Description: The last time they met, things got a little awkward between Pacific Resistance's Pás and the Guardian Kings' Tenma Kiryuu. Finally getting up the gumption to go and confront her about it, Tenma finds himself creating an even more awkward situation. And then Pás beats him up. Chicks! Am I right, fellas?
There are horrors out there never meant for human eyes. Some so terrible that the mind, with all its genetic adaptibility and programmed resilience, is unable to fully conceive.
In the privacy and solitude of the late evening, alone in her dormitory room, Pás is committing one of these unspeakable horrors now. There is no stepping back from executing something like this. There is no absolving yourself of this sort of crime. The blood wept from this deed stains your hands forever.
With neither mercy nor regret, she... is doing her homework.
Undoubtedly, this is a side of the deceptive Brazilian that never escapes the safety of these walls, one that betrays all her mystery, her exotic long limbs, and secret smiling. But even the most dangerously ambiguous of Southtown's fighters deserves her night off. Far from her devoted legion of fanboys that wonder on message boards how that foreign girl must be spending her nights -- partying, dating, wearing so very little and surrounding herself with the most indulgent of good-looking men, walking the globe drunk on her freedom -- Estella de Santo is sprawled across her bed along her stomach and listening to her iPod as she lazily works on math.
Even a fact that she hides from her own peers, perhaps even a couple of her teammates, is that the girl is pretty studious. Contrary to that crafty, devious little creature who willfully exposes herself to international television, Pás is dressed down rather disarmingly, trading in her thready bikinis for the comfort of a t-shirt and athletic shorts. Her hair has been messily tried back, and her face, normally weaponed with the most cutting of smiles, is tired, almost blank. She holds a spare pencil boredly between her lips as she solves her next calculus problem, scribbling out countless pages of math that help form the littering, congested mass of paper over her bed.
The rest of the room is neat and spotless, lit comfortably with low light in the late hours. She's left the balcony doors open -- some of the pampered students of Pacific get those -- to let in the cooling air. Otherwise, it is a dull, monotonous night... and she looks all too content to add to it.
It's been a while, you know.
It's been a while since that strange day on the rooftop of Gedo High, the day that sent Pás running for the hills and left Tenma Kiryuu sitting there looking extremely confused, and a lot has happened since then; Hakuya's disappearance, the battle with Koichi Suigetsu to get the cheerful hoodie-wearing boy back, and the resulting near-crippling Tenma sustained... And a dozen other things besides.
The whole time, of course, Tenma was convinced that the Brazilian girl was simply off doing whatever it is that she does, shunning connections and revelling in her freedom, and that sooner or later she'd pop back into his life. But, deep down, he wondered if that was true, if maybe he hadn't really royally screwed up.
Were Tenma less, well... /Tenma/, he might've gone to someone for advice. Maybe even someone sensible like Stasya, since his other friends probably wouldn't have given him much to work with.
Finally, though, the Kiryuu demon hunter decided to take action. If she wasn't going to come to him, then he'd have to be the one to bite the bullet. With all his limbs now intact and working like they should - his swordarm, much to his relief, is no longer bent the wrong way - climbing up the dormitory presents little difficulty. Finding the right room, that was the tough part; he had to hang down from the roof and peer inside, until he located his target.
Tomorrow there will probably be some weird stories going around Pacific High.
With a quiet, almost imperceptible noise, Tenma drops himself feet-first on the balcony. Lucky for him that the door is already open, freeing him to peer inside more easily, his brows raising as he recognises the unmistakeable form of the Brazilian girl, looking rather more clothed than usual. And she's... Studying hard? What? With a 'who'd have thought?' shrug, Tenma steps into the dorm room proper, showing about as little concern for breaking all sorts of rules as you would expect of him, and then he raps on the inside frame of the balcony door with one end of his cloth-wrapped bokken. See, he has manners! "Knock knock," the lean youth intones.
Unless he's been making prior trips to poke through her unmentionables, this is probably the first time Tenma has ever seen Pás ' bedroom. Possibly even the first time he's witnessed this shifty, unpredictable girl in her own element. Always she's been the invasive one, meeting him on his turf and challenging it in that playful way of hers, all the while going out of her way to reveal so little of herself.
Pás keeps a surprisingly sobered bedroom. Her taste in decor is far from spartan, and she's managed to dress her dormitory into second home -- and really because it's her only home. Most of her furniture is an aged, antique hardwood, she seems to have a great fondness for indoor, tropical houseplants and trees that crawl the walls in green, leafy vegetaiton, and she has a particular taste for persian rugs that blanket the hardwood floors. Her four-posted bed is on the larger side, and her sheets are white.
Infer from that as you will.
Draped like a sleepy, lazy cat across her bed, her legs bent up at the knees with her bare toes curling idly in the air, Pás seems to be too far absorbed in graphing her question to even notice her bedroom's unexpected intrusion. Tenma Kiryuu seems to materialize out of nowhere, drop down to her balcony, and invite himself in. She doesn't even see him, listening happily to the music on her iPod as she writes dutifully away.
Then something sharply raps through the tinny guitars that blast from her earbuds. Pás' face, held in concentration, twitches visibly from her thoughts. She draws her eyebrows together, swearing she heard something, and simply looks up.
And sees Tenma standing there.
"Aieeee!" the Brazilian shrieks, caught totally unawares. She jerks up, scrambling to sit, and for an instant looks like she's trying to cover herself from him; not any immodest nudity. Just the even more embarrassing fact that he's caught her /dressed./ But her arms soon lower, and she pauses amidst her pile of papers, staring incredulously across the room at the Guardian King. Her surprise soon seems to sober into something more horrible, and memory makes her cheeks darken with a flustered blush. "P-Pescador?!" she stammers.
Honestly, Tenma's not sure what he expected to find in Pás' bedroom... The mysterious Brazilian is good at keeping her secrets. Dark blue eyes survey the unfamiliar surroundings, Tenma's head slightly tilted to one side, his expression considering. The shriek, though, that snaps him out of his reverie.
"AAAAH!!" Tenma bellows at the same moment, alarmed by the girly shriek that escapes the girl, giving a start as he looks towards her. Is she... Trying to cover herself up? Did he get the wrong room? Is this the mirror universe or something?
Coughing once into his right fist to regain his composure, the leader of the Guardian Kings straightens up, half turning away from the blushing Brazilian, surveying her with one eye, sidelong. "You left the door open," he offers by way of an explanation; it's the /balcony/ door, of course, but when is that going to stop a spry young fighter like himself? "Nice place," the young man adds. It's certainly nicer than his bedroom, especially since someone who will remain nameless blew it up.
Stepping more fully into the room, Tenma taps his cloth-wrapped bokken against his shoulder, a gesture bordering on a nervous tic, realising that he came all this way with no idea of just what he was going to do or say when he got here. "Ain't seen you in a while, figured I oughta drop in an' make sure everything's okay," Tenma says, finally, not looking at Pás, his own cheeks faintly flushed.
Quick as a hiccup, Pás is scrambling up from her bed to her feet, as if standing up to her full height will make this all seem better. It doesn't. She lingers nervously on the spot, her hands learned well enough to clasp together behind her back to ward off the fidgets. She stares straight at Tenma, looking close to panicked at the sight of him /here/ -- in her own /room/ -- as her mind moves desperately to collect her bearings.
She can't seem to find them all. Instead of getting a hold on her usual, lazy, careless facade to pull down like a screen and willfully hide behind, she keeps thinking and rethinking the last time she saw the Guardian King leader. They had fought. It was nice. Then he kissed her.
It was also nice.
It was too much for her. And Pás, who had promised herself a long time ago one ocean away that she would live her life as simply as possible, that she would never find a way to be attached to a person that could leave her again, had never made the trip back to the Gedo school. She avoided its grounds in a wide berth, fearing even the random chance of running into Tenma Kiryuu. Time passed and she did not see him. The thought was disenheartening for a strange reason, one she did not approve of, but the girl assumed he had forgotten about her. It would be better that way. It would be easier.
And now he's stepping back, into her bedroom, into her life, and the Brazilian is just left shifting uncomfortably with the lot of it. His nervousness seems to just escalate her own, and after her surprised staring finally dispells, Pás seems unable to look Tenma in the eye. Even in the face. She glances away, tight-lipped, her dark skin still coloured in her cheeks. "I have -- euh -- I am well," she bleats back. She pauses. "...And is same to you?" If there is a God in Heaven, he would shoot her down /right now./
Truthfully, in the time since it happened, Tenma has also given that kiss a lot of thought. Did he do it wrong? Did he offend some sort of crazy South American cultural taboo about boys kissing girls instead of vice-versa? Right now though, he's not thinking about those worries.
He's still thinking about the kiss, though.
"Nn, really? That's good," Tenma replies, awkwardly conversational, head tilted to one side and slightly back, dark blue eyes fixed on the ceiling. "I've been okay, I guess. Hakuya's old bastard of a grandad busted my arm backwards, but I healed up all right." Is he... Is he babbling? A little bit, yes. This is terrible.
Clearly, these are the two lamest people who have ever lived.
It's weird for Tenma, being nervous; it doesn't happen to him often. He can face down titans of the fighting circuit without batting an eyelash, he can charge into a nightmarish hellhole from which there's a strong likelihood he would never return, all to rescue one of his friends from the clutches of a murderous woman who threw away her own humanity for power, without a flinch or a second thought. But this? This nearly unmans him entirely.
His mouth hangs slightly agape for a moment, and he scratches the back of his neck, just under his hairline.
"Did I do somethin' to piss you off?" Tenma wonders, finally, the words coming out in a rush. He's never been afraid to say anything, and yet tonight he can barely make himself voice the words. He looks down from the ceiling, finally, his dark blue eyes latching onto the sight of the Brazilian. He has to force himself to do that. "'cause you just sorta... Vanished after that day."
As Tenma busily blurts out his past few months at one corner of the room, Pás is busily occupying the opposite corner, looking away as she distractedly toes at the ground. Unable to look at him, much less say anything back, she listens demurely, silently suffering out what may be the most awkward few minutes of her entire life.
She nods a little placidly, though she isn't quite making out his words, her capacity for second and third languages utterly failing the girl. She forgets English, busily thinking in a frantic Portuguese. How did he find her room? Why did he find her room? Why has he come to see her? What does he want to do? What is he thinking about? Is he looking at her? She must look terrible.
Pás briefly considers the possibility of just dashing past Tenma Kiryuu and escaping out her balcony doors. Just as enticing is the idea of hiding under her bed until he goes away.
Instead, she finds herself glancing up when the Guardian King suddenly, very sincerely asks her if she's angry at him. Pás seems to have regained her English fluency, because she's understood those words loud and clear. The look on her face is the most innocent sort of surprise, innocent even for her. Her lips purse briefly, and she looks deeply reticent to reply. Not sure of the right words to say. Shyly, she looks back down at her bare feet, blurting out something quick and incomprehensible in her native Portuguese. She pauses briefly, then continues meekly, frowningly in English, "...Nao. Tenma, I have no anger with you at all."
But, just as well, she doesn't seem too enthused to explain herself.
Something is seriously wrong here, if the Brazilian girl is being both demure AND shy. Is it some kind of a trick? Is there a camera crew hidden in the closet or something? Is Tenma currently in the process of being punk'd?
The Portuguese babbling doesn't help either; Tenma doesn't understand a word of that particular moon language. His brow furrows as Pás explains that she isn't angry at him, which leaves him even more confused than he already was. You see, people are often angry with him, and that's something that he's capable of understanding easily, categorising. Dealing with. This? This is some sort of mystery. And it's got the girl acting funny.
"Keh," Tenma breathes out, a short, frustrated noise. "Well, then, what the hell is the problem? 'cause you're actin' all sorts of weird, an' it seems like it all started when we-- when I-- Y'know," he finishes lamely, with a vague gesture of his free hand. But each emphatic statement brings him a step closer to the Brazilian, his long legs putting that comfort zone of space between them to death.
But the Guardian King gathers his courage and continues. "So, what, you've just been avoidin' me? That seems like somethin' you'd do 'cause you were pissed off, or hurt or the like. I wasn't tryin' to make you upset or anything, it was just..." No, don't continue down that road, a subconscious voice says. There are dangerous things down that road. "You don't need to hide from me," Tenma says instead, switching gears. "Not that I miss you always showin' up outta nowhere an' kickin' my head in or anything, I just..." You just what, Tenma Kiryuu? "Arrrgh!!" he pronounces, frustrated completely, and flops down to sit crosslegged on the rug-covered floor, his bokken balanced easily between his legs and resting against his shoulder, his torso slumped forward so he can rest his chin in one hand, his elbow balanced on his knee.
He is sulking.
The Brazilian girl lifts her head when the first flicker of movement crosses her peripherals, glancing up in time for Tenma to take his first step towards her. She stares there simply, somewhat dumbly, trying to sever her attention between the importance of his words and the importance of how he seems to be getting closer. He mentions how she's acting, and she frowns thinly at the accusation -- not defensively, but inwardly, as if he's forced upon her an instant of introspection. But then he starts to babble, and she can't quite seem to understand -- at least until he begins to mention /that./
Pás looks away as though stung, immediately thinking about their kiss, absolutely unable to even dream of looking the Gedo fighter in the eye. She doesn't even notice him stepping closer and closer until, with no warning whatsoever, she can practically feel his physical proximity to her. Glancing back up, she tenses lightly around the edges, uncomfortably alert to how close he is. But she doesn't try to back away. The Brazilian merely watches him.
Looking away, even for an instant, is an impossibility when he's this close to her. With wide eyes, she absorbs his impassioned words, looking vaguely the way deer do in the headlights of sixteen-wheelers. Emotion threatens her face briefly when Tenma plays with the switch on a nuke, trying to explain away their last kiss; her eyebrows twitch briefly... but the thought doesn't last. He continues on.
And as he proceeds, becoming more and more frustrated, Pás is starting to look more and more lost by it all. She's not sure what he's trying to tell her... he's upset that she hasn't been around? He hasn't missed her at all? Inwardly, she wonders briefly if she's just understanding him wrong. English is such a troublesome, over-involved language.
Then, without warning, Tenma Kiryuu suddenly shouts his frustration and emphatically sits himself down right on the floor. Pás twitches backwards at the sudden gesture, then relaxes, tilting her head down at him. Bit by bit, her reserved shyness is exhanging for a more palpable confusion, and hell if she knows anything he's just said.
The girl is silent a moment. Then, slowly, moving almost like an easily-spooked prey animal, she ventures in closer, stepping up to Tenma's side and dropping down to a deep kneebend. She crouches in front of him, her chin rested on the tops of her knees, looking closely, intently into his face. Her dark eyes hint apology, and it becomes obvious she's assumed his frustration because of their language barrier.
In a small voice, Pás admits sheepishly, "...Tenma, I do not understand what you mean."
"Yeah, that makes two of us," Tenma agrees, sourly. He glances over towards Pás without moving his head, blowing his bangs out of his face with an upwards breath. Can he bring himself to express his feelings on the matter sincerely, without lapsing into defensiveness and anger and talking abject nonsense again? Of course he can; he's Tenma Kiryuu. He can do anything. "It's just..."
Tenma thinks back on the various encounters he's had with the Brazilian since his arrival in Southtown. When she was a mystery girl with no name, when he found out she was a member of the Pacific Resistance, that her best friends were his avowed rivals. When she was hurt by Wellington, in the soul as much as the flesh; how her words then came back to him in the Ninth Circle, on the razor's edge between life and death. When she was there in the aftermath, when Tenma was wracked with guilt over his apparent murder of Marise. And then, and then...
"...I didn't like it. You not bein' around, and thinkin' you were mad at me, or that I'd hurt your feelings or somethin'." And it's not often that Tenma demonstrates the least care about another person's feelings, now is it? "Don't go thinkin' I'm gonna apologise, though," he adds, gruffly. "'cause you deserved what happened. Good surprise every once in a while won't do you any harm."
He explains himself in so few words, but they still strike a strange chord in that mysterious Brazilian girl. For the countless time since she found Tenma Kiryuu standing in her room, she flushes faintly at the cheeks. But this time it's not out of nervousness or a flustered panic. This is something else, something Pás herself isn't entirely to sure of.
Yet again, her eyes avert, and her confused apology soon mutates into a more meaningful one, and she's begun to get a sense of consequence for her actions. It's something rarely ever felt for a girl whose designs are only to be free, to be living in the present and only for her own amusement. She didn't think that her absence would ever affect anyone negatively -- least of all the leader of Pacific Resistance's rival team.
However, his last statement draws the girl back up from her thoughts, and she pauses very visibly against those last words. A strange sort of realization crosses her dark, ambery eyes. Pás leans her crouching weight back on her heels as a thought hits her that she never considered. That kiss they shared -- he meant only to shock her?
Exactly the way she tries to surprise others?
It's not because--
"That's what it was?" Pás asks out of nowhere, needing to know this. She watches Tenma closely. Her face is as genuine as genuine gets for tricky naked Brazilian fighters. "A surprise?"
This is totally an awkward situation, for various reasons.
Sure, Tenma explains himself, but how sincere is he really being? What about the things that he can't even quite admit to himself, where do they enter into this? Why, exactly, did he dislike the Brazilian not being around? Was it simply the fact that he finds her attractive, or that he enjoys the challenge of trying to actually defeat her? Why did it bother him so much to think she was angry with him... Much the same way it bothered him when he first found out that she was part of Pacific Resistance, and thought that she had just been stringing him along?
But Pás' reaction is just downright weird, the way she blushes faintly and rocks back on her heels, as though some idea had struck her as a physical blow; Tenma's eyes remain fixed on her face throughout, and they widen a bit at the girl's sudden question.
Part of him realises, on a subconscious level, that this is a very dangerous question, placing him in an extremely percarious circumstance.
For a moment, Tenma's mouth works without any sound coming out, as a result of both surprise and an internal conflict; his persona, gruff and coarse, wants to affirm that yes, that's all it was, but something else, something he can't quite put a name to, prevents him. Not even Tenma Kiryuu, jackass extraordinaire, could say that to the face that Pás - or maybe, more properly, this is 'Estella' - is showing him right now. His hand on his bokken tightens, knuckles whitening.
"No," Tenma says, in quiet and uncertain tones. "That's not all it was."
Pás replies this with as much eloquence as she can muster.
"Oh," is all she says, because that's all you can say when someone reveals that they may just like you. Oh. Her voice sounds airy like the wind's been knocked out of her. She looks away, the gesture almost shy as she very studiously looks at something that is not Tenma Kiryuu. She bites a little on her lower lip.
She's never had anyone like her before. Not like this. Surely she's been lusted more than a few times in her life, and that was always the way she preferred. It was such a simple, silly response, one that could be easily controlled and easily left behind. But this is different, because it shouldn't be possible. He can't like that person she puts on, the reckless, self-centered, intolerable, irritating girl who seems to exist solely for her own amusement and care little about the world except for its use to her as a stage. It's impossible to like her. Estella knows this because redesigned herself specifically to avoid attachements, because if no one can take you seriously, then no one thinks you're worth their time.
So count her surprised to realize she may have failed, and that someone can even like her even like this. And count her especially surprised when she thinks she likes it. She can't keep thinking about this. At least there's one failsafe left.
Slowly, gently, Pás glances back at him, and after exhaling a deep breath, a faint, playful smile begins to rise to life along her lips. "Tenma Kiryuu," she says, "you are not tough and scary at all." Her smiling grooves into a more playful grin, and she continues, teasing him indulgently, "Can I tell everyones that you are so sweet?"
But who can like the arrogant, off-putting boy that Tenma built around himself? Loud and abrasive, caustic and temperamental; keep everyone at arm's length, because if they don't get too close, they can't see any weakness. It's simply easier to deal with people like that, casually and superficially, with a safe buffer of emotional distance. Who would ever suspect that there was anything else there?
So here, there's two young people with carefully crafted personae, designed to keep anyone from getting close to them. And it's possible, just possible, that they both might've screwed that one up a little bit.
Still, Tenma is hardly immune to Pás' skilled teasing style, so the remarks from the Brazilian girl get a faint twitch from the corner of the Guardian King's eye, and an irritated huff. "Oh, yeah, sure," Tenma says, finally. "And I'll be sure to tell everyone how hard you study, an' how, deep down, you're really a nice, shy girl, Estella."
Yes, two can play that game, missy.
Pás' mouth works a little uselessly in response to that. In a mirror of Tenma's reaction, her left eye twitching. She slants a long-suffering look back to her bed, still piled with books and papers, all unslightly evidence of her well-hidden academic pursuits. "Shiu!" she huffs to that. Her eyes fold, and her face goes almost razory with thought.
She almost looks inclined to flush helplessly in the face all over again.
Instead, her mouth starts to tic back into its usual grinning. Swiftly, the Brazilian girl reaches out without warning, trying to hook one hand around the back of Tenma's head to pull him close, and she leans in to press her forehead up against his. Her left eye squints like a sniper taking aim, and in a low, dark voice, she utters to him conspiratorially: "They will never believe you."
That's right, turnabout is fair play. Tenma, of course, feels inordinately pleased with himself at having elicited such a reaction from the Brazilian, a slash of a smirk crossing his face as Pás looks towards her unsightly pile of schoolwork. It seems that he's truly gotten the upper hand on her here, deftly deflected her teasing, and...
Hey, what is she doing, grabbing him by the head like that?
Tenma looks rather shocked as he ends up forehead to forehead with Pás, a faint colour rising in his paler cheeks, but he's not going to cry uncle here, no way. "Heh, like they'll believe you? Everybody knows I'm just some jerk Gedo punk. Much easier to believe you're really some dainty, studious flower rather'n your whole bad girl routine. You might even pick up some more fans, buncha white knights who wanna save you from yourself, or somethin'..." Nah, who would actually act like that around here?
Pás is silent at that. These are rare, precious times when someone is able to effectively shut her up. Her mouth purses.
She's still not quite used to getting out-teased. Honestly, is she just losing her touch?
Then the hand at the back of Tenma's head suddenly moves, as the Brazilian tries to catch him into a sudden headlock. The hold is rather gentle for all her well-known proclivities to roughhousing -- and violence. She lets go a theatrical sigh, the sound of someone whose hand has finally been forced, and though they are resigned over the decision, it must be done. "Then I am no choice," she tells him sadly, ever the actress. "I must kill you and hide the body."
Clearly, yes, Pás is losing her touch entirely. How is she going to be able to get through life if she can't tease all the boys around her into submission? How, indeed.
"What the--" Tenma starts to say, as he's suddenly entrapped in a headlock by the Brazilian girl, and while it might be relatively gentle, he's still left wriggling to get loose, scrambling for a handhold, eventually moving to catch her by the waist. He does roll his eyes a little, though, at Pás' theatrics. "Yeah, I guess so," he agrees, moving to get his feet underneath him. "'course, that'd be pretty ungrateful of you, considerin' I did save your life an' all." Sure, she might have saved his too, but he could've survived that fall beside the Suiryuu! It's entirely possible!
Also, his next step is going to be to attempt to stand up, even with Pás headlocking him. If she's not careful, she might get lifted up in the process.
"Psiiiiu," Pás replies dismissively to Tenma's claims of chivalry, "do not worry, Pescador. I will get over it." As he starts to squirm against her headlock, she just gets more tenacious about it, willful about subjugating the Guardian King in one way or another. If she can't tease him the way she used to, then she'll just keep him captive the good old-fashioned way. She pauses momentarily while trying to keep him bound, pretending not even to notice it, and adds matter-of-factly, "Ufa, but you know Marisolas will kill me for doing this." Her grin widens, and she begins to bark laughter through her explanation, "She -- she will not know what to do without you around for yelling! Ha ha ha -- what would she yell at then? Ha ha! Shiiiu, it would be the walls! Ha!!"
The Brazilian finds that reality way too hilarious to even realize Tenma's got his feet up from under himself. She laughs loudly at the image in her head, a lost, Tenma Kiryuu-less Marisol with nothing to insult, stopping only with her world suddenly tilts. He's standing up, and she's up there with him, braced by both her half-hearted headlock and Tenma's hand at her waist. Their height difference is enough that Pás' toes barely brush the ground.
She glances up, her riotous laughter suddenly sobering down to a more gentled, faint smiling, though the look in her eyes has reclaimed some of its original nervousness. Their faces are terribly close.
Grunting as he works to lift Pás, Tenma seems unconvinced with this talk about Marisol. "Yeah, sure, maybe after Red throws a big party 'bout it," he grits out, though even he knows that isn't really true; his relationship with Marisol might be usually rivals and sometimes allies, but it's always, without fail, /complicated/. But, eventually, there he is standing, holding the Brazilian by her curvy waist as much as she's got him in that headlock, and he looks her in the eyes with one of his own squinted shut, the other dark blue eye staring intently.
He can feel her breath on his face.
"'least you're pretty light," he says, with a momentary pause between those last two words. Tenma, of course, wasn't exactly thinking this one through; what's he going to do now that he's standing and they're both in a rather weird position, faces entirely too close to each other?
He kind of wishes he knew.
Pás has just gone quiet now, her words, laughter, and teasing all forgotten as she looks Tenma in the eyes. The colour has returned faintly to her cheeks, but her original shyness seems to have left her entirely. Where before she had trouble acknowledging his existence in her very bedroom, she watches him closely, almost thoughtfully, and makes no movement to pull away.
She was hoping that their last kiss wasn't only a surprise.
And now she feels compelled to do it again. She's not sure why, but she wants to kiss him. And unlike the hundreds she's stolen off countless boys who hadn't even seen it coming, Pás wants to be kissed back. Her eyes are wide and staring and her face is guileless as she, very slowly, very timidly, starts to lean in.
That realization comes so suddenly, so palpably to her that it's startling. It's frightening. She likes him. And she wants to kiss him. And if she doesn't stop herself, she is going to kiss him.
There's only one thing left to do.
There's no pause, no warning whatsoever, as Pás' slow, gentle leaning suddenly transforms into a wicked headbutt.
COMBATSYS: Pas has started a fight here.
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Pas 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Tenma has joined the fight here.
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Tenma 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Pas
COMBATSYS: Tenma blocks Pas' Random Weapon.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > //////////////////////////////]
Tenma 0/-------/------=|-------\-------\0 Pas
The thing is, with her this close, Tenma is surely thinking back to that particular kiss; the one she didn't initiate out of whatever playful Pás thing their previous encounters were motivated by, the one he started. It was pretty nice, he thought, even though he hasn't really sussed out why she ran off afterwards like some spooked animal. So when the Brazilian starts to lean in, Tenma echoes the motion, and it's clear that a very touching, sweet moment is about to happen between the two of them.
Until suddenly Pás is headbutting him.
"Son of a bitch!" Tenma pronounces, even as his /own/ head starts to move forward faster, to meet the Brazilian's before she can build up her full momentum; so, yes, he just blocked a headbutt with his head. It's possible that he's been spending too much time hanging around Kenji Ashima.
Head ringing like a bell somebody just hit with a crowbar, Tenma twists, and uses his free hand to power his way out of whatever remains of Pás' headlock, the better to simply pitch the girl at the nearest wall like tossing a bag of potatoes. Presuming he's able to get rid of her, his next step is to retrieve his bokken, letting the cloth sheath fall away. And then, of course, blood follows.
COMBATSYS: Pas auto-guards Tenma's Quick Throw!
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > //////////////////////////////]
Tenma 0/-------/------=|-------\-------\0 Pas
A familiar grin has flickered across her lips, sharp and serrated like the blade of a knife.
In the face of encroaching threat, there are sorts of people who choose to retreat to safer things. In Pás' case, it's brutal violence.
Expecting immediate reprisal, she goes slack as Tenma tries to extricate her off himself, gone suddenly pliant when he all but flings her away. Pás is pretty light, especially when she wants to be. She only moves once she's in the air, twisting suddenly, sharply in her trajectory. Instead of smashing harshly into her dorm wall, she tucks in her legs and plants both feet flat against it, pushing immediately off to beeline like a bullet straight back at the Gedo youth.
Her eyes wild and bright, and with a harsh laugh that bares the tips of her teeth, she tries to meet Tenma with a sharp kick at his head. "Hit me, Pescador!!"
COMBATSYS: Pas successfully hits Tenma with Medium Kick.
- Power hit! -
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > //////////////////////////////]
Tenma 0/-------/----===|-------\-------\0 Pas
This is going... Worse than usual for Tenma. Maybe he's off-balance for reasons unknown.
Yes, what could Tenma possibly be distracted about right now.
As Pás rebounds off of the wall, Tenma lets out a faint hiss of irritation, and tries to slip out of the way of her kick... But he doesn't quite make it, catching it against the side of his head, already moving /into/ the striking leg. He gets hit pretty hard, jarring him away from the foot, sending him staggering across the floor and backing into one corner of the four-poster.
That kinda hurt.
"Tch... You forgot to say 'please'," Tenma retorts, swinging his bokken through the air in an arc in front of him; it's too far to hit Pás from where he is, of course, but that's not the point. The point is a familiar one, at least, as a crescent of blood rips through the air in the wake of wooden blade's passage, careening directly at the Brazilian girl.
COMBATSYS: Tenma successfully hits Pas with Dharmapala.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > /////////////////////// ]
Tenma 0/-------/--=====|=====--\-------\0 Pas
Landing to her feet, tossing her long, wavy hair aside, she turns on Tenma to fix him with a half-mad stare, her grinning twitching at one corner. All that shyness is gone. All her nervousness has long given up the ghost. He might have gotten a glimpse of Estella de Santo as she truly is, but it was a fleeting one, and Pás has come back to stay.
Luxuriating in her own power, in her thirst for pain, she goes on to demand him to hit her. Pás asketh, and shall receiveth. Tenma unleashes a swath of chi from that infamous bokken of his, a belt of power-infused blood arcing widely into the air. Fearlessly, she faces it head on, planting her feet and thrusting her shoulders forward, and at the last instant trying to pull up her forearms to suffer the worst of the blow--
It seems Pás has underestimated Tenma's chi, and how powerful it's grown in all those months she studiously spent avoiding him. It smacks her backwards as though she were little less than a gnat, the girl's spine SMASHING into her own dresser. Wood splinters. She collapses with a gasp, giving her head a shake to clear it. Looking up, her dark face is now painted with blood, her dark eyes staring brightly through the mess.
"Pleaaaase," she slurs back reflexively, just as he directed, as she crawls back to her feet. "Hit me harder, Pescador." A windy, almost eery laugh punctures into her happy pleading, almost as if she were trying on purpose to creep out the Guardian King, trying to make him dismiss her as someone perhaps not all there. Recoiling, she snaps back towards him, pushing off one leg to try to crack the other in a hooking strike at his ribs. She tries to get herself aerial on purpose, her hands nabbing the post of her bed near to Tenma, as she suddenly twists herself to swing around it and follow up with a second kick at his opposite side.
COMBATSYS: Tenma blocks Pas' Devil's Crossroads.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ////////////////////// ]
Tenma 0/-------/-======|======-\-------\0 Pas
Oooh... That's probably not good. But then, how much clothing does Pás really have that she needs a dresser? Honestly. The room he's given provides enough time for Tenma to push off of the bedpost, to get his footing back, which means he's got himself together... Right when the Brazilian is crouched on the floor and staring at him through blood and dark hair, and she... Whoa dude.
/Whoa/.
Tenma is actually less creeped out than he is certain other things by the girl's behaviour, swallowing audibly and shifting lightly from one foot to the other, to the extent that he very nearly doesn't notice that she's attacking him. The initial kick strikes not his ribs, but his forearm as the Kiryuu demon hunter drops his shoulder, and when Pás whirls around her own bedpost for a second kick, this one is met by the interposing wood and chi of his bokken, and he uses the momentum provided to skid away, providing a little more room.
Wh-what the hell is with you, askin' like that?!" Tenma wonders, his voice a bit shaky, his demeanor disconcerted. No, Tenma, don't lose your feel of the pulse of the fight, the ambient energy all around the pair... He's got to do something.
Think unsexy thoughts!!
Collecting himself as quickly as he can, and trying to force less than useful impulses to the back of his mind, Tenma lunges at the Brazilian, extending his blade in front of himself to try catching Pás with the tip; if he does, the chi there will grab the girl, so that Tenma can whirl around and toss her at a wall again.
See, nothing bad on the bed. Yet.
COMBATSYS: Pas counters Asura from Tenma with Branded Mule.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////////// ]
Tenma 1/-------/=======|======-\-------\0 Pas
"Shiuuuu... Am I not askings nice enough?" Pás intones slowly, pleasantly, as she drops back down to her feet. She's still smeared in blood, and it drips off her clothing, oozes down her bare leg, and she leaves dark footprints of it across the hardwood floors. She stalks Tenma, circling him with a distinctly predatory air. Her eyes and tooth-filled smile stand out brightly against the blood darkening her face. As if smelling his indecision, the way he's reacting to her total transformation, she advances. Her voice is low and dark as she kindly repeats her last request, singsonging emptily in the quiet air: "Pes-ca-dor, hit me har-der..." Her smile widens. "Make it hurt."
She races back at him upon making that last, almost masochistic plea, fearless in the way that she lunges directly at the Guardian King leader. He brings up his bokken to receive her, but she's got mastery over her body in this moments; knowing the blood on her feet, she lets her heels drop and just slides along the hardwood floor, missing the swipe by inches. She snaps up one foot to try to kick aside the weapon from her body, following up as she tries to snatch Tenma by his weapon-wielding wrist. Pás was too shy to even look at him minutes ago, but now she's leering in, blood and all, to try to slowly lick up along one side of his face.
Not a moment later, her foot is trying to catch him solidly straight in the gut, to careen the Gedo youth harshly backwards, possibly into her own antique furniture.
Somewhere along the line here, Tenma made a mistake, that much is certain.
His strike misses, and he gets caught by Pás as the slinky Brazilian gets up inside his guard and licks his face, which is slightly disconcerting... And then he gets kicked in the stomach, sprawing backwards into that poor dresser from before. Now, quite aside from just the force imparted, Tenma also weighs substantially more than the girl does, so the poor, already damaged antique wooden structure groans dangerously and partially collapses under his weight, before Tenma manages to pull himself free, giving an odd look at the Brazilian.
"You've got some serious issues there, Estella," he says. Because words, and names especially, are weapons.
But, taking a deep breath, Tenma does not go immediately back on the offensive; instead, he holds his bokken up in front of himself in a loose stance, his dark blue eyes fixed on Pás; he might not have the people skills others might, not quite as empathic, but now that he's not dealing with certain distracting base impulses, he can process the idea that she's /acting funny/ and that this was a /rather sudden change/.
Just what it means, well, that sort of escapes him at the moment.
COMBATSYS: Tenma focuses on his next action.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////////// ]
Tenma 1/-------/=======|=====--\-------\0 Pas
Pás doesn't seem to mind that Tenma ruins her furniture, that separate piece possibly priced in the thousands. She reacts only when he says her name, her birth one, her eyes drawn on him swiftly, sharply. The sound of it seems to grate on her, and she tenses like a cat being pet the wrong way. However, the girl replies him with a lazy smile, even if it doesn't quite reach her dark eyes.
"You are the only one who calls me by that name, Pescador," she tells him simply, briskly, with no inflection on her inky words. Pás does not reveal anything more of herself to Tenma, whether or not she enjoys hearing that name of hers spoken.
But she does not like hearing it, not often. She doesn't like the old feelings it inspires. Names are weapons, and powerful ones at that.
Sudden as that change is that she's undergone, Pás relishes in it, needing it for her strength. This is the preferred way to live, the one she's only ever wanted for herself, one where the only sensation to feel is pain that can be ever so pleasurable in its total simplicity. She pauses only to look at her own hand, her eyes following the way the blood off his bokken covers her fingers. Her eyes slide back on Tenma. Pás' grin widens.
Then she's lunging at him, assuming the offense if he will not. Stepping right in close, the Brazilian pinwheels off one leg, her torso swung low as her other leg wings in from above, trying to ground the bone of her heel down at one side of his neck.
COMBATSYS: Pas successfully hits Tenma with Change-Up Kick.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////////// ]
Tenma 1/-----==/=======|======-\-------\0 Pas
Something is palpably wrong, Tenma can tell that much.
He's not oblivious to Pás' reaction to his use of her birth name, either, nor the way she seems to quickly cover it up with this other behaviour. "Yeah, well," is all Tenma really offers for a response before the Brazilian is on him again. It's a clearly telegraphed attack, and surely there's plenty of time to deal with it, right? Except... No. He starts to move, and the heel slams down on the side of his neck, sending a painful jolt through his body.
Fustration shoots through him at the same time as the jolt of pain. Why? Why does he never seem to be able to do well against this girl? It's not a question of power, he knows that... Is there some inherent flaw in his judgement where she's concerned?
For a second, his bokken starts to drop limply from his hand, having taken the blow on his right side... Until he swiftly catches it with his left hand, and brings the chi-emanating blade up in a vicious arc aimed across Pás' body. Fine, if she wants pain so bad, he'll be sure to give her some!
COMBATSYS: Pas blocks Tenma's Fierce Strike.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ////////////////// ]
Tenma 1/----===/=======|=======\-------\1 Pas
Moving almost bonelessly, her dexterity as natural to her as it is to breathe in one's sleep, Pás slips back from offense to defense, lowering one arm to catch and support her body as she goes suddenly inverted, her left kicking leg suddenly traded in as the right shoots out, warding off his bokken with her foot and shin, redirecting the strike away from her body in a fierce push. More blood paints her, and not just her own. The Brazilian realizes all too well that she's playing with fire, and that Tenma Kiryuu's chi has developed into something far more than she can endure. Her only defense is to just try to minimize its reach on her body as much as possible.
Just because she wants pain, doesn't mean she's not going to be all that yielding about it. She's found that pain always feels better when it's rightfully deserved.
And the potential of hurt bound in Tenma's attack is lost this time, felt no more than stinging fire up her interjecting leg. Righting herself back to her feet, frustration is shared mutally upon them, as Pás seems to be looking more and more impatient for that pain she wants. Something she can't defend. That perpetual, Chesire grin of hers falters for the first time in many minutes, as she tries to reach forward and grab the boy she wants to kiss so badly by the collar, attempting to pull him in for yet another smash of her head against his. "HIT!" And, if she can, again. "ME!"
COMBATSYS: Tenma fails to interrupt Zidane's Revenge from Pas with Dead End Breaker.
[ \\\\\\\ < > ///////////////// ]
Tenma 1/--=====/=======|=======\-------\1 Pas
Apparently, nobody's going to get any satisfaction today. Tenma knows what's coming, and he makes a snap decision - a snap decision that proves to be the wrong one. As the hand grabs him by his collar, Tenma starts to swing... But Pás gets in too close, too quickly, leaving his arm to strike her side uselessly as he gets hit right in the face with not one, but two headbutts, each impact rocking his head back.
Oy.
"Shit," the Guardian King breathes out, and there's that sense of frustration, again. Always, it's like this, to one degree or another. He almost had her beaten once, when it was her breaking into his room, but this is just... Embarassing. He staggers back, not that there's much room to do so, and breathes raggedly as he spits blood onto the hardwood floor.%
No way he's giving up.
Her hand lets Tenma go the instant of her second attack, the Brazilian shifting away cleanly to earn herself some space. Whatever reprisal he had intended on her that did not work, she doesn't seem to notice. The only wound with what she comes free is self-inflicted, her temple split from violently cracking her head against his and her blood mixing darkly with his.
Disengaging somewhat from the Guardian King, she leaves bloodied footprints in her wake, no doubt generously allowing him something of a breather in their fight. However, and no doubt to Tenma's disdain, the Brazilian girl only looks like she's broken the barest of sweats, and probably used up more energy marinating in nervousness over his prior closeness than landing attacks on his body.
Stepping away, the girl stretches indulgently, extending her arms up over her head. Exhaling, she turns a heavy-lidded look back on Tenma, all of that masochistic urgency that dominated her eyes soon sobering into a dismissive resignation. Her smile returns, somewhat in a sad way, before it just crooks impishly. Far be it from her not to sneak a taunt in. "Hum. I am not finish my mathmatica school work, Pescador. You will not hate me if I finish it while I fight you? Psiu, I am promise I will give you enough attention."
Her smiling gets /mean./
COMBATSYS: Pas takes no action.
[ \\\\\\\ < > ///////////////// ]
Tenma 0/-------/----===|=======\-------\1 Pas
Were Tenma anyone other than Tenma, it's quite likely that he would've given up by now. His stubbornnes, though, his reflexive defiance and complete unwillingness to admit the possibility that he cannot win... Those things keep him going anyway.
There's frustration, too; only once has he really seemed to have had Pás beaten, and even then she was able to turn it into a draw with a last, desperate gamble. This time is going a lot less well than that time.
But worse than that, worse than the likelihood of defeat, is the attitude the Brazilian is adopting. There was something, there was almost some kind of a moment there - of what, Tenma himself isn't sure, or maybe he just can't admit it to himself, but at least he didn't run away from it. He might try to keep other people at an emotional arm's length, and he might not really be capable of expressing himself well even when he /doesn't/ try to push them away, but he faces things as head on as he's able.
Tenma Kiryuu might not understand girls, but he understands what Pás did in starting this fight, if not /why/. It just took him a few minutes to really process it.
"You coward," Tenma says, regaining his footing fully, and looking over at Pás. "I dunno what you're runnin' away from, but that kinda shit is pretty beneath you." His voice is heated, though just what emotion is winning out isn't entirely clear. Suddenly, though, he springs forward, bokken dropping to the floor in a clatter, and he reaches out with every intent of catching Pás with both hands, grabbing fistfuls of shirt, before he springs off of the floor using his own momentum and main strength to carry the girl with him. "That kinda shit--" he starts, and if everything goes the way he plans, then he'll bear Pás into a rough collision with her own bed - and her own homework - with his own greater weight added to seal the deal. "--REALLY PISSES ME OFF!!"
COMBATSYS: Pas counters Strong Throw from Tenma with Catherine Wheel.
[ \\ < > ///////////////// ]
Tenma 0/-------/=======|-------\-------\0 Pas
Pás has been called many things in her life, some good, some bad, some that would make a sailor blush.
A coward is not one of them.
All that lazy, happy-go-lucky charitability just rots right off of her. Her perpetual smile falters and finally disappears. Her sleepy, bedroom eyes that seem to promise things flare, the look in them fierce and searing, and more inclined to promise something very different. "Coward?!" she echoes, the tips of her teeth flaring as she all but spits out the word, the taste of it sharp and bitter.
Her dark, ambery eyes narrow. Insult flickers poisonously across her face. Not an instant later, Tenma is racing back towards the Brazilian, aiming to follow up his barbed words with a more painful attack. But she's prepared for it. Fuelled only by furious outrage, her own arms reach in to get in the way of his, her own shirt saved and the throw momentarily redirected. Instead she tries to grab Tenma by the tops of his extended wrists, and tries to /lever off of them/, twisting into the air as her legs suddenly hook outwards. Sparkling chi bursts off the bottoms of her feet, almost appearing to surge momentarily into brief licks of white fire, as she corkscrews through the air while trying to nail him with harsh kicks. The attack is different than it usually is; it is brief and merciless, all of its characteristic, drawn-out art exchanged for the desire to really make it hurt.
The last explosive kick just tries to smash him away, delivered before the Brazilian girl even touches the ground. She lands, curling into a roll and pushing indignantly back up to her feet, her angry chi still crackling from the flesh of her bare feet. "/I/ am a coward?!" she shouts after, loud and incensed. Her voice breaks into wild, insensible, and probably very ugly Portguese. "--Filho de puta! You name me a coward?!" Pás demands hotly. "I do not run from anything!"
Turning back on Tenma, she emphatically taps her own collarbone as she furiously declares, "I am afraid of /nothing!/"
Sometimes, when he's really furious, Tenma can do some amazing things. Bordeline miraculous, really; such as his standing up to Kain R. Heinlein, or that time he actually managed to get the drop on Seishirou Ryouhara.
This is not one of those times.
Quite securely caught by Pás' own furious response, Tenma is blasted by each explosive kick, the Brazilian's not-inconsiderable power tearing into him painfully, and finally blasting him away and into the far wall, putting a crack in the facade before he falls to the floor heavily.
Of course, he's still pushing himself up when Pás unleashes her spicy South American tirade at him, blue eyes staring at her through the fall of his black hair. He's none too steady on his feet, burned, battered and bloodied... But when the girl turns away from him with her emphatic declaration, his mouth pulls into a wide smile.
"Sure you're not," Tenma agrees, surprisingly indulgent for someone who just called her a coward. "'cept for enjoyin' being kissed by me, right?"
Maybe he's not quite as dumb as he looks.
COMBATSYS: Tenma takes no action.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Pas 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Tenma can no longer fight.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Pas 0/-------/-------|
Her gesturing hand drops down to her side, but it remains folded into a wary fist. It seems that she has won their imprompu fight, but Pás visibly remains standing with threat, finding something dangerous in the way the Guardian King is suddenly smiling at her. He's not supposed to be smiling..!
Her eyes widen. Pás flinches back from those words, stung, as if they'd physically hit her. The flicker of surprise quickly dispels off her face, her expression tethered up in a fresh surge of anger. Her teeth grit. Her eyebrows twitch with a temper she is straining to keep in check. She stares at Tenma quietly, then curls her lip and makes it a deliberate point of looking away, turning her back on the boy all too dismissively.
"Che," she grunts, folding her arms as she steps away, forcing a wide berth of space between Tenma and herself. Feeling no longer satisfied with striking him with her feet alone, Pás turns to words. Her voice is sharp and curt as she replies, so very proudly, "Stupid boy. You have made confusion of fear and disgust."
Meanwhile, halfway forgotten on the floor, Tenma's bokken has already lost its aura of blood and chi; usually a sure sign that the Kiryuu heir himself isn't able to keep fighting. Not, at least, in the old fashioned violence way. Hurling words to attack another person is nothing new to the tall Japanese youth, but in this case, at least, he's doing it less to actually be a jerk than he is because he's pretty sure they're right.
Clearly, though, Pás isn't operating under the same assumption.
"Is that right?" Tenma says, straightening up, his tone dangerous. "So that's why you were so worried I just did it to shock you, huh? Why you kept lookin' like you were gonna kiss me?" In this, at least, he can hide any hurtful effects of Pás' words, whereas the earlier kicking and headbutting was much more difficult to conceal. "Heh, I thought you were a good liar."
Starting over towards his discarded weapon, Tenma stoops to start picking it back up. "Hey, you wanna be scared by stuff like that, that's fine, whatever. Ain't like I'm some kinda expert either. But if you're gonna feed me this bullshit 'cause you wanna run and hide, that's what I'm not gonna put up with. You're afraid of it, an' you're afraid of me, an' hell, you're probably afraid of yourself, too. Just kinda depressing to see you be such a big coward about it."
Pás very adamantly keeps her back turned on Tenma Kiryuu. She doesn't even dare glance once at him. That is dangerous territory.
Oh but she wants to, so very badly, as each one of the Gedo youth's words dig into her as if they carried barbs. So rarely does that mysterious Brazilian girl even rankle at others, so impossibly does she aggravate at the rest of the world -- but right now it's killing her to keep her rage in check. That particular insult has struck a deep, hazardous chord in that seemingly-harmless girl, who wants nothing more to turn on Tenma and /PROVE/ to him, swiftly, violently, that he is wrong and that she is afraid of nothing.
Her tells her she's afraid of /herself./ Her hands clench. Her teeth grind. How dare he. How dare he...
She is fearless. That's who she is. That's what she stands for. Nothing can give her pause and nothing will ever make her weak. It's a sore spot for that mysterious Brazilian, whose first and most desperate impulse now is to respond loudly and thunderously to the mere suggestion of that insult, despite all that she may have ever felt about Tenma, despite that he may... be completely right. But Pás keeps her back turned on him, and that simple gesture is what reins her back from losing the remainder of her restraint.
She takes in a deep breath, and focusing hard, decides to respond to his accusations the only way she knows how.
Exhaling, Pás replies all too anticlimactically: "Shiu." Straightening up, trying to shoulder off the tension in her muscles, she tells him breezily, "If you cannot hit me, what good are you? Now I am bored. You know the way out, Pescador." She moves briskly to the front door without even a glance back, imparting a dismissive little "Tchau."
Okay, seriously, how can anyone who's had any previous contact with Tenma actually wonder 'how dare he' about anything? He dares, obviously. He just does.
But the thing about hurling words as weapons the way Tenma does, even with the knoweldge of how to make them hurt, is that he usually expects people to respond in kind. That's probably why he doesn't just outright avoid Marisol; if he wants to have a good screaming match with someone, the redhead is pretty likely to respond in kind. Also he seems to keep end up seeing her bra.
But the response he gets from Pás - which is to say 'initially none' - just doesn't work for him. And then to be treated so... Well, dismissively, that rankles. It rankles because it builds on his earlier frustrations with their impromptu fight, and it rankles because - and this might come as a surprise - Tenma likes to be acknowledged. He likes attention.
So it doesn't take much for Tenma already in a foul temper, to make one of those snap decisions that always works out so well for him. If she wants to run away literally, if she wants to be in denial, then he'll just have to prove his point. He moves with all the immediacy his tired and battered body, groaning in protest, can manage, and he reaches out in an attempt to catch Pás by the upper arm, to turn her about to face him.
And if he can do that, then he's going to repeat the very action that got him into this situation in the first place. He's going to try to kiss her.
Pás, choosing to dismiss others, and ever so used to being dismissed just as easily in return, doesn't even see it coming.
She's positive that, however purposeful and persistent as Tenma Kiryuu is whenever she fights him, he'll simply leave the way she came. Either way, right here is the last place she wants to be.
And she almost quite makes it. The Brazilian girl places one hand on the handle-- and then Tenma's hand steals around her upper arm. Her eyes widen, her muscles tensing up with shock as she's pulled around and forward into--
--a taste of her own medicine.
Unmoving -- unable to -- Pás just murmurs a small, surprised sound into the kiss, her lips crushed up against his. Her eyes just stare widely, brightly, gazing helplessly forward. Then they slowly close. She doesn't even try to break away.
She only opens her eyes when the kiss eventually ends, her breathing ragged and her heart hammering at an uncontrollable rate. The flush of colour has returned to her cheeks. For a moment, Pás just stares widely up at Tenma. She liked that. She liked it enough that she's able to forget, for two precious moments, how angry she is at him. Don't worry; she doesn't forget that for long. Her eyebrows tic.
A capoeirista never attacks with their hands; the hands themselves remain wholly separate from the art of war. Capoeira has an old rule, that someone creates with their hands and destroys with their feet. Pás breaks that rule, swiftly and suddenly, coiling her right fist and hooking it out in a direct mirror of Marisol's favourite strike. Right now she's set on creating some pain in the left side of Tenma's jaw.
If this is her own medicine, than it tastes more than faintly of blood, just like the last time. One supposes that's what happens if they were to kiss or be kissed by Tenma Kiryuu after he uses his powers; those previous times, where Pás kissed him, weren't like that. Maybe it's just because he initiated it.
As he kisses the Brazilian, Tenma keeps his hand forcefully on her upper arm, slowly moving it up to cup the side of her face - his other hand, after all, still holds his bokken. What he feels then is complicated. It's not quite the sense of triumph he would've expected, having managed to get one up on the capoeirista again, but it definitely has largely positive connotations. And once he breaks off the kiss, he finally takes his hand from her, dark blue eyes meeting her brown.
This time, he doesn't look pleased with himself, as he did that time on the roof of Gedo High; he looks flushed, like Pás, and he's breathing a bit heavily. So he's pretty surprised when he gets decked.
"Geh!" Tenma exclaims involuntarily, as he's punched in the jaw. The force of the blow, and his own battered, tired body, which hasn't nearly recovered from the fight just moments before, is certainly enough to send him sprawling to one side, colliding forcefully with some furniture or another. And, for once, Tenma doesn't seem to have anything to say about that; he just stares at Pás, wordlessly.
Her hand aches powerfully from punching him, her knuckles unused to throwing strikes. Shaking out her paining hand, still breathing a little too shallowly, Pás stares incredulously down at Tenma. This kiss is very different from the others, this too she knows. It was not her attempting to tease and toy with him. It was not him trying to surprise her. It was something else. Something different. Something much more terrible...
She thinks she likes him.
Backing up, she just looks at him, though the expression on her face has gravely changed. That look of insult has fled Pás' face, and though she's still locked up with shock, it's no longer purely out of outrage. It's something else entirely. Her face is still hopelessly burned with fierce flushing, and every so often she swallows thickly against how her mouth has gone suddenly dry. The girl keeps backing up until the small of her back bumps up sharply against the door handle, the touch suprising her hypersensitive nerves. She jumps with a sharp gasp, then turns a bladed glare back down on Tenma as though it were his fault.
Because it is!
Without warning, the very incensed Pás fixes him with a sharp frown, pointing a damning index finger straight down at his face. "Pervertido!" she barks in her native language, her voice quickly lost into quick, insensible, and very, very angry Portuguese. "Vocę é muito impetuoso! Pare de olhar fixamente em mim como isso! Putz, vou ficar puto.... caramba. Psiu! Deixe-me em paz! Merda!!"
With one last indignant huff, Pás turns shoulder and gets the hell out of there.
Well, if Pás likes Tenma, she sure has a funny way of showing it.
The Kiryuu heir rubs his jaw as the Brazilian girl looks at him incredulously like that, and he's not entirely sure what's going on beneath the surface of the always mysterious capoeirista, but he's reasonably sure that he struck some kind of a chord there. Besides, he's been thinking about doing that for weeks, and all the more intensely since he got here. He just didn't foresee it resulting in his getting punched.
When he gets glared at, Tenma's brow furrows, and his eyes fix on that finger pointing at him, but when Pás starts berating him wildly in Portuguese, it turns into more of a befuddled look. Well, he caught the first word, at least, but the rest of it went way over his head.
And then he's left alone in the room.
"Agh... Damn, what the hell is her problem anyway?" the Gedo swordsman mutters to himself, as he starts towards the open balcony. "She totally liked that kiss, where does she get off punching me and calling me a pervert? Girls are frickin' crazy, I don't even know why I like her so much--" stopping up short at that, Tenma's eyes widen, and he blanches.
Oh.
Slumping his shoulders, Tenma scrubs his free hand through his hair, and continues muttering to himself as he escapes the dormitory via the balcony, before all the noise, or Pás' subsequent flight, draws any untoward attention. There's just one problem, of course. One piece of damning evidence he left behind.
The blue cloth sheath to his bokken, with the Kiryuu family crest on it. Whoops?
Log created on 19:26:27 10/16/2008 by Tenma, and last modified on 22:37:45 10/26/2008.