Logs:Fight Test

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Content Warning

Description of minor injuries, violence

Cast

Vorpal, Jane Martingale

Setting

The Route 32 SEPTA bus and a park

Log

Late night buses are their own special hell, the fluorescent light illuminating the inside of the vehicle, making the night outside seem inkier, darker. Jane's sitting alone toward the back of the bus, dressed in a grey hoodie and jeans with a busted lip and a fresh-blossoming black eye, a small black leather backpack in her lap. Despite having clearly been in some sort of physical confrontation, there's the vaguest little smile on her lips.

Those who look closely will see that her knuckles are in as bad shape as her face, if not a little worse. At least she gave as good as she got?

A lanky fellow- skinny, with pretty much every inch of exposed skin covered in whorling, crawling scarification- boards the bus after a while. Coins clatter into the terminal, and he makes his way back, sitting a seat or two away. The bus starts, there's a few moments of silence, and then-

"You look too happy to have lost, and your knuckles don't look like an amateur. I'd wager you already know boxing gloves aren't meant for the victim's protection, and that means you opted out on purpose." Vorpal twists in his seat, the movement a little too smooth to practiced eyes used to seeing bodies pushed near human limits. "I don't suppose you can actually -tell- me where you were fighting, can you? First rule and all that?" There's an amused lilt to his tone.

A few dry leaves drift out from under her seat and beneath another beside her.

She glances at Vorpal, looking him up and down quietly. "Good eyes. Most people wouldn't have looked so close. Easy to see a girl on her own, think she's a victim. I've even had guys decide they wanted to be my white knight and beat up my clearly-abusive boyfriend on my behalf."

"I mean, for all I know, you got beat up by your girlfriend or dog. I've seen pibbles give people split lips just because they were a little too happy to see Mama," he offers with a grin. "But no, those knuckles say it was a fight. No defensive wounds, just two folx throwing hands and intentionally skipping the handguards. And headguards, by the look of it. Which means it's actually a good time. And you either won, or close to it against someone REALLY good."

"I won." This doesn't come out as a brag, more confirming that his analysis is accurate. "It was close, though."

"Well, congratulations! That explains the grin." Vorpal offered his hand, just as scarred as the rest of him. There's not much excess to his form- it's all wiry muscle. "Jack. Nice to meet you."

She hesitates before answering. "Jade. Nice to meet you, too, I think. What field are you in, that analyzing a stranger is something you're so good at?"

"Eh, not analyzing the stranger. Analyzing the familiar. Busted knuckles, pleased smirks, popped lips. I only wear one out of the three myself these days. But then, I didn't know there was a scene in town. More's the pity, I could have been getting back into the swing of things." A sigh for good times passed by.

"You still could, if you wanted to, I suppose." She glances out the window briefly to see what stop they're at, but doesn't move to get up yet. "Unless you've got a reason to be out of that scene."

"Not at all. There's a lot of advantages to staying sharp, you know? I'd be delighted to get involved again, though at the moment, you're my only Pea Oh See to get involved again. You up for playing chaperone? Promise I won't make you look bad~"

She thinks for a moment. "What's in it for me, if I make those kinds of introductions for you?"

"Aside from discovering 2020's New Hotness?" Jack fluttered his lashes without a hint of sincerity. Dude's a joker.

She lets out a sound that's midway between a snort and a laugh. "I mean, besides that and presumably getting to fight against you at some point."

"Yes, I suppose besides those things." Jack studies Jade for a long moment after she clarifies, clearly pondering. "What'd leave you feeling like you got a good deal?"

While he's watching her, something catches his attention--the worst of the scrapes on her knuckles and the bruising around her eye, they're not quite as bad as they were a moment ago. She seems to be bouncing back from the beating she took a bit quicker than he'd expect. Oh, it's not poof-all-healed, but it's enough that his sharp senses and attention to detail mark it.

"I mean. I suppose, like, a cut of any winnings from your first couple fights? Yeah, I'm vouching for you, but if you're that good...I get something for bringing you in. Unless you've got something else to offer."

He pondered, noting the rapid healing. Wheels started to turn. "Hm. I could lose my first couple fights. You don't actually know for sure I'm worth a damn in the ring. So, tell you what. Why don't you try me out first? If I win, I'll take that deal- a cut of the first three matches. If you win, we'll make it any three matches I win, your choice. How's that sound?"

"Sounds good." A thought occurs to her. "Or we could go for a straight trade. You introduce me to some group of people who'd be interesting or useful for me to know, somehow, and we let what happens after introductions fall on our own heads."

"If it's all the same, I'll take the ass beating," laughs Jack with a grin. "Less chance of pissing someone off, and the money means less to me than the work-out. Besides, if you prove to be cool, my friends have a habit of meeting each other, and I consider them very interesting and useful."

"Hey, that's fair. I've got a few friends like that--though I also have a bunch of friends who don't get to see me like this, so that's always fun to work around."

"You have friends you don't want to know you can handle a scrap?" That seems like it had never even occurred to Jack. "I don't know that I'd want to spend much time around someone if that part of me was an issue."

"Oh, no, it's not that I don't want them knowing I can handle a scrap. I don't want them--including, like, my boss at my day job--to know I actively seek out fights wherever I can find them. They might not let me sit at the grown-ups table if they knew that."

"Seek them out, do you?" Jack grinned wider. "You sound like me. But okay, I can see where you might not want your boss privy to such things. Fair enough." He turned front forward again. "You want to schedule something another night? Or think you might be up for a second round tonight?"

He knew damn well she'd be fine soon.

"Oh, well..." She thinks about it for a moment--because she shouldn't be fine soon, if she was a normal person. But at the same time, that's an offer she can rarely bring herself to refuse. "I might could be, if you let me get some water into myself and stuff."

A grin, cleverly hidden by virtue of... facing the other way. Then he glances half over his shoulder and nods. "Absolutely! I've got all night- take your time."

"Think this might be my favorite bus now."

"I dunno, it's alright at night, but the 32 can be rough during the day in tourist season, because it stops real close to Strawberry Mansion. So it's all snot-nosed kids and their bitchy moms..." She shrugs.

"Well, let's be fair, I didn't make any fight friends on the other routes- the bar is pretty low."

"Alright, I accept this. Do you have a place in mind for this fight? I'm on my way home, and I think fighting in the apartment might lead to even more people thinking I've got an abusive boyfriend. Or that I'm abusive, myself."

"No place in particular, but there's always a little jaunt into a park if we need someplace away from judging eyes and ears."

"Works for me. There's actually one not far from the next stop." Because the world of darkness will occasionally bend to accommodate a fight.

"Excellent! How do you prefer? Figure we can use the transit time to puzzle out terms so nobody ends up in the ICU?"

"Shouldn't be too hard. Bare fists, no weapons, until someone passes out or yields, something like that? Keep it simple and clean as possible. It's a formal introduction, not fighting to hurt each other."

"Makes sense to me but you'd be surprised how many people think they need to slaughter everyone they face." Jack offers.

"That's not the point of this, for me. Don't think, for you, either. I mean, not that slaughtering someone before they can slaughter me or someone I care about isn't important, but that's...outside the scope of this engagement."

"Heh. No. It's not." Jack chuckled under his breath.

She gives him a sidelong look, one eyebrow raising artfully, a silent question.

It takes him a second to catch her look. "Oh! Sorry. That-" He wobbles his hand to and fro. "Miiiight be relatively indicative of how I may or may not have approached such things in the past. Used to mean a lot more to me to lose a fight. Now? Not so much. Just means I found someone worth hangin' with.”

"Fought like you meant it, every time? Dangerous to live life like that." She wrinkles her nose. "I'm glad you're not there anymore."

The bus stops and Jane stands, putting her little backpack on her back. "This is us, c'mon."

"Honey," he mutters. "You and me both." He rolls to his feet and follow, letting her set their pace.

She might be eager, a definite bounce in her step as she walks. She's a fairly tall woman, when standing, 5'9" and broad in the shoulders. "Probably good to do this in the grass by the basketball court. Softer landings, and the trees in that area mean it'd be harder for people to spot us."

"Deal," quips Jack, loping along in her wake. "By the by. If I pass out, think you can stick around 'til I wake up? It really sucks to wake up someplace you don't recognize with nobody you know."

"If you'll do the same for me. Shit, like, I wouldn't think of abandoning you in a situation like that. That's not who I am."

"Agreed," Vorpal confirmed. "Listen, like, you're an increasingly fine specimen of person, but you understand why I ask."

"I mean, yeah, I do. Shit, we're going to end up proper friends after this. A pair of bruise brothers."

"Punch pals. Chop chums! Asskick allies!" Jack laughs as they slip through the park, any unsavory elements wisely option NOT to move in on the terrifically muscled chick and her all-too-scarred friend.

As they reach the patch of grass Jane was thinking of, she swings off her backpack, putting it against a tree. "Battle buddies! Fight club friends!"

This is all tremendously delightful, and it shows- Jack's visibly thrilled as he strides into the grass, pacing around and kicking at the turf to make sure there's nothing icky planted out of sight- needles or whatnot. "I think we're gonna get along fine, you and me."

"Better than fine." She rolls her shoulders, grinning broadly. "Lemme know when you're ready."

Jack strikes like a fucking snake. The moment Jade indicates she's ready, his fist lashes out, a rabbit punch catching her square between the eyes. She's tough, and it's only just hard enough to actually do some work on her- it's immediately evident he relies far more on skill and speed than sheer muscle. It's like watching Bruce Lee throw a punch, but with motion blur- her eyes weren't designed to track something as fast as he is.

And just like that he's sliding to the side, ensuring that if she lashes out blindly at his last position, he won't be there. Simple footwork and tactics- and a sign that he's not trying to completely obliterate her, but give her a chance to show her stuff, too.

Her eyes might not have been designed to see him, but she huffs quietly a bare second after fielding that blow. She shakes her head slightly, waiting, instead of throwing another blow back immediately.

Watching Jade hang back after being struck, Jack waits a split second, confirming she still seems good to go, then follows his first punch with a second, similarly on target- but reels back after making contact, taking an all-too heavy step backwards in a particularly familiar reaction to Jade's hidden trick. It's not the fuzzed senses or the lack of coordination that hits Jack hardest, it's the abrupt obliteration of the majority of his stores of resolve. Right now, he's reeling.

And she takes advantage of that moment of confusion, managing to lash out with her elbow and hit him squarely in the solar plexus. She seems vaguely surprised to have landed that attack; Jack moves like the wax in a lava lamp, and she had honestly expected him to flow right around her limb instead.

Jack whips back away from Jade after he's struck, the blow leaving him coughing out a lungful of air before he pulls in another. For a moment, the sheer emotion of things starts to break things down. He looks at her and for a split second of outright indignant fury, she could swear the shadows eat his eyes and leave black pits staring at her as dead leaves kick across the grass between them.

And then he stops. And visibly considers something. Sighs REAL hard. And points at her... general... direction. She's over there, right? He's got her pretty good, even with the sensory disruption.

"Okay, so first? First?" He holds that finger up. "... I'm gonna give you that one. Cuz I wasn't playing perfectly fair. And I'll own that. But I'll have you know it was a really super tiny cheat. But I wasn't playing fair, so I'm gonna decide to not be mad here. Plus, you fuckin' hit me and I can't remember the last time that even happened. So I'm inclined to be nice."

"But. And I need ya to listen to me here." He does his best to put all his "be nice to people" practice into play. "I'm gonna need you to not mess with my head again. It's a cool trick- almost good enough to make me see things like everyone else does. And if that was all it did, I wouldn't even be mad. But that fucked up more than my body, and I cannot afford to have my head fucked with." It's only that word that carries any sort of vitriol at all, and boy does his anger leak in that word. Vorpal is more Story than Person, and he feels that Mad real good. "Are we understood?"

Of course, if Jade was feeling spicy, she could always interrupt his monologue, and he'd have to try to whip out of the way. But. He's trying to play nice.

She doesn't take advantage of his monologue, though, busy watching him thoughtfully. It's the look of someone who's seen Weird Shit before, so this isn't causing you know, total mortal panic, but she gets that this is definitely a Thing.

"We're understood. I wouldn't have done it if you weren't cheating first--after all, we had agreed to a simple fight, fists only, no weapons. I was prepared to try and do without it. But I won't do that to you ever again. It...should wear off in just a few seconds, mostly."

He nods and rubs at his temples. "Jesus. Kay. So. Transparency time. My- mental state. My focus and clarity and senses, fucking with that is a huge fucking problem for me. I'll spare you the details, but I have to treat stuff like that as serious as attempts to shoot me in the head. You didn't know- I ain't holding you to that for this, but after this, you know. Alright? I know you said okay already, and I appreciate that, just- if I'm gonna ask you to skip your own tricks, you deserve to know why."

"And- teeeeeeeeeechnically," And his tone makes it clear that he knows this is a stretch. "I wasn't using a weapon. And I was using my fist. I-" Insert perfect guilty eye roll here. "- just have more of them than you do and the extra ones are faster." He shrugs. "I was making sure to keep them on the same trajectory as my fists so it wouldn't be, like. Totally unfair. I didn't think you'd notice." Which- that's fair, it's not like it's easy to notice a blip of darkness leaking between his fingers at the instant of impact in the middle of the night. He rubbed his chest, wincing faintly. "I knew you had something tricky going on when I realized you'd visibly healed since you got on the bus. It's subtle, but."

"Tricky's a word for it. You've seen almost all the tricks I have, honestly--the other one's something that's just for actual absolute emergencies." She grimaces. "Do...we still get to be friends after this, or have I blown that? Because, look. Your mental state might be unstable and you might be leaking shadows, and you might be more fluid than quicksilver, but I still think you're someone I want to hang out with. I mean, if that'd be okay."

Jack stared at her deadpan for a minute. "... bitch, I was cheatin' first, the fuck you think I'm mad at you for? We're cool."

She lets out a laugh, moving to lean against a tree. "Oh, good. So. Hm. If I'm going to bring you to Fight Club, you can't get yourself caught doing that. I fight mundane about 90% of the time myself. The other 10%, I adjust my own body, similar to how I heal, but don't pull out that trick against opponents."

"I mean, if I was going to fight club, I'd just bring black handwraps. It'd serve the same purpose. I just didn't head out into the world today planning on conning some badass chick into not noticing me being awesome." He studies her a moment. "How's that body adjustment thing work? If you don't mind sharing."

"Uh. Let's see, how to explain. Sometimes, I'm up in a fight against someone who I really, really don't want landing a punch on me. So I...spend some time with my body, asking it to be less strong and more nimble, and my body kind of adjusts a bit. Or I try to be more durable, instead, to take more punches. But there's always a cost. Either I end up slower, or a little weaker...does...does that make sense? I think it's from the same 'place' as the healing, and similar to the Emergency Thing as well. I'm just an X-man, alright?"

Jack nods, getting the gist of it well enough. "Yeah, yeah! That makes sense. You just move some assets around, little less bicep, little more calf. I get it. And- X-man, huh? What's your cool mutant name, then? Did you get one of the suits? Hopefully not the dorky black and yellow ones with the executioner's hoods."

"...not literally an X-man. I'm not exactly anyone's hero, you know? Sort of just trying to get by and understand myself. And, uh...you?"

"Oh, me?" Jack laughs. "SomeThing thought it'd be super great to scoop out some kid's insides and replace them with shadows. Had a shit pad, though, so I split. More fun this side of Madness."

Blink. Blink. She seems to be taking that pretty seriously, maybe cross-referencing against other things she's heard in the past.

"Glad you made it back mostly intact, then."

"I mean, what more can you ask for, really?" He shrugs. "Anyway. If we're gonna be chums, I just need one thing, really. You seem to have your head on straight when it comes to being discrete. Think you can keep me under your entirely proverbial hat? I'll let you tell my friends you hit me~"

"I mean. No, I'm going to go home and blog all about you." This is clearly thick sarcasm. "Would it be okay if I mentioned your 'kinesis in the abstract? Because I've met electrokinetics, and a pyrokinetic or two. Cryokinesis is documented, but the..." there's a pause with a bit of a thinking-hum "...umbra-kinesis? That'd be news to Professor X and Emma Frost. Your name wouldn't be a part of it, just that shadows are a thing that's enough of a thing to be kines..ed? Kinesised?"

"Oh. Sure! It's- hrm. I dunno how to classify it. Like, sure, I can move shadows around, but to be real, it's more cuz I'm more shadow than anything else, and less mind over matter. But yeah, in that context, it's fine, far as I care." He pauses. "Wait, cryokinesis? How the shit does that work, cold ain't a thing, it's an... absence of..."

He trailed off and crossed his arms grumpily.

"Right? But apparently most people who...do cryokinesis, they need cold to start with. It's a mindfuck, and there's actually been theories that it's their perception of cold as a thing that's actually driving a thermokinesis that favors absence of heat. Because when it comes to these phenomena, what one's starting point with regard to 'what I think I'm doing' matters a lot. Besides, can you really talk, given that shadows are an absence of light?"

She sounds like she's had full college level lectures on this topic that she can repeat back.

He glares at her when she brings up the point he skidded to a stop immediately before. "Listen, shadows are things cuz I am a thing. So there." Grump grump grump. "But... cool. So you have pyschic friends. That's pretty awesome. Everyone cool I know went through hell to get cool tricks. Being born psychic sounds way better."

"It's only better once you have the friends and you don't think you're just going insane." Her smile dims somewhat. "I...spent a rough couple years sort of mired in a lot of self-doubt shit as this all started to unfold for me."

"Oh. Suck." Jack winces. "I got lucky. I stumbled into folx that knew what I'd been through right when I got back. So I got to skip the crippling self doubt and skip straight to great power and great responsibility storylines. Sorry you had to deal with that, though."

"Yeah, well. Better now, for both of us, right?" The bruises that Jack added to her collection are already starting to heal nicely, the split lip from before almost gone. "Wanna trade phone numbers, so I can call you next time a thing's going on?"

"Yeah- I'd like that. Lemme know if you run into anything dangerous, too. That's kinda my specialty. Chasing off dangerous shit. Don't get whacked." He pulls his phone out and opens the dialer, handing it to Jade.

She shakes her head as she puts in her phone number (as Jade :greenheart:). "That's my specialty too. For reasons that would have been obvious if you weren't so slippery."

"Listen, you're plenty nasty. Like I said. You hit." He sounds genuinely approving, and calls her number so she can save it. "Well, good. Operation Battle Buddies is a go, then!"

She does save it (though if he's looking at her screen, he might note that he's "The Other Jack" now). "It's been a pleasure. I'm going to go home and ice some of this."

"Please do. This was fun. I gotta- go get my head back on straight, I think. So stay frosty, and drop me a line whenever."