Welcome to Gaia! ::

This was a particularly ill-advised state to be in with Taym, who was startlingly catlike despite the fact that he was never seen without heavy boots on. Taym had spent the past few years of his life actively avoiding notice, and he'd gotten good at it, when he wanted to be: at being, despite the memorably ill-looking face and figure, someone who your eyes skipped over. The stealth had been honed right alongside, and he stood over Ever's shoulder for several seconds, considering his options.

He decided to go with something kinder than his first instincts. He spoke quietly, too, as he always did, but into the preternatural Island silence it was loud enough.

"Watch your back."

Only kind of an a*****e. For a split second Taym forgot that he hated Ever, and for an instant a grin surfaced before mutating into an irritated scowl.

"Well," he said finally, after surveying Ever while absently chewing on a hangnail, "at least your reaction time is good. That's a positive. The initiative's good too." He indicated the weapon with a rude jab of his finger. "Not many of us running around," he observed pleasantly. "Knife-wielders, I mean. Lots of assholes."

"Two things," said Taym, summoning his weapon. And partly because he had a theatrical streak and partly because it was old habit born from constantly-fidgety hands, he twirled it absently, the antlered handguard pivoting neatly around his fingers. It was slightly more impressive than it had been when he'd first picked it up, but only slightly: it was still small, understated; there was no abrupt flare of demonic light or triumphant shimmer of otherworldly blue, just a faint glimmer like sunlight falling through a canopy, washed out in the daylight. The leaf-shaped blade did not even shine, forged of some dark and dull metal. "Firstly, you're a lucky ******** b*****d if you've only met helpful people so far, so ******** treasure it. Secondly, keep an eye on how people act when they're hiding behind a screen. They're more honest there than they are in person."

(He either hadn't thought about what this said about him, or didn't care.)

"There's some in the library," he said automatically, and then, just as much: "I'll text you a list. But reading's not going to do you much good." It was an urge he sympathized with. Taym's first reaction to many problems, most problems, was to see if a solution could be found in a book somewhere. "Sort of like trying to pick up basketball by spending all day on Wikipedia. Not the most effective ********' approach. But I will," he repeated, "text you a list."

He gestured, rudely, with the tip of his knife at Ever's. "Listen to it, it knows more than a book does. What's it do?" He added.

"My favorite hobby," he deadpanned back. "Fine. I guess you pulled one that's difficult. Or maybe it doesn't know."

He paused, absently twisting his (chapped, narrow) lip back and forth in his (callused, yellow-nailed) fingers.

"Go for it," he said eventually, without shifting his stance at all. He indicated lazily what he meant by pointing his own knife backwards.

"You are," he returned, with a grin that was not very nice. He'd not really reacted, letting Ever ding his shield, letting Fiona feel out the flavor of Ever's knife. His stance shifted, almost imperceptibly, the coiled-wire anxiety translating for a flicker into a sense of readiness instead.

"You'll feel more ridiculous poking the dummies, but it'll help you with your footwork. Again," he added, still apparently unconcerned. "From the shoulder. Like I'm an actual threat. Don't worry about looking like an idiot because you will. We all do."

HP: 49
DEF: 8 >_>;
CHG: 1/3

He'd had every intention of merely deflecting, but instead, in a split second of irritation--as if he'd done any better, as if he hadn't in fact done much worse his first few weeks--he stepped nimbly aside. The cliche goes that a movement is "catlike," and it certainly applied, but it lacked any predatory, dangerous recoil. He was simply, in one instant, in the path of Ever's blade; in the next, he was not, flowing neatly from one to the other.

"Disabuse yourself of the notion," he said, "that you need to swing hard. You don't. You don't need to swing hard when you're pitting a normal knife against a normal person, and you damn sure don't need to swing hard here. You're going to find yourself using that knife against things a whole ******** of a lot stronger than you are and trying to overpower them is going to do jack s**t for you. You look like a ******** squirrelly ********. Act like it."

//forfeiting block