(Untitled)

[chaincutter]

Who: a_slayer_slays and chaincutter
What: A friendly spar
When: July 9th, midday
Where: The Barracks
Summary: A couple months and a few minor bouts of Luceti-wide doom later than expected, Sigmund is finally giving Buffy that shield demonstration he promised.
Rating: PG/PG-13 depending on how serious they get about things

Comments

[slaying]

"Sounds delish." No, Buffy couldn't tell if Sigmund had been joking or not but she had decided to err on the side of flippancy, anyway. When in doubt, quip. It was a mandate to live and slay and die by. One more buffer between Buffy and reality. But her voice sounded distracted as humour began to take a backseat to vocation. Her gaze narrowed and she began to enter that habitual space of combat calculation. He was larger than her. But they usually were. He was better protected than her. But she'd never bothered with armour, before. He wasn't even drawing his weapon. Well, that was his problem--not hers.

The Slayer gave her scythe a few slow, lazy turns that ended with the stake-side out and the bladed side beyond her elbow. This position was much more effective for a vampire than a human, but it also kept the wickeder part of the weapon closer to her skin than to that of her spar-partner. She healed fast. Accidents would be coped with.

One, two, three steps forward. As she walked, she fell naturally into a typical slaying stance. More hard-wired than learned, it brought her arms up in a loose block formation--the right hand now significantly preoccupied with the scythe's handle. Her front leg was bent and her back leg--straight--stood solidly a shoulder's width away from the front. Her footwork was fluid as she advanced. Back foot in to centre, then out to front.

Her first move was soft and did not involve the scythe at all. It was an arcing round-house kick whose power was built up in one jerk of the hips. Short as she was, it was aimed about mid-height. No where near any important areas by design.

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Sigmund was already waiting for an attack the moment he straightened. In fact, as accustomed as he was to his enemies practically climbing over each other for the privilege of killing him, it was surprising that it took three whole steps. As soon as her weight shifted for the kick, his mind was running through the possibilities. They weren't conscious thoughts -- he'd moved well past needing to think about battles -- but intuition drawing from long experience. That was his way. He just... knew.

He could have taken the hit, but his midsection is the most vulnerable. With no plate and lingering injuries, it isn't worth the risk.

He could have caught it on his shield. That would have been taunting her, blocking every blow without fighting back.

Instead, he slid one foot forward and launched himself at her with surprising, if not superhuman, speed. He kept his shield arm tucked tight to his chest, torso turned to the side to give her a smaller target. Sigmund didn't play at fighting, and he didn't feel opponents out. She'd just have to keep up.

[slaying]

Buffy had been burned by not feeling her opponents out in the past. Even people who were not opponents had suffered under her lack of discretion; for example, Buffy hated remembering the day she had accidentally broken Doc McCoy's arm. After nearly ten years of being a Slayer, she had strength control down to a fine art but she had been five months sans-power, here in Luceti, when a sudden shock of strength had returned at the most inopportune moment.

But musings on the hows and whys of hurting others were far away from Buffy's mind as she processed what Sigmund was doing. With less of a target, her foot only glanced. That was fine. She hadn't expected much to come of it, anyway. Such a lack of expectation meant that she also wasn't surprised when the advance failed; this left her with an extra split-second to consider how best to react.

If he insisted on coming at her with a side stance, then she would just have to find a new way to land a blow somewhere that was not a shoulder or hip. This was where the scythe could come into play for a little creative combat. Buffy waited until the moment before body impact to hook her right hand out from its block position and, instead, draw her clenched fist toward her chest. This had the knock-on effect of swinging the flat-side of the scythe out in a sharp parabola. Buffy had the skill, but with an additional piece of luck the shaft and blunt, wide flat of the scythe's blade should smack against the mid-section that would otherwise be inaccessible from this angle.

If she missed, surely the two of them would end up colliding. But she did not see anything wrong with that.

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Something colliding was Sigmund's intention, just not all of him. A sudden screech of metal announced his putting on the brakes, and the momentum turned his torso even further away from her. Unfortunately, this meant that he had no choice but to take the hit with a loud clang, as it caught the edge of his armor.

It doesn't hurt. Nothing hurt any longer, which was disturbing on its own merits. In some part of his mind, he registered that Edward would be beside himself about this later. Maybe this was a bad idea. One little bruise, and there would be ointments and compresses and more ointments, hurt looks and lots of fussing over Sigmund intentionally putting himself in a situation where he could be injured.

He would need a very good lie for this one.

Buffy might need even better reflexes, because after rocking forward with the force of the blow, Sigmund swept his shield arm out in a wide arc. His tightly coiled defense became his offense. With any luck, he could catch her with the flat of it and put her on the floor. A solid wall of metal strapped to one's arm was good for so much more than protection.

[slaying]

If Buffy had known about Sigmund's current condition, she would not have been so gung-ho about this little date. Instead, she could only watch with admiration as he took the hit. Something not strictly human, then--such was her verdict. She would have to modify her strategy accordingly. Up the offence and tread a bit more carefully.

But this decision was made too late to be effective come the shield blow. She was floored by the blow, but managed to hit the ground with a semblance of dignity. Tucking in her shoulder, Buffy transitioned into a side-roll in order to transfer the momentum from the hit into a way of keeping just out of Sigmund's reach.

She had certainly felt the shield. Her abdomen burned where it had caught her; however, that wasn't such a new sensation and there is only the slightest suggestion of her favouring her left hip. Two seconds and she was springing back to her feet with just as much verve as before. Her stance dropped; she kept low. Buffy charged in and hoped to get past the shield by feinting once closer.

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To be fair, he did tell her once, not that he expected she would remember. It was better this way. He didn't enjoy being treated as if he was helpless and fragile.

He spotted the change in her stance, and chided himself for hitting her so hard. Oh, he still wasn't going to go easy on her; but there was a line between challenging and malicious that he refused to cross. It wouldn't be easy. To be honest, a fight was the one of the few places where his prized self-control was... more than a little lacking, to say the least. He would try. For the sake of not causing unnecessary damage, he would try.

In response to her charge, he decided to take this little spar in an unexpected direction -- up. Up and back, to be exact. For a moment, he crouched, legs hidden under his long tunics as tight as springs; and then he leapt. It was a high jump, at least to head-height. Surprisingly high, for a man bogged down with padding and platemail.

He couldn't go on the offensive, not unless he drew his sword; but there were ways to turn an opponent's strengths and weakness against them. This would be an unusual fight for him, but not an unwinnable one.