come_sailaway | Pack it up, pack it in,

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Pack it up, pack it in,

CHARACTERS: Darcy, and YOU?!
DATE: First half of September prior to the event
LOCATION: Sports deck
SITUATION: A pirate-sponsored fight club for the sake of ~~beating the shit out of each other~~ bettering each other
WARNINGS: It’s a fight club. Violence is to be expected.

I came to win

Fliers go up around the ship, as they so often do. This time put up with a reasonable amount of tape and written in a much less flowery hand than people would expect, the announcement ‘FIGHT CLUB TUESDAY EVENINGS SPORTS DECK: MAKE FRIENDS AND THEN HIT THEM’.
Anyone going to the sport’s deck after 7pm for the Tuesdays before the excursion will find tennis court set up for an impromptu fight club. There’s a notebook with a pen off to one side as a sign-in sheet, and a small list of rules written in the same handwriting as the fliers.
-No killing or dying
-Respect tapping out
-If you’re learning, respect your teacher/s
-If you’re teaching, respect your student/s
-Cause problems, get kicked out

Off to the sidelines, Darcy can be found supervising, keeping an eye out for any issues.

Battle me that's a sin

In one corner is supplies for fencing and swordplay. Three protective jackets, mesh masks, and blunt training sabers in a loose pile, plus whatever weaponry people themselves supply. There’s a circular arena drawn out on the ground, with a narrower fencing piste drawn through the middle of it.

I won't ever slack up

For those more inclined to hand-to-hand combat, a couple of the punching bags from the gym have been dragged out onto the court, along with focus-pads and a couple of long strips of bandages bandages to wrap one’s hands with. An arena has been drawn out, about the right dimensions for a boxing ring.

Punk you better back up

Over on the furthest side- deliberately angled to face off the ship- there’s a makeshift shooting range consisting of a bunch of water bottles and some mannequins from the Tommy Bahama laid out as targets to shoot at. A line has been drawn on the ground, presumably to stand behind when shooting.

Try and play the role and yo the whole crew'll act up

Right in the middle of everything is an arena marked out for no clear purpose, with no equipment nearby. It can probably be presumed that this is somewhere for people to spar, or more likely, show off in front of everyone.

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Erin observes this young swordsman for a long while, squatting on her heels with a distant but interested expression on her face. His weapon is familiar enough, plenty of Lost and for that matter mortals use weapons that differ only in trivial details, but what has her attention is his style. While there are only so many ways to swing a sword every culture has their own style, and she's struggling to place this one. It's almost Irish, which takes its notes from the English occupation and the warriors that followed the grey monks over there, but not quite right somehow.

Hrm. Johnny had said he didn't know if she was from an Earth. That does seem to suggest some not-Earth.

Fucking fascinating.

"You fight like someone's going to write a book about it," she says at last, aloud. "Good footwork, good follow-through, impressive control of the weapon but it's so...pretty. Who's got you fighting all pretty, youngblood?"

Dimitri's not startled to find himself watched. He's a little more startled to find himself watched through a blindfold, but at this point he assumes nothing about anyone on the Serena Eterna. He's got no idea how metal or bare bone can see, either, but Bastion and Skulduggery make do. A moment later, as he drops back into a rest position, he recognizes the newcomer who'd beaten Darcy. Someone to be cautious of. He'd rather not take a bludgeon to the head, especially since he doubts he'll handle it as (relatively) gracefully as Darcy did.

"How do you mean, 'pretty'?" he asks. The question's genuine, though his diction is stiff. "It's simply how I was trained. Faerghan upbringing. I had my first lesson in swordplay as soon as I had the grip strength to hold one." He doesn't mention this often -- people tend to take it poorly, for some reason -- but he wants to see what the newcomer makes of it. "Of course it isn't this precise in a real fight, but I'm safer when my muscle memory is consistent. For one thing, I'm liable to break my weapon otherwise." An odd statement without context. Erin can likely recognize that the sword in Dimitri's hands is expertly crafted: largely unornamented, with an almost hyperreal shine to the the steel, not a blade mere clumsiness should be able to break. "It's kept me alive so far. And I find the repetition soothing."

The look Dimitri levels at the newcomer is steady, calculating, slit pupils narrowed. (It helps that Erin doesn't have eyes to make contact with.)

"And you? I don't recognize your style, either, but you're clearly skilled. How did you learn?" It's a better question than 'where'; odds are the answer would mean nothing to Dimitri.

Erin listens patiently, pointed ears twitching every now and again as she focuses. When Dimitri is done she does not answer the question immediately, instead lapsing into a thoughtful expression.

"You're a soldier," she says at last. It's not a question. "And unless I miss my guess, you're the Dimitri that Darcy mentioned. My pleasure to meet you; please, call me Erin. As for how I learned..."

She stands and stretches. Something in her back clicks violently. "A lot like Miss Darcy just learned. Me and mine, we were never soldiers; we were warriors. Are warriors. The needs are different, the resources are different. I'm used to full contact spars and then limping off to the medic after, all kinds of scenarios. Hunted through the woods like dogs, three on one, one time the Spring Queen rented out a bar in exchange for curing the owner's cancer and we had this fucking brawl..." she trails off, wistfully. "Not that I neglected formal mentors when I could get them. Paid this German swordmistress with my body for something like eight goddamn months and she ran me through the wringer night and day, did time in the local militia. Fought. Killed. My sword's a mongrel wherever it goes."

"That would be me. I was trained as a soldier, but I've fought as both." Sent to the uprising in the west as a soldier, yes. Hurling himself screaming towards the commander whose sneering dismissal burned like a brand in the back of his mind? Tearing through the steel armor of grown soldiers for the sake of a boy barely older than him? Not the actions of a soldier, and they've been closer than usual to the front of his mind of late.

Dimitri inclines his head. "'German'? Is that a style, a profession, a place, or something else?" He ... has absolutely no idea how to respond to the rest of that sentence and so he is not going to try.

"Ah. My apologies, I caught that you were human and mortal and made some assumptions that I should not have made. Germany's a place back at home, but it being just one place is uh...new. Relatively new. They spent a lot of time being many distinct places that were usually at war with each other and then a long time being the favorite battleground of kings who wanted to show how long their dicks were, so their swordsmanship is also a bit of a mongrel wherever it goes."

Erin stands, slowly. She makes no sudden moves.

"Do you have a guess why I did your friend like that, youngblood?" she asks, softly.

Dimitri sighs. It wasn't pleasant to see Darcy taken down like that, and his instinct is to defend his friend, but ... "She was trained as a fencer. It impacts her footwork, the way she approaches an opponent. She's still in the habit of moving in straight lines. She's adaptable and skilled -- she's improved a great deal even in the time I've known her, and she fought admirably against the zombies last month, but I still worry about her in live combat."

They've both approached their training with each other lightheartedly, for the joy and the art of it; he'd figured Darcy was getting enough realist drilling from her other mentors. He's wondering if he should have been harder on her, himself.

"The zom - Christ, okay, that's where we're at in life I guess." Erin doesn't bother masking her surprise, but something tells Dimitri that beneath the surprise is a certain...weariness. Less shock, and more, "oh, those are here specifically are they."

She shakes it off after a moment. "Well-reasoned. I got my orientation here from Johnny Summer, who seems to think folks could use a hand here and there. Figured I'd play to my strengths, check out on the ship's small unit tactics. I'm prepared for a 'yes' here but: are you and I the only folks on board with an idea of how to do that in melee?"

Edited (I am, you see, a fool) 2022-09-13 19:20 (UTC)

"You're familiar with the concept, then. It was my first experience with the things, but I've gathered they're a well-known fiction on Earth and similar worlds. Walking corpses, dressed as our loved ones. The Captain is a sadist, but that was a particularly sick touch." Dimitri's voice flickers, dropping low with fury before returning to a cold neutral. "They weren't intelligent, but there were swarms of them. We're lucky as many of us survived as we did." He shakes his head. "The month before that, any contact with water would compel you to truth or lies, and you wouldn't know what you'd said until the effect wore off. There were a few deaths because of that, I'm sure you can imagine. That was when I arrived. Before that, there was a voluntary excursion to a 'summer camp', which I understand is another concept from Earth. Before that there was a battle royale. So that's what to expect from the Captain, which is There seems to be no pattern but the bastard's whims.

"As to the passengers ... We're not the only ones with experience in group melée, but you're right, we're by far in the minority." Dimitri frowns, running through his mental roster. "SecUnit might, though I don't know for certain. The pirates ... Blackbeard and Izzy Hands, at least." He casts a glance over to where Stede is, politely, getting his ass handed to him. "Stede and Lucius, not so much. Watson has been a soldier, but he was discharged for injury; he's the ship's informal surgeon. Apart from that ... I hardly know everyone on board. You'd want to talk to Skulduggery -- you can't miss him, he's a living skeleton -- or Stede, in fact. He's not a fighter, but he seems to know everyone."

Dimitri rubs the side of his neck, flushing sheepishly. "I'm sorry, that was a lot of information all at once."

Erin laughs, light and pretty and friendly. "Youngblood, don't apologize. I just got kidnapped from my dimension, some exposition is a favor. Honestly it's helping set a vague worry at ease. I thought for a bit that this ship was...somewhere else, but the details are all wrong for it, and you just put paid to the last of those nagging doubts."

Erin approaches to the absolute furthest distance that she can be and still offer a polite handshake, and offers it out. "So, thanks. You ever need a favor you just let me know, and I'll probably hit you up for sparring sometime. That said I gotta ask, and...there's no not-insensitive way to say this, but like. I can tell you're big and strong, but it's not adding up. You're stronger than your size and it's not like you're small. Is that just a thing with humans where you're from, is 'human' the wrong word to be using for you in the first place, or are you like...magic."

"Well, I'm glad I could reassure you, though I'm not sure the alternative is better. The Captain arranges these ... trials ... because our suffering powers his magic. He's after godhood, though why and to what end we don't yet know."

Dimitri blinks at the offered hand a moment before remembering what it's for. He's almost as ginger as Erin is about accepting it; his handshake is godawful, floppy and limp like he's afraid to exert any actual grip. Because he is. Which leads nicely into Erin's question.

"I'm human, yes, but not from Earth. I was born with what's called a Crest -- a power passed down through the blood. Mine confers extraordinary strength. They're well-known in my world, but rare."

"Ah! That explains why you kinda carry yourself like the folks I know who are also stronger than they look, thank you kindly." Even the weak handshake is a big Ogre-y, though admittedly usually only the skittish youngbloods get like that.

Then again, who's to say this Dimitri isn't like that.

"Don't think I'm shaking off the thing with the Captain, it's just...every time I've had to kill a wizard it's been an entire affair. One bastard took two years of research before I got him. Two years! Off the top of my life, little shit." Erin makes a Face. "So I've resigned myself to being in for the long haul when it comes to this situation. It's like this every god damn time."

Erin's spot on. This Dimitri is absolutely like that.

"Do you ... make a habit of hunting wizards?"

Not much else to say on that, really.

"No, it just keeps happening," Erin mutters bitterly. "In the main I try not to fuck with wizards at home. They're bad news and, as established, they suck to kill. But," she pauses, brightening, "is that a different relationship with wizards on your world I'm detecting in that question?"

"Yyyes," Dimitri says slowly. "Is your world one of the ones where only some people can use magic?" It being an Earth doesn't guarantee that. "Everyone in my world can use some magic. Though don't ask me for a demonstration, my attempts tend to be ... explosive. Some people train in spellcasting for one profession or another -- chefs and surgeons refine fire magic for cooking and cautery, and some soldiers practice battle magic in the way that others train in the lance or sword. Some scholars study the theory and the nature of magic -- I suppose that's who you would call 'wizards'. But it's strange to consider them distinct from other scholars -- of botany or history, for instance."

"Christ, how to explain...you wanna get out of the training circle?" Erin nods her head at some of the seats for fighters to rest on, and starts explaining on the way over.

"My Earth has...a bad relationship to most kinds of magic. Even magic that should be, or can be, or just is, good and natural and a part of the world actually. My people, the Lost, we usually think of sorcerers as either people who know a lot about our particular magic, who are powerful with our particular magic even if they don't know anything much, or ideally both. But the Winter Court says: Earth Is Stranger Than Arcadia, and they're right. Like, just me existing is an existential nightmare but there's also other kinds of magic that are bizarre to me. Ghosts are a thing and they have nothing to do with my people so like, that keeps me up at night if I think about it too long."

The blind warrior sits with a heavy noise from her ice-mail, which glistens prettily in the daylight. She gestures while she continues.

"So imagine this for a moment, in a society where money is in theory the way you get social standing rather than birth. It isn't, not completely, but we tell people it is and they sometimes make the mistake of believing it. Anyway! You have a poor man, and he stumbles on some magic that lets him tell the future a little. He uses it to win some money. Maybe he pays his debts. Well, his debts are paid, and the magic still works, so he pays his rent. He educates himself. He keeps practicing the magic so he gets better at it, like anyone does when they practice something. Now, it can stop here. I'm sure there's lots of wizards peacefully running small businesses that just never seem to get hit by economic shocks."

Erin turns her head so that she's 'looking' at Dimitri; that musical voice gets low and fast, not rushing through her words but with the cadence of someone reliving a painful memory: "But say it doesn't stop there. After all, no one believes in magic. And if they did, who can catch him? He's just very good at guessing, after all. He sets up a rival at work to fail after he sees a bad deal coming in; now he has his new promotion. He knows when an accident will take place on the road, and ensures his cheating wife travels down that road, at that time. Investigations into common links between the victims always find Our Man smelling like roses. What possible way could he have arranged everything, even if he's the one who keeps benefiting."

She sighs and looks away again. "And then some Autumn Court with a lot of moral flexibility uses their own prophets to figure out it's him, finds me, and hires me to kill him because he hurt someone they love, and I spend eight and a half fucking years with THAT side project on my oven at all times because any plan I think of to catch him can get predicted."

Dimitri's expression darkens. He's sheathed his blade now that they're sitting, but his grip tightens on the hilt. "That seems to be one of the few features common to every world: those who have power, no matter the source, will abuse it.

"Most power in my country is from birth, yes. Leicester -- our neighbor -- favors profit, though all the roundtable dukes are from old noble lines, and that shows no sign of changing. But even in Faerghus, wealth plays a role. Kleiman held only a single fort before they sent troops to raze Duscur and occupy its land." His lip curls, and his shoulders bunch; his voice rattles with the kind of ice that bursts the trunks of trees at the depth of winter. There's a flare of static, a brief scent of possible. Dimitri spits onto the deck, and it's a wonder it doesn't freeze.

... and then his anger falters, as he remembers how helpless he is, how far he is from being able to do anything about it. It's not gone, but his shoulders sag. "I can imagine it all too well, is what I mean to say. Fortunately, Fódlan's magic is largely limited to healing and manipulation of the elements ... as far as I know, at any rate." Congratulations, Erin, you've opened up whole new vistas of paranoia for the boy.

"And only a few know of this power? Surely it would be easier to manage if everyone was aware of the possibility. How can such a thing be kept secret?"

"I don't rightly know, which scares me," Erin admits in a small voice. "I know why my people were myths for thousands of years but...the rest? I can only imagine that mortals are complicit in their own ignorance. I don't like to imagine that though."

She turns her head. "Sounds like you've got feelings on this Duscur. If I'm reading you right one of your bannermen pillaged it. Sacked the towns, violated the women, whole deal? We had that back home, for...no, we still have that back home."

"You would be correct." A hint of that growl, again. The whispers at the back of his skull, the hands clutching at his ankles, ash and smoke in the back of his throat. Dimitri shakes his head, dispelling the visions. "There's more to the story, but ... we shouldn't get into it. Not here." After a couple rounds of this conversation, he's learned his lesson; the whole sports deck doesn't need to hear him rant about treason and slaughter.

Dimitri shakes his head again. Subject change, before he winds up shouting anyway. "How does one catch a precognitive sorceror, then?" And ... "You mentioned an Autumn Court. Are you from the same world as Giles and Oswald?"

"Oh." Erin can take the hint, and uses the subject change to switch gears mentally. "Jury is out on if it's the same world but it seems to be substantially similar at least. As for the wizard, well. We thought he was one of us for awhile, my crew and I. Then when we ruled that out after four fucking years we stakes him out to test the limits of his powers. Once we figured out he only had the one trick we bought a dream prison with a succubus inside it and gave her freedom on the condition that she kill the wizard for us. He wasted away, panicking for nearly a month, and died in a hospital bed. The little prick."

She grins, feral and satisfied. Most of Liz's jobs had been bad, but that one was sweet as honey.

Oof. Just like that, Dimitri’s on edge again. Not because he doesn’t understand -- no, he recognizes that vicious satisfaction all too well. It stirs in sympathy beneath his ribs, the bloody-tusked victory of destroying someone who had preyed on others with impunity. Brutally. Bitterly. Letting them suffer in desperate, terrified agony; letting them taste even a fraction of what they had wrought upon the innocent --

Dimitri’s head gets very loud, very suddenly. He twitches to shake off the shades blurring his field of vision.

“I’m glad you were able to defeat him,” he says stiffly. “Someone so willing to abuse a power like that cannot be allowed to live.”

Edited (feeling nitpicky about phrasing) 2022-09-25 23:45 (UTC)

"Mm. Yeah. I've turned it over in my head a bit since going down a life path with slightly less murder but," she shrugs. "You show me a wizard that deserves to live and I'll kiss you on the mouth. Well, a wizard from my joint, anyway. Sounds like yours are a bit more civic-minded."

Erin stands and dusts herself off. "I'll be here Tuesdays, youngblood. You keep well, yeah?"

"It helps that our magic is just another skill. You might as well take issue with sewing or fishing. Though your order of things seems to be more common across the various worlds."

Dimitri follows Erin to her feet, picking up his sword. "And yourself. We should have a match sometime -- I'd love to see your technique firsthand. I'll be here most days, or elsewhere on the sports deck."

Look, he has other interests! It's just that this is the only one he can pursue here.

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Pack it up, pack it in,

Battle me that's a sin

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