pyr min solemnly swears he is up to no good (twinclaws) wrote in emillion,
Pyr couldn't help being amused at the way Juliette's eyes narrowed. Did she regret pulling her blow? Her temper seemed to be surfacing; perhaps that would lead her to get a bit more creative with her attacks. It would be no fun if she stuck to textbook moves.
He regretted the thought almost instantly, as Juliette launched into an entirely different attack, an entirely different style, even, and drove him back. He had an idea of what she may be trying to accomplish - he'd seen the practice dummies scattered around, and knew from experience they were wonderful aids when it came to cornering an opponent - but was powerless to stop her advance. But if he got cornered, he'd be done for, and he wasn't giving her the satisfaction of going down so easily.
Yet go down was exactly what he did as her foot connected with his chest. That kick had the full weight of her body behind it, and, though she was slender, the impact managed to stagger him. Rather than resist the fall by adopting a haphazard stance that she could exploit further, he let himself be knocked down and, taking care to fall without hurting himself, rolled away and stood up before she could bear down on him.
She seemed a lot more serious about the bout than she had been the previous week, but he'd meant to rile her up and seeing what would happen, hadn't he? He'd see his experiment through, even if it meant he'd be taking more damage. And in a way, this made it more interesting. If he had to hold her interest long enough to see if she'd let her guard down, though, he needed to win this sparring match, no doubt about that.
Pyr thought back to his lesson with Drake. The Councilor had praised his feints, hadn't he? And Pyr enjoyed feinting; he felt more comfortable setting up a ruse than attacking right away. And since Juliette seemed to be expecting him to use tricks anyway, it would probably work, as long as he made her believe the trick was somewhere different from where it actually was. With that thought in mind, he closed the distance between them again and launched a few kicks of his own, none of which did a lot of damage, but that was okay. He made sure to fabricate a habit for Juliette to pick up; letting his left shoulder drop slightly when he feinted right, and vice versa. He didn't mess up his form badly enough that it would create a severe imbalance, but just enough so that Juliette would no doubt notice. Then he only had to switch up the pattern, and attack from the side she least expected him to.
After a few attacks following his pattern, he initiated a new one, but this time when he let his left shoulder drop, he let his real attack come from that side too; no doubt she had expected him to aim for a hit from his right, and that would be the key to getting past her guard. If she fell for his trap, that was.