Star Ocean 2 (Dias/Ashton)
Title: Floryshe
Fandom: Star Ocean 2 (Dias/Ashton)
Author: Yurei
Recipient: Eos
Rating: PG
Warnings: Some fighting. More preslash than anything, so no other warnings.
Summary: Dias isn't used to being critiqued on his swordsmanship.
Note: I know zilch about actual swordsmanship, so there are likely mistakes all over the place in regards to technique. My apologies for that. As for the title, floryshe is the actual term for shadow-boxing with a sword (which is what the prompt called for). And my apologies for the lateness; this is the first opportunity I've had to post.
To say that the front lines of Lacour were tense would be quite possibly the greatest understatement ever made. Everyone was worried, both for the evacuees waiting holed up inside the castle and for themselves and even for the people on the other side of the sea in Cross, because if the monsters had crossed the seas once from El to Lacour then they could certainly cross the sea again from Lacour to Cross. And there was no telling when the research department would finish their heraldic weapon, and that was doubt from the people who didn’t know that the weapon was being mostly designed by a twelve-year-old child. The precious few who did know that were even more worried about whether it would be finished on time, because Leon Geeste had a habit of cracking under pressure at the worst times. That was a doubt they didn’t need now, not when the promised weapon was their greatest chance against the advancing army.
Dias Flac hadn’t known the part about the designer of the weapon being a child until someone let it slip to him. People tended to tell him a lot of things he didn’t want to know here, since his being the winner of the arms tournament and a so-called hero meant that they took him to be someone important, someone who cared about their petty theories about the outcome of the battle. It also meant that when he walked away from their problems they didn’t take it to mean he was ignoring them out of spite or boredom (which he was) but because he had more important things to do. Heroic things that had everything to do with saving Lacour and nothing to do with staring off into the distance in the quiet green places behind the command headquarters while wondering if Rena and those friends of hers- Claude and that woman he hadn’t bothered remembering because she hadn’t been worth the trouble- had given up on their stupid quest to find and stop the Sorcery Globe or if they were walking right into the path of the horde.
He found out soon enough that they hadn’t stopped their insane mission. Things had gotten worse and worse as the monster horde swept over rural Lacour and came closer and closer to the center of the country and they couldn’t do anything but build up their defenses. It might not have been Dias’ home, but it was easy enough to imagine the slightly less grand houses and farms across the ocean in Cross in place of the ones being destroyed now. He’d been going over the plans for the next few days with the commander when the door opened and Rena came in, an even bigger troupe of people behind her now than she’d had when Dias had last seen her. And somehow, he'd found himself roped into working with them. Well, not somehow- he couldn't say no to Rena when she was looking up at him with her best you're like an older brother to me expression and telling him that she and her friends needed his help not only to save Lacour, but to put a stop to the Sorcery Globe itself.
Over the course of the fighting, Dias really started regretting that decision. Rena was all right, when she was convinced that she knew more about what Dias wanted and needed than Dias himself did. Claude was harder to deal with, a bizarre mix of sullen and respectful towards Dias- he clearly didn't like the man, which was just fine by Dias, but at the same time had to admit that he was a vastly superior warrior and an asset to their group. At least he didn't really actively seek Dias out unless there was a good reason or Rena was pestering him; that was one thing in his favor. The woman he'd met briefly before- Celine, he learned her name was- turned out to be marginally less useless than he'd thought back then, too, if even more annoying than he'd realized. Dias might not have any personal use for heraldry, but that didn't mean he couldn't appreciate it when someone else was incinerating a line of monsters before it got to him. And Ashton mostly kept to himself, but that might have been because he had a habit of stammering and coming up at a loss for words when he was confronted by strangers. He was a weird kid, even without touching on the fact that he had two dragons sticking out from below his shoulders.
Which is why it came as such a shock that it was weird, neurotic Ashton who took it upon himself to correct Dias' sword technique when they were cutting their way through the overgrown forests in El.
"Er, it would probably be easier for you if you guarded differently," Ashton spoke up meekly after they'd stopped for the day. Claude snorted, as if he found the idea of Ashton correcting Dias (or, more likely, the reaction Dias was likely to have towards the correction) to be absolutely hilarious. Ashton looked briefly towards Claude at the sound, flushing slightly. "Don't laugh! It's true."
"Oh?" Dias asked, raising an eyebrow. He ignored Claude.
"You're used to using a shield, right?" Ashton asked, voice strengthening and the slight stammer disappearing now that Dias hadn't bitten his head off. "But now you're using the same sword in two hands, but you're still guarding like you have a shield."
"That's not the same thing as using two weapons," Dias pointed out flatly. Ashton might have noticed something that the others hadn't, but that didn't mean he would actually know what to do about it.
"No," Ashton said quietly, "but it's more like it than using a weapon and a shield. You're still using both your hands on a weapon instead of devoting one to blocking. I- I could show you, if you wanted. Not that I'm saying you're bad! Or that I'm better than you! I just, um, thought maybe-"
"All right," Dias said, cutting off Ashton's descent into embarrassed babbling. He picked up his scabbard.
"I'm sorry- what?" Ashton asked, blinking in surprise. Clearly he hadn't expected Dias to take him up on the offer any more than Claude (who was still laughing in his little corner) had. "I, um. No real swords; we can't afford to get hurt out here. We're in the w-woods, there are plenty of sticks to use." The part about not being able to get hurt out here was true enough; while they were damn lucky to have Rena and her special abilities, they couldn't afford to run her ragged before they even got to Eluria. With real swords, one of them would probably end up with a blade in him; if Ashton was right and there was a flaw in Dias' guard, it would be Dias. If Ashton was wrong, it would be Ashton, because Dias had enough brute strength to shatter his guard entirely.
"All right, then. No swords." Dias looked around the camp critically. "But I'm not going out into the woods just to cut down a stick. You can show me without a weapon at all." They both stood up, and Ashton nodded.
"That would work. Enough to figure out if I'm wrong, anyway." Ashton took off his cloak and folded it fastidiously, as if it hadn't taken enough damage from the vicious fauna in El (not to mention the dragons) already and tossing it on the ground would ruin it. "Gyoro, Ururun, I need you guys to stay out of this." The red one snorted and sounded (amusingly enough) kind of like Claude; the blue one pecked at Ashton's head in irritation but didn't make any other protest. "You keep your hands together, like you're holding onto your sword. I'll come at you."
"This'll be something to see," Bowman muttered to Celine.
"I think you're right, darling, but for entirely different reasons." Celine and Ashton were friends (and that was really, really weird, even when compared against all their individual quirks), so of course she'd think he could do it.
Dias blocked him the first time. He didn't feel particularly silly moving as if he had a sword in his hands when they were empty, since it was a perfectly normal way to train. Rena looked like she found it rather amusing, and he was glowering at her for it when Ashton went for him the second time. One of his fists hit Dias' forearm in such a way that it would have been a blade on a blade if they'd both been armed, but the other fist went right past him and hit Dias in the jaw hard enough to send him flying backwards.
"I didn't mean to hit you that hard!" Ashton said immediately, hands flying up to cover his mouth.
"Son of a bitch," Dias said, getting up and wiping a trace of blood off his mouth. Ashton wore metal gauntlets; however hard he'd actually menat to hit Dias, he must have pulled it some. Dias would probably have a broken jaw if he hadn't. Once he was up and reasonably sure he wasn't missing any teeth or bleeding profusely enough to need Rena's help, he started for the edge of camp without another word. He could hear Claude laughing like his day had just been made and congratulating Ashton on doing what he'd wanted to do for ages, and Rena scolding Claude for saying such a thing. Celine and Bowman were laughing, too.
"Are you okay?" Ashton asked, sounding horrified. "I- oh, this is awkward. I'm so sorry."
"Fine." Dias examined the tree closest to where everyone was standing for a long moment before he broke off a limb and then broke it in half over his knee. He tossed the pieces at Ashton. "You proved you're worth my time. Show me how not to get hit like that again."
Fandom: Star Ocean 2 (Dias/Ashton)
Author: Yurei
Recipient: Eos
Rating: PG
Warnings: Some fighting. More preslash than anything, so no other warnings.
Summary: Dias isn't used to being critiqued on his swordsmanship.
Note: I know zilch about actual swordsmanship, so there are likely mistakes all over the place in regards to technique. My apologies for that. As for the title, floryshe is the actual term for shadow-boxing with a sword (which is what the prompt called for). And my apologies for the lateness; this is the first opportunity I've had to post.
To say that the front lines of Lacour were tense would be quite possibly the greatest understatement ever made. Everyone was worried, both for the evacuees waiting holed up inside the castle and for themselves and even for the people on the other side of the sea in Cross, because if the monsters had crossed the seas once from El to Lacour then they could certainly cross the sea again from Lacour to Cross. And there was no telling when the research department would finish their heraldic weapon, and that was doubt from the people who didn’t know that the weapon was being mostly designed by a twelve-year-old child. The precious few who did know that were even more worried about whether it would be finished on time, because Leon Geeste had a habit of cracking under pressure at the worst times. That was a doubt they didn’t need now, not when the promised weapon was their greatest chance against the advancing army.
Dias Flac hadn’t known the part about the designer of the weapon being a child until someone let it slip to him. People tended to tell him a lot of things he didn’t want to know here, since his being the winner of the arms tournament and a so-called hero meant that they took him to be someone important, someone who cared about their petty theories about the outcome of the battle. It also meant that when he walked away from their problems they didn’t take it to mean he was ignoring them out of spite or boredom (which he was) but because he had more important things to do. Heroic things that had everything to do with saving Lacour and nothing to do with staring off into the distance in the quiet green places behind the command headquarters while wondering if Rena and those friends of hers- Claude and that woman he hadn’t bothered remembering because she hadn’t been worth the trouble- had given up on their stupid quest to find and stop the Sorcery Globe or if they were walking right into the path of the horde.
He found out soon enough that they hadn’t stopped their insane mission. Things had gotten worse and worse as the monster horde swept over rural Lacour and came closer and closer to the center of the country and they couldn’t do anything but build up their defenses. It might not have been Dias’ home, but it was easy enough to imagine the slightly less grand houses and farms across the ocean in Cross in place of the ones being destroyed now. He’d been going over the plans for the next few days with the commander when the door opened and Rena came in, an even bigger troupe of people behind her now than she’d had when Dias had last seen her. And somehow, he'd found himself roped into working with them. Well, not somehow- he couldn't say no to Rena when she was looking up at him with her best you're like an older brother to me expression and telling him that she and her friends needed his help not only to save Lacour, but to put a stop to the Sorcery Globe itself.
Over the course of the fighting, Dias really started regretting that decision. Rena was all right, when she was convinced that she knew more about what Dias wanted and needed than Dias himself did. Claude was harder to deal with, a bizarre mix of sullen and respectful towards Dias- he clearly didn't like the man, which was just fine by Dias, but at the same time had to admit that he was a vastly superior warrior and an asset to their group. At least he didn't really actively seek Dias out unless there was a good reason or Rena was pestering him; that was one thing in his favor. The woman he'd met briefly before- Celine, he learned her name was- turned out to be marginally less useless than he'd thought back then, too, if even more annoying than he'd realized. Dias might not have any personal use for heraldry, but that didn't mean he couldn't appreciate it when someone else was incinerating a line of monsters before it got to him. And Ashton mostly kept to himself, but that might have been because he had a habit of stammering and coming up at a loss for words when he was confronted by strangers. He was a weird kid, even without touching on the fact that he had two dragons sticking out from below his shoulders.
Which is why it came as such a shock that it was weird, neurotic Ashton who took it upon himself to correct Dias' sword technique when they were cutting their way through the overgrown forests in El.
"Er, it would probably be easier for you if you guarded differently," Ashton spoke up meekly after they'd stopped for the day. Claude snorted, as if he found the idea of Ashton correcting Dias (or, more likely, the reaction Dias was likely to have towards the correction) to be absolutely hilarious. Ashton looked briefly towards Claude at the sound, flushing slightly. "Don't laugh! It's true."
"Oh?" Dias asked, raising an eyebrow. He ignored Claude.
"You're used to using a shield, right?" Ashton asked, voice strengthening and the slight stammer disappearing now that Dias hadn't bitten his head off. "But now you're using the same sword in two hands, but you're still guarding like you have a shield."
"That's not the same thing as using two weapons," Dias pointed out flatly. Ashton might have noticed something that the others hadn't, but that didn't mean he would actually know what to do about it.
"No," Ashton said quietly, "but it's more like it than using a weapon and a shield. You're still using both your hands on a weapon instead of devoting one to blocking. I- I could show you, if you wanted. Not that I'm saying you're bad! Or that I'm better than you! I just, um, thought maybe-"
"All right," Dias said, cutting off Ashton's descent into embarrassed babbling. He picked up his scabbard.
"I'm sorry- what?" Ashton asked, blinking in surprise. Clearly he hadn't expected Dias to take him up on the offer any more than Claude (who was still laughing in his little corner) had. "I, um. No real swords; we can't afford to get hurt out here. We're in the w-woods, there are plenty of sticks to use." The part about not being able to get hurt out here was true enough; while they were damn lucky to have Rena and her special abilities, they couldn't afford to run her ragged before they even got to Eluria. With real swords, one of them would probably end up with a blade in him; if Ashton was right and there was a flaw in Dias' guard, it would be Dias. If Ashton was wrong, it would be Ashton, because Dias had enough brute strength to shatter his guard entirely.
"All right, then. No swords." Dias looked around the camp critically. "But I'm not going out into the woods just to cut down a stick. You can show me without a weapon at all." They both stood up, and Ashton nodded.
"That would work. Enough to figure out if I'm wrong, anyway." Ashton took off his cloak and folded it fastidiously, as if it hadn't taken enough damage from the vicious fauna in El (not to mention the dragons) already and tossing it on the ground would ruin it. "Gyoro, Ururun, I need you guys to stay out of this." The red one snorted and sounded (amusingly enough) kind of like Claude; the blue one pecked at Ashton's head in irritation but didn't make any other protest. "You keep your hands together, like you're holding onto your sword. I'll come at you."
"This'll be something to see," Bowman muttered to Celine.
"I think you're right, darling, but for entirely different reasons." Celine and Ashton were friends (and that was really, really weird, even when compared against all their individual quirks), so of course she'd think he could do it.
Dias blocked him the first time. He didn't feel particularly silly moving as if he had a sword in his hands when they were empty, since it was a perfectly normal way to train. Rena looked like she found it rather amusing, and he was glowering at her for it when Ashton went for him the second time. One of his fists hit Dias' forearm in such a way that it would have been a blade on a blade if they'd both been armed, but the other fist went right past him and hit Dias in the jaw hard enough to send him flying backwards.
"I didn't mean to hit you that hard!" Ashton said immediately, hands flying up to cover his mouth.
"Son of a bitch," Dias said, getting up and wiping a trace of blood off his mouth. Ashton wore metal gauntlets; however hard he'd actually menat to hit Dias, he must have pulled it some. Dias would probably have a broken jaw if he hadn't. Once he was up and reasonably sure he wasn't missing any teeth or bleeding profusely enough to need Rena's help, he started for the edge of camp without another word. He could hear Claude laughing like his day had just been made and congratulating Ashton on doing what he'd wanted to do for ages, and Rena scolding Claude for saying such a thing. Celine and Bowman were laughing, too.
"Are you okay?" Ashton asked, sounding horrified. "I- oh, this is awkward. I'm so sorry."
"Fine." Dias examined the tree closest to where everyone was standing for a long moment before he broke off a limb and then broke it in half over his knee. He tossed the pieces at Ashton. "You proved you're worth my time. Show me how not to get hit like that again."