fandomtownies | The Preserve

Yeah, Kanan was squinting at his phone when he made his way up to their meeting point in the woods. He had a bag slung over his shoulder, too, and on his feet he was sporting a pair of brown boots, much like the ventilated black ones he'd picked up last week.

Guess who had gotten his gear when nobody showed up in the park for practise yesterday!

"A wild animal matches my eyes," he said, glancing up from his phone at Kaidan. "That's got to be the first time I've heard that one."

It wasn't wrong. But it was still a first.

Kaidan dropped into a split and reached for the toes on his left foot. "True, though," he noted as he came back to center and then bent to the right. "I've never seen deer that color."

"Well, I don't think they're meant to match me in particular," Kanan noted, glancing back at his phone. "I've seen them in passing around here and just sort of figured that's what they were supposed to look like. I've never seen deer anywhere else."

"Earth deer are usually brown, or reddish-brown," Kaidan answered, "There aren't any mammals that color here. A few birds, maybe some lizards, though."

He pushed himself to his feet, then dropped to a front split, bending his elbows and twisting at the waist once he was down. Vertebrae popped. Nodding at Kanan's boots, he asked, "You geared up?"

"Got everything Don insisted I needed," Kanan agreed, shutting his phone off and tucking it into his bag. Better to not have that on him while they did whatever it was they were going to be doing out here. "Apparently I'm as geared up as I'm going to get."

"I have most of the rest of what we'll need," Kaidan nodded, "Kick pads, the like. What do you want to start with?"

"Good question," Kanan admitted. "The hell is a kick pad?"

So, that was where they were, today.

Kaidan let out a slow breath, then rolled into a sitting position. Unzipping the duffel, he pulled out small round pads with what looked like half gloves and straps on the back. "Punching pads." The next set was a meter-long oblong pad with a solid plastic back and two handles. "Kick pads." Digging into the bag, he brought out a meter-long stick of bamboo, "Sword. Best I could do. It's meant to break when it hits. That's for you. I don't use a sword." Lastly, he pulled out a helmet with a grilled face guard. Then, he intoned gravely, "Always use protection."

"Protection in which of these scenarios, exactly?"

It wasn't that he was doubting Kaidan, really. It was just that the closest thing to a helmet that he'd ever been handed while training as a Padawan had generally been to block out his senses, it hadn't been meant as protection. This was a whole lot of equipment that he was certain served a purpose, but if Kaidan hadn't named what things were off for him, he'd have a fun time figuring out just what that purpose was meant to be.

"Hand to hand combat. I certainly as hell don't want you hitting or kicking me until I can see what you consider base strength," Kaidan said, "So you aim for the pads. At some point, you get to see what hitting Barrier with a sword would do. Headgear's mostly here because I had it. Until we're used to sparring, headshots are a bad idea."

He tossed Kanan one of the punch pads. "Stick your hand in it and hold it up." He mimed the action for him.

Kanan caught the pad, considered it for a moment, and then shrugged and stuck his hand in as he was told.

"I'll let you take point on what we do, for now," he decided. "Since you seem to be the one with the game plan here."

And kind of the one with all the hangups, too. Better to move at Kaidan's pace with equipment he was familiar with than stumble through at Kanan's, with him living in eternal bemusement as he contemplated things like protective gear.

"Brace," Kaidan instructed, and then he rabbit punched the pad. It was a swift, short blow, demonstrating where on the pad to aim. "That's the goal."

"Brace," Kaidan said again, and then he hit the pad at full force with a hit that started at his feet and ended at the pad. The pad absorbed most of the impact. "Because you generally don't want something like that hitting you."

"Generally not," Kanan agreed, smiling wryly. "Big fan of not being hit, actually."

As were most people, yes.

"I have to say, I like this thing, though."

What with all the not getting hit it was letting him do.

Kaidan stepped back and shrugged, "If you've got pads up, you won't get hit by me unless you move them out from under something already in motion, and even then, I can probably pull it. I hit what I aim for."

He made a 'gimme' motion with the pad, "Let's see what you can do. That'll give me an idea what I'm in for."

Kanan nodded and pulled the pad off, passing it over to Kaidan.

"Sounds good," he replied, slipping into a deceptively casual ready stance. Most of what he did these days leaned into 'deceptively casual.' All the better for surprising the hell out of people when he hit them hard enough to snap horns off their heads, say. "Let me know when you're ready, then."

Kaidan slid the pads over his hands, slapping the velcro straps closed over his wrists. He smacked them together to settle them and took up a relaxed guard stance. His eyes tracked everything in the clearing, then settled on a point somewhere slightly over Kanan's head, "Ready."

The moment Kaidan gave his okay, Kanan moved. Not in any way that really approached superhuman, though that wasn't for lack of an ability to do so. He moved very much like a man who hadn't spent the past ten years pretending to be useless, though. Not quite like a boxer, though after years of brawling and doing hard work for a lving Don hadn't been entirely wrong about his build. He took the easy stance he'd fallen into and he threw himself behind it, pushing off from one foot, stepping into his punch, fist headed hard and fast in a snapping motion into the pad in a motion that shouldn't have pushed the upper limit of normal human capacity. Not with as lazily as he seemed both in the moment before and the moment immediately following that swing.

But, evidently, what he had to work with was a heck of a lot. And that was without throwing the Force behind it, too.

Kaidan's eyes went from unfocused to intent as Kanan moved, following the line of his form. He frowned, "Where'd you learn to fight, in a bar? You're not trying to fly, get your elbows in and do it again."

That... was admittedly not the reply that Kanan had been expecting, there. He blinked and frowned back, stepping back into his stance.

And then pausing to re-think it for a moment.

"Where do you think I learned to fistfight?"

Still, those elbows came in. And now, instead of that lazy opening stance, what he was starting in was something a little less 'bar brawl' and a little more 'Soresu.' Not exact, of course. He had to adapt what he knew to work with a fist instead of a sword. The reach was different. He had to position his feet slightly differently in order to account for that.

It still wasn't quite right when he stepped into his next punch, but this time around was a marked improvement. The strength behind it was the same, but it came more honed now, more direct.

"Padawan don't get taught hand to hand?" Kaidan asked, nodding approval at the slightly better form. "You want the blow to start at the ground and come out through your fist. Use all the muscles on that side of your body, not just chest and shoulder."

"We get taught sword technique and some hand-to-hand. Enough to get us by until we can get our lightsabers back if we're disarmed," Kanan explained, frowning faintly. "And my training was never completed."

It was almost sad, the fixation on getting one's saber back after being disarmed, sometimes to one's own detriment.

"Again, then?"

This time he was pretty much going to crouch and spring into it, then. His attacks with his lightsaber were never just chest and shoulder, either. It stood to reason that an unarmed attack would be the same.

Kaidan frowned, "Your training is going to be backward from what I know, then." He watched Kanan shift his center of gravity down and took the hit on the pad, but shook his head. "You shouldn't need to do that. Stand, the way you were before. Right foot back. Hit with your right hand, and when you do, keep your elbow tucked and come forward on your right toes slightly. Feel it coming from the ground, moving through your muscles, and impacting on the pad." After a beat he said, "Do not Force punch me. That's cheating."

"I'm not using the Force," Kanan muttered, but he did as he told, adjusting his stance back into it, the way it had been before. He stood there a few moments before actually moving this time, closing his eyes and just envisioning the punch as Kaidan described it before opening them again, nodding, and committing to it.

This punch was much better.

"I know you're not," Kaidan said, "I just didn't want you to get lost in the visualization and wind up using it." The punch hit and Kaidan nodded, "That's how you want it to hit. Here, let me show you why you want the elbows tucked."

Ripping the velcro back, he shook the pads off and stepped into place. "Punch me like you did the first time."

Kanan squinted at Kaidan for a moment at that, and then shrugged and slipped into his more familiar, less refined stance.

He was pretty much ready for this to end badly for him as he threw the punch he was told to throw, yes.

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