Tallulah's earlier failings were more than made up for in this latest game - she was good at laser tag, after all! The rules of this round were a lot more in-line with what she was used to, she thought, as she left the arena and looked towards the scoreboard. At least she was finally pulling her weight. She shot Xander a wide grin and said, "That's more like it."
Kaori_luv
Keren was going to find some way to pin her less-than-optimal performance this round on the fact that she hadn't come planning to play, and probably also on her partner. She just hadn't figured out how yet.
Keren gets a +3 for Wisdom
Akina Tokuwa
Quicksilver the Archangel rolled 1 10-sided dice:
5Total: 5 (1-10)
Posted: Fri May 16, 2014 7:17 pm
Horatio scored a 6! (5 +1 Teamwork = 6)
The Himalayan was pleased as punch at the praise to her speed, and her tiny sides heaved and burned in the most pleasant of ways. Her eyes sparkled behind her goggles as she demanded more--and when the next round started, she jumped right back into the game!
[OOC Note: COMPLETELY FORGOT I didn't fill this in I'm so sorry.]
Quicksilver the Archangel
Beloved Seraph
Offline
Ivynian rolled 1 10-sided dice:
7Total: 7 (1-10)
Ivynian
Cat
Offline
Posted: Fri May 16, 2014 8:59 pm
[[ roll for Quenton - 7 ]]
If nothing else, it felt appropriate to be labeled red and therefore hostile. Equally fitting, in some manner, was that Penthesilea was his partner for the exercise of hunting other pairs. It was an easy role to adopt, something of reconnaissance with his better sneaking to relay signals to her probably better aim and athleticism. Or to play cover fire to her blazing offensives if they scented out any of the other reds or greens nearby.
When it was done, he offered his hand for a high-five in wordless 'good job, partner'
Jeanne could not have asked for a better partner in tracking, if unfortunately she herself was a little too eager. Running out in dramatic charges to shoot at other pairs wasn't exactly an ideal plan for making sure she herself didn't take hits, but at least they got in a good few on the other teams.
So she was actually pretty proud of herself when she and Quenton high-fived at the end.
Kaatje surveyed the group that returned. Some of them seemed proud of themselves--she picked out Finn's little blonde friend and a few others who had managed to avoid all the red-marked pairs; and the others didn't look like they were shortly to kick her in the shins and run off calling her a meanie, or else try to stab her with a fork. She had heard tales of both happening in BMT (which begged the question: what had these people been expecting?) and didn't really want to review the differences between a military training instructor and herself… mainly Kaatje actually had no compunction about grabbing hold of people. No one would charge her with dereliction of duty for defending herself.
Anyway. That was a tangent. She peeked into the arena and didn't see anyone. "Let's all return our vests, here," she said. "You won't be needing vests or laser guns for the last bit here." Over any groans of reluctance, she said, "We are going to practice hitting people! Please raise your hand if your weapon is, you know, a rifle!"
No one raised their hands. She held both arms out to her sides and said, "Okay!"
Out in the lobby--which had much more space than the arena--she said, "There's four basic moves you need to know. They are called four basic names. Stop me if you've heard them: Punch, smash, hook, and block. Blocks come in all heights and all sides and I'm not going to patronize you by pretending none of you know the basics of fighting. If you don't, or want an actual hand and not a demonstration, talk to me after." She beckoned Keren up to the front of the group, and demonstrated each move--Keren blocked them neatly, or else threw decent punches.
"Your assignment this round is to review those four moves with your partner, because next round you're going to be sparring. In powered forms. Don't worry about the Negaverse; there are, as you've probably noticed, cats here and they will be covering our signatures." She crooked a half-smile, and shrugged widely. "Feel free to get some water before you start. I'll stop you in twenty minutes."
For this round, please roll 1 10-sided die! Points go as follows: 1-3: Has it been twenty minutes already? You still keep missing blocks. 4-7: You feel solid, but like, a little more practice wouldn't hurt. 8-10: You've got this. You are pretty sure you can handle a really basic fight in your sleep.
The next post will go up on May 20th! Remember, if your stat is Teamwork, you're getting one point for this round. If your stat is Dexterity, you're taking three points!
Cats, you are continuing to play tag! Next round, you will be energy-smothering! Your rules are here.
You may continue to roll for the round immediately preceding the current one. So, no more warmup or intelligence round rolls! (This is to make records-keeping easier on me.) Thank you!
Lily took her pamphlet and started to look it over, but to be honest she didn't look it over very long or very well. She sparred a lot the park, at night, so she definitely knew how to spar. Only thing she really figured would be a problem was fighting Ganymede to be perfectly honest. They were the same power level and the she suspected Paris would fight with her feet as well. Who wouldn't, if they danced ballet, she herself certainly did.
When Paris started speaking, she abandoned the pamphlet in favor of listening to her friend. She really didn't think that she needed it.It probably made her look haughty though she really wasn't, she was just confident in her ability.
This was the part Paris knew she was going to have some trouble with.
She wasn't much of a fighter. Oh, she'd gotten better after three years of floundering around. She couldn't really participate in this war in any capacity without learning a thing or two about how to defend herself, even if that learning turned out to be more luck than any actual skill. Still, she had a general idea of what she was doing. Her legs were her best asset; she could handle a decently executed kick and manage to do some damage when she was focused and in the moment.
Punching was another thing entirely, and though she could mimic the demonstrations, her punches were noticeably lacking in strength.
Not that she was really trying to punch Lily. That would be awful.
“Sorry if I hit too hard,” she quickly apologized. “Punching's not really my strong suit anyway but, you know, being bad at it means I'm not really good at judging what strength I do have.”
Unlike the preceding exercise, the practising hitting people part had been something of a disaster for Arian. He had felt particularly embarrassed about how his blocks had gone, given that it was normally something he was relatively okay at.
It came as a bit of a surprise for Arian to find out that the allocated 20 minutes were up, time having seemed to have passed pretty quickly.
"I'm not usually this bad" he said apologetically to Alexis, a rueful note in his quiet voice. Not that he was particularly great - Arian knew fighting wasn't something he was particularly strong at - however he knew he'd done pretty badly in that last exercise.
This game of tag was something that Liryn was particularly enjoying, and the tabby bobtail did his hardest to find good places to hide.
Since managing to get the hang of the game it seemed to be working, mayhaps helped along by the fact that he wasn't the biggest of cats and although he been caught once, Liryn couldn't remember being caught more than that.
It was something of a shame when the tag game came to an end, since Liryn had been enjoying himself but he trotted over to Ash and Anabel happily enough and sat as he waited for Snowball and Horatio. "That was fun," he said cheerfully to both, "I guess it's time for us to work now though." Then he turned his purplish eyes towards Anabel as he added "But thanks for coming up with the game."
Finn had a really easy time of the practice moves, right from the start - but he was willing to bet that was more a factor of experience than anything. He'd had years to develop his spacial awareness and hand-eye coordination, and it was paying off now in a big way.
It also didn't hurt that his partner was doing pretty well this round! Finn shot Maggie an encouraging grin as they wound down. "You're doing great," he said.
Finn gets +3 Dext, so he has a 12.
Hand-to-hand combat had never been Tallulah's strongest suit, so the fact that she did about average in this exercise came as no surprise. After doing so well in last month's boot camp, she was a bit dismayed to be progressing at a more middle-of-the-road pace this time around, but at least she was keeping up.
Tallulah gets a 5.
Keren was definitely going to blame how badly she did at this latest exercise on Bo, and she was going to do so loudly and to anyone who would listen.
Keren gets a 2.
Kaori_luv
Akina Tokuwa
I'll reply to your roll post next time around, this is just to have something up!
Sparring was perhaps the easiest assignment she could've gotten, and it was actual effort for Jeanne to keep to the four basic moves and not try something fancy.
So she wanted to show off a little, was that really such a crime?
She also had to remember that this was Thraen, so trying to beat the absolute stuffing out of him was probably not a good plan. Alas.
Maggie (Intelligence) earned a 10 in finding and shooting her partner!
Stealth. Kaatje was speaking Maggie's language. At least, the language Maggie wished she spoke.
When they entered the arena, Maggie was way into it. She took Kaatje very seriously, sliding around on her belly, turning sideways at all times, and ducking in and out of every nook and cranny like she was made of shadows. It was working, too! Finn seemed incapable of finding her.
The tables turned -- and the situation was the total opposite. It was as if Finn had a giant red X on his back. Maggie repeatedly found and shot him to the point that she was burbling with laughter at the end. "I'm sort of Lara Croft, right?" She posed with her gun once and made a fake gun noise.
Maggie (Intelligence) earned a 5 in green/red avoidance!
"Looks like more stealthiness," Maggie mused as she perused the hand signals. It was all very spy-like to her. She did her best to memorize what she could, but before she knew it, they were shuffled into the arena.
Peering over her shoulder, she grinned at Finn. "Time to disappear," she said.
The thirty minutes went by a lot faster than she expected, but Maggie didn't feel as confident this time. She was caught more than once, which chapped her a** each time. It was too dark for her to even tell who it was that managed to nab her with the chalk. Finn actually seemed to be doing a little better than her.
She flicked the corner of his shirt when the time ended. "You have less tags than I do -- good job!"
Maggie (Intelligence) got a 7 in practice moves!
Grabbing water, Maggie sipped lightly at it as Kaatje explained the next part. She thought she knew the basics of fighting, but had never bothered thinking of the names of them. It was more like "run away" move versus "throw yourself at opponent" move. To hide her lack of knowledge, she made sure to carefully watch Keren demonstrate before turning to face Finn.
"Okay, don't make fun of me if I am bad at this," she said, practicing the first couple moves. She accidentally forgot to block once and wrinkled her nose. "Sorry, sorry."
However, as the time went on, her moves improved markedly -- all in all, it was a solid performance. Maggie stopped when time was up and leaned in toward Finn. "I sort of can't wait to see everyone in their powered forms," she said, grinning from ear to ear. "Though it might make me jealous. My uniform is kind of, uh. Pukey. In color." She shrugged, but it clearly bothered her.
Why could her sphere be cute?
Don't get her wrong -- Maggie felt sort of cool because basically a horseman of the apocalypse, but she couldn't help but feel War or Famine might have better looks than hers, weep.
((Sorry -- just saw we weren't supposed to roll the earlier ones. I did it on Maggie, whoops.))
"The Surrounding," Bo said, sing-song. "The ole homestead. Perhaps that, then."
When everyone else donned vests, the tall senshi did the same. It stuck to his bare skin and scratched awkwardly. He grinned over at Keren, adopted a western accent, and said, "Do yer wurst!" before charging into the arena with an extra peppy hop in his step.
Bo was sort of impressive at the hiding-from-Keren thing -- mostly because he fell asleep in one corner because the dark was so pleasant.
Whoops.
Bo (Teamwork) earned a 9 in red/green tagging!
The sound of everyone else shuffling back to the lobby woke Bo up just in time to learn the details of the next activity: combat tag. "I am a master at tag," he said to Keren. "Did a lot of babysitting. Well, more like assistant babysitting." Which basically meant that Bo tagged along when his friends were babysitting so that he could run around like an idiot with the kids without actually being responsible for them.
True to his speed, Bo tore into the arena like a tornado. He rounded the arena as if he could see in the dark, tagging almost every single other pair. Some people? Twice. "I am a machine," he said to Keren when it was all over. "Many bled chalky dust at my hands on this day." Perhaps it was because he was shirtless, but Bo didn't have a mark on him.
Hurting people with chalk was so much better than causing actual harm.
Bo (Teamwork) earned a 2 in practice moves!
True to form, Bo was not very good at The Fighting, and it showed in his piss-poor practice sparring. He missed basically every block. "You know, I kind of like to go with the flow in battle," he said, "especially if that flow leads me away from battle."
Ivynian rolled 1 10-sided dice:
2Total: 2 (1-10)
Posted: Mon May 19, 2014 7:59 pm
[Quenton roll - 2]
This was primarily why he'd shown up- trying to get some more basics and rote combat expectations under his belt. Because he was awful at it. If it weren't for his magic's status effect, no doubt he would have been laying in a gutter naming the stars he could see as they slowly dimmed to black months ago.
Trial by fire experience and Maia's help a lifetime ago at least meant he wasn't a total greenhorn. Just suffered the usual complete disconnect of someone who's brain understands a concept but whose muscles have no memory or intrinsic talent for the motions.
I was never meant for the battlefield. Oh well. The best thing to do is keep trying and not get embarrassed over it. No improving without failing a couple hundred times first. He offered Penthe a grateful nod that she admirable put up with his general suck at trained, efficient combat. I appreciate the cats being here to cover our signatures...it is a little concerning to have to power up in front of everyone. I don't expect anyone would cause a scene. Athene I doubt to be the type, and I don't expect Iris would be at something like this.
"We all get to be glitter dancers together, " he offered in light commiserating lamp-shading of the fact that they all had transformations that must involve some amount of magical glitter and variations of light and appearing clothes. The last came wry, "I can't imagine a better community-building, sharing exercise."
"Finn is my best friend," she said. "Sort of. He's more like one of the only people I know here, anymore. All of my Court is dead, or… or missing." She rubbed the side of her head as Kaatje lectured at them, mostly ignoring the demonstrations. Maybe she knew enough to get by, but either way, she was… why was everything making her sad? Ugh. Too moody. "What do you mean, jumped in front of--" but he was introducing her to Paris and Lily, neither of whom she had met for more than a moment. "It's a pleasure," she said, smiling.
Maybe she really did need to eat more. Get her strength up, and stuff. Or maybe she was just tired? But those could be the same thing. Either way, Elke's attempts to block Chris's punches were not exactly stellar. "I'm so sorry," she said, falling back once time was called. "I'm not feeling well at all."
Guine
Sunshine Alouette
Kaori_luv
[3]
--
Nick honestly hadn't even been paying that much attention to the lecture, preferring instead to stand awkwardly near Tallulah because the sustained silence of his partner was a little off-putting; but when the time came to match blows with her, his arms moved by rote. Of course they did, he'd been learning basic martial arts since he was small. Granted, not for that explicit purpose, but… the result was the same either way.
