Friday: Free For All

[havenward]

The weekend begins now! Or, well, close enough. Friday is upon us all over again, and to get the spring in your step even before you find freedom, we've got our Free For All! That's right, any fandom, characters, and prompt will do

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Mixed Mediums, The Middleman, Wendy Watson, art

[nonky]

Army brats either loved or hated the military. She'd hated it as a kid because there was never enough time with her friends before she was moving on or they were - never enough space to take all her old toys, never enough notice to say goodbye to everyone. Wendy Watson's pacifism was more like bitterness after her father disappeared. She didn't know what had happened to him, but she knew it had happened because he was a soldier.

When she became a sidekick, she suspected the military was a lot different than she'd remembered. The Middleman was thoughtful and funny. He wanted to be her friend and took her suggestions seriously. He wasn't conceited, chauvinistic or harsh. She started to wonder if her old impressions were more the trials of being a child than being a soldier's child.

Still, it took a while. There were her first few weeks of unpaid probation until Sensei Ping could show up, then the snafu where Sensei Ping was kidnapped by Lucudores in an incident that could have happened to anybody - least of all an as-yet-unpaid, untrained Middle sidekick. Boss drove her crazy with his paranoia and overreactions. She appreciated the save from the gorilla wielding a machine gun, but did he have to break down her door and pummel her boyfriend? He definitely did not have to look down Lacey's top, even if he was just that tall.

Wendy had been mulling over her real prospects in the job when Sensei Ping shot a fist out toward her face in the dojo. She was completely new to fighting, because art school didn't have a lot of fisticuffs. Mostly they would have drawn unflattering portraits of each other and put them on cars in the parking lot. Wendy Watson should have lost her head metaphorically, if not literally. It should have been the beginning of a long and horrendous experience having her mother nurse her back to health.

She dodged, ducked the fist and came up around on his other side, shuffling madly and giving him the only comeback she had in her arsenal - the incredulous stare. Sensei Ping came at her again, kicking at her knee. She moved even faster than the first time. The panic melted away to action, the action turned into a kind of base pleasure, and by the end of the session she felt amazing. Every muscle knew what to do at the right time, every instinct was correct for protecting her body, her arms could reach longer, her legs could stretch taller. She could remember tumbling in her preschool twenty years ago with the same freedom and lack of worry. Even the attacks that hit her spurred her to work harder and she was thankful for them.

Wendy Watson had been an artist as long as she could remember. Sensei Ping made her another kind of artist and she took joy in it. A Middleman used violence only as a last resort, but she could use her confidence and poise every day on the job.

She could do this. She could help save the world. Maybe one day, if there was no other way, she could save the world.