fandomtownies | The Preserve

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.

Have a little faith. Kaidan's not that sloppy.

As the fist came at him, Kaidan turned slightly and grabbed Kanan just above the elbow. He used the arm as a lever to send Kanan stumbling in a square. "You can yank all you want, but I can keep you from locking it down. At this point, I can put you anywhere I want, and I have the options of throwing you across the clearing. This is a position you don't want to let yourself get in."

Releasing the arm, he stepped back. "Bring in your elbow and do it again. This time, when I grab your arm, yank it out of my grip. If you aren't able to, you're not bringing it in far enough."

Well. That little dance was a lot more being puppeted around than Kanan was strictly used to. He gave his shoulder a little roll as Kaidan let him go, and then stepped back into his own ready stance. This time, the way he'd been instructed to do before, he brought in his elbow to swing, ready to pull his arm back again.

Stumbling around at someone else's mercy wasn't his idea of a great time.

Kaidan did the same sidestep and grabbed, and Kanan's yank caused him to stumble before his grip was broken. He nodded, "That is what you want to happen. It lets you keep control, and brings the person grabbing you into scope. I'd have to take two or three steps back to get out of range, and if you moved fast enough, you could do some serious damage - especially while they're off balance in that stumble."

Kanan nodded as well, his expression serious as he took what Kaidan was telling him and applied that knowledge to what he already knew.

And this was why he wanted to see how he held up against Kaidan. If the man kicked his ass, he'd at least have the decency to explain how that happened.

"Is there a way to recover from either situation? Once they've got my arm, which ideally won't happen anyway, or that stumble if I grab someone's arm and they pull?"

"Did you learn how to take a fall, or to come out of one in a roll?" Kaidan asked, thinking, "There's a few ways to handle it if someone has control of your arm, but the fastest is to be an immobile object, which means dropping to your ass and kicking them, either straight up or levering them over you. Other ways, break their hold, or use your momentum against them and turn it into a backhand."

He thought some more, trying to articulate this to someone who hadn't trained this way - and who didn't share the same language, really - was a little harder than he'd anticipated. "If you stumble, use it. If you're going forward - go forward. Get an elbow up, go for their throat or face and bring the other arm down low, to their stomach or kidneys. You're gonna take a hit, because if you're in scope and the person has half a clue what they're doing, they're going to hit you, but you're not a small guy, and if you take it and step into it, you could do some damage."

"Let me show you," Kaidan said, taking a step back and standing in a mimic of Kanan's bar-brawler stance, with his elbows out further from his body than he usually held them. "I'll go slow until you grab me. If you see anyone fighting like this, with their arms out like this, you go for that area right over the elbow. You get control of the arm."

"I can take a fall," Kanan replied, shrugging. "And I can get back on my feet again. Those are both easy enough."

He held up his hands.

"Let's do this, then."

Kaidan moved into a punch at about quarter speed.

And Kanan reached in to grab Kaidan above the elbow, the way he'd been grabbed, himself.

Kaidan waited for the yank and then dropped, landing on his ass and pulling Kanan toward him. "If you feel them start to fall, let go and back up or sidestep, because.." He demonstrated, without actually kicking Kanan, that he could. "If they don't kick.." Kaidan caught Kanan's arm and rolled back further, not fully, but enough to show that if he got his feet up, Kanan would get tossed. It was similar to a move he'd used to throw Emil.

And Kanan stumbled along with all of Kaidan's demonstration, brow still furrowed, committing all he could to memory. He'd remember it. He'd pull it out if he needed it. At least where fighting was involved, he'd always been a quick study, after all.

"Seems like from there it all becomes a bit of a dance."

That wasn't really a criticism. So did swordwork, after all.

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