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As the days rolled past Taym was finding it easier and easier to keep himself busy. Keeping himself busy had been priority number one, and he'd struggled with the inevitable downtime--moments when, despite himself, he'd be given over to thinking, which was exactly the last thing Taym ever wanted to do.

While he had never been a particularly physical person, the startling reminder of just how damned out of shape he was had come in the form of the tournament, when he'd lost a commanding and easy lead by running out of steam far too fast, growing exhausted long before he should have. Part of the problem was the lack of food--you can't burn calories you don't have--but that was the trickier side of the equation to address. So there it was: the alluring combination of both a way to kill time and to feel as though he were embarking on some sort of minor self-improvement.

The problem was the same problem it had been last time, and the time before. The same problem it had always been. He'd go run a couple of laps, sweating under the Bermuda sun and grinding to a halt at a distance that was frankly embarrassing, and then he'd catch his breath and go stare defiantly and morosely at a training dummy for a few minutes.

And that was it. Then he'd leave.

He just could not make himself hit the damn things. Maybe if he'd had a gun, or a polearm, or something, but he had a knife and it was dinky and stabbing it into a training dummy made him feel incredibly stupid. Last time he'd managed to find himself a living opponent. Today he was indulging in the counter-productive urge to smoke, standing about four feet in front of his motionless target and looking at it with enormous skepticism, stewing in the stink of his jogging sweat and his cigarette although, to be entirely fair, he did not reek nearly as badly as one would assume just looking at him.

Glaring at the training dummy, he willed the Universe to provide him with something moving to attempt to hit. Someone who, preferably, wouldn't embarrass him too badly.

He startled, then fixed Shiloh with an unimpressed, canine stare. Not his usual leery, defiant one--he couldn't attach the word "threat" to someone who looked like Shiloh. This sort of superficial judgment was going to be a hindrance to him in the long term, but at the moment he was still carrying around his biases, and this was one of them.

He seemed distinctly less cheery than he had on the sidelines of Maebe's fight, and stuffed his hands in his pockets before he answered around his cigarette: "Again?" And then it dawned. "Right. Miss Bertrand." That got Shiloh a second look, more considering, and a sudden grin.


He eyed the training dummy sideways while he talked. "That was the idea, but I've got what you might call hang-ups when it comes to the idea of engaging an inanimate object in hand-to-hand combat," he said drily. "Like the idea that it's wasting my time."

He eyed Shiloh consideringly.

On the one hand, maybe Shiloh would kick his a**. This would be an indignity possibly too big to bear. On the other, if he declined, possibly it would just look like he was chickening out (which he would be, but that thought didn't occur to him). This was too much to stomach.

"It would certainly be more educational than prodding a mannequin and hoping to get something out of it," he conceded, the amusement washed right out of him. He hated this, but forcing himself to do it would be beneficial, surely. So he did.

Last time he'd tried to get the drop on someone. That hadn't exactly turned out well, and so this time he decided to play fair, perhaps on the off chance that he'd be karmically rewarded for not being a rules-breaking jackass. But he didn't exactly take the long road to the fight, either. His weapon was in his hand in seconds, the utilitarian, dark blade rotating around to a vicious-looking underhand grip. Taym felt that his weapon was singularly unimpressive, but it had a certain fitting quality compared to his hunter: the both of them lean and small, dark and quick-looking. If he was a wolf, the knife was a tooth.

That was enough, he thought, to indicate that he accepted the invitation.

"You a friend of hers?" he asked by way of casual conversation. "Maebe's."

"Obadiah Thompson," was the answer blunt, as he hefted the knife. And then hesitated.

"You first," he said, with another sudden, tooth-baring grin. It was as much a taunt as a politeness. Taym preferred, on the whole, to be on the defensive--when he wasn't getting a sneaky drop on someone, that is.

And it worked, the heavy jaws slamming into him and sending him nearly off his feet. Out of instinct--get away from hurty thing--he stumbled backwards, hissing a non-too-nice curse through his teeth. But getting out of range was counterproductive when a person's weapon was a knife--especially when his opponent's was on a chain.

With sudden aggression he snaked back in, closing the gap, and when the dirk (a weapon made solely to stab) found purchase in Shiloh's ribs, Taym was pissed enough to give it a relentless twist. He'd done that repeatedly now and was a bit alarmed by how good it felt. How violent. How effective.

"Funny. Wolf against a deer," he observed, as he turned the blade.

HP: 34
DMG: 9, wtf sudden competence
CHG: 1/3

It was almost enough to make him feel bad. He withdrew the knife, only to go for a second.

And then he felt... shaky. His usual shaky, the nerve-damage shaky, but shaky too because Fiona was silently exulting in the taste of Shiloh's shield and because holding him in place and jabbing a knife into him felt profoundly and deeply wrong. Violent in a way that Taym knew that he was violent, knew he was capable of without thinking, but in a way he'd never wanted to be.

The blade slid free and he stumbled back, dragging the back of his trembling hand across his mouth. But the grin didn't slip. Not for a second.

"Don't get what?" He made a jerking movement of his arms, a "come get me" invitation that he hoped he would not regret.

HP: 34
DMG: 5
CHG: 2/3

"Just an observation," he said, opening his shaking fingers long enough to display the antlered hilt. "Of course, I think it normally goes differently. She's got more going for her than Bambi, I guess."

He was irrationally angry, now. Angry, for some reason, that Shiloh had lived up to the expectations Taym had of pink-haired boys with questionable Twitter handles. He almost paused, while Shiloh coiled the chain back up--almost gave him the space, took the breather that he knew with a twinge he ought already to be taking. But then he set his teeth and darted back in, all liquid movement interrupted by the shaking of his hands, which didn't stop him from getting in another solid shot. Which, again, he held, steeling himself to stay in Shiloh's personal space, steeling himself not to instinctively stumble backwards.


HP: 34
DMG: 7
CHG: 3/3

The grin vanished as Taym was sent stumbling back, and this time there was a bit more leery circling before another strike was attempted--a feeble, nervous little swipe that barely nicked Shiloh's arm, a stark contrast to the vicious torso shots he'd been doling out before. Apparently it didn't take much to shake Taym's confidence.

"Looks a bit unwieldy," he said, with a jerk of his elbow at Haruka's chain as he attempted to put himself out of range again--a counterproductive move but one that was driven by pure instinct. It was hard to say which of them--the deer, the Hunter--was the vicious one and which one the nervous, shaky prey. Taym was doing a good job of being both at once. Maybe a cornered rat was a better analogy than a dog.

HP: 30
DMG: 1
CHG: 3/3