[for sonya]
Harry had always been a scrapper. He couldn't help it; he had an impulsive nature and fists that moved too fast for his common sense to keep up with, tendencies which only got worse when he was drunk. And he was often drunk. Some people called it 'short man syndrome', and claimed that his temper was a means of compensating for a sense of inferiority. Harry would reply later on, wiping their blood from his knuckles, that he didn't feel inferior at all. He just had very little patience with assholes.
The kind of fights Harry got into were always spur-of-the-moment affairs, without much in the way of rules. The object was to make the other guy shut up, leave or pass out, and try not to get hurt yourself. Harry had considered himself more than capable of holding his own, and then he'd arrived on this magic island and met people who were trained in ancient traditions of hand-to-hand fighting, and it turned out he couldn't hold a candle to any of them. It was downright embarrassing, and when the offer of lessons was made, he'd instantly accepted.
It did wound his pride a little more to be taking lessons from a broad, and it'd taken him some time to get over his chivalry and actually feel okay with hitting her, but after a few months of sparring lessons with Sonya, Harry could feel a definite sense of improvement. It was a lot like what he'd learned about armed combat: knowing where to put yourself, finding the enemy's weak spots, trying to anticipate their movements and fool them into making the wrong choices. He hoped he could remember it all when he wasn't sober.
It was a typical Thursday afternoon, and he had headed down to the beach with Sonya. This was the same spot she had her own training with Scorpion, who Harry was still determined to get his own back on for giving him a nosebleed (never mind that he'd asked for it, and the man could've done much worse). Harry started to limber up a little, stretching out his limbs in preparation for what he knew would be another exhausting session.
"So then, Coach Blade," he said, tilting his head and making a horrible cracking noise with his neck, "What'cha got for us this week?"
The kind of fights Harry got into were always spur-of-the-moment affairs, without much in the way of rules. The object was to make the other guy shut up, leave or pass out, and try not to get hurt yourself. Harry had considered himself more than capable of holding his own, and then he'd arrived on this magic island and met people who were trained in ancient traditions of hand-to-hand fighting, and it turned out he couldn't hold a candle to any of them. It was downright embarrassing, and when the offer of lessons was made, he'd instantly accepted.
It did wound his pride a little more to be taking lessons from a broad, and it'd taken him some time to get over his chivalry and actually feel okay with hitting her, but after a few months of sparring lessons with Sonya, Harry could feel a definite sense of improvement. It was a lot like what he'd learned about armed combat: knowing where to put yourself, finding the enemy's weak spots, trying to anticipate their movements and fool them into making the wrong choices. He hoped he could remember it all when he wasn't sober.
It was a typical Thursday afternoon, and he had headed down to the beach with Sonya. This was the same spot she had her own training with Scorpion, who Harry was still determined to get his own back on for giving him a nosebleed (never mind that he'd asked for it, and the man could've done much worse). Harry started to limber up a little, stretching out his limbs in preparation for what he knew would be another exhausting session.
"So then, Coach Blade," he said, tilting his head and making a horrible cracking noise with his neck, "What'cha got for us this week?"