Post by Solomon Moon on Mar 8, 2020 14:20:35 GMT -5
Solomon
Sol thumbed the face of his scroll. He did it with more force than was strictly necessary, as if hammering the power button more aggressively would cause the device to obey the command with more alacrity. He caught a glimpse of the Haven chat engine before the screen winked out. It had been scrolled a few lines up from the most recent entry, focused on a message left by Aegle shortly before she logged out. It had seemed strange to Sol at the time. Though to most there would have been little strange about someone logging out of the chat to go and train, Sol was familiar enough with the behavior himself to read slightly more into it. Aegle wasn't the kind of person who sought refuge in solitude like Sol was. In fact from Sol's experience, whereas he himself used the tactic to halt a toxic interaction before it could get ugly, with a debatable degree of success if he was being honest, Aegle employed it differently, and though Sol did not know enough to suspect the impetus, he was aware enough to know it was significant.
The entire exchange had seemed off to Sol. Something was bothering Aegle, and he wondered how the hell he could be the only one to have noticed it. He should have been the last person to be sensitive to the moods of others, unless that mood was violent intent.
It came almost as a surprise when he walked into the gym and found Aegle studiously hammering the heavy bag, instead of finding her weeping or secluded in a dark corner, or something else equally dramatic. Aegle sparring with the punching bag was not in the slightest remarkable to anyone who knew the punky pugilist. She spent so much time at the bag that Sol could count the number of times he'd seen her without wraps, on a single hand, but he hadn't come here for accepting what he saw at face value.
Timing his footsteps so that the sound of her strikes would muffle the tread of his heavy combat boots, Sol approached Aegle from the left and slightly behind. She was right handed, and though ambidextrous when it came to boxing, still favored that hand and tended to angle towards her target with her left side to provide a more compact stance, and Sol's angle of approach exploited that fact to keep himself out of her field of view. He wasn't even aware that he was doing it, it was just a habit he'd picked up at some point, travelling with the northern raiders in the snows of Solitas, who prized stealth as highly as might in a straight up engagement, because it was only a fool who squandered any advantage, however slight. The difference was that Sol was not preparing to leap in a slit the girl's neck for her, he simply didn't want to disturb her, this already felt like too much of an intrusion without his interrupting her practice, and give himself time to make a judgement of her mood and whether it was worth his involvement here at all.
A cursory inspection revealed little. Aegle was just trying out combinations on the heavy-bag, like she did many times a week, no doubt, her fists flowing into elaborate sequences with an artful grace and power that belied her frail stature, almost too quickly for Sol to follow, despite the benefit of not being the target of those blows. If he were on the receiving end of that assault SOl doubted he would have been able to make sense of the storm of blows that flowed out of the tiny creature. It was flawless, at least to the eye of a layman, but Sol, among his dubious honors, was a master of violence and he could see that something wasn't quite right with the display.
While for the most part, Aegle's combos went off without a hitch. Left, left, right, left, right, right, gut, throat, chin, nose, cheek, cheek. It was impressive, as long as each punch connected solidly, but every now and then, a punch would land wide, or the bag would move unexpectedly on it's chain, and Aegle would have to compensate by adjusting the timing of her inputs. That was where the flaws became obvious. The moment it took to adjust and launch back into another combo added up over time to a fatal span of moments when a quick opponent would be able to exploit the opening, and the more out of sync she became with the bag, the more corrections she was making and the more out of sync she was becoming, until finally, blows that had been landing with the perfect precision to translate as much of her mechanical advantage into the blow as possible were glancing off or falling short of the mark. Sol wondered how that could be the case. It couldn't be exhaustion. Aegle's wells of stamina were a thing of legend among Class-Red, so perhaps distraction, perhaps something else.
He waited for the girl to give up he most recent series of blindingly fast combinations, the bag once more swinging too wildly to land a solid hit, and finally approached, no longer concerned that he might catch a fist in the confusion. If Aegle was going to hit him, he wanted her to at least be doing it on purpose.
Sol steadied the swinging bag with an even pressure of his left and right hand, both clad in black leather gloves, and glanced down at the panting Aegle. It was not an unkind gaze, but there was something of the appraiser in it, more than the sympathizer. He looked at the bag and then back at her, wordlessly communicating that he too could see what she must be already freely aware of.
"Is it always like this?" He asked, his gruesome rasp of a voice seeming somehow heretical in comparison to the rhythmic thudding of the tiny warrior's bandaged fists against leather, "Or are you having an off night?"
Something in his voice, though it was subtle amidst the growling syllables that could have passed for radio static, suggested he wasn't just talking about the punching bag or Aegle's ability to hit it.
The entire exchange had seemed off to Sol. Something was bothering Aegle, and he wondered how the hell he could be the only one to have noticed it. He should have been the last person to be sensitive to the moods of others, unless that mood was violent intent.
It came almost as a surprise when he walked into the gym and found Aegle studiously hammering the heavy bag, instead of finding her weeping or secluded in a dark corner, or something else equally dramatic. Aegle sparring with the punching bag was not in the slightest remarkable to anyone who knew the punky pugilist. She spent so much time at the bag that Sol could count the number of times he'd seen her without wraps, on a single hand, but he hadn't come here for accepting what he saw at face value.
Timing his footsteps so that the sound of her strikes would muffle the tread of his heavy combat boots, Sol approached Aegle from the left and slightly behind. She was right handed, and though ambidextrous when it came to boxing, still favored that hand and tended to angle towards her target with her left side to provide a more compact stance, and Sol's angle of approach exploited that fact to keep himself out of her field of view. He wasn't even aware that he was doing it, it was just a habit he'd picked up at some point, travelling with the northern raiders in the snows of Solitas, who prized stealth as highly as might in a straight up engagement, because it was only a fool who squandered any advantage, however slight. The difference was that Sol was not preparing to leap in a slit the girl's neck for her, he simply didn't want to disturb her, this already felt like too much of an intrusion without his interrupting her practice, and give himself time to make a judgement of her mood and whether it was worth his involvement here at all.
A cursory inspection revealed little. Aegle was just trying out combinations on the heavy-bag, like she did many times a week, no doubt, her fists flowing into elaborate sequences with an artful grace and power that belied her frail stature, almost too quickly for Sol to follow, despite the benefit of not being the target of those blows. If he were on the receiving end of that assault SOl doubted he would have been able to make sense of the storm of blows that flowed out of the tiny creature. It was flawless, at least to the eye of a layman, but Sol, among his dubious honors, was a master of violence and he could see that something wasn't quite right with the display.
While for the most part, Aegle's combos went off without a hitch. Left, left, right, left, right, right, gut, throat, chin, nose, cheek, cheek. It was impressive, as long as each punch connected solidly, but every now and then, a punch would land wide, or the bag would move unexpectedly on it's chain, and Aegle would have to compensate by adjusting the timing of her inputs. That was where the flaws became obvious. The moment it took to adjust and launch back into another combo added up over time to a fatal span of moments when a quick opponent would be able to exploit the opening, and the more out of sync she became with the bag, the more corrections she was making and the more out of sync she was becoming, until finally, blows that had been landing with the perfect precision to translate as much of her mechanical advantage into the blow as possible were glancing off or falling short of the mark. Sol wondered how that could be the case. It couldn't be exhaustion. Aegle's wells of stamina were a thing of legend among Class-Red, so perhaps distraction, perhaps something else.
He waited for the girl to give up he most recent series of blindingly fast combinations, the bag once more swinging too wildly to land a solid hit, and finally approached, no longer concerned that he might catch a fist in the confusion. If Aegle was going to hit him, he wanted her to at least be doing it on purpose.
Sol steadied the swinging bag with an even pressure of his left and right hand, both clad in black leather gloves, and glanced down at the panting Aegle. It was not an unkind gaze, but there was something of the appraiser in it, more than the sympathizer. He looked at the bag and then back at her, wordlessly communicating that he too could see what she must be already freely aware of.
"Is it always like this?" He asked, his gruesome rasp of a voice seeming somehow heretical in comparison to the rhythmic thudding of the tiny warrior's bandaged fists against leather, "Or are you having an off night?"
Something in his voice, though it was subtle amidst the growling syllables that could have passed for radio static, suggested he wasn't just talking about the punching bag or Aegle's ability to hit it.
@tag | 1097 words | notes |
Velvet of WW