[Let's begin this with some (To Be Cleverly Named) Forces 2 Fueled Invisibility, shall we? Diff 5, -1 Time, -1 Personal Instrument.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (4, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Pen
Today Pen is going to teach Nick how to defend himself.
Today is a work day, for Pen as well. He knows that she spent lunch with Ari. He knows that she was sidetracked by a thrift store she'd never seen before with a chest as big as a bear that she wanted to get. He knows quite a number of her thoughts, because Pen likes to carry a conversation on with Nicholas even when they are apart and one must wait for a response. Maybe today they spoke about sealing wax, cabbages, about the philosophy of the soul, about a trip to Prague (city of Thresholds), about some hilarious linguistic joke she discovered that she called during his lunch break to attempt to explain and she is eloquent so after a while she'd manage to explain it. Pen told him she was at a sewing shop and asked him whether or not he needed anything sewn. She did not tell him she was there choosing embroidery threads, or what those embroidery threads were for. And of course, for all the regularity of communication, there were hours of silence: Nick was working. So was Pen.
This evening Pen is going to teach Nick how to defend himself.
She is home before he is, and she must keep in mind he is not of her House. Must she keep that in mind? She doesn't meditate on it because Penelope Mercury Mars is not very good at meditation but she thinks about it. He also isn't a young man who wants to learn how to duel, who is prepared to wield a sword on a rooftop at dawn. He is Nicholas, and Nicholases respond to trickery and traps, to having their intellect challenged and startled.
So before he is home, Penelope draws a circle (which has been oft-drawn, beneath the rug in their room) using a metallic chalk, invokes the attention of the appropriate celestials which is really just a way to focus one's own attention and then she whisks her wand (it is a good wand, and lovely; it is wooden, but chased with metal and stone) up and down circles it around and the light turns inside out and she becomes the dark of the moon lacking in outward radiance an aura a halo a spirit a suggestion less than a suggestion vanished to the eyes.
The eyes only rule one sense. That is the point!
And then she reads a book in Nick's study, seated cross-legged on the floor. It should be soon. She ruefully acknowledges to herself that if she'd managed the Art of Time already she'd know exactly when Nicholas would be arriving.
Nick
Perhaps she rues it further: Nicholas is a bit later than usual coming home from work. He generally has a way of timing his arrival home just so; he leaves work during the period just before traffic begins to get heavy, neatly sidesteps it. While not overly given to casual use of magick (with his resonance, how could anything be casual?), there are times when Nick uses it to make his life easier.
What he did not foresee today was sudden recovery: celebration. It's a rare thing when one of his clients is no longer his client because they have recovered; generally he meets them with the opposite expectation. And so today, he stayed behind. He stayed late, and then traffic.
When he gets home the serenity and quiet sense of wellbeing that had settled in has been dampened somewhat by having a shirtless young man scream at him out the window on the highway. Nick might be good at meditation, but he is not always good at shrugging these things off as some.
Pen can hear the door open and click shut downstairs.
It takes a while for Nick to come up to his study. Unbeknownst to her (she cannot hear him) he is wandering around downstairs looking for her, out the windows and around the back. He likes texting her back and forth through the day, and even so he misses her; he has never said this, but he does. And finally he appears in the doorway to his study, a slim silhouette and still in his white shirt and dark tie.
Pen
The door click kissing frame as it shuts downstairs is Pen's cue her sign her wink wink house and Pen in it together to put aside the book under that chair there and take out instead a wooden knife. The wooden knife is a toy is blunt is rounded would leave a bruise couldn't puncture flesh could smear the jelly of an eye across a cheek could break a jugular could be force-fed down a throat and hurt and hurt but it's just a toy it might bruise at the most. Pen is content to wait even as Nicholas he is such a haunt and perhaps she thinks about Nicholas as a haunt as a ghost as possession perhaps she begins to work on a line of poetry perhaps she is restless she has certainly stood is leaning against the wall as she waits for Nicholas to come to his study come to his study and pass over the threshold. She waits still.
Even so, waiting, she is contemplative; it is rare one sees someone else when they think themselves alone; when they are not putting on a face, a mask, however well intentioned; sleep takes one mask away, but it also buries the spirit. Solitude: that's something else.
And so, a moment. Go on, Nicholas.
Make your move.
Nick
He doesn't yet pass over the threshold. He leans back way back and cranes his head back around the doorframe to glance down the hall once, then back and then again; maybe he is still looking for her. Maybe he has some sense that she is here or that something is, something that he is listening to but can find no objective evidence of. Frustrating, isn't it?
There is no sign of her and so he straightens again and steps into his study, over to the basin of water in the corner and the two candles on either side, framing it, the one that hangs from a sconce above it; they create a door of sorts. A circle. He pulls a book of matches from the side table nearby and flicks flame into being on the back of the book, and his movement is practiced as he lights them all the way around. He shakes the flame out just before it can begin to lick at the tip of his thumb and the curl of his finger.
He uses his other hand to reach up and wiggle the topmost button of his shirt free of its stay, hooks a finger through his tie to loosen it.
Then he folds his legs beneath him and sits. The basin is kept clear; it's fed and agitated below the surface, filtered out and fed back in. The surface looks like polished glass like a calm lake. He's not looking into it, just sitting next to it. Nick when he thinks himself alone isn't much different from Nick when he is among people, from the looks of it.
Pen
[Stealth-y stealth. I'm not that quiet, Nick...]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 3) ( fail )
Nick
[Alertness?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Pen
Pen:
absent from this portrait. The house has begun to feel like her; the house has begun to feel like Nicholas. The floorboards are ardent, and daring; they are hallowed, where ever a foot might fall. A foot is falling; hear that?
Nicholas does. He can hear a long tread, crossing from one side of his room to the other, coming nearer. Imprecise just where, but near: hear that?
Sure he did.
Nick
Imprecise just where, but Nick's head twists around because he can tell it's somewhere inside the room: too near to have been muted by the door and the wall, see. He can't quite pinpoint it, he wasn't paying enough attention. But he heard her.
If it is her. Nick's heart has beat just a little more quickly after he and Andrés came across the wolfman, and after he and Ari tracked something to a high lonely place in the hills. It was a hungry something, and he is not sure if they lingered too long. That has been on his mind, even if it hasn't been on Ari's. Their friend in spite of what outsiders might assume may be the least cautious of the three of them.
Nick's hand comes to rest against the floorboards; his fingers curl as though he would launch himself to his feet. He does not, just yet.
Because there were footsteps and he cannot see where they came from.
The motion of his hand is quick; it touches the surface of the water first, leaves little ripples curling outward from the side of the basin, and he touches his fingertips to his forehead.
[Spirit sight? Who's there? Base diff 4, coincidental, -1 for focus.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (2, 5) ( success x 1 )
Pen
His shadow is on the water and she regarded the drops which fell from his fingers on their way, quick as a kingfisher, from water to forehead, how they caught the light for one brief moment; became topaz; amber; honey; quartz, dripping candle-light. Penelope is no one and nothing to the eyes, but Nicholas heard her.
He doesn't see anything out of the ordinary when he searches the room. He sees his study as he left it; perhaps he sees the book beneath the chair, where it shouldn't be, but Pen could have left that there at any time she was in his study, sprawled on the floor reading. He doesn't see Pen regarding his posture coolly, the hand braced against the floorboards, the imbalance there and there and how maybe he could -
He doesn't see any of that.
(Let's init! +7)
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( botch x 1 )
Nick
[Init! +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
Pen
[Invisible Headlock! Defend thyself.]
Nick
[I can't see you coming so I'm just gonna have to try to wiggle free.]
Pen
The arm around Nicholas's neck may be a familiar one, but right now it tightens; not enough, one hopes, to choke off his air completely; certainly, enough to be a threat (to threaten), and Pen says in his ear (he cannot see the arm; he can only feel it), "What is the best course of action here?"
(St + MA + Willpower, because it is hard to attack one's husband, and also one wants to give him a good villain.)
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Nick
It's not enough to choke off Nick's air, but it is enough to make him think twice about speaking; his voice has stopped up somewhere between the hollow of his throat and where it would emerge out of his mouth. The nonverbal noise he makes sounds just a little betrayed.
[Thrashthrashthrash. Str + MA (untrained, +1 diff). WP.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (2, 5) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Pen
He struggles. He thrashes. He does not break the hold she has on him. Now she is nothing; she is the central figure of a painting, if that central figure escaped her painting - was not where she should be; not where you look and expect her. But he has other senses: He can hear her, he heard her just before, and he can feel her at his back and neck, and he can feel something hard (wooden; the knife. He might not know what it is, exactly) at his ribs pressing in.
"No," she says, "Try again; free yourself."
Nick
There is something hard pressing into his back; sharp too (it might not slice flesh, but the blunted knife tip certainly feels sharp to him when it is digging into his skin). Nick has no idea how to escape from a hold like this. One of the social workers at the crisis center tried to show him once; he had not paid attention.
Nick tries to shrug his shoulders and duck. They'd said something like that, right? He twists his body around and it only brings his throat into even more uncomfortable contact with her arm.
Pen
The knife travels across his ribs; slides in front of him; could unseam him, were it real; were it true; were it not just ash-wood, rue-oil rubbed; were it not practice, student's, actor's, stagecraft.
"Try again, Nicholas; you have some freedom of movement; I, at your back, have some vulnerability; can you not sense what it is?"
Nick
Try again, she urges; he is already sweating and part of it is from exertion and part of it is his body's natural response, his quickened heart and how his world has narrowed to the head of a pin, narrowed to his perception of the arm around his throat. Her suggestion is met with silence at first: she does after all have a knife, blunted though it is.
Nick sucks in a breath and tries to pitch forward and throw her over him. He is very certain it is not something his former coworker suggested.
Nick
[Strength! Rawr!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Pen
[Very good, Nick! Nope. Willpower, because again, we must be a good villain.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Pen
He can feel some give when he pitches forward; only some. Her hold doesn't quite slip; he doesn't quite move properly. After nothing happens, but perhaps an ache for an opportunity lost, he feels her leave his back and her arm leave his neck. He can see: not Pen, if he turns. Pen is only a thought; he can hear, if he listens close, her retreat; can't he hear her retreat?
And say, quietly and thoughtfully, "Why do you think none of that worked? We are not so ill-matched in this."
Nick
He cannot see her, but he can certainly feel the faint chill left behind in her absence after she was pressed against her back, how free and unlabored his breathing feels. Can he hear her? Perhaps she is still not so far away.
Nick reaches up and rubs his palm over his throat. The gesture is borne more from discomfiture than from any pain or soreness. "I'm a civilian. I don't really have any training."
Pen
"You're receiving training now, Nicholas," Pen says, gently. "Think about your body and mine; what advantage did I have, what advantage did you have?"
Nick
Duly chided, Nick lowers his hand from his throat, which is reddened more from his rubbing it than from Pen's arm around it moments ago. "You had the knife and you had...you would've had a chokehold on me, if you were actually choking me. I guess..."
Nicholas cannot immediately think of any advantages; knife and chokehold seems to have cancelled out any advantages he had in his mind. "I guess maybe I probably had more balance, and your stomach and ribs would've been open if I'd had a weapon," he says.
Pen
Nicholas's eyes continue to tell him Penelope is not there, nor her shadow, nor even a fold of fabric, nor a strand of red hair. Not a colour - blood-bright, garnet-dark, copper silk for some god - to fade elsewhere but here it is. Sorcery. Enchantment. He has decided to co-habitate with an Enchantress (with this ring, with this breath), and magick cannot be separate from either she or he.
"I've thought before that basic self defense is a sharp wit drawing an understanding of the present moment and how it might transform into the following moment. Yes, it helps to know moves that have been time-tested, and it helps to practice them, but I believe it is almost more a matter of self-assurance. You have wit, Nicholas, even when there is no weapon at hand. One relies on one's weapon. If I circle your throat with my arm and I hold a knife to your ribs, I likely feel like I am in control, feel safer because of the knife - that is a little edge that you have over an attacker like that. They think they are already winning. So if someone comes at you like that, you lean back. You crack your skull into theirs. You use your elbows to - exactly as you just noted - jab the vulnerable stomach and ribs. Your arms will be free; would you come with me to our bedroom to look at yourself break free in the mirror?"
Nick
It is disconcerting, that he cannot see her. This way it is almost as though he is talking to the open air, talking to some spirit he cannot see, talking to himself, if a person weren't able to hear Pen's disembodied voice. There is a long strand of red hair that she has left behind on his shoulder, and this he plucks off with a thoughtful glance as it catches a bit of sunlight like a thin copper wire: it is the sole evidence that she exists right now.
"All right," he says, and he pushes himself to his feet though his feet are still a little unsteady, his heart still a little too quick. "I suppose losing is a certainty if you don't fight back."
Pen
"Yes."
All he has to read her by is the sound of her voice, the texture of it woven in the air; the familiarity he has with her voice and all its nuances. She says the word simply, and without adornment. But it occupies a space in time: Yes.
Maybe she follows him to the bedroom.
Maybe she doesn't. Maybe she is by his side; maybe she is behind him.
[Stealthy stealth!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Nick
[Alertness please?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Nick
Nick pads to the bedroom, and maybe the essence of him has steeped so into the floorboards that they hush Pen's feet as she follows him (or doesn't.) He is still sharp and alert and on his guard, but he finds that as they pass into the hall he cannot hear her; Penelope Mercury Mars is on point tonight when it comes to terrorizing her husband.
There is an uneasy feeling in his stomach even though the threat is an artificial one. As he crosses into the bedroom he turns in front of the mirror, makes a full circuit. His muscles are tense; he reaches up and strokes his tie absently, a nervous gesture. "Are you coming into the bedroom?"
Pen
"I am."
Her voice comes at Nick from the left. The room is cleaner than it was in the morning, the floorboards scrubbed with vinegar and the floor-rug vacuumed; the bedside table has been somewhat rearranged and there isn't (rare) so much as a single bra strewn across the floor. This probably means that somewhere quite a few items of clothing have been shoved as a temporary stopgap. There are some lavender sprigs on the bed's pillows, bundled together with a little snip of embroidery thread. The mirror shows Nicholas himself: a haunt, dark-eyed and dark-haired, and himself alone.
Penelope Mars: the vampiress. "Ready?" There is something testing about this word.
Nick
"No," he says, because he doesn't think it'll stop her either way and: honesty, right?
He has turned toward her at the sound of her voice, and after a few seconds he catches himself and lowers his hand away from his tie, tries to pull himself into some semblance of readiness. He cannot see her though; how can he anticipate where she is going to come for him? What will she do this time? What part of him will she grab? Does she still have the knife?
Why is the room so clean?
Nick
[Init! +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Pen
+7
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Pen
Nothing happens then, from Nicholas's perspective.
He tries to pull himself into some semblance of readiness and perhaps Penelope can read his confusion and anxiety, his uncertainty, in the line of him; the way he stands in front of their mirror. She does not attack him yet. She watches him to see what he will do, and there is a hope in her heart.
Pen come quietly close and closer; if he made a sudden gesture, he might catch her in the shoulder, face, ribs. Another beat; and then
Nick
It's generous of Pen, not attacking him just yet. Moments before if she had leapt upon him he would have probably still drawn into himself; as it is, he sweeps an arm out to the side, around, tries to catch her since he cannot hear her. It is not done suddenly; she could avoid it if she wanted.
Pen
He is successful! Pen doesn't try and avoid his arm. He can land a solid blow; something that rattles her voice in her chest.
Then, with cool good humor, "Well, well! Why did you do that?"
There is still this: tucked away, not-quite-secret: hope.
Nick
Nick could land a solid blow if he wanted; he is less attempting for a blow than he is reaching out, trying to locate her, and his hand settles there when it catches her shoulder, folds around flesh and cloth. "I wanted to catch you before you got close enough to grab me again."
Pen
Silence.
Pen is considering Nicholas, and she lets go of the hope in her heart: for now. She lets go of more, too, scribing a gesture in the air and speaking a phrase in Ancient Greek, the language of endearments, the language of the gods modeled to be like men and women but bigger, brighter, more human; she resolves into an image; perhaps it startles Nicholas to have her there, under his hand, so suddenly - a fall of light; a film reel jump, silent and unattended by music; by any other wrong.
"Do you think you can hold me like that? A hand on the shoulder. What would you do, having caught me?" Her voice is cool and bright as a sword-blade which only remembers the forge, and that, distantly; these are phrases, or similar enough to phrases, she might use in another context: playful, beguiling, winsome, wanton. Not now. She very, very slowly begins to sketch out the gesture she would make to sweep his touch from her shoulder, were he some enemy took hold of her shoulder like that. Tries to sketch it out slowly enough that Nicholas can see what it is, what is meant to happen after, how it will connect with him; what he might do to compensate for it.
Nick
It does startle him, having her materialize in front of him and he blinks as though he is seeing her for the first time: which today, in today's dress and with her hair bound the way it is today and in the freshly scrubbed room, he is. Maybe he hears disappointment in her voice or sees it in how she allows him to see her; in either case, his grip loosens slightly just before she speaks.
"Well, I don't want to hurt you," he says, though his eyes are following the gesture, and he can well enough understand how it will connect with his body at its end. He moves his arm to deflect it; it's a clumsy thing, could easily be turned against him with a shift in balance on her part, but he is at least firm in the motion.
Pen
"But I want to hurt you, don't I?" The wooden toy, the knife of wood, dull and blunted and only good for bruising, for play-acting, that practice blade; it is in her left hand; she strikes it, snicker-snack, toward Nicholas's ribs, an underhanded strike: just to see what he will do. Her eyes do not quite match her voice, but Nicholas is not looking at her eyes: in scribing the gesture she makes for him, molasses slow, he misses the look, flint-struck, all tender awareness, leveled at his curls.
Nick
Pen flicks the blade out toward his ribs and Nick does the only thing his base survival instinct tells him to do which is to swing his arm in response to try to knock hers out of the way. Combat is not always intuitive, not for many people: it takes more than a simple awareness of what another person will do, a sense of how to leverage and how to find an opening after. It is obvious that Nick has never had any sort of training.
He is not looking at her eyes, so he responds to her voice. "I...well, it definitely seems like it."
Nick
[Dex! Block please kind of?]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (2, 10) ( success x 1 )
Pen
[Do you?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
Pen
The knife taps his ribs, but it was not a wholly unsuccessful instinctual flail; the knife point does not tap where it meant to tap, but higher, less directly. Penelope says, "Face the mirror. I'm going to show you how to escape a hold; then you are going to practice escaping. I don't want you to be concerned with hurting me. Then I'll show you some ways to disarm an opponent if you are fortunate, and not yourself armed except with your hands."
Nick
It is less direct, but it still strikes him; perhaps Nick does not yet have enough awareness to recognize the difference and only realizes: he has been struck, she hit him anyway. His brow furrows, a little point appearing between them. It smooths again as she suggests that she teach him how to escape a hold, how to disarm. "All right," he says, and here he turns to face the mirror, to see himself: a haunt.
"Are you going to grab my neck again?"
Pen
By way of answer, she circles an arm around Nick's throat. "Unless you would find it more helpful to see me escape you before you try again to escape me?"
Nick
She asks him that, and there is a second's hesitation before he shakes his head, his curls gently swaying in front of his forehead. She can feel how his pulse has quickened again, there beneath her arm. "I think it'll be easier for me to just try it without knowing what it should look like."
Pen
[Doo, dee, doo. Explain, explain. Wits + Expression?]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
Pen
"Then right now, I am menacing you. Bluh, bluh! Menace, menace," Pen pronounces, in most sinister tones. Her expression is sober; her eyes will find Nicholas's in the mirror, whether his gaze cants more toward her arm or not. Such a solemn grey they are, too, witch-stone, tarnished cup. "What you must do to free yourself is," and Penelope, with great clarity -- eloquent woman -- and simple turn-of-phrase, describes to Nicholas Hyde what he must do to escape: exactly how he should let his body move; exactly how he should hurt his captor; what leverage he can take. Go, Nicholas, go.
Nick
[Uhh...escape!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (8, 8) ( success x 2 )
Pen
[Contest.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 10) ( success x 1 )
Nick
"I am menaced," Nick says, though he cannot quite quiver his voice enough to complement her sinister tones. His eyes are focused on her arm, though eventually he does look up and meet hers in the mirror. His eyes in the mirror are dark as a shadow cast across the looking glass, as a charcoal sketch of a night sky.
He listens intently as she explains to him what he must do to escape, and once she has finished he does his best to follow her instruction: with effort, and without any particular skill. His limbs are nimble today, at least.
Pen
He follows his instructions well enough to win the tale to beard the giant in its den to catch the fish to make the wish that opens the gate and frees the kingdom and undos tyranny and plants the acorn that grows the tree that becomes the cradle that lulls the child that wins the tale to beard the giant in its den. He follows his instructions well enough, although clumsy, though unskilled yet and untried mostly, so it is an accomplishment: the break; the way he uses his weight and his arm; and Pen: she is unbalanced, and she is un-settled, and she smiles quick flicker-flash this firefly spark star burning out falling into a chalice no grail no something bright horizon hopeful and one of her dimples appears and there's an echoing gleam in her eyes and she rubs her ribs and gestures with the knife. "We'll do that again; I menace you, Nicholas Hyde. Rar, roar." And snicker-snack: she grabs him from behind again.
Nick
He somehow was not prepared for her to make a second grab at him, and so there is a quiet grunt as her arm locks back around his throat. Getting out of the hold is not reflex, not yet (he has only done it once), and so he looks back in the mirror and has to quietly recite in his own head the process for getting out, just before he executes the movements a second time.
[Dex!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (3, 9) ( success x 1 )
Pen
[Doo-de-doo.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
Nick
[Tiebreak, maybe?]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 2) ( botch x 1 )
Pen
[?]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )
Pen
This isn't 'fun' wrestling around. This is serious business, and Pen's eyes in the mirror, studying not her own reflection (pale-skinned, all graceful lines and interesting angles) but that belonging to Nicholas, have a solemn cast to them. Not only solemn, but watchful in an active way; she is thinking about Nicholas as he tries to escape and she tries to keep him from escaping and he does not escape and perhaps she can feel his throat work against her arm perhaps feel the way his breathing alters.
"It takes practice," she says. "And sometimes good fortune."
Nick
Pen is trying to keep him from escaping; at first they are deadlocked, and he is hopeful as he begins the movements that he will do them correctly. He does them correctly, but Pen adjusts her weight, adjusts her grip, and he should not have been surprised but there is a grunt of surprise nonetheless. His breathing has quickened but has not deepened; it is another mark of how inexperienced he is at this.
He glances at himself again in the mirror, at Pen's arm smooth like polished marble at her hair and at his own reflection, at his awkward angles. "How much did you have to practice before you could do it?"
Pen
"Mm. I could do it without a lot of practice, but to do it reliably against different foes, it took quite a lot of practice. I'm not near as proficient as I should be or could be. Try again."
Nick
[ughhhh]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 8) ( success x 1 )
Pen
[Nope]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Nick
[ :( ]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Pen
[Nep.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Nick
[ughhh my best effort too. contest.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Pen
[Aw, almost strong.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Nick
[*flail*]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (5, 9) ( success x 1 )
Pen
[>.>]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3) ( botch x 1 )
Nick
This is not the fun kind of wrestling. It's not necessarily brutal, but it does carry a weight with it: this is the kind of wrestling one would do for survival, even done in slow motion. His shirt is translucent with sweat at the small of his back, and he keeps finding his limbs bent awkwardly. Say this for Nick: he is trying, and trying hard. He executes the motions she showed him effectively and once or twice he even modifies what he is doing to try to twist away; she's just better and more practiced than he is.
Frustration ignites in his guts then, and there is a final burst of effort as he twists free at last, pushing against her and finally bringing his weight around to bear and then: he pins her flat against the ground with a lack of resistance that surprises him so much it shows on his face. He surprised her, perhaps. Either way, it results in him pinning her flat, his arm across her chest and his hand still gripping one of her wrists a little too tightly. "Sorry, Pen."
Pen
[Hmm. Pinned flat-to-the-ground damage? Let's say 3 possible dice. 2 for Nick, 1 for botch.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Pen
[Soak-y soak.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Pen
He didn't surprise her, but she is surprised now: flat on the ground, skull ringing after it hits the ground like the tongue of a bell, and Nick's fingers around her wrist like a link in a chain: how they pinch. This isn't the surprise of someone at a loss; only the surprise of someone who didn't expect to be in the position they are in now; who gambled, who played the odds, who was aware of all the risks; who now sees the chance, the slight one, ascendant.
"Don't be," she says, because her body is a drum and it has absorbed the blow, because he shouldn't be. She lofts her eyebrows at Nicholas and says, "What would you in a fight for your life if you found yourself in this position?"
Nick
Her question catches him off guard because his blood is humming, because this conversation makes him consider: what would he do, in a fight for his life. It is a much more visceral question than he is used to considering, it has struck something there at the base of his brain, at the root where he is more animal than man. For a moment his eyelashes flutter.
"I...I suppose I would..." He considers her a moment, considers how his weight is leveraged, and then slides his arm up close to her throat. His grip has not slacked on her wrist; he is wary now. "Probably that. I'd try to choke."
Pen
Beneath his arm, the movement of it, her chest moves; inhale, and exhale, and inhale, and exhale; a steady rhythm, and an easy one. He can feel the vibration of her voice against his arm: he can change its tenor by pressing; in a fight for his life, he could try to stop it. "And you'd keep your hand at the wrist, like so?" She twists her wrist, just a little, testing his strength but without any true attempt at freedom. "And you'd hold your body like that? Unless the person you were fighting was stunned by the fall, they would not be so still - show me how you'd stay their retribution."
Nick
"I, um..." Nick lifts himself long enough to consider their bodies, how they are positioned. He looks over at the two of them in the mirror, and he gazes longer than anyone would in a life-or-death situation but perhaps Pen will be generous to him. "I guess I..."
And here he shifts his legs, his weight, tries to maneuver himself so that he is straddling her, so that her arms are pinned beneath his knees. It's a good idea. In execution it falls short, if only because he lacks the skill or the dexterity to do it quickly.
Pen
Pen will be generous. Pen is generous. Pen is not, as a teacher, giving; she does not give chances, unearned; she observes, pays Nicholas the respect due any Thing which strives; and she wants him(.Distractions.) to succeed. "I'm going to try to escape you; I want you to put all your effort in keeping me confined and confounded. And tell me, what is the goal of any fight?"
Nick
"To make the fight stop?" It doesn't make much sense in context but his answer is reflexive, and also: true, at least for him. He is positioned awkwardly, though his stance becomes less awkward as he eases into it, as he lets his weight settle more naturally. His hand rests across her collarbone which could easily become across her throat if he were so inclined, and he does not want to hurt her so of course he is not. Just now it is only a warm, gentle weight, more inclined to become a caress than a stranglehold.
Pen
[Escape-y escape.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Nick
[Noooooooo]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (2, 5) ( fail )
Nick
[Ugh. Re-pin Pen, quick!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (8, 8) ( success x 2 )
Pen
[Bob: wtf are the neighbors doing now.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 7) ( success x 1 )
Nick
[And stay pinned!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (3, 8) ( success x 1 )
Pen
[Marianne: krav maga. get with the times, honey.
Bob: that is not krav maga.
Pen: xcaaaape!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )
Nick
[Tiebreak tiebreak!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 3) ( botch x 1 )
Pen
[Well well well.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 8) ( success x 1 )
Pen
"That isn't the answer I would give were I asked the same question," Penelope says. Then she breaks free of Nicholas's hold, as a hot knife through butter, as a fish through water, where the water parts easily for the bright leap of silver-flash dazzle; this is a contest of strength. Give Nicholas credit; he launches himself at her new liberty and immediately quashes it; she laughs, pleased, the sound unbidden and arrested; and then there is a contest in truth: He pushes; she pushes, wriggles; he does too: a moment of precarious balance and then: Nicholas slips too far and unbalances himself; grazes his chin on the floor and a moment later finds himself hard on his own back, Pen's elbow against his jugular.
Nick
[Damage? 2 for Pen, 1 for botch.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )
Nick
[Soak?]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Nick
[Tooootally giving up. >.>]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Pen
[Just wait until my player buys me another dot of Empathy, Nick. -_-]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (1, 3, 4, 4, 8) ( success x 3 )
Nick
Pen's laugh startles him; Nick is too focused at the moment to laugh, to do anything more than sweat and stare intently and panic as she slips out of his grasp and then
he slams against the floor, manages to absorb the blow like water will when struck with a boulder though it stuns him. His head feels as though it rattles back against the floorboards, and a moment later Pen's elbow is against his throat. Nick's eyes are wide, she can see their whites ringing deep amber, his pupils tiny pinpricks. He lets out a breath, hard.
His eyes roll backward and for a moment he is still: defeated, it would seem.
And seconds later he is reaching up behind her to grab at the back of her collar, trying to yank her down and throw her off balance.
[Fight fight!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (2, 6) ( success x 1 )
Pen
[Oh my gosh, what are you doing! Dodge-dodge.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2) ( botch x 1 )
Pen
[>.> Expressive cursing? Wits + Expression.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Pen
He has given up. Look at that face: it is the face of a defeated, vanquished, try-nothing; it is the face of a foe who doesn't want to lift up arms. Pen would not trust it, necessarily, in true combat; but this is Nick, and she doesn't like to see the whites around his eyes like this, so the pressure of her elbow eases fractionally and she begins to say -- something that she doesn't, because he executes his maneuver, Penelope doesn't want to break free of it she wants to never be touched at all, to be a whisper of smoke left behind, to be on her feet -- so Penelope, quick-quick-quick, lightning-fast, Pen she --
promptly loses her balance, bites her tongue hard enough to draw blood, and gets tangled up in Nicholas's limbs. She curses like a French soldier.
Free move, Nicholas.
Nick
[Flip! I can pin you again!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 7) ( success x 2 )
Pen
[Escaaaaape.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Nick
[No! I was so clever!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (2, 5) ( fail )
Pen
[Gettin' you again.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5) ( fail )
Pen
[No! Unacceptable!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Nick
[Noooo]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (2, 6) ( success x 1 )
Nick
He does manage to pin her again: flips her over and rolls over on top of her, trying to regain the ground he lost and straddle her once more. For a moment he manages; for a moment he has his palm centered on her chest, holding her down, and he is flushed and triumphant.
This is of course short lived. Pen slides from beneath him; Pen is the left hand of vengeance and pins him again and this time he cannot struggle free. A feint is a trick that will only work once, and he knows that, and so after thrashing he grows still once more, his lungs starved for air.
Nick
[Stamina?]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (2, 5) ( fail )
Pen
[Me?]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )
Pen
Stillness.
Observance. A curl has fallen over her forehead; it follows the sharp line of her nose; her bangs are in wild disarray. She is in wild disarray, deshabille: except isn't she as steady as a sword? Water parts; water roils (and her hair is a bright, bloody roil); not the sword. She is steady, Enchantress; even grave. Stillness. Observance.
She doesn't truly choke him; she would not. She is in control; she is restrained.
"Now, Nicholas?"
Nick
He is trying to catch his breath, and she can see that; she has won enough fights. This is a case in which his ghost might like to keep going but its shell has given out: his lungs are burning, his arms and legs are burning. (That's what happens when you play with fire.)
"Now, I...I guess I would wait and try to catch my breath. Unless I didn't get the chance. Then I would die." He says this evenly enough that one could imagine he might even do it gracefully. But there's no prize for dying gracefully; there is only: this life, and then the next.
Pen
"If you were fighting with someone like this, like what we just did, I do not think they'd be trying to kill you. Perhaps they'd take you; but point taken." Pen: she rolls away from Nick entirely; gets to her feet and offers him her hand. There is no hesitation; there is no sense that she is guarded, as she should be still, after he tricked her once.
Nick
Pen should still be guarded. Maybe he thinks that, when she offers him her hand and when he takes it in his own and allows her to pull him back up to his feet. He does not use it to his advantage; there is no fight left in him and even if there was he does not want to hurt her. And maybe he should teach her the lesson: there are many who would. But Nick is not that sort of teacher, or that sort of learner.
Nick rises to his feet as though he is trying to rise up through water, through honey, as though weighed down. He lets go of her hand but it's only so he can let his rest on her hip. His smile is playful, but sometimes his playfulness has an edge: "Am I going to have to watch for you whenever I come home now?"
Pen
"You didn't look for me when you did come home," Pen says, and there's playfulness here, too, although it is playfulness set with solemnity still. "Would you like a glass of water?"
Nick
"I did look for you," he says, and now his playfulness too is set with solemnity: she could not hear him downstairs, could not have seen how he wandered through the house seeking her out, glanced out the back windows and into her study and peered into the kitchen. A haunt, indeed.
To her question about a glass of water, he only nods.
Pen
Pen shakes her head. She can guess he looked for her, with his eyes. Listened for her, with his ears. She bites the inside of her lip, sways towards him (a dancer, Pen), and then steps back. The threshold; the door. Their bedroom is no longer the scene of a lesson in the art of defense and offense. She walks backwards, so she can see him as she replies. "I didn't feel you looking; only a little bit, at the end. Did you hear me? When I was invisible."
Nick
Pen walks backwards, and Nick reaches up to flick a few of his curls back away from his forehead so that his skin can breathe. They have tangled together; sweat makes them do that, enlivens them like wires so that they stand on end. "I heard you, but I wasn't sure if it was you or something else. The footsteps sounded like you, but then you grabbed me."
Pen
"Why didn't you look?" Brief pause, and then, quickly: "I mean with your other senses. That's why I grabbed you after making myself unseeable; I wanted to know whether you'd try to gain an advantage in a fight; whether you'd seek me out - seek your assailant out, that is. I know you want lessons only in simple hand-to-hand, and later other martial arts and that you needn't use your magick too. But it's so important to have an advantage, any advantage; it's so important to know where to strike a blow, if you can. I just want you to think about that: how to see what isn't right in front of your face. In a fight. When it isn't a spirit. I'm sure you can handle that better than I can."
Nick
"I didn't think to," he says, and maybe it is only because he was at home in his office, a place where he did not expect to be attacked. Maybe Nick just doesn't have much of a survival instinct, has drawn so often close to death that he sometimes forgets the drive that unites all life: it could also be that. "But I'll think about it." A beat, and then he says, "I surprised you," and he has the grace to try not to sound pleased, but he cannot quite manage it.
Pen
"You did! I feel it," and Pen, she puts both hands on her back, arches it, scrunches her nose; she didn't bruise, she doesn't feel it, but she did for a moment. "And my tongue is bloody, see?" And she sticks her tongue out at Nicholas, for his perusal. She did bite it; but the tongue heals quickly. There's a luminous sort of witch-light in her eyes; she is pleased he surprised her. She has no competition in her, here in this moment, now with Nicholas.
"You could have found me when I was invisible; I was only bending light; it was only Forces. You've got to look. And if you do strike a blow, you know Correspondence and Entropy; you can give yourself an edge. And you should. But if you don't think of it: if you just," and she flails her arms around, slow motion, at her side; octopus like. Going down the stairs now, backwards. Slowly, so as not to go falling on her ass. This would be an inopportune time to do it. "I will try to teach you as well as I may."
Nick
Pen imitates his flailing and it is enough to make him smile, now, though he does not appear abashed or ashamed: perhaps that is indeed exactly what he looked like. (It is.) "I'm...I'm not used to doing things like that quickly. I would need to practice."
Pen
"Will need to," Pen says, bewitching smile: right here. Lopsided; a polished edge. She flicks a glance at the ceiling; reaches the first floor; turns: whisks through the living room, the dining room, to the kitchen; water runs into a glass, this one of smokey blue, just this side of opaque. By the time Nick catches up to her: she is turning to hand it to him. "Were you frightened?" There's a stitch between her eyebrows. "At first, I mean."
Nick
He does catch up to her, eventually; there is no sway to his step, no walking backward or side to side. His footfalls are heavy because his feet feel leaden (and yet: ), his limbs have the bandy feel that accompanies overexertion. "A little," he says, as he draws close to her and reaches out for the glass of water. "Before I realized it was you. And even then, a little. I thought maybe it was some spirit in your likeness, or that you'd been possessed."
Nick raises the glass to his lips and takes a long swallow of water, and then two then three. He has drained half the glass by the time he lowers it.
Pen
"Couldn't you tell if I was?"
Penelope has both palms settled on the counter, her fingers curled inward, and they are braced wide, her shoulders squared. She leans her weight on her tail-bone; her gaze sweeps downward; it stays there. She tastes the rawness of her tongue again, recognizes a soreness in her jaw, too, from the same moment. He did surprise her, well and truly, and she also bungled it: the escape.
Memory; it heats her blood.
Nick
He shakes his head then, slowly; he takes another long swallow of the water, nearly draining the glass. There's a finger or two left there at the bottom. "I looked for spirits, but not possession. There was no way to look for all of the things that it might be at once, before you had me."
There is soreness in his chest, in his ribs: all over his body to tell the truth. Tomorrow the pain in his jaw will linger, it will be tender for a few days. He swirls the remaining water in the glass, then drains it, swallowing around a thick tongue.
Pen
Pen accepts this with a flicker of her eyes, a nod; she lets her head drop back and casts her gaze heavenward, breathes in and in and in, exhales. Then: "Was I too rough with you?"
SImple. Does he want the lessons to be toned down.
Nick
Nick has to consider this, because the reflexive answer is that he did not like fighting, did not like hearing the snap of her teeth when he knocked her to the ground or the ringing in his head. Some people feel a sort of exultation even during mock combat; Nick is not one such person. He considers, and then he shakes his head. "No. I...I mean, I didn't like it very much, but I need to learn, and it's better that I learn the way it will really be than be surprised when it really matters."
Pen
"Very well," Penelope says, grave. Pauses to taste the meat of her tongue again, how it is copper, how it is bright as a fist-full of dirty change, the taste of it; then she reaches out for Nick's arm, trailing her fingers up from his wrist to his elbow. Leans into him as she does: one of those easy gestures. "I want to take a nap; dinner, after? We might go out."
Nick
"I'd like to take a nap with you," he says, and as she leans into him his arm curves around to hold her against his side: not a pin, this time. She'd be free to go if she liked. He reaches up and tugs again at his collar, at the tie which is still hanging around his throat albeit looser than before. "Let's go out. You can decide. Victor's spoils."
And here, a smile: which might erase any doubt in her mind that he is holding anything resembling a grudge over being surprised.
Pen
"I was teaching you how to escape a hold; by that definition, I am not the victor," Pen says, but her tone of voice is playful: goading, flat-as-a-sheet-of-metal. She disengages to reach up; take his tie in hand. Untie it, neatly, swiftly, two gestures; she smiles at his smile; looks at that rather than his eyes; then pulls him a step or two after her by dint of his tie. Turns and precedes Nicholas up, and up again: the bed is soft, and large, and waiting; the sheets are cool, the pillows just the right firmness; her body wants sleep and Nicholas beside her.
Argument/deciding where to go can wait.
