citylogs | ( open ) — july catch-all

Down. [ She echoes, just to confirm. ] Not really feeling like getting up again. Got it--sounds fair to me.

[ Everything is definitely succinct with her, including negotiating fight terms. They're not here to get bloodthirsty or rip each other's limbs off. It's just a way to burn off some energy, perhaps a tad more violently than is healthy, but this is what she's used to. ]

[ "a tad more violently than is healthy" is basically heine's middle name, so he's not about to call her on it.

heine steps away from the curb and into the wider area of the intersection, some small effort to be cautious about not causing more damage to poor innocent mailboxes and/or newspaper stands than he's already done. when he turns back to gebura, he gives her a considering glance, then flips the knife in his hand and adopts a more defensive posture, arms up to protect his torso. ]

Come on, then.

[ It's rare that Gebura fights while imposing the restriction to "try not to kill", but she's disciplined enough to keep that thought in mind and does her utmost to keep her movements just restrained enough. It's not as though she has to hold back entirely, after all, not when Heine is a force to be reckoned with.

It's a blur of blade and bat that goes on for probably longer than it should, with Gebura occasionally throwing in a fist or a sharply spun kick into the mix, but eventually she drops down to one knee, breathing shallowly. His recovery time is pretty damn impressive, she has to note, though she's a little irritated (with herself) that she's not back to full strength yet. She can't wield E.G.O. in this place, and she's missing Mimicry.

... Still, that's no excuse. She was able to fight pretty damn well before she ever gained that blade, so she'll have to keep at it for the future. ]

[ the same is true of heine, and that's been the biggest challenge for him. not the fighting—he's good at that, easy—but fighting in a way that doesn't do too much damage, doesn't leave anyone a stain on the cement. it's not their fault, but humans tend to be fragile.

not so with gebura, though. it's immediately apparent that she's strong—at least as strong as heine is, if not moreso. he's quick on his feet and tenacious, plus he has the healing thing, but heine has no advantage here. he has to work for every blow he lands, and when she inevitably hits him back, the force of it rattles his bones.

it's exhilarating.

in the end, though, it's only seconds after gebura takes a knee that heine gives up and drops down onto his back, panting hard as he looks up at the sky. fuck, he hasn't fought like that and meant it in—well, a long time. probably since he was a teenager. ]

What do you normally fight with? [ he's still looking up but the question is obviously for gebura. ] I'm guessing it's not a bat.

[ Gebura huffs a little dryly, her way of a laugh if a.) she wasn't tired and b.) if she was the type to laugh easily. It takes her a minute to debate whether she wants to stand up or not, but she settles for just sinking to the ground properly and resting her back against the closest solid surface. ]

Good guess. It's a sword, actually. Pretty big one, at that.

But before that, it was pretty much anything, including myself.

[ just two super strong dudes laying in the middle of an intersection, nothing to see here...

a big sword makes sense. something about the way she'd swung the bat made it seem like she was used to swinging something considerably heftier. heine doesn't move to look over at her, but he still nods his understanding. he has a complicated relationship with swords due to Things that happened Immediately Before Arrival, but part of him still feels like it would have been even more fun to fight gebura with all her weaponry intact.

badou would definitely call him a freak for thinking that. ]

Mine are guns, normally. [ so if she noticed his hand-to-hand was a little sloppy, that's why.

heine can also guess that this isn't gebura's full strength, and after a second he adds, ] If we'd been at full power I think you'd have kicked my ass.

[ arguably she did kick his ass but at least he kicked hers back a little! he doesn't think it would have been quite as even if there were powers and weapons in the mix. ]

Probably, but there's not much of a point if you're just gonna rapidly heal it off, you know.

[ She seems more amused than irritated by it, though she'd definitely found it aggravating when they'd actually fought.

It's fine, ideally Badou will never meet her, because she would also be all for fighting Heine properly if they both had their weapons of choice. ]

There's also not really a point in wondering how something would've gone. We'll just have to do it again once we figure out how to get back what we need.

[ A DO-OVER. In many, many months, not that Gebura knows that yet. ]

[ that earns a bark of laughter. ] Hey, I can't help that. And it's probably the only way I'm gonna keep my pride.

[ with a groan, heine finally pulls himself up into a sitting position. thus far in his life, he's never healed so slowly that he actually experienced the aches that come after a fight—or at least, very rarely, absent a mortal injury. ]

You've got a deal. [ heine's determined to figure out how to get back both his guns and his powers, and once that happens, a do-over sounds like a good plan.

he stretches out a little, rolls one of his shoulders. ] Ah, fuck. I've never been sore before.

Lucky you.

[ Said with all the dryness of someone who has probably spent more years in her life sore than Perfectly Fine. It was a good lesson, though, reminding her what group of muscles she should work on before the next fight she inevitably got into, once she was old enough to survive the battles she wound up in instead of running from them. ]

So was that a procedure of some kind? Healing? At this point I can't tell what the hell's magic and what the hell's just typical science here.

[ Everyone had some kind of skill, it seemed. ]

More science than magic.

[ it's sort of a long explanation with many painful details, and heine's trying to run from his trauma rather than confront it, but he can offer an abbreviated explanation: ] I had a lot of experiments done on me as a kid. Back where I'm from, I could heal from anything.

[ not so, here—but his healing factor is still many times the average human's, which means the bruises gebura left on him will be fading to green and then vanishing entirely within ten, fifteen minutes. ]

Guess it counts as magic for purposes of this place, though.

Where I'm from, it wasn't unheard of for kids to go missing off the streets for one reason or another. There are also procedures people can get done to enhance their bodies or, if you have enough money, to just get healed in seconds. I'm a little more used to the "science and tech" reason than magic myself.

[ She won't linger on the explanation, since Heine looks like he doesn't want to go into detail and Gebura's not interested in pressing people for their life stories and possible trauma anyway. ]

( open ) — july catch-all

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