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He didn't. He wanted to stop, right there, and his decision had been if anything bolstered by America's failed attempts.

"No. Yes." Helpfully, he clarified: "I don't ******** know. Sure. Yeah."

Maybe it was less a question of balance and more a question of general distaste for the whole thing. "Next time let's just go pitch ourselves into the Shadow Run and you can keep s**t off me for a while," he suggested, or perhaps pleaded. It was hard to say whether he was braced to defend or if he was simply, as he so often did, cringing in anticipation of future unpleasantness.

DEF: 3 really taym some future moon you are

Slowed down was enough: he dodged nimbly, and it didn't seem like Fiona's slim and understated blade should have been capable of knocking the heavy weapon aside, but somehow it was: thus the strange mysteries of their weapons, which Taym would never quite entirely believe, even if the man in his future dream had wrested control of an entire division with nothing but a dark-bladed dagger.

Her goading challenges caught up to his frustration and his instincts of hurt that which hurts you and Fiona's own calmly bloodthirsty urging overrode his common sense entirely, and he took advantage of her instant off her guard to strike as abruptly as a coiled snake, knife biting into her shield.

It wasn't fair, and he knew it, and the bitterness when he addressed her was thick. "Better?"

DMG: 9
CHG: 3/3

He stopped. The weapon remained in his hand--he wasn't quitting, not exactly--but he stepped back and put space between them and even though he had that focused look on his face that indicated some sort of intense conversation with Fiona, he was warily attuned to America nonetheless, unwilling to let her to do him what he'd done to her, and catch him off his guard.

His jaw tightened, hard; whatever chat was taking place in the privacy of his head it was clearly not going in a direction he appreciated.

He didn't answer her. After a couple of tense seconds he merely repeated himself: "I hate this," he said miserably. Apparently he hadn't meant attacking someone who wasn't fighting back. He gestured with the knife in some vague "get ready" motion, maybe already regretting the dirty tactics.

"All of it," he said, and he couldn't catch the noise that escaped him, half-frustrated and half-relieved, at being matched perfectly by her defense. "I don't--"

know what to say. Because he never did, but also because he could never tell her, could possibly never tell anyone, that every time he was out here he was put inexorably in mind of shoving April into a wall, of closing his fingers hard around Bird's throat. That he enjoyed it. That he'd felt a sick satisfaction slamming Leslie's head against the sharp edge of the desk, and that he never felt less useless and more competent than when he held some human face in the dirt.

It wasn't the way he wanted to feel heroic. It wasn't, in a word, right. It was the only time he felt capable, and despite the fact that he never, ever felt in control of himself--wasn't that the whole point of the little rigorous ascetic self-denials that had gotten him looking the way he did? a petty grab at control? wasn't that the definition of power that he'd seen in the hall in the dream: a man in control of himself?--he felt the least in control when he felt the most competent: when he was hurting someone. Even in the tightly-controlled environment of the sparring yards his hands ached with the longing to spill blood and to complete and utterly subjugate.

"--want to ******** discuss it, OK? I just... hate it. I hate that it's a ******** ******** knife," he said suddenly, violently angry. "Can't do a goddamn thing with it but stab someone, cut a throat, I hate it. Would that I had the luxury of standing a few feet back. ********... feels--" he groped for a word "--I don't ******** know. Savage. I hate it," he repeated.

And he didn't unsummon. And he fell back, miserable and ready to strike out again, because she'd asked him to.

DMG: 3
CHG: 3/3

He fell back a few feet and lifted his hand, exposing the branching antlers caging in his fingers, and in a quick demonstration of a couple of swings, aimed away from her, illustrated that he lacked the ability to rapidly shift his grip, thwarted by the guard (and this was new, and had not been the case before she'd changed, and he was unsettled by this when he remembered Bix's lectures about a weapon's potential for change), and that a swing leading with the blunt edge lacked the easy, finessed grace that accompanied his usual strikes.

"I looked it up, the shape. It's called a falcata. Curve of it--puts all the momentum--" and he demonstrated, again, a swift and arcing swing at nothing "--on the front edge. Same principle as the curve in an axe, and you ******** try to swing an axe backwards and see where it gets you. Like a backhand in tennis. No power, no stability. No momentum. You want me to use the blunt edge, tell her to stop caging my ******** hand into a forward swing, and most of all tell her to take some shape that wasn't primarily designed for a ******** stab." For a few seconds it had seemed like the distraction of having some information to impart had alleviated him of the stress of fighting, but it returned with an agitated flick of his hair off his brow. He was visibly tired already, wearing down under far too little exertion.

"Every time she--I don't know how to describe it. She sends little--little instincts, or memories, or something, all the time, and every time I swing in it's like--you ever seen a buck going in for a charge? That's what feels right."

He demonstrated, again, the vicious forward jab that was, now that he pointed it out, rather like the thrust of an stag's antlers.

"I don't like it, it isn't fun, and I don't know how to treat it like a game, or however it is people like you and Bix and Peyton deal with it. Go," he added, giving her only a fraction of a second before coiling back in again, this time in his irritation attempting to throw her off with a feint to one side.

DMG: 6-3 = 3
CHARGED GDI

The compliment went unheeded and perhaps even unnoticed. Taym was not in a receptive mood for flattery. "Fine. Interpret it however you ******** want to. Sure. It's me settling. I'll be sure and remind Peyton next time I see her that she can just chuck Warrick at someone like a ******** football, because why should she settle for doing what he's ******** designed to do?"

Just to demonstrate the point, he tried to come in on the clumsy backhand he'd just demonstrated, and did exactly as well as he'd expected to. The point that he could try to do that more often until it did work was apparently being dismissed out of hand. No sense in turning a tool to anything but its intended purpose, to Taym's mind, and the suitability of his weapon to quick vicious motions was more than just a function of her shape: she gave each swing purpose, and she had definite ideas about how she was to be wielded. The idea that he might have overridden her presumed wisdom here was foreign to him.

DMG: MISS
CHG'D who cares

His own volume was escalating, and in Taym, normally so softspoken even--maybe especially--when he was angry, it was startling. "Don't you ******** dare get self righteous with me just because you don't want to use a tool for what it's designed for. You don't race a basset hound or send a rottweiler after a rat, and you don't--" the blow was sudden and vicious and if she'd been less prepared for it very likely would have bitten deeply into her shield "--get to be a better Hunter by using a weapon in a way that doesn't make sense. ******** you for trying to make me feel even more guilty than I already do out here and ******** you for insinuating that I ever try to be less than the best I can at my ******** job."

DMG: 6-4=2