driftfleet | mingle post? mingle post. MINGLE POST!!

[he takes his sweet time in finally looking down at her. his gaze is just as dead and apathetic as always. the shuttle hisses for the both of them as the door seals shut, and the on-board filtration system sifts out unusually high levels of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and tar.

still, he doesn't complain. he plucks the cigarette from his mouth, a little stuck with paint, and just... holds it out for her, because he doesn't want to be rude and put it out on their floor or something. "mother" taught him better manners than that.]

[ To be entirely fair, Cecil is surprised he actually cooperates. She expected him to not so much as acknowledge her order, let alone obey, and for a fleeting moment, there's a pause where she looks from him to the cigarette and back again, in mild disbelief. Then she takes the paint-stained cigarette from him and tosses it to the ground herself, stamping it out a bit too aggressively with the heel of her boot as she turns and removes her weapon from her thigh. She places the firearm and its scrappy holster on one of the benches in the bay, clearly not planning on using it, and gives him a warning without turning back to face him: ]

If I suspect you're holding back for one reason or another, I'll make you regret it.

[their quarrel outside was different. that was neutral territory. that was a grapple to establish rules, make sense out of a senseless set of actions. this is different to him. he is in someone else's house. he does not respect her, exactly, but he respects authority.

and, again, she hasn't struck him as an enemy yet. just an annoyance.

his response is to take off his coat. he's just wearing a simple, long-sleeved black shirt underneath, but there's a similar holster and gun strapped tightly along his side. when he drops the coat near his shuttle's door, it looks bulky, sounds heavy. he seems taller--or more likely, thinner--without it.

it's pretty obvious that he'll be able to hold his own, though, at least in a fight with something a few notches above human. he sets the gun aside too, to be fair, along with a sharp, long piece of metal that was hiding in his sleeve.

see? he's being good.]

[ Cecil almost wishes he would keep the piece of metal. After being accosted by those bandits, she thinks she might have preferred extra practice at facing an armed enemy while being unarmed herself. She does spare a curious glance at the coat, but her eyes don't linger and soon, she's focusing her gaze back on his painted face. ]

'Care to add further purpose to this with a wager? We are entertaining the masses, after all.

[ That last part she bites out with no shortage of bitterness, the statement made a bit facetiously and definitely resentfully. ]

[he considers, glance darting quickly to the side--imagining all the cameras that could be watching them right now. he wishes she hadn't brought it up. he already has problems with paranoia, feeling watched. it actually being true is, in itself, a quiet little nightmare.

...after a moment, he shrugs.]

Don't have anything to bet.

Of course you do.

If I win, you tell me one thing about yourself you don't usually tell people.

Hmph.

[his instinct, of course, is to say no... but maybe he's been hanging around real people too much. he's still wondering why she would even care. he's just curious enough to leave it and consider it, weigh his options.]

And if I win.

[...his gravelly monotone does not make it sound much like a question, even though it should have been.]

[ Even if he'd said no, she would have just cajoled him into it by questioning his confidence in his own abilities. ]

Name your terms.

Not interested.

[or imaginative. he's got a healthy doubt in his own ability against someone with a power he doesn't understand; he'd rather not risk actually giving her a reason to think of him as human if he doesn't have a chance to get something he really wants in return.]

Not interested in saying what you want or not interested in rubbing two brain cells together to consider what you'd want in return?

[a huff of breath. don't be rude.]

The first.

[ It's her ship and they don't like each other, so she's not really ashamed. ]

And why's that? Embarrassed?

Not interested.

[he thought he said that before. he semi-absently pushes his knuckles against his palm, which makes all kind of quiet, popping, cracking sounds.]

[ Hmm, when he insists it's like that, she considers that it's probably more the latter then. How dull. ]

Your opening move then.

[he doesn't seem bothered by it, whatever the reason. he's used to having the first move, so he won't hesitate to dive in--feinting at the last second to kick from the other side.]

[ A simple kick would have been too easy to block, so, expecting him to use a slightly more complex move than that, she's not caught off guard by the feint. She takes a small step backwards to pivot on one foot and grabs his ankle with her hands, then throws him aside by his own leg. She's not particularly careful about where she swings him, but at least there's nothing sharp and pointy in the general area around them besides what he brought with him. ]

[he's used to it.

she's a lot stronger than she looks, though. he catches himself against the floor, uses his new grounding to kick her back with his other leg. adds "strength" onto a quiet, running list of attributes.]

[ Indeed, Cecil hardly looks as though she exerted any effort at all in tossing him like a rag doll. She deflects his kick just as easily though and counters with a punch thrown straight for his jaw. She aims to hit him hard too, in hopes it'll get him to up the ante a little. ]

[she's going to figure out pretty quickly that he will go to great lengths to keep people from touching his face.

he deflects the punch and moves fast, whirling to punch her back. he's a lot faster than he looks. stronger, too. he may be little more than human, but he's a human who's been training to do this his entire life.

he's also relentlessly offensive. he'll put up a good fight before she can finally land a blow that counts.]

[ It'll go on for a while— deflect, block, Attack... Cecil learns real quick that he's no soldier. He's not a professional, not military— at least not like she is. That said, he's experienced and used to having the odds against him. He's a home-grown fighter, a brawler, and the facepaint is beginning to make a little more sense now. Still, it makes her wonder just what he fights against and why he does it, since it doesn't seem to her like he really has a protective or compassionate bone in his whole body.

After a few glancing blows are exchanged, Cecil gets tired of playing around. With a growl, she focuses her might inward, tapping into that fount of blackened energy inside of her. The flames ignite in her and manifest in a visible dark aura that's potent enough to make even a normal human's hair stand on end. This is the power of a Dark Knight. It hurts, actually, as Cecil sacrifices a bit of her life force in order to receive boons, but she's used to it, trained to endure and even welcome the pain, so while that shroud of darkness never goes away, she hardly misses a beat. She spits a small splatter fresh blood on the floor, then rushes him at a seemingly impossible speed, curling into a tackle that'll feel like being hit by something far larger and heavier than Cecil if she manages to tackle him to the ground. ]

[that's... distressing. another mark on her list. not a point in her favor.

not that it matters much, since his two-armed block is not remotely enough to keep him on his feet, this time. he rolls to the side almost as quickly as he hits the ground, but it's blind and he's kind of stunned--winded, his breath hitching in his throat.

trying to get footing again, but she's got him. he's not a match for this kind of power.]

[ She doesn't let him go far. As soon as he tries to get up again, she pounces on him quickly, pinning him under her by kneeling on his chest, and immediately she starts pummeling him with punches, still using Darkness to hit him harder than she should physically be able to.. ]

[so much for his perfectly-painted face. he doesn't give up, not for a second--still trying to land a hit or wriggle away at every open opportunity--but his determination only gets him so far before things start cracking. he could stay dogged and angry forever, but his human parts can't keep up forever.

so he'll pretty much be there until he literally can't move anymore.]

[ He definitely lands a few blows that she feels bruises and soreness setting in, but she doesn't quite stop until he stops moving. Then she deactivates Darkness and panting to catch her breath, finally gets off of him to let him up. ]

[he hasn't been beat up this bad since he was little. ah, well--maybe that time he fell off a roof. it was ten stories up, or something. he had a concussion. that wasn't all that long ago. doesn't make him feel any better as he tries to sit up, kind of numb to his surroundings and in seven different kinds of agony.

mostly he's just trying not to really obviously wheeze when he breathes.]

aw yeah~;

u///u

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