, not unlike being hit in the face with a towel, and in one gesture, Marie-Ange dismissed both, calling a "Non, stop, merci." out as the staves disappeared. "Apologies, it became uncomfortable to keep them." She seemed triumphant though, and glanced at her phone. "Four minutes, constant impacts. Thank you both gentlemen, that is a full thirty seconds more than my last attempt."
Having a stave go flaccid in his hands was something Shatterstar never expected to have happen and he was sort of glad when Marie-Ange called them back, uncomfortable with the wet, melting popsicle feeling of the ectoplasm dissolving. He stretched out his hands, surprised that absolutely nothing was left on them. "That was... fun. Thank you both," he said, nodding to each in turn. It was also good to see that even people as experienced at Marie-Ange still trained their powers.
Doug nodded in reply. "Getting a fresh perspective is nice. Angie and I have known each other so long it's hard not to fall into patterns. Thank you for joining us."
Marie-Ange nodded. "I am geniniely surprised no one adopted you into the unoffical sword club." She tapped out a few texts on her phone. "I am remedying that now. No formal meetings, it is not really a club, just a group text, but sometimes it is fun to play, yes, and sometimes good to practice practical skills. Good for exercise, good for a sort of meditation."
