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It was far more obvious once she had placed her hands onto him that the unmasked male's body was shivering in a cold sweat; with his hands clasped tightly to his chest and gasping for breath this was a pale comparison of the competitor who had been throwing her to the ground for their entire match. He seemed to not even notice her at the start, muscles completely tensed as his entire body curled with convulsions... but they faded in time. A number of seconds that felt like hours dragging on were all that it took for the rot to run rampant through his system and be fought back by the power of his heroic spirit.

After a moment of calm, as his breathing started to return to something resembling normal the young hero's hands slipped off of his chest and fell; one to the ground and the other onto something soft. Justice moved his hand, wrapping his fingers around what it was he was feeling without knowing what it was... he moved his hand along it and within a few inches touched his own face, which caused him to realize his head was also laying on whatever it was. Blinking to clear his vision he looked down but only saw streaks of black paint and red blood across a light-colored surface that curved away out of his field of vision.


He turned his head to look up at the voice. It was familiar but just didn't sound like something he could immediately recognize. He couldn't place it until he saw her face looking down with tears running off of her chin, and it all clicked; the voice was Miss Jay but just... not angry.

"Don't... talk about dying so easily." The unmasked male lifted his hand and put it back down, gently patting her on the thigh even though he spoke in a series of gasped breaths. "Your life isn't... worth so little... to the people who care about you."

For some reason the tension had completely left him. If their battle had still been continuing on no doubt he would have dragged himself on one finger at a time but now that the situation had changed he just felt... exhausted. It didn't matter that this woman had been his enemy until just a minute ago, he could no longer feel that viciousness from her. With his breathing regulating, he laid his head back down on her leg and shut his eyes for a moment. If she was done fighting him he was done fighting back... whatever happened from here would be for the officials to decide.


Her hand would come away smeared with black; the dampened paint mixed with sweat would rub off easily onto her hand and leave a pale smear across his forehead just as it left a dark one on her own skin.

"N...no..." he answered, lifting his arm from the dirt and waving it gently from side to side in completely the wrong direction. "I didn't take... your power. Only... your pain. But..." He paused deliberately, his hand on her leg squeezing down lightly once more as he took a single deep, controlled breath for the first time since she had awoken.

"Forgive me, Miss Jay. I know I had no right to make that decision for you, and I have no right to question your choices, but... I don't think you should rely on that power. There are things that are worth dying to protect, but pride is not one of them."

He reached over with his outstretched hand and grabbed onto the edge of the wolf pelt laying a few feet from them; dragging it in first with his fingers and then into his hand, pulling it back and holding it up as he rolled slightly into her body and turned his head up.

"This is yours now. As we agreed. It's not much, but... try to remember that your life is a part of so many others."

"Call it an apology gift then," he said back up at her; seeming to be getting more of his energy back after the short rest. The tired look in his eyes was beginning to fade now, and he no longer spoke as if he were short of breath... his voice was still quiet though, but merely because they were so close that there was no need for him to shout at her and his natural tone, quiet and respectful, was slipping through past the boastful heroic voice he had been belting out during their match. "From someone headstrong enough to tell other people how to live their lives."


He smiled in a vaguely insincere way when she said this, stirring slightly until she placed her hand on his face and then pausing for a moment to place his own hand over it for a moment... pause... and then wrap his fingers around hers and take her hand away. With a bit of a groan he put his other hand to the ground and pushed himself up to a sitting position beside her with a light-hearted chuckle.

"I'll take that as a compliment then." Taking on a stern expression he raised his arms at his sides and made a tremendously cheesy display of flexing his arms... only to drop them a moment later with an "Ow."


"If you don't mind seeing me wobble like a spinning top I think I can do a slight more than stand, Miss Jay. How are you feeling though...?" The young hero changed his tone in a heartbeat from joking to concerned. He'd extracted a good deal of the damage that her power had caused to her body but beyond that he hadn't asked about her condition yet.

Putting his right hand on his right knee and his left on the ground Justice leaned over and pushed himself up, first getting his left leg under him and using that to support his weight as he pushed down on his right leg to straighten it out. Remaining standing was easier than getting there in the first place, as most of the damage she had inflicted to his leg had been to a specific muscle group. He heavily favored to the left side obviously, but despite the dirt-cached bloody streak running down the back of his right pant leg he seemed to be relatively stable.

If Jay wasn't already up herself he would offer the woman a hand in standing... one that would, if accepted, probably make him stumble a step forward.

Justice pulled up on her hand when she took his, trying to help her to her feet but not expecting the strong woman to jump up so suddenly; the unexpected tug on his hand causing him to step forward to keep his balance and almost knock her back down in doing so. There was a momentary pause for either of them, before she continued on...


His hands stopped hers before she could continue any further than she had; covering her fingers with his palms as he gently pushed back.

"I can't accept that..." was his reply in a softspoken tone, almost at a whisper. Looking down as he spoke, with a regretful expression in contrast to her heartfelt gesture. "It's something that is important to you, and was a gift from a mentor that saved your life... If anything that should be a gift to someone you've saved."

He paused for a moment, and looked as if he had a thought that really piqued his interest. "Oh, or your daughter. In the future, I mean. Not that you look like you're old enough to have a daughter... But isn't that how it usually happens in stories? 'I was given this by the person who taught me everything, and now I'm giving it to you'...? Or something like that...?"

...the places where his face-paint had been wiped away turned a shade redder.

"A-anyway!" Justice, seeming flustered, leaned in over her shoulder so that he could speak quietly into her ear where even the most keen-eared listeners in the stands wouldn't overhear. "I really am not allowed to accept things that belonged to demons. It's part of being a sworn Paladin, after all..."

The part he didn't say was that he wasn't expecting to be surprised with an article of S&M gear as a gift. A few of those long pauses had involved contemplating what he could have possibly even done with the thing. He could barely shake the terrifying image of arriving to a match wearing a gimp suit and sending completely the wrong message. No no no no no no no no no no he was a hero! Though they might overlap on concepts such as 'punishment', 'masks', and 'tight outfits' there was no mistaking that there was a very clear line to be drawn between the two.

It was absolutely an irreconcilable contradiction!

Drat.

She wasn't taking the bait on this one... not that he was really the kind of person who followed all of the rules all of the time... They were more like guidelines, really. Clean living, kindness to strangers, not cackling like a sadistic maniac while flipping over baby carriages and flicking cigarettes at school children at a red light. The universal holy decree of "try to avoid being a complete jerk". Of course, Paladin orders were a bit more strict about this than most other people tended to be but then again he wasn't technically a Paladin either.

...but the fact that he wasn't obligated to refuse it still didn't change the fact that accepting a piece of S&M gear from a scantily clad woman in front of a large audience was completely contrary to how he imagined this day ending and hells take him if he was going to go down without a fight. He'd been worried about her condition before but if she was feeling well enough to be this coy then there was no reason for him to hold back.

Perhaps their exchange of blows had ended but now it was a battle of wills!


"A-..."

No, no, no... don't jump in too quickly, he thought to himself. This was a trap, that much was incredibly obvious. The problem is that it was a double trap that would get him no matter which answer he gave. If he said yes then he was going to be the one that ended up looking bad here, and if he said no then she was going to force that... thing... at him again. It didn't help that this was the kind of situation he was weak against because any way that he answered would be disrespectful.

Though what was this obsession these 'bad girls' always had with trying to toy with the 'good boys'? It seemed like they never missed an opportunity when it presented itself to... ah... present themselves.

What would Mr. Black do here? He had always been a ladies man and knew exactly how to handle these kinds of situations, and he would always share them with the young(er) hero back in the day whenever he poked into the temple to fluster the priestesses' robes. A man like that, in a situation like this would... take a cue from the slowly growing roar of the crowd that started as Jay began to reach for her strap.

"That's very generous of you," replied Justice as he took a step back away from Jay; not only taking them out of whispering distance but also putting her in full view of the crowd once again as he raised his arms and gestured wide at the stands behind him, "and I'm sure everyone here would like to personally thank you for that suggestion."

What would Mr. Black do...? Call her on it. Direct the attention off of himself.

"Though I do regret to say, Miss Jay... I don't think that it would look quite as good on me as it does on you."

The blackfaced hero cut a grin at her as his hands came down again to rest on his hips. It was her move now.

Yay, he won! She wasn't going to take her top off! ...but why did it feel like he'd just lost?

The grin he had forced at her a moment before wasn't able to hold up under pressure. As much as he had been able to fake the words and gestures to put up a convincing argument he was a man of pure heart and unquestionable morals; 'fake it till you make it' would only take him so far when he had little experience at hiding his feelings under anything other than a stern expression.

Justice didn't fully trust that her tears were real, but he knew well enough that what he had just done to her was a hurtful thing and he couldn't help but let her expression tug at his confidence. An apology now would be backtracking though, and put him right back into the position he had just gotten himself out of.

A favour? ...well, that was an offer that was hard to refuse. No matter who you are there is never a time when you won't want to have an ally or two to fall back upon. But even that gave his actions a sour taste; he hadn't tried to save her in order to gain something by it and he hadn't given her the mask she'd asked for because he wanted an exchange. He needed an appropriately heroic answer for this.

"Alright... I've got something in mind right now," answered Justice after a moment's thought. "Do something for someone else, save someone in danger or help someone through a troubled time. There isn't anything better that you can do for a hero than to be heroic, too! When people do good it inspires people to do good."

Yes, that sounded about right. Justice folded his arms over his chest and nodded his head approvingly at the idea. It was exactly the kind of hero speech he would have expected to hear in the comics. He didn't know if she'd had something in mind with the way that she was fidgeting but he was pretty confident about his answer.

Justice put his hand on the top of her head and ruffled her hair. 'Why' was an answer that couldn't be put into words, but it was something that he had remembered doing for many of the young acolytes at the temple when they made that same face that Jay was making now... Though he was a bit surprised by himself when he did it, as even though she was smaller than him she was probably older as well.

"...you wouldn't say that if you didn't care," he said back in a soft tone, not willing or able to argue her somber rebuttal. Good intentions and good actions were not the same thing, and neither of them guaranteed that everything would work out. Even with his background as a paladin, Justice knew that there were sometimes necessary evils and that good results can come from bad acts at times; he'd known many men and women that did bad things for good reasons. What makes a person a hero is that they never give up on trying to do good no matter how many tries it takes.


The unmasked male returned her smile.

"If you need a hero, just call. See you around, Miss Jay."

He would have to grab his things from the ground, which was difficult considering how hard it was for him to bend down but it only took a minute or two. Waving goodbye to the crowd in the stands, the hero took his leave.