Description: When it comes to Pás, K' discovers it's best to try fighting fire with fire. And Pás, for her part, discovers why it is K' should never be allowed to be in a good mood.
Ever so far away from that exotic, fearless girl who appears on the televised fighting circuits, her reputation infamous for taking down opponents as quickly as she sheds her own clothing, this Pás is something of a rare sight. If only that those who only know her by her fighting face would hardly be able to recognize the girl now. Even for being a Brazilian so far away from home, she doesn't stick out from the throngs of Sunday afternoon shoppers as well as she should. Dressed down in leggings, a tank top, and an old grey hoodie, her hair clipped up and her hands dug into her pockets, the Pacific Resistance fighter seems intent on taking a day off from everything -- even herself.
To be honest, lately there's been a lot on her mind, too much for spending the day sitting around her dorm room. Her father's expecting her to accept his invitation, to return home briefly during the next school break. The fact that it seems to fall around the anniversary of her mother's death makes it seem more than a coincidence. Why does he want her back? And if she's not thinking about that, then she's thinking about Tenma Kiryuu kissing her, and grinning like--
Pás frowns, stuffing her hands deeper into her pockets. She forces herself to go back to today's remedy for introspection, which is window shopping and the power that is being able to walk off your worries.
Soon enough, her striding down the Southtown market streetsides, and the girl slows at the front window of some music shop, her eyes locked on some of the guitars on display. Pás eyes them arduously, at least until she's forced back a step by common courtesy to let a young family past, a young child chirping up to his parents how he only wants to play the really big drums and nothing else. She looks after their turned backs as they enter the store. And then she just smiles, very faintly, and keeps on walking.
Pás cuts a highly unusual sight this afternoon, dressed down and subdued, her steps thoughtful and her usual flamboyance absent. In the same vein, barely anyone who knew K' would be able to recognize him now. His sheer relief at Whip's recovery had not abated with time, and in fact it peaked early this morning once he was told his sister was well enough to leave the hospital. K' hated hospitals, and the fact that they could go home had put him-- shockingly enough-- in that rarest of things to see from him: an actual good mood.
Once K' and Whip got settled back in the apartment, he'd realized that the neglected space had nothing in the way of the amenities necessary to support two tired and recuperating siblings. Usually it'd be Whip or Maxima taking care of these things, as K'-- when sent on domestic errands-- had a tendency to become overwhelmed by the profusion of brands, become angry, and buy something completely wrong in a rage. But this time, it couldn't be helped.
However, K''s usual surliness over having to brave errands is absent. Even the irritation of having to go to the store could not kill the relief he still felt. Whip was as safe as she could be, Shurui was staying with Vanessa, both were unlikely to be significantly bothered again anytime soon... for once, worry was not gnawing at the forefront of his mind.
Nonetheless, little of his good mood shows on his face. He was not and would never be an expressive boy. An expression of neutrality remains the only sign that he isn't possessed of his usual grumpiness as he wanders down the sidewalk, across the street and some distance behind Pás. This changes when he notices his errant charge. It takes him a long time to recognize her, and when he does he simply stares for a moment in thought. He knows he's been ignoring her. It's not something he feels any regret or guilt over-- he couldn't help it, and even if he could he still wouldn't feel too bad-- but still...
K' disappears off the street. For all intents and purposes, he just melts away. It's unfortunate Pás ran into K' when he was in one of his rare good moods, because when K' is in a good mood he gets maliciously mischievous. He circles around behind the girl, scaling to the top of a nearby building via a fire escape and stalking her along interestedly: yellow eyes pinned on her back in a way that just might toggle her sixth sense. He's waiting for her to hit a less populated area, and judging by the way he grins to himself and gauges distance, he has nothing good planned.
Honestly. Normal people would just say "Hello."
That sixth sense does get tripped. The Brazilian girl, for some strange, inexplicable reason, swears she can feel eyes burning on her, and those usually of the sort she's less accustomed to. She's well-used to getting stares -- rather enjoying to attract them herself -- but not ones like these. She's the type that's little thought and all intuition, and without pause she arches a glance over her own shoulder. Pás doesn't see squat. She squints one eye briefly, considering, and then lets it go just as well.
And, in the ensuing minutes, the reluctant mentor gets a short glimpse of the life of the spoiled protege. It's pretty boring. She's not driving motorcycles off riverbanks. She's not surrounded in enemies and is engaged in some ridiculous last fight for her life. She's not even taking off her hoodie to show a bit of skin. Pás is merely taking her time window shopping and people watching, though there's a strange urgency in her stride. Most people seem to hurry because they want to get somewhere, but this girl seems to hurry like she's trying to leave somewhere behind. She doesn't mingle. She doesn't check her cell phone in that constant, repetitive way teen girls do. She merely rearranges her designer leather handbag on her shoulder and paces onwards, bleeding out the definition of typical harmlessness.
Utterly unaware that she's being watched, much less followed, Pás' meanderings soon take her to the end of the street, where a small park thrives thickly and greenly at the heart of the city. She heads towards it with a casual absent-mindedness, looking at the flip-flops on her feet than where she's going, her face lost in that distant, unlined look of someone deeply lost in thought. It takes a while, but soon enough she gets right where K' intended, following a paved park path straight into undisturbed seclusion. Late afternoon amber filters through the breeze-lifted leaves of the canopy above, shadows gathering in the alleys of the trees. There is a clearing here, a small, soft patch of free grass fringing a great pond. Trees hang over it, growing towards the water, as if drawn to see their reflections in it. The water laps quietly at the banks, cool and clear. That's where Pás finally stops, if only for a moment, to stare down at her own face mirrored in the water.
Stalking prey was always the only setting in which K' ever had any patience, and in that context his ability to bide his time was almost infinite. He trails Pás without sound, watching her go about her business... and finding it to stand in stark contrast to what he was always shown when she knew he was there. His malicious amusement starts to bleed out first into puzzlement, and then into thoughtfulness.
Whatever he might be thinking about this unusual side of Pás he's being shown, it soon flies from his mind once he sees a chance to exact a little more of his ongoing revenge against the girl for her treatment of him when they first met. Some of that playful malevolence works its way back into his mood, and-- still a little euphoric and crazy from the sheer relief of having pulled through such a rough time with his sister-- K' decides just what he's going to do with Pás.
Pás stops to look at her reflection in the water. For a long time, there's nothing but her own face mirrored back up at her... and then, suddenly, a flicker of movement ghosts amidst the ripples purling the water right above the image of her head. The transient image is followed, immediately afterwards, by the lightest of sounds behind and to the left of Pás. It's the sound of something landing on the ground-- maybe an acorn?
It's also the only warning Pás gets before, very suddenly, K' has pushed off and introduced himself into her personal space: trying to plant a kick-- more playful than strictly violent-- clear into his protege. It's a light and rather slow strike, but it doesn't hold back nearly enough to ensure Pás won't get knocked straight in the water if she doesn't react fast and well enough.
Pás may be taking a day off, but she doesn't leave everything at home. Something moves against the reflection on the water, and she's got too much of a fighter's soul to dismiss it as anything harmless. Her grim thinking goes out like a snuffed flame. And in a movement as reflexive as breathing, she pulls up her guard and swiftly turns shoulder-- just in time to see someone's foot.
There was no worse time that the Brazilian girl could have been caught unawares. She's out of uniform, out of character that deigns and deserves a good fight, and was too lost in her head and thoughs and own little world to even expect she would get attacked. It's a sheer test on her very reflexes, and they move with their practised quickness, a quick slice of her body and both her raised hands allowing her to absorb the barest peripherals of that kick. It's a good move.
And it would almost be graceful of she were standing anywhere else in the whole world.
Not entirely mindful of her surroundings, Pás' artful dodge lets her escape K' but plants her on the edge of the bank, the muddy glass slippery under her flip-flop shoe. Her eyes widen. Her arms pinwheel. Her lips part. And...
And then K' gets his revenge. It's a dish best served cold, with a side of SPLASH! as she falls straight into waist-deep water.
Pás surfaces with a surprised gasp, coughing out a few mouthfuls of pond water that's certainly not like the Swiss bottled water she drinks at home. She opens her eyes and widens them in surprise, looking horrified to be wet -- no, worse than wet -- wet and /surprised./ She's soaked from head to toe, with her expensive handbag and all its contents floating on the water around her. In the heart of the mess is a priceless expression one gets when they outsmart a trickster, much like the one she slants up at K', staring at him incredulously like he was the last person in the whole wide world she'd ever expect catching her unawares.
"A- acendedor??" she blurts, colour rising to her cheeks.
And K' just stands there, straightening up out of his impromptu attack, his head lifting arrogantly and the worst sort of amused smile slanting crookedly across his face. He looks fairly pleased with himself... and, shockingly enough, perhaps even a little pleased with her for managing to avoid him. Even if her dodge wasn't so clean as to save her from taking a tumble straight into the water... it was still pretty good.
He'd wondered, if only for a moment, if she'd let herself get rusty while he wasn't paying her any attention.
Rather content to have successfully interacted with another human in a decently normal manner (his idea of normal is skewed), K' tips his head downwards so he can regard Pás more closely, tilting it to one side as he smiles his best infuriating grin. For once, he lets himself do something so mundane as to play a little joke on another person. He's held himself apart for long enough; a realization he'd come to when his sister came back into his life. Normal people get to do this all the time: why not him?
"Looks like I'm the one who got you wet this time," he points out dryly, fully aware of the double entendre therein-- he's no Kula, to be so sheltered from the crudeness of the world.
For a brief and very honest moment, Pás truly and utterly believes that she's awakened to the Bizarro world. It is a strange and frightening place, an alternate reality where her father actually wants her home, where Tenma Kiryuu somehow moves to kiss her, and where K' cockily points out that she's wet.
She knows that's not true, and that alternate dimensions don't exist, but it's sure feeling like it this past week, like the collective universe has finally had enough and gotten everyone together to play one big global joke, with the poor Brazilian at the butt of it.
K''s remark makes her already-wide eyes find a way to get even wider. The blood drains out of her face. And in the sheer unlikelihood that is this moment, she meets K''s rare good mood with her own rare silence, struck mute for one smartass thing to say. Pás just peeks up at him from inside the pond, looking no less than a fearful kind of shock, the way someone looks and feels when their whole entire world has turned upside-down. She says absolutely nothing.
After a long, measured pause, the girl just sinks down until half her face is submerged underwater, and just her staring dark eyes are showing, their whites whorled a little as she stares very warily. Then the rest of her disappears, her head disappearing entirely under the water. After a silent ten seconds, the surface bubbles.
The world's scary. She's hiding.
K''s smirk slips off his face. It gets replaced with a frown once Pás starts pretending to be a submarine, and for a long few moments K' just stares blankly at the spot where the girl vanished under the water. Lifting a hand absently, K' scratches at his jaw in a puzzled fashion, narrowing his eyes on the errant bubbles drifting to the surface. He considers quietly.
He wasn't expecting this sort of reaction at all. Especially not from Pás. He thought the end result of messing around with her was going to be a little different than this. Maybe he's doing it wrong.
An indifferent shrug given, some of his previous mood draining away into confused aggravation, K' picks his way to the water's edge and leans down. He waits, very patiently, for the girl to run out of air... and once she inevitably has to surface, he's demanding of her, "The hell's your problem...?" As if SHE were the one who'd done something wrong, when he's the one who just kicked her into a pond and then poked fun at her for it.
Perhaps reassuringly for poor Pás, much of K''s characteristic irritation has returned to his demeanor, his voice decidedly annoyed: his arms crossing as he waits for the girl to start acting more as he expects her to. It's a hell of a lot more familiar on him than what he was doing -earlier-.
After thirty seconds, there are more bubbles. And then some more.
A full two minutes after that, the pond water goes completely still, all its tiny ripples evened out, left a perfect mirror of the park and city around it.
There's a slight pause. Then the U.S.S Pás finally surfaces once more. She explodes out of the water with the frantic urgency of needing air, coughing harshly and shaking the water out of her eyes. Her hidey hole is compromised, and she's delivered back into that strange bad world that comes complete with annoyed K' questions. Looking up from her spot in the pond, she stares at him as he speaks, the expression on her face strangely blank like the way people look when you try to ask them a question in another language. Receptive, but confused. Able to hear, but not able to understand.
Without responding to him, she wades slowly out of the pond, planting a hand against the bank and pushing her body out. It frees her reluctantly, her clothes and hair heavy and dripping with water. Pás just looks down at herself, makes the shortest and airiest of sounds, and very enduringly unzips her hoodie, moving to work its drenched fabric off her arms.
"Ha ha1" she says out of nowhere, the sharp laugh cresting through her patient work. She fixes K' with a sudden look, as if noticing him there for the first time, and the look on her face has totally changed. Switched out like playing cards on a con artist's table. Her usual grinning is stamped back across her lips, her sleepy eyes finding a way to look bored even though she's shivering at the edges. "Acendedor... you did scare me!"
Growing more and more irritated by the moment with her uncharacteristic silence and wide-eyed confusion, K' squints at Pás as she squelches miserably to the surface and trudges out of the water. He looks down at her in thin silence as she starts peeling her hoodie off, saying nothing: taking a moment just to examine her weird silence in mild bafflement.
But just as he starts inevitably reverting back to his more expected behaviorial patterns, Pás starts to revert back to her own. When she next looks at K', it's with that familiar thousand-watt smile and those lazily-mischievous eyes. It's like she leeched her trickster nature right back from him, leaving him to scowl moodily as she finally greets him in a more Pás-like manner.
"Hmph..." he shrugs eventually, shouldering past her and turning to lean his back against a tree. Scorn drips from his words as he reaches up, flipping his favorite pair of shades down over his eyes. "Did I...? I obviously let you alone too long then." Did he just imply she wouldn't keep up with training if he wasn't nagging her every step of the way?
Looking utterly unbothered to be soaking wet from head to toe, with pond reeds tangled in her wavy hair, Pás very patiently wrings the water out of her tank top, rolling the fabric up off her long waist and squeezing it into a more bearable dampness. She probably doesn't need to show much skin in this process, and she knows that. But she wants to.
Rubbing beads of water off her face, she turns, plants both hands on her hips, and lets go a good-natured sigh at the sight of all her things floating desolately in the water. Even the kindest and most patient of people would express the littlest bit of irritation at seeing their possessions wrecked, but Pás reveals so such weakness. Smiling as ever, she wanders back towards the bank of the pond, slipping out of her flip flops and crouching, leaning out to retrieve her leather handbag that's probably already ruined, using it to scoop a bucketful of pond and her floating wallet. It's such a mess. And the man responsible for it all?
Pás turns an inquisitive glance back at K', her weight resting on her heels. She considers him a moment, very sunnily, his comment only brightening her expression all the more like an extra surge of electricity. "Shiu, you think so! Acendedor.. I am the flattery! I would not think you would ever come to find me." She steps closer, twining her hands innocently behind her back and leaning forward, biting her lower lip and peeking at her mentor from under her heavy eyelids. "You have havings the deep thinkings about me, yea? And the dreams at the night?" Her leaning crooks forward one notch more. "Is it sexy?"
Most other young men would have gotten themselves an eyeful while they could, goggling with as much discretion as humanly possible when Pás reels up the edge of her tank. K'? He slides his yellow eyes shut, his left hand lifting to palm his face and rub at his temples in the beginnings of a headache. Every time, he thinks: this will be the time I finally put one over on her. But somehow, the girl just never gets angry.
Persistent as he is, K' is starting to take Pás' sheer unflappability as a challenge. Someday he might realize this stubbornness is causing him more grief than anything else. If he were one to be content with mere moments of victory, that priceless look he got from her just now might be enough to mollify his irritated contentiousness just a little... but he's not really the type to be happy with anything but total victories.
"Unfortunately..." K''s hand peels off his face. The expression that's revealed is a rather dangerous, humorless smirk, set beneath a pair of narrowed eyes. It looks tense. "...I gave my word. And I tend to -keep- the promises I make." Idly, without much contrition at having ruined her nice things, he watches her fish her purse and its contents out of the water.
His relative harmlessness disappears abruptly, however, at Pás' coy little question and her inviting advance. The boy's eyes half-lid as she leans in nice and close, his head tilting down slightly as she eels in close. For a few moments, K' just -looks- at Pás, and it really is anyone's guess whether he's thinking 'sexy' thoughts.
Then, unable to take the proximity anymore, K' is forced to concede defeat. He shies away from Pás, sliding out from between the girl and the tree and retreating a disgruntled few steps away. "Wouldn't call any've my thoughts about you 'sexy,'" is his gruff and frank reply, the boy ruffling a hand agitatedly through his hair. "Unless your idea of sexy is 'fucking annoying...'"
Still, for all his grumpiness and reappearing irritability, his good mood hasn't entirely left him. It's the reason why he actually initiated any interaction, and it's the reason he's not already left. Nonetheless, he didn't exactly ambush her just to engage in small talk. "You work on your chi any...?"
Hidden far beneath her encouraging smiling and her sleepy eyes that promise things, there's a challenge holstered in Pás' face that only the sharpest of eyes would be able to see. After the week she's been having, all endeth by her inadvertant plunge in a pond, the girl is trying to win back her bearings, starting with the unfortunately boy before her. Eventually, he folds his hand and backs away, unable to stand her closeness, and victory flares briefly across her features. It dulls quickly into her perpetual good humour, and she allows K' his retreat, watching him slyly out the corners of her eyes.
The admission of 'fucking annoying' pulls a grin from his errant charge. She pushes back a heavy wet tress of her long hair. Oh yeah. He wants her.
She ends up taking his spot, leaning up against the same tree and reaching up to hook her soaked hoodie on a low branch, letting it hang in the sun to eventually dry. The rest of her, hair, tank top, and leggings, will have to find alternate means to dry up. Of course, it helps to know that there's a walking hair dryer standing but twenty feet away. The Brazilian tilts her head.
The next question brings her to look her most innocent. "Aiii..." Pás answers at length, looking little else but completely dubious as she rolls her eyes up and gives it great thought. The fact she has to think about it is not a good sign. She's been kicking. And kicking a little more. Among other kicks. Biting her lip, she waves one hand back and forth in a very generous response of 'so-so.' "I do not like to call it 'work', but... ufa... I think I have... I... I am just trying to think of when I did." She pauses. "I am just not having any of the remembering."
At Pás' first unpromising sound in response to his query, K' starts to look, very slowly, over his shoulder at her. The yellow eye he eventually pins crankily on her is profoundly unimpressed. It maintains its unblinking regard throughout all her waffling, the look of it suggesting quite clearly that K' is neither fooled nor amused by her lack of diligence.
If he's going to waste time on her, he wants there to be -something- to show for his invested energy. It probably helps, also, that he caught the tail end of her sly look of victory, and the expression severely soured his mood. With Pás, it seems... you win some, you lose some. K' might have started out ahead, but he's starting to feel himself, inevitably, falling behind. It annoys him.
"You -asked- me to teach you," he eventually starts, very lowly, eyes narrowing in aggravation. Tact doesn't exist in his vocabulary, and the blunt phrasing of his next words makes that manifestly clear. "You waste my time with laziness, I might reconsider."
He turns to face her. The temperature rises distinctly, a faint haze of heat starting to waver the air about his form. It'd feel almost pleasant-- almost be a nice way to dry off faster-- if it weren't just the precursor to outright fire. He eyes her, very consideringly, the severe line of his mouth coming extremely close to an infinitesimal quirk before it irons itself back into a frown. "Or maybe you want to start with your chi -defenses- instead?" His right hand smokes dangerously close to ignition.
"Sim, sim, I did ask you! And I am wantings to get a learning!" Pás chirps back at K', happy as ever. Without even a moment to prepare, she takes two quick hops of her bare feet against the tree trunk, pushing herself up walk down the length of one of its outstretched branches, her languid steps jarring loose leaves from the canopy. She doesn't even use her hands once as she tilts her body forward into a controlled freefall, catching her weight with the backs of her knees and allowing herself to happily hang.
She dangles perfectly at K''s eye level, levelling him an upside-down grin. "You are so serious. Psiu, Acendedor, you need to lighten up. You take all the fun out of this, and then it is work! Work is an awful thing. I am glad I have never done it." Spoiled little brat.
Despite all her innocent, carefree smiling, the girl's upside-down eyes slant at the corners, a disguised blade sheathed in the look they give K'. Is she trying to test him? Get on his nerves? Maybe.
Swinging a little from her leafy perch, the smell of smoke makes her head crane, her gaze veering down on that infamously gloved hand of his. Her smile gets smug. "Acendedor, you bad little boy. Are you getting hot for me?"
K''s eyes narrow on Pás' eager upside-down gaze. The fact she's at eye level just means his stare is ten times as direct. Her carefree attitude is starting to piss him off again, and it's reminding him of one of the reasons he agreed to this entire debacle: that urge to beat the perceived naivete out of her until she becomes something that -doesn't- anger him deeply on multiple levels. Something that can actually handle the world as it really is.
If only he knew, eh?
So serious. You need to lighten up. I'm glad I've never done work. The first two are bad enough. The last makes his fraying temper finally snap. A sudden hand darts around Pás, at first seeming so bold as an encircling embrace-- but soon enough revealing itself to be a considerably less exciting attempt to snare the girl by the back of her shirt and tug her bodily out of her perch: dangling her like a misbehaving cat.
Yeah, something about her carefree nature there touched a chord.
His knuckles press against her shoulderblades. They are, indeed, extremely hot: he feels that to be all the answer she needs for her last lewd little comment. "You want to learn, you'll do work. The same as I did. I don't tolerate shortcuts; I've seen enough of them." Almost imperceptibly, his gloved hand twitches against her back. "Everybody suffers to get where they are, and you sure as shit aren't exempt." Scorn twitches his expression as he regards her smiley nature. "Probably do you some fuckin good to get a taste of reality, it'll save your neck down the line where this spoiled carelessness of yours won't."
His speed utterly unmatched, Pás has only the instant to look confused -- confused and almost wary -- as K''s hand snaps out at her like a snake bite. A moment later, she's dangling before him by the shirt on her back, feeling his knuckles brand against her back with the threat of their killing fire, and, strangely enough, the Brazilian girl almost looks relieved for it. Who knows what she was even expecting -- much less fearing.
With a tilt of her head and an imperceptible rearranging of her hanging limbs, she finds a way to get comfortable in her predictament, her permanent smile never faltered for a moment. The angrier K' looks, the more at ease Pás feels. It's how the world is supposed to work, and she won't have it any other day. There's little she can do except dangle there and absorb his angry lecture, remaining aggravatingly patient through every last syllable.
Though he might as well be speaking in a different language; she just grins obliviously back at K' like she's never suffered a day in her life. Like it's a foreign sensation to a person like her. Pás is an exceptional actress like that.
On the other side of that untouchable grinning is a different story. She went for a walk today so that she didn't have to think about burdening things. She wanted to spend today happy. She's not about to let K', even inadvertantly so, bring back all that she wants to avoid.
So the look on her face remains mostly unconvinced, in that ignorant, lofty sort of way. Of course she's exempt, it says. How adorably silly of him to think otherwise! And, sighing like the martyr he thinks her otherwise, Pás considers K' as she hangs there. "Ai, ai, ai," she sing-songs, clucking her tongue and rolling her eyes. Her expression weighs with a theatrical commisseration, though the humour never leaves her wily gaze. "You are right, yea. Sim, Acendedor. I am promise you then. I will do... euhhh... /some/ of the work just for you." She dimples. "I cannot say no to this face."
Pás reaches out to gently, affectionately poke the tip of K''s nose. "Beip!"
She's not really listening. K' can tell. None of it's sinking into this spoilt girl's head. But he keeps talking anyway, determinedly trying to make her see how things work in HIS world. One might almost think he was purposefully out to ruin her mood and make her as grim as he is: and maybe he is.
He doesn't know, of course, that Pás is already well acquainted with suffering. He also doesn't know that she's plotting a retaliation for her scruffing.
Before he can even react, K' finds himself feeling a most unusual sensation. He feels someone... touch his face. Most people don't even dare get CLOSE enough to him to ever get near his face, much less plant a solid beep on his nose; and the sheer incongruity of it is enough to make him visibly pause. He stares at her like he doesn't know quite how to respond.
Eventually, he does the first thing that comes to mind. He snorts unimpressedly, drops her, and retreats. His backing away serves a double purpose, however; it opens space between them, space across which K' fixes a critical look.
"Then let's see it." He beckons her impatiently at him, inviting her to show him whether or not she's really serious about her 'dedication.' At the last moment, he realizes the potential double entendre... but it's entirely too late to take it back.
Dropped from the air, like most cats Pás lands on her feet, standing tall and using both hands to straighten her damp, sticky, and now twisted-up tank top. Those sharp eyes of hers follow K''s retreat, immediately homing in on the tactical side of his movement. Her grinning sobers into sleepy smiling, and she watches her cranky mentor from under her heavy eyelids. And then swiftly, and very purposefully, the Brazilian girl gathers up her wet hair, bundling it into a thick handful and binding it with those two braids she keeps permanently tangled within its heavy mass. She smears a few lingering tresses off her face, before swiping her hands down her arms, kicking dust onto her bare feet, and widening her stance, giving her head a shake, her shoulders a roll, and her guard its last moments to raise.
It looks like the boss has demanded some time to train. And who is she to deny such a pretty face? Even if it phrases things a little badly. As expected, she brightens the instant K' says the absolutely worst thing one should ever say when in a half-mile radius of any Pás, all her readied vigiliance sinking out of her posture like a stone, replaced with a perky eagerness. "You want to see?!" she asks in a delighted chirp. "I thought you would never have ask!"
The girl grabs one side of her tank top, the muscle tensing in her arm. Her eyes lock. The look in them darkens. Her pretty smiling Hydes into something horrible and serrated with flaring teeth.
And that's when Pás pulls down her tank top and flashes K'.
Fortunately, and very mercifully, she follows it up with a quick dash and a sudden aerial spin, one foot smashing past with their signature sparks.
He knew he shouldn't have put it like that.
The moment Pás perks up, K' knows what's coming. A long-suffering look enters his eyes as her hand streaks straight for her top. He's semi-prepared for the eyeful he gets when, quick as anything, Pás YANKS down her shirt and flashes him, but nonetheless K' almost pales at the sight: his subtle blanch almost visible even through all that dusky skin. His eyes widen. He can't help but -look-, momentarily poleaxed-- but the instant of weakness is very brief. It helps that the girl follows up instantly with an attack.
Oh, is -that- how she wants to play it.
K' gets his composure back quickly, eyes narrowing again, focus regained with an angry shake of his head. With a huff of irritation, one arm lifts to let Pás' kick glance off his forearm. He ducks clear under and past her in the next moment, his trademark speed smearing him in an indistinct blur of black, and when he resolves again he's in the midst of twisting back around to face her: the amusement back in his eyes. His heels brace wide, skidding in the dust.
"Heh... Is that -it-?" K' shoots at her, grinning cruelly, the slant to his smirk suggesting he's referring to -both- of (or 'all three of'?!) the things she just threw at him. He straightens up, watching her, fire snarling to life down his forearm... pooling in the cage of his hand. Apparently he was serious about 'chi defense' lessons.
Is that /it/?!
"Aiii?!"
He stops her kick, heat sizzling off the flesh of her foot, and one twist and turn of her body later, Pás reveals herself again, her usual grinning all but /slapped/ away. She flares her nostrils and snaps shut her jaw, her face twisted into a momentary but very visible pinch of indignity. Huffing, she looks down at her own chest, arranging it meticulously with both her hands before her dark eyes lash up and snare K' once more. She frowns! And like any offended Brazilian woman, just as quickly casts him off with a fierce snap of her fingers. "Shiu! Vai tomar no cú!" is all she has to say to that.
She pauses very briefly, the slyness never quite wrung out of her eyes, especially as they remain especially cautious of K' -- and that hand of his. She hoods her gaze, her face tranquilizing itself into her fighter's poker face, an expression that reveals little save for the lazy slant of her eyes and the strange way she smiles. The girl pivots her weight back and forth from foot to foot, moving slowly and fluidly as one were dancing. Then, breaking into sudden speed, she lunges her weight forward in one direction but ends up moving in entirely the opposite, trying to slip under a possible reach of his arms and meet her mentor with a sharp kick straight at the groin.
Is that it, indeed!!
It seems every time K' and Pás meet up, they're locked in constant struggle to get one up on the other. And K' counts this as a clear victory for him. The boy twists around to meet her gaze again, grinning insouciantly to see how indignant and stung it looks. He knows Pás is probably cursing him out in Portuguese, but he doesn't give a shit; his grin doesn't alter. He figures that wide smirk'll get Pás even more irritated by dint of its blithe, uncomprehending unconcern.
And it does. Oh, it does. The girl might have gotten her composure back, but her mind is still on revenge... still on getting that upper hand back. K', however, isn't willing to relinquish it quite so easily. Pás arrows straight at him and K' is prepared, starting a high guard-- but then, she switches low, aiming straight to avenge her offended pride. How?
By aiming for -his-.
K' wants -none of that-. The young man retreats with unearthly hurriedness, but Pás still glances her hit; and that in itself is enough to draw a sound of pain soon choked off into a snarling hiss. "You f..." he starts articulately; and then, he decides he'd much rather just act than talk. His hand snaps upwards in a wide raking motion, lashing the gathered flames in a wide and swinging arc cut straight at Pás; and maybe he's been watching his sister practice too much, because the motion and the arc of the fire is decidedly whiplike.
One kick later, Pás beams happily up at K', fluttering him a little wave. She recovers from her attack with her readied ease, always quick to demonstrate her crazy flexibility. She rolls backwards into a handstand, giving a propelling spin of her wrists to flip back to her feet. She stands straight, her attention sharply fixed on K', a measure of alertness pervading into all her lazy smiling. His hand stokes its fire. But she knows she's not even within arm's reach of him. There's no possible way he could try to hit her unless he--
...did that. The Brazilian's face carves with an instant of surprise. Ai merda. And K''s protege demonstrates her first line of chi defense -- which is really no more than her own automatic reflexes. She hunches down on her already-bent knees and drops to avoid the worst of the blaze, bringing up both arms to protect her face from the heat. She suffers through the the bite of it through sheer luck itself; it's harder to burn someone soaking wet, and the pond water soaking down her hair and beading her arms turns potential blisters into stinging sears.
She peeks through her raised forearms. "Caramba, Acendedor! I name you right!" And soon enough that grin of hers has returned like a loyal dog, radiating a hundred watts of sheer admiration straight up at K'. He's so amazing.
And K' just meets that little wave with a deep frown, his eyes half-lidding in distinct displeasure. His fire-wreathed hand flexes once or twice. Though it looks like he's just standing there in order to gather his next attack... it's also because he's waiting for some of the stinging to abate. Bitch.
He doesn't -castigate- her for taking nasty shots like that, though. It's not like K' himself has any conception of not being cruel in a fight.
In time, he finally decides to see just how much Pás might have improved in dealing with chi. The answer, in his eyes, is 'not much at all.' He's about to remark shortly on it, but Pás' blatant admiration cuts him off. He hesitates visibly, squinting at her adoring look, saying nothing for a moment. He still doesn't know why she looks like that around him-- he has no grasp on the concept of 'actually being liked'-- and he definitely doesn't know why it feels kind of nice. "...hmph," is all he eventually deigns to reply. He still has to go find out what that word even means. Once he figures out how to spell it.
"You're going to have to find a better way than that," he moves on to note sharply. His lifted hand flips over and lowers again, a wall of fire forming in its wake as an evanescent example of his point. "Circumstances aren't always gonna be in your favor..." She won't always be able to soak herself. She won't always have something ready to throw in the way.
"Sim, but they usually are," Pás replies, one eye squinting shut affectionately. Whether she's commenting on her resourcefulness or sheer dumb luck... well, when does she ever give a straight answer? Rather casually, and only with a deceptive wariness smuggled in her languid movements, the girl pulls herself back up to stand, brushing dismissively at the raw marks scorched down her arms and pawing a hand through her much drier hair, its mass touselled and almost inclined to curl from its rough treatment.
Still, she returns every bit of K''s crankiness with happy-go-lucky good-humour, beaming at him while twining her hands behind her back, rocking her weight back and forth on her feet from toes to heel. "Pou, but I am have the training with you, so yea, yea, I must be learnings something. What should I be doing, boss? Other than falling in love with you?"
An absent shake of his burning hand puts the remnants of the fire out. Irritated, K' pushes his quenched fingers through his hair, letting his arm drop back to his side afterward with a drawn-out sigh. The aggravated breath stirs his long white bangs. The worst part of Pás's carelessness is the fact that he can remember a time when he was just as uncaring of danger and consequence. That time wasn't so long ago.
It's nostalgic. He wishes things were still so simple that he could just leave the thinking to other people, as he used to do. It's also annoying in a precognitive sense, in that he knows what inevitably happens when one is so flippant.
But the attitude adjustment can come later. Life itself will probably help teach -that- lesson, and K' didn't bind himself to do anything but teach the girl (-why- did he do that? fuck, that was reckless) a couple tricks. Instead, K' just rolls his eyes and motions Pás closer. "Come here." Once she's close enough, K' sparks a fire in his hand and extends it towards the girl. It crackles invitingly: effortlessly conjured, but not so easily put out. Unfortunately, putting it out is what K' wants her to do.
"Use your chi to cancel mine." There's a pause, before he drearily realizes he should probably at least explain or help the girl a little... and then, there's another, longer hesitation while he tries to figure out how to frame things that he himself had to learn through mere instinct. He's always just kind of... -known- how to handle chi, and having to put it in words is hard to the point he starts getting incredibly frustrated. His mood deteriorates further. "There's patterns in any kind of energy," he finally starts, a little of his aggravation showing clearly in his voice. "The point of defending with chi is breaking those patterns with your own."
Come here? He doesn't have to tell her twice. Immediately, and very predictably, Pás' wolfish grin widens, and with a slight bounce in her bare-footed step, obediently and very eagerly pads towards her long-suffering mentor. Her head tilts, those dark eyes of hers immediately drawn to the sudden crackle of fire, and she watches it fan straight from the hand that extends toward her. Her face clears its crooked grinning with a more neutral, wondering look. Shadows from the frames move across her face.
The command ends up earning K' a look. It almost looks amused on the corners. Cancel his chi with her own? Is he kidding?
But, with a deep, preparatory exhale -- and more seriousness in her face -- the Brazilian girl absently flexes the fingers of her right hand. She never uses her own hands to fight, but they are far from being consigned to uselessness. After a moment of concentration, her dark skin crackles with her signature chi, the early ancestor of fire. She pauses briefly, not out of fear, but out of sincere consideration, trying to pull from her minor experience with chi an idea of what to do. She's not finding too many options. He mentions patterns. She can find patterns in movement. She knows how to learn to read a person's attacks, stance, guard and plan on how and where they intend to go. But to find the same thing in chi? The sheer possibility seems almost alien to her.
Thankfully, Pás has always been a fan of the direct approach. Biting her bottom lip, she reaches forward with that same brash recklessness of hers, her hand hissing with her own sparkler energy as it reaches forward for his. With little warning, she simply tries to take his hand with hers, her face disguising the grimace of pain of the heat searing her fingers as they grip down. She subjects her entire hand straight into that heat, relying only on her own hissing, sparking chi to try to snuff it out against her palm.
K' bears a famous aversion towards touch. Even his own sister is not exempt from his hatred of contact. But that dislike, it seems, is restrained only to situations in which he is not the one inviting or instigating the touch. Pás grasps his extended hand, attempting to simply snuff the fire rather than perform the more complex task he's asked of her, and K' abruptly -shuts- his hand around her own: preventing her from drawing back even if she wanted to.
This could induce some panic. Especially since that fire burns as much as its appearance would suggest, and K''s steel grip doesn't seem inclined to open anytime soon.
Still, it's not quite as bad as it could be. He hadn't told the girl, but he had purposefully chosen to manifest a very weak and 'easy' flame. The truth was that Kusanagi bloodline flame was not something easily canceled even by masters of chi manipulation, particularly while the wielder still retained direct control over it. Even Frei had had to wait until direct control of the fire had been relinquished before he could employ his own skill to conclusively dissipate the flames.
Now, grasping Pás' hand tightly, K' leisurely assesses her efforts. Disapproval soon sets in. "Force isn't always enough," he starts coldly. The fire against her skin seethes quietly, quiescent and regular in its burning ebbs and flows. It's open to her chi, exposed to being counteracted: if she can just feel those openings, she could twist her sparking energy into them. "It can be enough when somebody's thrown chi at you and you've got the time to throw some back. But when you already know you're gonna get hit, nothing's gonna save you but knowing how to cut the damage..."
His hand tightens cruelly on hers, mouth curling in something between a smirk and a sneer. If derogatory challenge is the way to get Pás to learn things, she's sure to learn a lot from K'. "That's when you have to move your own energy to find the weaknesses in theirs. Disrupt it. You even know how your own chi moves? How to -make- it move? How to feel the way another person's chi moves, so you can find the holes and break it? From what I see all you can do is bring it out and hope you hit with it..."
All teen girls daydream about holding hands with their crush.
But it's usually not supposed to happen like this.
Pás flinches when K''s hand tightens around hers, startled by the gesture before the pain even sets in. Reflexively she tries to pull away, her expression twitching at the edges when she learns she cannot. He's not letting go. Her struggling starts to get a little frantic.
By all means, the girl is no stranger to pain. She readily invites it, and seems to luxuriate in the more horrible of sensations that would give any normal person pause. But there is a difference between that and this, a certain detail that seems to arbitrate so many of her reactions. She's not initiating this. It isn't on her terms. He's holding on to her. He's forcing her to feel this. And Pás isn't liking this at all.
Her expression twitches and flickers, and it soon becomes obvious that it's taking all her strength to keep her eyes steady and her face calm. The fire is searing her hand with a patient sort of viciousness, and she has to blink her eyes to keep them from watering at the agony of it, absorbing K''s lecture on the bare peripherals of her prickling attention. She can hear him saying something about force, but she doesn't care; she's too busy trying to think how she could break his arm and get out of here because she doesn't like this one bit, and he's not letting her go, and he /should be/ letting her go, and...
Pás briefly meets K''s eyes and it's probably the closest to angry he's ever seen her. The expression looks to be little less than a breath from her face, and she's gritting her teeth and steeling herself against it. Breathing shallowly, the girl instead finds her last shred of focus to hold her breath, fix her stare, and force a blinding torrent of sparks out of her trapped hand, the deluge of chi thrust out to try to strangle that fire.
K''s expression remains level. He doesn't move appreciably even when Pás starts to thrash in his grip, struggling frantically to escape the low-burning fire wreathing his hand; he remains still as ever, watching her carefully. He knows what he's doing would be classed cruel by just about anybody. He knows it might not be the best way to go about this. But it's the way that he knows, and it's what he'll employ. Tough, uncompromising instruction.
K' can't really be blamed for his harsh approach. He's never really had any good examples to go off, after all. He doesn't seem to realize that people don't learn well when suffering pain-- after all, Geese seems to expect him to be able to learn just fine while in the worst of agony-- and as such he's almost frustrated when Pás does nothing more productive than try to manually wrench herself out of his grasp. The nearly-angry expression Pás finally cuts up at him almost takes him aback, however; as does that sudden, emotion-inspired assault of chi. K' opens his control over his flame, letting it sputter out in the face of Pás' chi... but in truth, the sparkler energy didn't need much help to start with.
Still a mere show of force, not quite the precision he asked from her-- not quite the precision Geese requires from K' himself-- but it illustrates another point he's made to her before.
K' lets go once his fire's out, his hand retracting swiftly for all the world like maintaining the contact that long had hurt -him-, not her. Shaking his hand out absently-- some of that sparking chi had actually gotten through his glove-- he narrows eyes on her, that severe look not quite gone from his face. "Now you see," he finally starts calmly, "what that kind of strong emotion can do for you..."
Perhaps he instigated her temper on purpose, then. Hardly an orthodox method of training... but then again, this is K'.
For all her careful grace, Pás is not the epitome of precision. She is the type of girl who has only just learned the concept of force, and how to impose it on others. She has not even yet considered finetuning such a thing. She's not yet even sobered from the initial sensation of knowing she has strength. A good thing; if that novelty wore off too soon, she may have lost interest in fighting altogether, and gone on to more dangerous things.
Torn out of Sao Paulo's favelas before too much damage could even have been done, it's only a question of how far Pás would have allowed herself to fall. But this question has an inkling of a response with that look she gives K' when he releases her; she takes back her hand as briskly as he retrieves his own, rubbing tenderly at her burned skin and blisters. Her hand burns, but so do her eyes, and for the briefest, quickest of moments, the look in the girl's eyes borders threat.
The look is quick for her, but long enough for K' to comment on it. His words seem to give her immediate pause, her body going short of startling, and she forgets her own burning hand to just stare up at him. Her expression slips into something unreadable. For an instant, it's a mystery how that mysterious girl will respond.
Until she just gives him a big bright ignorant smile. "Sim, sim!" She chirps back merrily, nodding in wholehearted agreement. Then she pauses. And, pursing her mouth and tapping one nail against her chin, the Brazilian's striking features twist into innocent confusion. "...Ai, I am not knowing Englisches como... pouu.. 'ee-moish'..." she stops, furrows her brow, and tries to sound out the foreign word again, "e- eh- ehmosho... en-moshon? Sim?"
Pás beams assily.
His point made, K' waits for it to sink in. He waits for his charge to actually learn something. And for a moment, that unreadability about her seems promising. It seems to suggest she'll do something different than what he's seen her do thus far. It suggests she might actually lose some of that carefree, unruffled, and spoiled nature of hers that-- in his evaluation, anyway-- is what holds her back from being able to really tap her chi.
Of course, then she gives that assy retort instead. K''s eyes visibly half-lid, narrowing to yellow slits. He regards her with the most long-suffering look on the face of the earth, before he gets the presence of mind to veil that irritation away. His expression smoothes back to neutral.
"If you don't know, then we're done here," he settles for saying instead, his voice sharp. With a dismissive huff he turns shoulder on her, seeming ready to leave; his interest in prolonging this exercise apparently having run out. He starts away, but pauses a few moments into his departure. A glance arrows over his shoulder, the look resurrecting some of that slyness that existed in his demeanor when he first apprehended the girl. "Go learn the word. A gente fala inglęs aqui..."
K' lifts a shoulder in a shrug. His smirk cuts a little wider. And his piece said, he simply turns and continues to leave: taking with him the unrevealed truth that that's pretty much all the Portuguese he knows.
Despite all her magnanimous smiling, Pás gets betrayed by her eyes. They never lose their dangerous slant, and they glint with the knowledge what she otherwise feigns innocence. She knows exactly what he means. She just wants to piss him off.
And she seems inclined to a victory when her mentor levels her the most troubled of expressions, all his weariness gone unreturned by her perpetual good cheer. He mentions leaving, and taking that as a surrender, Pás lifts her burnt hand to flash him a tiny, and very blistered wave. It's when he finally turns his back on her does the girl's expression changes, her merriment falling off her face like an old bandaid, leaving a much more sobered expression that seems more inclined to watch him with a wary, half-pensive, half-guarded vigil. Her eyelids droop thoughtfully. Her head tilts. And...
Pás finds herself pausing when K' suddenly turns shoulder and looks back at her. He looks sly. She just looks confused. Then, if one were to gauge tonight as a tally of wins and losses, it's K' who officially gets the final victory, because when he ups and speaks /Portuguese/, the look on Pás' face is pretty close to priceless.
For the next heartbeat, all she can do is stare at K''s turned, retreating back. It's not until he's gone that she finally responds. Out of nowhere, her mouth hitches up at one corner. She grins, but not like she usually does; her mouth is much too wide and much too amused to even be considered close to her usual laziness. Her stomach hitches, and she makes a windy sound.
Then Pás just bursts out laughing. And it doesn't stop for a long time.
Log created on 23:33:52 06/22/2008 by K', and last modified on 23:57:10 07/02/2008.