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 Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2012 8:18 pm
Jett watched approvingly as Gwen, unable to resist grinngin as she asked her questions. "You use as much strength as you want. If it's just training, getting used to the moves, then don't throw your all into it. You don't want to wear yourself out. But gradually, you can put more into it. And dodging—sure, dodging is fine."
He moved aside so that Gwen could have enough room and crossed his arms over his chest; the boxing gloves made it a little more awkward, though the position wasn't uncomfortable in the slightest. "Especially for your size. Gymnastics ought to give you an advantage, too," he noted, as if it weren't already obvious. "In the ring there are strict rules with that is and isn't allowed, but I don't think you're going to have a referee calling out fouls. But I figure being light on your feet isn't going to get you in trouble there or here. Might get your opponent in some trouble, though."
He nodded again—a silent gesture that he was ready to see how well she grasped the punches.
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Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2012 6:50 pm
"Hm... I think I'll spare this punching bag from destruction then and only go in at half strength," Gwen said with a lopsided grin, thankful that Jett, though insightful as he may be, could not read her mind and know the truth of the matter. She was still sore from the recent fights and she knew that punching the bag at full strength, given the condition of her wrist, would have been a broken bone waiting to happen. Therefor, best to use the 'I'm too poor to pay for a replacement if I break something' approach instead, Gwen thought, giving her fingers a little flex before moving her legs into position and preparing to mimic Jett's movements. "First, the jab!" She made sure to use her good hand first, hitting the punching bag with more strength than she was originally intending to but certain that she'd correct it for the second blow. When the punching back swung back in front of her, she wasted no time, going straight for the cross, hitting the punching bag though her form was a little off. "Then Cross... then the Jab..." Gwen didn't wait for the punching back to swing back around before moving to the jab, and she had gotten her hands mixed up along the way, as when she went for the uppercut, she used her left wrist, the tender one, and there was little she could do to hide the yelp. "And the upperc-eowch- Uppercut!" Now she backed away from the punching bag and bit the inside of her cheek, trying to give her something else to focus the bit of pain on, hopefully before Jett would have noticed it. She asked, hiding her hands behind her back so that she couldn't be tempted to favor it. "Well? How was that? Any good?"
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Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2012 11:04 pm
Jett might have missed Gwen hurting herself—if he hadn't been watching for mistakes. He pursed his lips in thought, and then settled on a nod. "Mostly. Minus that last part. I told you, we don't want you hurting yourself. Hard to throw a punch if you hurt your hand. You got a bunch of tiny little bones in your hand, and putting a lot of pressure on any one of them leaves them with the potential to crack. Hell, even if you just bruise yourself it can be a pain in the a**."
Her cry had been enough to tell him that she'd done something wrong, but hiding her hands behind her back was just downright suspicious. Of course the first thing he'd do when she was in such a stance was wonder just what the hell she had done. "What did you hurt?" he asked, nodding towards her now hidden hands.
So far as everything before the cry, he'd been pleased; he couldn't really be mad at her for hurting herself. It wasn't like she was just some girl screwing around and doing everything wrong. Even though he'd been boxing for years, he still winded up hurting himself.
…Sometimes.
But those times were few and far between, and usually he had a damn good excuse for losing control.
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Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2012 12:34 pm
Gwen knew that she had a choice; either blow off the injury and keep at it, and risk making it worse, or simply give in and reveal the injury to him and have him cancel the lessons for today. Neither one she really liked, but the thought of furthering her own injury, even breaking her hand and wrist and how useless she'd be to her after school activities got to her more, and before Jett had the chance to ask her again, she brought her left hand forward for him to inspect. "Um, my wrist, I think. Not from that fight in particular, but another fight. More like I was trying to make my getaway and ended up landing badly on it," Gwen admitted, trying to pull the glove off for him to get a better inspection of it. "I swear, you must think me the clumsiest person in the world. First time we met, I twisted my ankle, and now this." She allowed for some of her frustration to be heard, though anyone could see that her pride was more damaged than her wrist, making it hard for others to pity her giving that she always brought these things upon herself. "I swear, I'm really not this accident prone. Or, at least I never used to be, until I came here. You're... not going to cancel the practices, are you?"
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Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2012 12:19 pm
Jett had gotten many a glove off in his time; using his teeth he peeled back the velcro on his left glove, then placed his gloved hand in the crook of his right elbow. Holding the glove like that, he slid his hand out before quickly removing his other glove. Dropping the two down on the bench, he went to assist Gwen with peeling off her glove. With both hands free, it was easy—though he was still very gentle in case she did hurt her wrist. Discarding her glove, he tenderly began to unwrap it. "Depends on how bad your wrist is. I understand enthusiasm, but if you have an injury, best not to agitate it," he noted, giving her a stern look. "Of course, if it's just a little sore, we'll throw an ice pack on it, sit down—you learned the punches, so that's all that matters for now. We can work on execution when you're not coming to me damaged."
The wrapping tape off of Gwen's hand and wrist, he took her hand with his right and used the other to rest under her arm to steady it. It didn't look broken, but he wasn't a doctor. Didn't look like a severe injury—and hell, he'd seen a lot of those—so he decided, "Probably shouldn't knock anyone around with this for a while, but I'd imagine you'd be fine. You wanna sit down? I can snag some ice if it hurts too badly."
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Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2012 4:32 pm
Gwen didn't argue or try to hide the injury from Jett, perhaps because she simply knew that he was far too insightful to allow it to go by unnoticed, or even too stubborn to allow her to try to hide it any further. So, she gave in without a fuss and steeled herself to keep any outward sign of pain to herself as he inspected her arm. She gave an annoyed grunt, however, when he mentioned that she was damaged. "I'm not damaged. Just... a little tender right now." There was no point in pushing the matter, and as hard as she tried, Gwen could not hide the disappointment in her voice as she all but stormed over towards the nearby bench. Her complaints were not meant for Jett, but it seemed directed at the world in general, and Gwen held nothing back when it came to her opinion. "Yeah, I suppose it couldn't hurt... dammit, it's just annoying having to wait for my body to decide to heal itself... how can I get better at fighting and defending myself if I have to wait for my stupid body to catch up? It's infuriating..." She sat down with a huff, any thoughts of acting her age was completely gone from her mind and perhaps too much of her frustration to be seen in front of Jett. She cared about her reputation, but she was just too angry to care anymore. She did, however, try to be civil with her friend, as he wasn't deserving of her verbal wrath. "I'm sorry, Jett. I hate feeling useless, you know? I'm not going anywhere..."
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Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 1:43 am
Gwen's irritation was not one Jett had to struggle to understand. In what fights he'd lost while boxing, he had—despite being battered—always immediately returned to train. To get stronger.
Lost was not a sensation he appreciated enjoying, and he'd done next to every damn thing possible to ensure that he'd come out on top.
And yet, for as much as Jett liked to believe it, he was not perfect.
He pushed himself too hard. He'd hurt himself—badly—in his arrogance. Worse, he had neither learned from his mistakes and was an absolute hypocrite on the manner. When faced with defeat, he was faced with the need to get stronger. When he needed to get stronger, nothing stood in his way—except his own body's weakness. And he hated it. The strange, violating sensation of helplessness that came with defeat—the disappointment and frustration from when your body needed to heal. He took a seat next to Gwen, now that she had calmed down a bit, shifting positions until he was comfortable.
"Because you're pushing too hard," he announced. It was something he could absolutely relate to. According to the others around him, at least. "I don't take loss very well. I don't tolerate weakness. Pisses me off. The people around me can be weak—but me? Yeaaaah, no. But," he shrugged, "There are three things you can do about it. You can sit there and b***h while you take it easy and let yourself heal, you can ignore your body and try to beat s**t up anyway, or you take the time, let your body heal, and focus on training something else. Much as I hate to say, there's a lot more to a fight than just actually throwing blows. You can still mimic the movements—just can't actually hit anything. You can still get lessons—hell, you can pick out any old fighting movie and watch them duke it out on screen, try to pick up a few tips. Or," he kept a friendly grin on his face, "Take an anger management class to make sure you've got everything under control. Very uncouth to lose your cool during a fight. Gives the opponents an upper hand and puts you in danger."
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Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 3:40 pm
Now Gwen felt like a melodramatic ninny, especially when Jett had replied with astounding calm, all things considered. She sat and listened to his options, for once taking the time to consider all three options he laid out for her. The one involving serious injury was immediately ruled out; that was more or less just common sense and Gwen didn't trust herself enough to not injure herself any further if they tried to carry on the traditional way. Which meant she could either carry on with her bitching, or, practice the motions. Not a hard choice at all! "Well, if I'm going to be striking air, do I need to keep the gloves on, or is it okay that I take them off?" Gwen asked, waving the one she still had on for him to see and making puppet gestures with it, in hopes of deflecting any of her frustration away now. She didn't want to admit that he had raised a good point about her temper, but she figured it'd be worse for her if she tried to deny it, or even try to justify it. "Sorry I lost my temper... I guess I just have a really short fuse and I haven't found a way around it yet. You'd think a red hot temper would be useful in a fight, but... I suppose I have my fair share of defeats due to my anger getting the best of me." Gwen looked to Jett, asking, "How do you keep your head in a fight?"
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Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2012 2:52 am
Propositioned with a smart question, Jett just flashed a smile. It wasn't necessarily an easy question, but it was a good one. He leaned forward to help her out of the other boxing glove she was wearing. If she wasn't actually hitting things, there wasn't a reason to wear it—and boxing gloves certainly weren't the most comfortable accessory to wear when you weren't slugging something.
"Oh, you know," he started, resuming a slightly slouched posture as he pulled away from her, glove in hand. "I guess it's just something you learn. When I was younger," which wasn't something Jett liked to talk about, "I had a lot of anger issues. Wasn't easy to keep my head in a fight. I went all in, all the time. All that anger muddles your mind, clouds it. I never lost a fight," he was too prideful to admit if he ever actually had, "but I came damn near close because of that anger. Mother," he said with a hint of exasperation, "wanted to put me into some anger management classes. But that's for people who can't control themselves, and I wasn't going to be like them. So you learn little tricks—things that work for you."
He still got angry—half of that anger was what drove him to get into fights anyway, but hell if he didn't love a good fight. But he wasn't going to give her that for an answer; instead he tried to give her at least something insightful. "The key is, you don't let the anger move you. You focus it, not focus on it. Use the anger to make your punches stronger, to keep you aware of your surrounding, make you move faster. Anyone'll tell you, keep your breathing calm, try to clear your head—all that bullshit."
He chewed the inside of his cheek and begrudgingly admitted, "It works. But it also helps if you know why you're fighting and what happens if you lose. It's how I keep pushing myself—I don't like to lose."
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Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2012 10:52 pm
Gwen wriggled off the gloves the moment he told her she could and she tried not to focus too much attention on the bruising around the wrist or the grimace that made it out onto her face. She hid it with a snicker, and she flexed her fingers but dared not crack her knuckles in risk of agitating the wound, though she knew the action could offer her some relief. "You hate losing? You and me both... though it sounds like you got a lot of it under control... me? I'm a loose cannon." Of course she was, that was Gwen's charm, though the bruised wrist and recent wounds she suffered from the likes of opponents that she had no chance in hell beating and had no business facing off against, it was finally coming back to bite her in the a**. She gave a sigh, listening to Jett's advice and trying to soak it in without allowing it to damage her pride, though that would have been for the best for her. "Though, you don't sound like you ever had anger issues... you're as cool as a cucumber. Someday, I'll be like you... once I can cage this raging tiger within me." Now she couldn't help but laugh, but she didn't want to bring too much attention to that statement. No, the last thing she WANTED to do was give ANY kind of indication as to her true identity, especially with a civilian. That would be a BAD thing. "So, while I wait a moment for my hand to stop throbbing, you wanna tell me the story about the Surrounding you mentioned last time during lunch? I've been rather curious about that... there's still a lot in this city that I don't know about."
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Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2012 1:18 am
Jett couldn't help but slip loose the slightest laugh just after her tiger comment; he didn't attribute it in the slightest to the senshi of tigers. Rather, he was amused that she would offer disbelief to his statement. He worked hard to keep himself under control; now it was just second nature.
"The Surrounding is a bit of a long story," he said, wondering where, precisely to start. "And hearsay is that no one really knows what happened or why. All I know is that one day a bunch of people were spending their evening in Destiny City, blinked, and then wound up on some magic space rainbow."
Which was totally strange as ******** to try and describe to someone who might have doubted him. Jett did not like to be 'weird', so he'd often refrained from discussing anything that might warrant him such a label. "Which, as it turns out, was actually part of some ancient society for strangely clad cultists who arguably kidnapped said bunch of people. Said people who were only returned to Destiny City once a giant monster and a legion of soldiers liberated the Surrounding and, through battle, were able to return things to their natural order. If you'd care to believe it," he said with a shrug of feigned indifference.
As opposed to typical nonchalance, Jett actually took the situation very seriously, and while he did not want to lash out at Gwen, he intended neither to be the butt of any joke or sit there silently while she judged him.
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Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2012 10:07 am
Gwen wasn't sure what to expect from the story, but she certainly had not intention of mocking or teasing Jett, not when he could punch her head right off in retaliation (though Jett seemed more likely to kill her with sharp words than straight up punching, but Gwen wasn't going to take that chance). Besides, given what her true identity was, the thought of people being whisked away in this city and the Sailor Senshi and a youma being involved, his story seemed completely legit. But Gwen was hesitant to get TOO convinced of it. It would make her either look completely naive and just shy of believing other fairy tales to be factual stories, or perhaps, worst case scenario, a conspiracy theorist. But then again, she was Gwendolyn Caspian, a Senshi of Tigers and had magical powers. What did she care what Jett thought of her in THAT regards? "In this city? Yeah... that seems about right. At least from what my sister tells me from time to time," Gwen said, admitting that she had some previous knowledge to the strange workings of this city. There was the St. Valentine's Rave which she later found out to be a Negaverse trap to gather energy, then the strange meteorite and the space flu that came with it. Combined with the Senshi and talking felines, a rainbow portal seemed fitting. Though, she never heard of the Senshi being referred to as 'strangely clad cultist', but to a civilian, it was a fitting metaphor. "She's always warning me not to go wondering off on my own or else I'll run into trouble with the supernatural... I get into enough trouble with the normal people around here. Case in point, that cut purse..." It still brought a smile to her face to think about Jett smacking that guy right in the jaw, and she mimicked the motion by punching the air. She seemed eager to get back into the swing of things and she did little to hide this enthusiasm. "I'm not too worried about them, though. Soon I'll be able to knock 'em out, assuming I don't just waltz out of their way."
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Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2012 10:36 pm
With another light laugh, Jett simply nodded. "Destiny City does seem to have its fair share of normal villains along side its supernatural ones. Though, I'm inclined to ask, what sort of group does your sister hang around if she's warning you to watch out for the supernatural? I'd think that wasn't something you run into every day. Not that she isn't right to warn you about the everyday trouble and all, but I'm sure when you're at your best, that's not something you have an issue with," he said with a content grin. "Hell, as long as you learn to control that temper of yours, I figure even those supernaturals your sister's been warning you about won't stand a chance. Of course, I don't really recommend you go out and try to pick fights with them. Just in case that thought ever enters your head. I wouldn't even go start something with one of them. Unless they gave me damn good reason to, but." He gave her a stern look.
"I don't want to read about how Gwendolyn Caspian picking a fight with some magic space alien any time soon, you hear me?"
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Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2012 2:12 pm
The topic of her sister was always a fun one to get into, and Gwen was only too willing to oblige. She loved her sister and she was eternally grateful to her for offering her a place to live to escape him, but there were times where it was TOO easy to poke fun at her, especially when she wasn't here to defend herself. "Maddy's a bit of an interesting character, that's for sure. She's not crazy, but she's a little too eager to believe in such things. She really gets a kick out of those Ghost Hunters shows and paranormal documentaries. I honestly think she believes that there are monsters running around here..." Gwen couldn't blame her sister for her beliefs, as she was, technically, correct. Not that she wanted her sister to be dragged along for the ride; where would she be without Maddy? "Well, so long as those monsters are smart enough to stay away from me, then you won't have to worry about seeing me in the newspapers anytime soon. Especially not with this wrist..." She gave it a poke and was relieved that the pain seemed to numb down enough to where she could touch or move it without yelping. "I'm still game for practicing the motions... maybe it'll be therapeutic?"
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Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2012 9:49 pm
A grin drew onto Jett's face and he nodded. "Yeah, go ahead. You seemed to have 'em down pat, from what I can tell. And if you keep practicing the motions, by the time your wrist heals up, you'll be able to throw a damn fine punch."
He seemed pleased with this; he liked when someone was able to pick things up quickly. Not that he minded spending time with Gwen; she always brought him a fair share of amusement and typically made for good conversation. "…But seriously," he added, giving her a stern look, "Stay away from monsters if you can help it. —Shouldn't a girl your age still be afraid of monsters, too?" he asked, cracking a grin. It wasn’t that Gwendolyn was particularly young, just that everyone ought to take at least some caution when dealing with 'monsters'.
Jett, himself, had never liked the youmas. He wasn't afraid of them (he was, after all, afraid of nothing) but merely knew that it was imperative to keep your eyes on them. While powered, they weren't any sort of trouble for him, but as a civilian? Hell, he hadn't been attacked by one, but he didn't imagine those dull beasts could distinguish between friend or foe without him being powered up.
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