fandomhighdorms | The Salle, Saturday Evening

Evan really hadn't been expecting much when he walked into the Salle today. He'd been planning on maybe taking a sword to one of the dummies, or just beating on one of the heavy bags, or... well, maybe even just doing push-ups or something, since he was feeling kind of guilty that the only training he'd been doing tended to include long-fall boots and portal guns.

So the music was a really nice touch as he walked into the Salle today, and turned a smile toward the other person in there with him.

"I don't know what opera this is from," he shared, "but I think I really like it."

... Pop culture was not Evan's strongest point.

"It's from Lucia di Lammermoor," Surreal replied as she spun around and gave the bag a vicious side-kick. ...it was entirely possible she hadn't managed to find the original yet and didn't understand this was a remix. "By way of a moo-vee about elements."

That was totally logical, really.

She followed up by launching a series of punches at the bag. "...Aren't you a little little to be in here?"

Evan wrinkled his nose a little at that, and then stepped up to a heavy bag and shook his head.

"I'm just short for my age," he replied, giving a few quick jabs to the bag as a warm-up. "Usually. But that doesn't mean I can't hold my own in a fight or anything. I have before."

Against the guy who would have been Apocalypse. At least, for a while. He wasn't so anxious to be taken down so easily again. And people would try.

"Kind of."

"There's isn't a 'kind of' in a fight, boyo," Surreal retorted between punches, amused. "You either win or you get stomped."

~~Or it was foreplay with your girlfriend, but Surreal was maintaining he was too little for that. And not Cara's type.~~

"I got stomped, then," Evan admitted, frowning a little at his heavy bag and trying not to feel too sheepish about that. "But it bought someone else the time they needed to pull themselves together to finish the fight, so I kind of... won by proxy."

The world was still populated with human beings. That was kind of like a win.

"So you got lucky."

Sorry, Evan, Surreal isn't good at holding hands or soothing egos - that's what healers were for - and she finished with a roundhouse kick with a punch of Green behind it that tore the heavy bag clear off its chain. "Darkness and Hell, not again. Don't they have anything stronger in here?"

Evan got lucky. He frowned a little, but he didn't deny it. It was true enough, after all.

"The chains aren't so great when you really get going at it," he offered, looking at the bag on the floor, and then reaching out and lifting it up with one hand. "I had to reattach a few back home before my uncle decided we were going to train with something a little more sturdy. Then we just kind of blew things up outside."

That the hand that he was holding the heavy bag up with was about the same size as the bag itself? Well, Evan certainly didn't seem to be making a big deal of it as he used his other hand to re-fasten the chain, and then welded the snapped link back together with a quick blast of power from his eyes.

Color Surreal impressed, and other people's magic didn't phase her very often. "Hey, show me that again," she said, calling in her Green and using her Craft to let it loop around her neck, letting the gem settle between her breasts. "It's a handy trick."

"It's only handy until the other guy is better at it," Evan replied, offering her a wry little smile. He tugged experimentally at the bag, and then let his hands return to their usual size, dusting them off on his pant legs. "You're talking about the eye-blasts, right?"

Most people couldn't go all Mr. Fantastic on command, but letting loose raw energy seemed like something that at least a few people around the island might be able to pick up, so that seemed like the more likely bet.

"They come out of your eyes?" Surreal made a face. "Seems like that'd hurt."

Still, she pulled some power to her hands, trying to do small beams from her fingers. "Heh. Lasers, right?"

Moo-vees talked about lasers a lot! A lot of the ones Surreal liked, anyway.

"It's easier to aim when they come out of my eyes," Evan explained, watching her try to focus her own power from her fingers. "Otherwise I just kind of... um... It all goes boom."

It had taken a lot of training to dial back his eye blasts, as it was!

"But this way, it kind of is like lasers, isn't it?" He looked around the room, and then spotted one of the practise dummies, firing off another blast of power and leaving the poor thing sizzling. "Maybe a little bigger than the ones from Space Battles, though."

Don't spoil him on how the third prequel movie ended!

Edited 2012-11-11 01:55 (UTC)

"You people and explosions," she sighed, trying to do more detailed-type work on another dummy; small, tight beams. Or at least that was what she was trying for. "I think that is half of what your movies are. How can you be subtle with things exploding everywhere?"

"I really don't think they're going for subtle in Hollywood," Evan noted, smiling lopsidedly as he looked back toward surreal. "Real life works a little differently, obviously. That's why I learned to focus it like this. So that I wouldn't just... blow everything up."

He was really, really good at blowing things up.

"If you're looking to finish a kill, I suppose that works, but that's why I prefer getting in close. No mistakes." It wasn't said to shock, or even provoke, just a statement of fact. The boy was too young (and smelled too sweet to someone who could smell his psychic scent) for Surreal to be worried about retaliation or typical male nonsense.

"Now, combine that with a punch with those hands of yours, boyo, and you'll do better next time someone takes a swing at you."

The talk of killing mostly just made Evan look toward the floor. He'd have gone more pale if it was at all possible, but he understood, also, how sometimes it was just... necessary.

"He didn't swing at me," he murmured, a little awkwardly. "We fell off a building," or, rather, Archangel had smashed through a wall Evan-first, "and then he picked me up out of the crater I made when I landed on the sidewalk and he electrocuted me."

So, the big hands really wouldn't have done him much good.

Surreal just raised an eyebrow. "And what, exactly, did you do to piss him off? Kiss his daughter?"

IT WAS A FAIR QUESTION, WHEN YOU GREW UP AROUND A MALE LIKE SADI.

Oh, so much fidgeting, now.

"I didn't like the way he was trying to destroy or enslave every non-mutant human in the world, so I hit him."

... Well, 'hit' him. From behind with both fists while flying, and then again with eye-lasers. As you do.

OH COME ON BOYO, THIS WAS LIKE KICKING A PUPPY.

"Well, good for you," she answered, walking over and reaching out a hand to slow the swaying of the bag she'd been experimenting on.

"Now come at me."

Clearly, the boy had more to learn about fighting dirty if he was going to pick fights with people stronger than him.

"At you?" Evan actually looked kind of stunned there for a moment, blinking Surreal's way and trying to absorb that. He knew she could handle herself. After all, she had knocked the heavy bag clear from its chain and had complained that there wasn't anything stronger to swing at. And he had come here hoping to get some proper training in...

And so he took a deep breath, nodded, and then came at her running, hands in fists and ready to take a swing.

This was probably not going to work out so well for Evan, no.

No, Evan, not in the slightest. Not at allllllll.

Surreal just stepped to the side, smoothly sliding into a spin that would put her booted foot right in the small of his back.

"Oof!"

And that would be Evan, stumbling the next few steps with a bruise forming on his lower back for his efforts. He wasn't about to be deterred so easily, though. He spun on his heel, ignoring he ache, and threw a fist at her again from right where he was standing, his arm stretching the distance between them and swinging his hand at her, whip-like.

A flicker of her fingers, and Surreal's Green vanished, leaving her with only the power in her own body and no extra tricks of Craft woven into the jewel.

She was rather sure she didn't need them.

The fist-whip was clever, and rather than pull a knife - which was her first instinct - she gave her sharp smile instead, moving with the quick motions of his arm, swaying back-and-forth while closing the distance between them to throw him off.

Evan's Uncle Cluster would have been so disappointed in him if all it took to really throw him off was getting in close to him, though the swaying was doing a bit of a number on him. He adjusted the length of his arm to compensate, while keeping his other up, close to his body, ready to swing down or out for a block if need be.

Aside from the arm that was already trying to keep up with her, he was mostly on the defensive, yes.

Hopefully that arm really was ready to swing down, then, because Surreal took a sudden dive, feet first to swipe his legs out from under him. Defensive posture wasn't going to win this fight, since her hands were already reaching to yank down on his arm, hard, in case he somehow managed to defend his legs.

So far as fifteen year old kid reflexes went... Evan's weren't too terrible. Really, he'd been training for a few years under the guidance of a master assassin, and Fantomex didn't exactly want the kid dead. He just wanted him to not destroy the Earth, which wasn't asking much of the boy, really, was it?

And so Evan did manage to keep his footing after Surreal's sweep, his far leg deforming to the shape of her kick while he lifted the other from the floor. Which... could have ended far more poorly, in retrospect, with her feet between his knees, if not for the fact that his other hand had been there for her to grab, and the yank had him stumbling forward all the same, his free arm pinwheeling wildly before he pitched forward toward her.

With... all the grace of a fifteen-year-old boy.

Look, just because he'd been trained for four years by an assassin didn't mean he could hold his own against one.

Edited 2012-11-11 22:02 (UTC)

She wasn't going to shave the lad with a good kick! ...yes, she could have, but that was just mean.

Surreal gave another good yank, using her momentum to try and flip them over so she'd land straddling his chest. Assuming he didn't go all jelly on her, that was.

She was also an assassin-in-training with boobs, and Surreal totally wasn't too shy to flash them a bit in her corset to distract him.

Yeah, Evan didn't stand a chance, landing with an oof on the flat of his back and then staring up at her, wide-eyed. Because, beyond the fact that he was now staring up toward the ceiling with a pretty girl sitting on him, he was also... still fifteen.

His wee little brain was hitting short-circuit mode, and he was blushing and stammering and trying to avert his eyes, even while being thumped to the ground. Which was a polite gesture that his Ma would approve of, at least, but it probably wasn't going to do him any good in this particular situation, and he knew it.

"I could have drawn a knife at any point in there, and you'd be dead now," Surreal said calmly, staring down at him. "Don't matter that I'm female, boyo. My face is up here - an so's my tits - but that don't make you less dead."

"Let me know next time you actually wanna fight, and not just indulge the random girlchild working out in the gym."

And now Evan's blush was that much deeper.

"You're really, really good at that," he offered, murmuring awkwardly. "I really didn't stand a chance there, did I?"

But he was very good at getting throttled. That was good to know...

"No, because you were pulling your punches. If you want to win, you have to be willing to make the other person hurt," Surreal answered brusquely, pushing herself off him.

"And no, you didn't. Cleverer, crueler boys than you have met their end at my hands. That's the trick." Surreal looked down at him. "If you know how to kill them, and are willing to go there, you can always win. That's the catch. You can't win if you're not willing to make the cut. Not against me, and not against that man that hurt you."

And that had been how Archangel had been stopped. Evan remembered vaguely, waking up to the chaos afterwards, Uncle Cluster nearby to assure him that he did well. People liberally coated in blood...

He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, and then pushed himself into a sitting position, running his hands through his hair.

"But I don't want to kill people," he said, his voice quiet. "I want to learn how to fight, in case I ever need to, and my Uncle's not here to keep training me. But killing..."

The thought of killing somebody made his insides churn. That wasn't what heroes did.

"Not every day you hear people working out to opera," Jessica noted. Was she coming down to work out herself? Was she just out to troll people for fun? Who knew? It didn't really matter. The important thing was that she was here and she felt like a music critic.

[Have another person to be amused by.]

"Not every day someone is bold enough to comment on my music choices," Surreal replied blandly, giving the bag a kick hard enough to send it spinning wildly as she weaved around it. "If you put in 'pop', I might have to kill you."

Joking. Mostly. She wasn't allowed to kill fellow students.

"I'm bold enough to do many crazy things any day of the week," Jessica said as she fully came into the room. "But only if it's mildly amusing or better. Pop music doesn't quite reach those heights."

"Does pop music ever reach any heights?" Really, now, let's be honest.

"Only on the pop charts, but they're biased. It's right there in the name," Jessica said, adding a 'tsk tsk' and disappointed head shake.

"...There's a chart? What does that do?" Not that Surreal cared, much. She was having too much fun trying to destroy her heavy bag, again, although she was starting to get disappointed that it wasn't smart enough to fight back.

"It ranks the most popular songs in sales order," Jessica said. "Because believe it or not, a bunch of people like that stuff at least as much as you like pounding that poor, defenseless bag."

"If it wasn't so defenseless, I'd get to hit it more," Surreal pointed out. "I lived with a girl obsessed with pop; I'll take my relationship with the bag any day."

"You might, but won't you think of the bag's feelings?" Jessica asked. "I mean, if it was sentient and had feelings instead of... whatever kind of stuffing they put in punching bags."

"If it didn't want to be punched, maybe it shouldn't have been a punching bag when it grew up," Surreal deadpanned. "Bad life choice."

Not that it was going to stop her from wailing on it some more. Beating up the heavy bag was a lot more fun than therapy.

"Unfortunately, it probably didn't have many career paths open to it," Jessica said. "I mean, if it looks like a punching bag, is manufactured like a punching bag, and takes a punch like a punching bag, people are just going to treat it that way," Jessica said, walking a little closer to the bag to look for signs of sensitivity. However one would do that. "It didn't have a chance. Maybe it wanted to be a writer."

"Then it should be happy I'm helping it on to the next life, where it might have a chance of happiness," she answered. "Do you always ponder the inner life of gym equipment?"

"Not always. Sometimes I focus on living room furniture instead," Jessica said. "You never know when something inanimate's going to have an actual life around here."

The Salle, Saturday Evening

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