legionworld | Let's Get Down To Business

Dipper was feeling a lot better lately, but still felt a little awkward around people. Even though he was more himself, his brain-to-mouth filter was more terrible than ever. Not only was there a risk of embarrassing himself in front of Wash, this other dude his age was here, and Dipper had no idea if he was the type to tease.

"When you say 'combat' is that like--hiyah yah yah!" He did some flaily, terrible punches with bad form "--or does running around screaming and improvising other ways to attack besides fists count? Because I've done a lot of the last one."

A pause.

"One time I severed wax Larry King's head with an electric candle."

Dipper looked back and forth between Wash and Pidge, hoping that sounded at least slightly impressive.

If by "impressive" he means "baffling." Pidge can't help but raise her eyebrow in Dipper's direction, but Wash's question takes priority.

"Well...my team's base, the Castle of Lions, was once infiltrated by the Galra, the universe's most terrible alien army. They blew up our power core and took two of my teammates hostage while the others were off on other missions." She has to count on her fingers as she remembers everything that happened. "Lessie...I snuck through the castle via the air ducts, took out some soldiers and a general, brought the Galra defenses down so my friends and I could defeat their commander."

Yeah, she...she just totally one-uped Dipper's story, didn't she? Her smile is nothing short of apologetic.

"But...I have more questions about yours?"

Wash would have been a lot more worried about Dipper's answer had he not already seen the murals on the walls of Dipper's hospital room. He gets the feeling that wax Larry King was pretty low on the scale of horrifying weirdness in Dipper's life. Still, he raises an eyebrow and looks at Pidge when she speaks.

Yeah, that's about what he'd been expecting from the both of them. Time to get to work.

"Questions can wait. This isn't social hour." It's not particularly barbed, but his tone makes it obvious that he means business. "Dipper, improvising is good, but you're here for hand to hand. Right now, your job is to watch and learn." Which means virtually nothing to someone with no combat experience. Uh. "Look for holes, mistakes, and things you want to learn to do yourself. Pidge," and he turns to her and makes a come at me motion with one hand, "show me what you've got."

Wow, fighting a bunch of aliens and retaking a whole castle was kind of impressive. More impressive. Embarrassingly so.

Should've opened with jumping off a cliff into a giant robot and punching someone repeatedly. Way cooler.

It felt weird to not answer the question, though, and authoritative voices just really didn't have enough oomph to get Dipper quiet and obedient, but he kept his answer short.

"Cursed wax figures," he said to Pidge, with a little nod that was a silent 'what can you do?' but then his eyes darted over at Wash and his serious face and he stepped back and knelt down to watch.

Not social hour. Right. He'd just...watch stuff. And try not to say anything else that was weird and led to ongoing questions of "what?" and "why?"

"Yeeeeah, that doesn't really explain it." Pidge said as she got to her feet with a look that suggested she was going to need the whole story at some point.

But for the moment her attention needed to be on Wash and her brain needed to be analyzing. She doesn't really know what he's capable of beyond that he's strong. She doesn't have her Bayard, or her armor. And he's bigger than her, which is a lot less of a problem.

She can go for his legs or his solar plexus. Less easy to defend the legs, much bigger target in the chest. He can probably take a harder hit there too. Legs it is. She bolted forward, aiming a sweeping kick to his ankles.

For a moment, Wash gives Dipper a look, one that says he expects to be obeyed right now, not whenever is convenient for Dipper. He doesn't really want this to be as strict as military training, but if he has to do that to establish some ground rules then he damn well will.

But Dipper gives them some space and takes a knee, and that's good enough. He drops into a ready stance and turns his attention to Pidge, who is already on the move. He sees that sweep coming a mile away - she's not exactly subtle - and jumps, landing in a crouch and swiping for her ankle, intent on upending her entirely if he manages to catch it.

She didn't really expect him to try the same trick on her, but at least her brain is primed for it. So when he catches her ankle, she has the presence of mind to roll rather than just fall. Hopefully that tiny bit of distance she's put between them is enough to play with, but she's also facing her back to him.

Her left hook isn't wild but it's not focused on much more than keeping him at a distance as she pivots around to face him.

She recovers well, Wash notes. That's good. The problem is her getting hit in the first place - a hard enough blow will bring her down completely, and that's what she needs to learn to avoid.

And then Pidge takes a wild swing at him. Well, that's disappointing. He catches it almost without thinking and yanks her in close to him, twisting her arm up behind her back and locking her in a hold. Time to see if she can break it.

He's got a grip like a Galra with a magic arm and a few jerks from side-to-side tells her she's not getting out of this by brute force. She could try to slip out from under his arms.

...Or she could think laterally. He had her upper body in a hold which left her lower body completely free. With his height and her leverage if she angled it just about...

There. It was an inelegant donkey kick backwards, but if she hit the right mark...

JesusfuckingCHRIST-

The kick connects solidly with his balls. Wash lets out a high, pained yelp and drops - drops his grip on Pidge and drops to his forearms and knees on the mat, doing his best to breathe through the pain and blink away the sudden tears in his eyes. Fucking hell he'd just about forgotten how much that hurt. Almost. And now he has a very fresh reminder.

He's never complaining about the codpiece of his armor again. Ever.

At least he'd had the presence of mind to shove Pidge away from him when he fell. The question now is whether she'll wait for him to get back up or go after him while he's down. Either way, he'll deal with it.

Edited 2016-08-23 06:12 (UTC)

Dipper sympathy winced at first, but then, impressed with Pidge's tenacity, he clapped quietly and politely.

Well done, Pidge.

Edited 2016-08-23 06:18 (UTC)

That...

That seemed a little cruel.

Pidge isn't in the habit of kicking a man when he's down. That's not part of the Paladin code. But Dipper's already added insult to the injury and she can't help but grin and give a slight bow. She's not sure how long it's going to take for Wash to get back on his feet, but it'll be more time than she needs to do that.

"Do you need to stop?"

Past experience has taught Wash that there is absolutely nothing he can do for his dignity; it's already forfeit. The best he can do right now is act like nothing ever happened, pick himself up, and move on.

He pushes himself to his feet and drops back into a ready stance, ignoring the applause and the diminishing pain in his groin. Thank God for that healing factor. "Pidge, it's going to take a hell of a lot more than that to put me down. Now c'mon, we're not done yet."

Well, now she knows what to do if she's in a hold at least.

OK, she needs a new tactic. Going straight for the ankles didn't work so maybe she needs to do some misdirection. She keeps her eyes trained on his chest as she advances. She's after his chin, as may become apparent as she leaps and kicks upwards for it.

It's a fairly straightforward rush that turns into a fairly straightforward front kick. That's the problem - Pidge is thinking in straight lines and fighting like she's bigger than she actually is, both of which will get her killed in a real fight. For now, Wash just sidesteps enough for the kick to miss him and waits. No retaliation - he wants to see how she recovers and what she does next.

Pidge's landing is just fine and she takes a few steps back to reassess. Wash isn't really fighting back so there's no way for her to go on the defensive.

...Can she get behind him and jump on his back? She moves back and forth and then she runs. If she can't move fast enough to get around behind him, then she's sliding straight through his legs.

For a moment, Wash is absolutely certain she's going after his balls again, and he's caught between disappointment that she'd repeat the same trick and outright paranoia for damn good reason.

But no, she's trying to get behind him. He waits for her to get through and drives his elbow backwards and down with enough force to make a point but not enough to actually break anything. If he's judging this correctly, the blow should land in Pidge's solar plexus and not her forehead. Again.

She knows better than to try the same thing twice, but if she knew she'd given him that fright she'd definitely have used it. Darn him and his poker face.

She notices his elbow just in time to remember how hard it hurt the last time, but at least she wasn't risking a concussion this time. With a "oof!" she was down flat on her back.

Yeah, that's kind of what he'd thought would happen. Wash takes a step away and offers Pidge a hand up. He's got a good enough idea of her fighting style to work with. "I'm good if you are."

Of course, part of him is still tensed, prepared for her to attempt to pull him to the mat. He's not about to put anything past her.

"Yeah...yeah, I'm done."

No tricks this time. Whatever Wash thinks of her fighting style, she's pretty sure he's gotten a handle on it already. Also, ow.

She takes his hand and lets him help her up, rubbing the spot where he nailed her and trying to catch her breath. "OK...what's next?"

Simple enough. "Now we talk." He glances over his shoulder at their audience. "Dipper, c'mere."

Dipper got up and walked over, looking slightly confused. He'd expected his own little bout of flailing (and failing). Pidge hadn't lasted all that long but it was still better than what Dipper knew he could do. There was no way he'd do as well.

"Do I have to attack you now? Am I allowed prep time or improvised weaponry? Technically, you didn't actually say that couldn't be a thing."

...said the small teenager looking around the room thoughtfully and considering possible improvised shivs or bludgeons.

Dipper's a little behind the conversational curve; then again, Dipper recently had his memory turned inside out, so Wash can't really be impatient with him. "Hand to hand, Dipper. No weapons. And if I wanted to spar with you, I'd tell you. Right now, we're just going to talk."

He waits for Dipper to get closer between looking from one (pre)teen to the other. "So. What did you notice? What stood out to you, good and bad?"

"Just for reference, these are my hands," he said, flapping his small hands at Wash, and the way he did it made them unintentionally look as bitty and delicate as kitten paws. "You can't blame me for trying to find a way around the not-having-something-actually-useful-in-them part when they have to go against other hands -- rules were made to be broken, man. But okay, okay, stuff I learned."

Dipper thought back to the fight, rewinding it in his head and trying to figure out if he'd learned anything. He briefly chewed on his lip, because saying what he'd have done differently felt a little bit like criticizing Pidge for not doing it, and he didn't really want to alienate someone else his age before he'd even had a chance to try to be friends.

Buuuut he felt like some of what he'd done was wrong, and he'd lost in the end, right? Criticism missiles away!

"I would've waited for you to attack me or tried to attack in a way that provoked you into throwing yourself at me, which isn't that hard to do when someone is small. We're low to the ground--"

He held a hand out near his own head and then near Pidge's head, and then stood on tiptoe to try to get his hand up to Wash's height to show the height difference. (And failed, because he couldn't reach that high.)

"--annnd to attack us if we're not throwing ourselves right at you, you'd have to get lower to the ground and lunge. Which works better for us in two ways: one, it's easier to use the momentum of someone bigger than you against them than to try to move them yourself, and two, that would make you bend over more when you have a higher center of gravity, which would make it easier to topple you over."

He drew in a little breath as if he was done...and then continued nitpicking.

"Also, I wouldn't have tried to just punch you because I have the upper body strength of a toddler, so I would've probably done one of those upward palm strikes to the nose that are on those self defense episodes of the afternoon talk shows my mom watches?"

Another pause.

"Or I would've kicked you in your knee, ankle, or instep because the first two are load-bearing joints and the third hurts a lot."

Yep, he was still going.

"Then if you caught my arm anyway and got me into an arm lock like that, I -- actually, I would've still kicked you in the same place. That, I would've done the same." Another pause. "Except a lot harder."

Yep.

"And if that didn't work, I would've turned around enough to try to bite something, because that's worked before. And if that did't work, I would've turned in towards you, since turning the other way would've put more tension on the arm lock and turning towards you would've put less tension on it, and I would've tried to elbow you in the solar plexus or kick something -- again, maybe in a load-bearing joint -- and --"

Okay, he was getting really detailed with this, maybe too detailed. He suddenly stopped.

"But, good things! I was supposed to point out good things, too! Uh, Pidge -- that's your name, right? -- Pidge fell...really...good?"

Wait, that was not the way he wanted to say it! He meant to say that Pidge recovered well from falls, and did good rolls, and bounced back with a lot of momentum, but it came out all awkward.

Edited 2016-08-24 02:30 (UTC)

It was "self defense episodes of the afternoon talk shows my mom watches" that put Pidge over the edge. And then he just kept going. She really, really tried not to get defensive, honestly, she knows it's just good-natured criticism but Dipper's list of hypothetical things that he clearly doesn't really know how to do...It picks at her already raw pride.

She stepped to the side and motioned toward Wash, as if he was a prize in a game show. You just instigated your own humiliation, Dipper, come on down!

"So, go ahead and do all that, if you can. If you know for sure you can bait him into an attack and bite and palm strike and everything. I'm serious, go ahead!"

Pidge did feel like she learned a lot, but her blood is just too hot to say it.

Wash honestly isn't expecting a blow-by-blow recap of the match - usually the only people to pick apart combat that thoroughly are AI or team leaders, and he's pretty sure Dipper is neither. But it's extensive, and it's thorough, and Pidge's reaction isn't exactly unexpected.

"Pidge, stand down." Though that's not completely fair, because intentionally or not, Dipper did just tear her apart. "Dipper, she's absolutely right. It's easy to say what you would do in a fight and a lot harder to actually do it." Of course, there's probably an easier way to make that point and have it stick. "Pidge." He points towards the track. "Two laps. Go cool off." It's only after she's out of earshot (after protesting, of course) that he turns to Dipper and drops into a ready stance. "Dipper, put your money where your mouth is." After that little argument, having Pidge watch Dipper try to spar might affect what Dipper does; it's better to put him through his paces while she's not watching, at least for now.

Dipper immediately looked awkward and embarrassed. The know-it-all smartypants routine had bitten him in the butt more than once, but he eternally had trouble not accidentally falling into it again. He hadn't meant to embarrass Pidge; mostly, he'd been hoping that being thorough would impress Wash.

Instead he'd done one of the things that made it so kids rolled their eyes at him in class sometimes and that he sometimes drove Mabel nuts with. Of course.

"I just meant -- those are things I would've tried to do," he said timidly, briefly eyeing Pidge, worried that he'd embarrass himself in front of a peer. Even with Pidge doing laps, it wouldn't guarantee that Pidge would miss everything. "Like that's what my brain would want to do, that doesn't mean I can get my body to play along."

He was smart enough to know that just being smart wasn't enough.

But he obediently dropped into a ready stance, too, like Karate Kid and Umbra had taught them in their classes and held up his fists. He could do that part right at least. Grunkle Stan had taught him the right way to make a fist long before he'd wound up in the Legion's universe.

Edited 2016-08-28 07:43 (UTC)

Wash raises an eyebrow at that admission. Dipper is smart, yeah, but he's just this side of 'too smart for his own good,' and that can be all sorts of fun to deal with. But he's willing to learn, and that's a good start.

"Sounds like you learned the lesson already." A beat. "But that's not going to get you out of this."

He notes the ready stance and the fists - it looks like this isn't Dipper's first training session - and moves in, aiming an open-handed blow to the middle of Dipper's chest. It's slower than he'd normally go and doesn't have a lot of force behind it; it'll hurt if it connects, and it should knock Dipper down, but it shouldn't break anything.

Dipper swept around in a parry the way Karate Kid had taught him and and swept an arm up for a block. Not a direct one, one meant to cause Wash's blow to slide off to the side -- a direct block just would've hurt his arms and knocked him back.

Since the parry brought him closer, with his other hand, he aimed a fist at Wash's side in a sharp little blow. It didn't have much force behind it but that was the sad reality of all of Dipper's punches. The best he could do was try to aim for weak points like Wash's gut, or try to use his momentum to throw him, and hope the damage accumulated over time.

Yep, this is definitely not Dipper's first training session. Wash is honestly impressed that Dipper got the block up in time; then again, anyone who could survive the apocalypse probably had pretty quick reflexes.

But Dipper's mistake is the same as Pidge's: getting in close to someone much bigger and stronger without a plan or an exit strategy. Wash takes the hit just below his ribs and breaks the block, driving his elbow down. It's still slower and with far less force than normal; it's also the move that dropped Pidge earlier, though Wash has to get a bit lower to aim for Dipper's solar plexus. Time to see just how quickly Dipper learns.

Dipper took the hit and it hurt, but after the wheezing outtake of breath, he twirled around, using the momentum from the blow to keep moving, stumbling back instead of falling and turning it into another parry. A lot of his movements were circular, rooted in some of the softer martial arts moves Karate Kid had taught him, and while that meant that his mistakes caused him to take hits he really couldn't afford to take, he could at least recover instead of going down.

The twirling parry turned into a kick this time, aimed at Wash's knee.

On the one hand, Dipper seems to have a bit more than the basics down. On the other hand, he's still fighting like he's bigger than he actually is, and just like Pidge, that'll get him dropped quicker than just about anything else.

Wash had stayed low after Dipper had stumbled backwards; it makes the kick that much easier to block. He sweeps a forearm downwards into a block, and then sweeps it back up, aiming to throw Dipper's leg upwards and knock him on his back.

And it did. Whump.

"Ow."

Between the blow to the gut he still hadn't recovered from and the way he clonked his head on the mat, he was already almost down for the count, but he rolled back over his own shoulder to at least get on his knees.

With his pulse pounding in his ears and his hackles raised, he...well, treated this like life or death. Which was probably not the best thing to do but he didn't even really realize he was doing it. His brain just said "this is what you have to do to ~~survive~~ get a hit in" and then he did it.

"Owwwww," he whimpered, holding both hands and wincing like he was actually a lot more hurt than he was.

All that training and Dipper hadn't learned how to fall? Wash makes a note to talk with Karate Kid about his curriculum, and-

And evidently he'd hurt Dipper. He feels a pang of guilt and pushes it down. Damage control first; guilt later. "Okay, that's enough for today," he says, dropping to a knee in front of Dipper. "Dipper, are you okay?"

Vulnerable. ~~Weak.~~

Fight. Hurt.

Dipper barely heard Wash saying it was enough for the day. He heard the words but it didn't quite register.

When Wash was close enough, he suddenly sprang up with a punch aimed at Wash's face. His expression was vaguely triumphant but also wild-eyed. Almost feral. For just a moment, his brain had gone into "do whatever it takes" mode, something not entirely thoughtless but still mostly on automatic.

Nope. Definitely not okay.

Wash jerks back, bringing up his arms to block Dipper's punch and pushing back against him, trying to knock him back a bit. "Dipper! That's enough. We're done" His tone is firm, but he can't keep the edge out of it entirely. Evidently sparring with a still-recovering kid is a good way to push fight-or-flight response. Good to know.

That led to flailing and hitting and attempted scratching, the kind of fighting someone did when they were desperate and fighting for their lives--

--and finally Dipper scrambling away, teeth bared, his telekinetic aura flaring unconsciously when it registered that Wash was pushing but not grabbing, meaning he could get away if he tried to move back instead of forward.

And then he blinked as he registered where he was and who was actually in front of him. Wash. Wash was a friend. And Pidge was a teammate and he was just in the gym. No one was trying to hurt him or break things or eat him.

The anger and heart-pounding fear faded away -- and then there was just guilt and him wanting to sink through the floorboards in embarrassment.

"Oh man. Oh man. I'm sorry. I didn't -- I didn't mean to --"

The only way it could've been worse was if he'd twigged out in a sparring match with Pidge. At least Wash understood why he'd twigged out and was hard to hurt.

There's a good amount of blocking and dodging on Wash's part, always either moving away from Dipper or moving Dipper away from him. He can take a hit just fine, so long as he keeps Dipper away from his face. He talks to him all the while, low and steady, like he's trying to coax a frightened cat out from underneath a car: "Dipper, we're fine. It's okay. You're safe."

At least Pidge has the good sense not to get involved, without Wash having to say anything. She's got a good head on her shoulders.

Dipper finally gets out of his own head and Wash breathes a sigh of relief. Good. The last thing he wanted to do was drag Dipper back up to the infirmary and explain what had happened. "It's okay. It happens."

It takes a bit to calm Dipper down - he's upset and embarrassed, and that's not something Wash is going to be able to talk him out of anytime soon. He just has to process it on his own.

It's as good a time for a break as any. Wash calls Pidge and Dipper over to the side of the mat, where he has something that passes for a small cooler. He opens it up and hands both of them a baggie of orange slices and a drink in a silver pouch that, as far as he could tell, is essentially the space future equivalent of a Capri Sun. "Here. Take a break." Goodness knows he's going to need the next five minutes to figure out where to take the training session from here.

Pidge hasn't really said anything, not since she finished those laps just in time to see Dipper have his episode of...feralness? Is that the word? Not something she's ever seen before, even in Shiro. Shiro gets lost in his memories. Shiro panics sometimes. Shiro doesn't...fight like that.

She's really trying not to stare. Trying.

Orange slices and Capri Sun. She's not in the mood to make fun for him for it even if this is a little more appropriate for an 8-year-old. If her small "thanks" for the snacks isn't enough to break the tension than she doesn't think she can do it.

Dipper immediately sat on the mat and started nomming away at the orange slices, hoping that spending his time eating would make up for the awkwardness of not talking after that whole little ordeal.

It didn't really work. He still felt weird and awkward and embarrassed -- and totally noticed Pidge's failed attempt at not staring. So he kept peeking over at Wash, as if he expected him to eventually decide he was mad. And kept peeking over at Pidge, and trying to pretend that he wasn't staring at Pidge's staring.

Then he looked everywhere else except for the both of them.

"So, that was a thing. That I normally don't do. Normally." Normally, he was totally normal, yep. ~~Nope.~~ "It's just I fought these bad guys the last mission, and there was this whole brainwashing thing..."

He twirled a hand vaguely in the air.

Then he finally looked over at Pidge again. "I know I said it already but it came out, like, totally wrong last time, but it's cool how you kept adjusting. What I meant to say about you being good at falling down was...not that. It's that he had a hard time actually keeping you down. You just kept bouncing back up again."

Which was almost as important as not getting knocked down in the first place.

So it was a not-staring contest. The only thing more awkward than a staring contest.

Brainwashing...not really her area of expertise. Not even the Galra really traffic in that. Trauma and horrible augmentation, sure, but not brainwashing. So Pidge stays silent while Dipper talks. It had been frankly frightening to jog back into the room and find Dipper attacking Wash like he'd gone rabid.

He seemed OK now, but she had to stop herself from voicing that thought. Probably better not to emphasize the fact that she's not sure something like that won't happen again. But he's gotta be getting help, right?

She's shaken out of her thoughts when Dipper actually compliments her. Yeah, he's kind of making up for earlier, but it's amazing the difference now that everything's uncomfortable and awkward. She grins at him, chuckling a little.

"I get it. Thanks." If there's such a thing as thoughtfully sipping a Capri Sun, then that's what she does. "You know, Wash would be pretty hard to take down even if we did have weapons. We'd need some kind of real plan."

Meaning she understands where he was coming from, trying to plan his attack exactly.

"That's why I think this whole hand-to-hand thing is lame."

Dipper narrowed his eyes and frowned thoughtfully at his orange slices.

"It's basically impossible to go anywhere without at least something you can use against a bad guy."

He held up a hand.

"That is my tried and true method for taking down things way, way bigger than I am. Hit them with something else that isn't my really--" He turned the hand he'd been holding up into a fist "--really unfortunately undersized fists."

"Small fists and short arms." Actually her hands are probably bigger than Dipper's, but she can at least do him the decency of not openly comparing them.

"I've always been able to trick my opponents and I rarely ever get into the same actual physical space with an enemy that isn't, you know, 20 stories tall or a fleet of battle ships."

Yeah, it's just commiseration at this point -Wash isn't going to let either of them out of this- but it's diffusing the last of the tension in the room.

Let's Get Down To Business

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