Prompt: Loyalty

[hunter_for_hire]

(ooc: For the sake of making the hunter sociable, this thread is open to anyone who wants to bug Lockdown about the Wildlife Project or Nexus Life in General. Only the thread with him and Slip is closed, and we can assume any other threads happen before or after the events below.

Also, permission was granted from Slip-mun for me to use her character

Comments

[karanseraph]

Slipstream disengages fluidly, acknowledging the bond between them, yet consciously forcing it from her strategic considerations.

She isn't one to seek to resolve problems by starting a fight, especially if there's another, sneakier, way, but that doesn't mean she never wants to fight. Sometimes it's a efficient way to test herself, or an opponent. It can be a measure of who is worthy adversary or ally. It had been for Lockdown and she, in the past. But, sometimes, she seeks a fight just for the sake of fighting.

Slipstream flips the grip of the sai over the back of her right gauntlet to reverse her grip. She's not familiar with the weapons; they seem tools of a Cyber-ninja to her, but the challenge in perversity of wielding these particular weapons heightens her battlelust. Sometimes a Decepti-femme just needs to fight!

And slag if Lockdown hasn't proven himself worthy adversary and ally, in their time together. It makes her momentarily giddy; an ethereal effervescent of shard to spark across the bond, to recognize that it's

[hunter_for_hire]

He blocks her wildly graceful attack with a burst of transfused excitement and criss-crossing of hook and sai, tangling their blades once again.

"Always gunnin' for the mods, ain't ya," he taunts, leaning in more than necessary. "Femme after my own spark."

With a strong shove, he cleanly breaks their hold then assumes a readied stance, flipping the sai from a defensive to an offensive grip. He takes a couple stalking side steps, then spins the sai around again, simply because he likes the feel of the cool steel caressing his fingers.

He spins it more, purely for showmanship, purposely delaying the next move, continuing to side step and fully abusing the art in martial arts. He always did prefer the slick moves and fondling of weapons over the supposed spiritual growth one was suppose to gain from sparring.

Painted maw now spread wide from a cocky grin, he wraps up his performance with a sudden sweeping strike aimed low at her knee joint, intended to temporarily paralyze that leg if the strike lands.

It's like no icons are cropped to show her knee.

[karanseraph]

Slipstream snarks back, at Lockdown's taunt, "Spark's already mine; must be rubbing off on me."

She stumbles backward from the shove, but regains footing with a brief thruster blast. The show of fancy martial arts posturing is optic-candy, but its excessive duration allows her enough time to gain self-awareness of how affected by battlelust she really is. It's not like her to take the offensive, unless she's seeing red, which seems to be purely figurative, where Lockdown is involved

[hunter_for_hire]

His balance is thrown off when she unexpectedly avoids his attack. That move had always worked in the past--distract with a fancy display then go for a cheap shot. It wasn't an attack that would do major harm but it does put a handicap on opponents and allow him the upperhand from the start. He anticipated she would only be briefly weakened, what with a self repair system fueled by an immortal life source. But his sai hardly scratches her paint.

"How the--!"

He recovers just enough to be skimmed by her plating, black stripe now scraped with teal, not enough physical pain to hinder his movements, but enough sting to his pride to make him immediately retaliate with another attempt.

Spinning around behind her, he shifts momentum to the modded arm, hook aimed at cutting that same fuel line only in her other leg. Another cheap shot, this one even cheaper as it's from the back. No one ever dodges his really dirty tactics, not even 'cons.