fandomtownies | The Preserve

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.

"Sort of," Kaidan acknowledged, letting go of Kanan's arm and getting to his feet. "It's about control. Keeping control of your own body, taking control of the other person, or people's. There's several different types of hand-to-hand, but the one I learned is meant to end fights in a minimum amount of time. It's mostly for defending yourself, or defending something else."

He fidgeted a second, picking grass off his pants.

Kanan considered that. The words and the fidget both, really. And then he raised a hand and dusted off his shoulder, mostly for something to do with it.

"I can understand that," he replied. "The lightsaber form I know best is tailored to dragging a fight out, to surviving longer than an opponent, saving stamina while they give it their all trying to take you out. This sounds like a fighting style made to counter that sort of mindset. Get in close and end it quickly, before you can get worn down."

He hesitated a moment, and then added, "This is why I need to train against everyone I can. Because I know my way around a blaster, but without my lightsaber, there's only so much I can do if they out-armor me or I end up disarmed."

Kaidan thought about it and tossed him the bamboo. "Go slow, but show me a strike with this, as if it were your light saber."

"The way I fight, it's in two parts. It's meant to protect whatever's behind me, and it's meant to kill or incapacitate enemies quickly so I can go on to the next threat and end that quickly. The entire goal is to finish the mission and get out to report back."

Sentinel. SPECTRE. It made for an odd mix.

Kanan caught the bamboo with ease, slipping far more readily into a stance that he was clearly comfortable with.

"If I'd finished my training, I'd be more well-versed in offensive forms as well," Kanan noted. "I picked up some Jar'kai, that's the two-bladed style, but that'll really only do me any good if I ever manage to find a second crystal."

Which... was not a prospect that was looking terribly likely, these days.

He lifted the bamboo, and then stepped forward with a simple, straightforward strike, aimed for Kaidan's shoulder.

Kaidan pivoted slowly to dodge the bamboo and brought a leg up, knee to hip, and slowly extended in a kick. He demonstrated the three modes of extension - aiming his foot at Kanan's hip, at his chest, and then at the underside of his chin. "How would you correct the strike? It's plasma. If it hits me at all, I'm maimed or dead, so my goal would be to keep out of the way of the blade, keep you off balance so you couldn't swing it, or keep you far enough away that a strike wouldn't hit. In this instance, I would follow up a kick with biotics."

"And if I were in your position, I might try to shove an opponent away with the Force," Kanan noted. "But assuming using the Force is only going to get me in more trouble, the best option is distance. A lightsaber wielder losing their balance is a potential wildcard. They're as likely to injure you as themselves. And," he lifted an elbow, tucked in the other, and twisted his wrist around, bringing the bamboo down toward Kaidan's hip. "Trying to avoid the blade will only take you so far. All I need on you for those strikes in particular is speed, and you've lost your leg."

Kaidan nodded, "Which is why my follow up would be biotics." He smiled grimly, "Assuming I didn't have a gun. If I did, you'd be on the defensive pretty much immediately. I assume lightsabers block bullets as well as blaster bolts?"

He thought of something, "Does the sword shut off if it loses contact with your hand?"

Tilting his head a little, he examined the sword and asked another question, "Why would you go for the hip? Three inches in height, you'd split me in half."

"The sword shuts off," Kanan confirmed. "And I've never tried to block a bullet with it, but I suspect it would simply reduce it to slag. You're welcome to shoot at me to test that theory."

He wasn't holding his breath on that front. He had a hard enough time asking people to throw pebbles at him, here.

There was another moment, while that last question registered. And then he looked faintly horrified.

"The aim is to incapacitate," he said, actively taken aback. "I can kill a person. I have killed with it. But if I can take a leg instead of a life, I damn well will."

"You're going to have to show me a Force shield before I start flinging bullets at you," Kaidan pointed out, "Show me you can block it if it gets past the sword."

Kaidan would have zero problems throwing pebbles. That would be easier than throwing punches.

He shot Kanan a very lopsided smile, "Remember when I said that everything I do is lethal? I wasn't kidding. If I took a leg, that person would be alive on the ground within my defensive sphere. That's not acceptable."

"I've I've taken a leg instead of a life, it's because I'm damn certain I have control enough of the situation to survive doing so." Kanan pulled in a breath, and then shrugged. He wouldn't fault anybody for making damn sure his opponent was down, even though it had very nearly gotten ugly on Tuesday for what was likely the same reason. "You find something for me to shield, and I'll show you how that works. I don't think there's much that can be said by either of us to change one any opinions on killing in that situation. I was taught a defensive lightsaber form for a reason."

Kaidan nodded, "If I'm fighting, I'm defending something. Anything within my defensive sphere is getting put down in a manner it won't get up from, because I can't afford for it to get past me, or to bring me down and give line of sight to whatever it is I'm guarding."

He nodded at a nearby tree, "Can you put a meter by meter shield in front of that?"

Kanan shrugged and tossed the bamboo stick to the side.

"Where? Ground level?"

Easy enough.

"Sure, that works. Higher up would be better, but my aim's pretty good. Will you know if it weakens or breaks?" Kaidan asked.

"It'll break when I let it go," Kanan replied. "I'll know if I weaken."

He held up his hands toward the tree and reached into the Force.

"You can aim higher if you want."

He was pretty much just covering the trunk for good measure.

Was he doing this? He was. He took a breath, then another, and then he triggered his implants. His Omni sprang to glowing orange life on his left arm. His voice, when he began to speak, was devoid of emotion. "We'll start with Cryoblast. Don't blame me, I didn't name these. On an unprotected person, it will freeze them solid and shatter them in 1.8 seconds. On an armored target, it will weaken the armor and slow them down. Multiple hits will freeze them solid. While it's active, any other biotic ability that hits the target, as well as plasma bolts or bullets, will cause a detonation. My recharge speed is approximately 4 seconds. I usually go with six, just to be sure."

With that, he brought his left hand up, aimed at the tree, and triggered his implants.

There was no physical projectile. There was nothing but the sound of water vapor in the air freezing along the shield Kanan was holding up.

From Kaidan, there was no emotion. Not even static. There's a void where there should be a person.

Every four seconds, he fired another blast, so Kanan could see what he meant by 'detonation'. Ice turned into jagged shrapnel with a sound almost like an implosive pop. It didn't fly all that far, but the speed it was going, it didn't really have to. After about four, he stopped.

"What I'm doing is firing masses of super-cooled subatomic particles that snap-freeze on the target."

"It's a hell of a trick," Kanan said, watching the vapor in the air form along an invisible barrier. "I can feel it through the Force, another energy at odds with what I'm holding in front of the tree. And you say it'll cause a detonation if it interacts with other biotic abilities?"

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