A
Ametheliana
Taisaku Sunahama Ryū Kenka or The Epic Beach Style Fight
Aashi Nath listened as Ronin spoke, picking up the nuances of his tone and the way his body language reacted to what he said. Ronin was proud of his own exploits and less than thrilled with the exploits of others, like those of the NMX and Mishhu and, yes, pirates. Only pirates like pirates, she knew that. She was unperturbed, but noted that he could have withheld that bit of information but had chosen not to. She wanted to know why, but that question was shadowed by the one she had wanted to ask when he changed his statement about being in it for the cash and had added something else.
"So," she began, bringing her face close to his as she pushed her palms on her beach chair and raised herself slighly, "what is this 'bigger picture' you are driven towards?"
Ronin took a moment of dwelling in the moment, his abs glistening in the sunlight for the momentary silence. It was only after another drag and puff of smoke that he let out an initially wheezy and single word.
"Change."
It was spoken with no doubt lacking semblance to the ears of the Iro woman he'd just had the privilege to start getting to know. Aashi, as she were, was an older woman just by how she carried herself and likely had little interest in the affairs of a short-lived being like himself. But the idea of changing Yamatai was something that he shared with many criminal and ex-soldier alike.
"Power armor is the only way we looked at crushing the Mishhu. My bigger picture... it's to use their own technology against them. Mecha-craft has existed but not in the state we saw them unleash against some of our numbers during the war. Power armor bridged it... but there was an untapped power to it. Watching a machine tear a fighter in half like we would paper? It changes your perspective of things."
"Change is an important thing to want. Knowing how to get it is another thing altogether," she said, ruminating on the thought as she lowered herself on the chair and took in a deep breath.
Her lungs were particularly good at filtering out dust and other fine debri in the air and were working well at filtering out the smoke from his cigarette while he drew it in and exhaled near her. A small part of her wished she could get the same head high that others had talked about after they took their drags. She watched him idly, then said, "You spent time fighting several different species, but what do you think those species were fighting you for? They may have wanted change just as much as you do."
"Fighting for change like me, huh?"
Taking a moment to sit with the cigarette in his right hand's grip but with the butt still sitting on the trim, masculine lips for support. After a moment of what must have been some serious thinking, the man broke from his funk and scoffed.
"If that was the case, then I'd hope their change was at least something that was worth getting killed for. NMX, pirates, rebellious forces... they're all just names. Just like there are no doubt scum out there even among all my cat-sisters and brothers in the Yamatai Star Army."
Sitting up, his hand pulled the smokestick free and let out a stream of the stuff before moving his left hand rub his forehead. It took all but a moment before he turned over onto his side to face her from across the short distance between their chairs. And, as such, his mohawk shifted ever so slightly to lazily lean to the side as his shade-covered green eyes set on her.
"I think, though... that maybe you know the same sort of thing. A pirate and a mercenary aren't always so different. With or without a purpose, we fight for a living... so surely you understand the sort of question you're posing at me, Miss Nath."
All too well, Aashi understood, but to understand and be understood were two different things. She wanted more to understand than have him understand her. And he was doing a fine job of making it seem like he had her figured out.
"I know it's likely we have both been through the same things, and, forgive me for doing so, I'm trying to find out which side of the net you're playing from. Star Army seems to be the side of the net you have the most footing in."
"Well," he returned the smoke to his mouth with the brief pause, "They did train and take care of me for the short while I served. My world isn't coming back, so Yamatai is the closest thing to a home I got."
Looking toward the sunny sky, he'd give a rather pathetic attempt at a wave of his hand toward the heavens.
"All that shit out there? That's where I get to play and mess around to try and make Yamatai recognize the potential of these mecha. The Tengu is just one big mess but even then it's fun flying system-to-system for a new fight. But that's why my net isn't so easy. Yamatai and the Star Army are my home... but this way of life? This is what I've grown adapted to."
Aashi nodded her head at the sky as she looked on at it with him and then looked to him, a keener sense of who he was instilled in her.
"There are a million possibilities for what you can grow into and a mercenary and pirate happen to be the ones we landed ourselves in, because we adapted. It seems there may never be a new home from the one you last left, and yet there's always one waiting for you. For me, my home was a planet, and then I wanted to leave it and travel the skies we look at, now. But I didn't get that chance. The next home I got was a cell. That is where I adapted," she said, "to become something that you would have not hesitated to kill. Does that make this way of life, being mercenaries and pirates, does that make it less of a living if it's what we had to do, not what we live to do?"
The final question had pieced together the banter rather nicely, resulting in Mister Takimori rolling back and onto his back with a smile gracing his lips with the death-stick looking like it would fall off with the tiny smoke-trail rising from it.
"It doesn't change it much when it's what we need to do and what we choose to do. I heard there's one girl in Uso's bunch who was seen eating cereal in her underwear. That sort of scene fits more back on some secure world far from this NMX-contested frontier."
His chest rose with a deeper breath, finally letting out a lengthy one that blew the smoke from his nose in another display of a seasoned smoker. But his green eyes looked skyward for that time before looking at Aashi for a few moments. And, of course, ending it with the slightest of chuckles.
"It's certainly not like any other job I've been on before. The day I was hired on by Uso, I got dragged into some rich formal party with her, you know? Would have seen her nude, too, if it wasn't for her body's tech. Thinking about it only helps cement that maybe, for once, this isn't something I'm doing for any other reason than I might just enjoy the oddity of what I've seen on this backwater world."
Aashi drummed her fingers against her chair and looked up to see his spectacled face looking at her. She could feel his gaze even when she looked back to the sky. Only when she looked back at him did she notice he had turned his vision elsewhere. It was odd, the feeling of being looked at as an equal. Being looked at at all, other than for commands. She hadn't talked like this with someone in awhile and something about it felt reassuringly good.
"I've seen a lot worse of worlds, but never stayed on one longer than it takes to unload anything its inhabitants find precious," she said with sly smile. "I wouldn't mind doing the same thing again and again with Uso, and you, I guess. I wouldn't mind doing that again, not at all. But what I really want to know is why you got hired. Were you left for dead with nowhere to go? Or just thirsty for some Uso action?"
A sly smile and a witty hint at what any man would call lust had caused him to almost sputter out in a slip of his professional but grumpy persona. As fast as he had done so, the cigarette coming dangerously close to slipping free and falling onto that nicely formed torso, he covered his mouth while his right hand plucked the cigarette free. Smoke slipped out from the cracks in his fingers as he laughed momentarily, finally moving it away once most of the smoke had finally left.
"Haha~! That was a pretty good one," he said while plucking the glasses off and falling back in his chair with some effort to relax after the surprising chuckle, "But uh... I got hired because she needed hands. I had come off a job and next thing I knew, she was buying on any help. A friend put me through and then I got stuck following her ass around for the day. As for if I'm thirsty, I'm a healthy human male. We're mostly water for a reason... you know, needing to drink. If I earned the right to get aciton with that woman, I'd not mind taking the risk of getting killed from the ensuing fun!"
Aashi said, "I wouldn't dare tempt her to show you just how easy it would be to kill you. You say you almost saw her naked? What would the repercussions have been if you had? I can't pin you down as being the flogging type or not."
"Well, based on how she was taking a look at me while I was getting dressed? I think flogging wouldn't have been the punishment our boss had in mind. I'd wager any man or woman would have killed to have come as close as I did... and just as many would kill to have her checking them out."
Ronin chuckled once more, his grumpy mood softened considerably. Aashi had certainly proven herself different from the common horny alien. She was probably one of the more relaxed of the Iro he had met in all of his time travelling job-to-job.
"Turning invisible as she does... you've not seen her naked, have you? I mean, asking those sorts of questions makes me think you're almost jealous!"
"No, just used to floggings being a regular thing, where I'm from, is all," Aashi replied with a half smile as she turned her head to face the sun. "To be quite clear, I don't think I've had a sexual thought since I went into that cell decades ago and I haven't found the need for one since I've gotten out. There isn't a reason to let that be what you live for. I presume that sentiment lands on deaf ears, though."
"Less deaf and more doubtful. I can't imagine the idea of someone being entirely devoid of a sexual thought. I mean... you're not some asexual alien. Unless I missed something about your kind, you all like to get down and fu-"
He's interrupted as an ash falls from his cigarette and singes his bair chest, causing an immediate curse and slight rise to sit up in his chair. A quick brush knocked it free, giving his non-interested neighbor a view at his strong back for all but a moment before he turned his upper half to face her. The cigarette was running considerably low, the pilot taking the time to speak up while carefully plucking it free.
"Tell you what... why don't you show me what you pirates learn when fighting? I can't imagine being in a cell that long removed your natural instincts as a being that reproduces and your fighting senses. That game of volleyball ended early, so I still got some energy for a mock spar. Whattaya say, Miss Horned-Head?"
"You're in for quite a fight, Mister Creamsicle, let's get this going, then," Aashi said, standing to her full six foot height, not including aforementioned horns. "Do you need any rules? Pull your punches, no groin or head, that kind of thing?" She began to walk over to a deserted area of the beach, expecting him to follow.
Getting up, he couldn't help but shake his head with a sigh at the attempt at a trashtalking nickname. Taking his cigarette as they walked, he would flick the much smaller smoke flying through the air and against some bookworm's head. Of course, he had no interest in seeing who he'd hit before moving along.
As they arrived, he'd give her a pat to her rump before passing her and moving to stand across from her. It was the one free shot he had, one mixed between a fighter's pat and an attempt to get a nice touch to that heiny. Compared to his opponent who stood six feet tall without her horns, the fit soldier was an inch shorter... but he was confident enough in his old training. As a last touch, he pulled his sunglasses off and tossed them into the sand nearby to avoid getting them involved in the scuffle that was sure to come.
"I guess we can keep our groins out of it... but everything else seems fair. Whenever you're ready to lose, let's get this show on the road."
Aashi nodded slightly with her hands to her side, a movement tha could have been mistaken as a bow. She moved her fists up as her feet started moving back and forth. While she held her gaze on Ronin's eyes, she threw two punches out to his abdomen, missing connection on both before recovering her fists to their defending positions and allowing him a chance at her.
Meeting those eyes with his green ones was all it took for him to lower his stance and bring both hands up in an open manner. It wasn't exactly a shared fighting style, but it was disciplined enough that her missed punches gave him the moment he needed. Lunging forward too fast, however, he came face-to-face with the Iro woman in such a manner that they practically smacked lips as he shoved her back as hard as he could. It was a simple manner to attack, but the awkward step to warm up into the fight had thrown off his own attempts and made it hard to do much more than put his own strength to work and try to send her toppling back.
The Iromakuanhe woman simply moved backwards and to the side as she grabbed his wrist and twsited as he fell forward and she moved out of his way. Her hnd was on his wrist as she moved behind him and held it up to his swole back.
"Kissing, already? Tsk, tsk. That doesn't happen at all for me, you know that. Now, tell me you want to be let go and I will. Say the words."
"Tch! Surrendering? This isn't anything yet, kiss or not!"
Rather than submit and let her purely take hold, his body strained in an act of defying the pain and instincts to not move in such a binding grip. Rather, he fell and rolled his body to slip his arm out from behind him while bringing his still free hand to clasp the wrist of the Iro. With his back toward the ground, he tried to keep the momentum of his falling weight and use the hold on her to pull her to the ground in a slam-like manner. Slipping free was possible, of course, but losing so fast would hurt any man's ego!
Aashi slammed her hand down on the ground to take most of the impact before her body hit the sand. It reduced the force minimally and her body was still for half a moment before she felt Ronin let go of her and she rolled away from him and stood up.
"Heh," she said, more of an exhaled grunt than anything, before stancing up again with him.
While she'd gone for a fancy roll, he'd turned and rose to his feet with sand covering his back from his own impact in the sand. As confident as she was and already slipping into her stance, it seemed her opponent wasn't too terribly let-down after scoring a semi-successful take-down.
"Getting reversed after demanding a surrender," he said as he paced around in his stance once more with a slight tug-down of his swimtrunks on his right hip to show some of that nice male form, "I guess you were expecting me to be some weakling. I can safely say you're living up to the tough pirate you were playing out to be!"
"I think you'll find that to be true," Aashi said as she got back into her fighting stance, bouncing on the balls of her feet with her hands determinedly placed, one in front of her face and one tucked against her large chest.
She lept forward, looking at her pseudo-target, his face, while her front fist went forward, only to pull back before it could meet him. That is when her real blow came from her other hand, straight against his belly. His body was too solid to get through that easily and she put her hands on his shoulders, using his body's recoil from the punch as impetus for her knee to find its mark against his face. She stopped just short of it, though, and instead pulled it back and hopped backwards, hands off of him.
The gut punch to his abs had almost knocked all the wind out of him with how sudden it came, but when she backed off and avoided delivering a knee-strike to his face, the man felt more than a little annoyed at being played around with. Rising to stand up sorta straight once more, he cursed under his breath and moved forward with his hands in a low guard. Without breaking their gaze, he feinted a right jab toward her head, then feinted a second time with a left hook that stopped mid-swing, before finally bringing a leg up and around in a fast knee-level kick that would land with enough impact to at least get retribution for the initial strike.
Aashi let out an exasperated and terse , "Ah~" as her foot made contact and instead of letting her body buckle now that one of her legs had the heat put on it, she sprung to the side and bounced back and forth on her feet, trying to bounce off the pain, which soon faded and became a dull pulse of past pressure.
Aashi then stepped her forward left food to the right side, twisted her hips and pivoted on the ball of her foot while taking her right foot off the ground. She had fully spun around and was now facing away from him as her spinning back kick made impact on his shoulder. She held back only barely this time and let her nearly her full strength go into the leg before landing with her right leg forward, hands up and defending.
The powerful kick had landed, but with how easily she had made it to read, it wasn't landing with the force one might have got from a stealthy blow. Instead, he braced for it and only went teetering and stumbling a few steps before fixing his posture with a grunt. The pain stung and ached, but it was far from enough to get him to stop.
"Not bad, Wide Hips... guh... you can certainly throw a k-kick..."
Being a baseline human, even in a state of fitness and prowess as Ronin was, was making this fight almost biologically hard. For each powerful blow he thought he delivered, she threw one back without much more than a moment to recover! This time, he moved in and planned to get off a flurry. Specifically, he'd try to bait out a punch from the Iro woman to take hold of her arm and deliver a nice hooked jab to her hip. All the while, of course, with his own swimming trunks seeming to steadily slip lower and lower!
Aashi blocked one punch after another, sweeping her arms side to side before she saw an opening and went to take it. He pulled on her arm and went to get a punch to her hip. The Iroma woman had hard bones, harder than humans and thick exoskeletal plates on her joints made of the same stuff. When Ronin hit her hip, he was hitting hard bone and Aashi jumped back in surprise at the sheer force he had punched her with, worried more for him than herself.
As she did, she noticed his sagging shorts and her eyes fled from the strong V shape of his lower abdomen, not needing to know where it led, but knowing full well that it was a place most likely as strong as the rest of him. She watched him to gauge the pain he felt, if any, from punching her exoskeleton.
Thankfully, as lewd as his shorts short-malfunction was, her hip had done enough to cause him to draw back with a curse and a look to his hand. It had felt like hitting a brick wall, but those hips looked like something any guy or gal would kill to just grab onto and hold all day! Looking to her with their newfound distance, it took him a few moments to click his knowledge of the Iro and understand exactly what happened.
"Jeez, you sure have some rock-solid hips... I know girls back from my Star Army days who'd have killed for that shape and that toughness! I guess I'll have to punch something different than normal targets..."
"The shape is what I think most want, but the toughness is what most need. I can tell which of the two you most desire, though..." she said, swaying her hips as she walked over to his sunglasses. She picked them up and walked over to him, then put them up to his head. She set them over his ears and against his eyes, looking into the refelction of herself rather than the green eyes she had only just seen.
"You are quite the adversary, I am happy to say you're on the same team as me. You know, I used to be the undisputed champion of the fight club on my ship. I haven't been able to join the crew in a few years and needed that refresher course. I'm sorry if I'm a little out of practice, but it seems it was a fair fight, if I'm being honest," Aashi said as she lowered his hands away from his sungalsses and face.
Getting his sunglasses put back on had certainly caused a pause in the man. From a fight to the nicely-shaped Iro picking up his shades and putting them back on for him? Even though it hurt his pride, and reminded him to rub his stinging hand, he figured that maybe letting the fight end on her compliment spree was a good choice.
"Well... if I'm being honest, you're certainly one of the few women I've met to look as good as they can fight, out of practice or not. I wasn't expecting one of the Iromakaunhe to be someone I can match up against even remotely fairly. Compared to the cats of Yamataia, us humans are jokes... nice to see there's someone in the stars I can still fight."
"Compared to the cats of Yamatai, we're all jokes," she said, mentally enumerating the many things those Neko could do that she herself could only dream of. Her familiar came over to her as she mentally called it and she pet it, soothed by its presence with her. It felt a strong urge to slip through the air and she let it follow its desires as it flew around Ronin, touching him on the shoulders and arms with its slick, flappy wings.
Blinking at the strange manta, his hand moved up to pet and pat the little critter for a few moments. It still hadn't occured to him, it seemed, that the swimtrunks were so close to falling off and leaving him exposed to the deserted portion of the beach. Of course, that meant he'd be bare before the Iro gal... but as he reached down to try and grab hold of his cigarettes, he failed to grab anything. Looking down, his glasses at least hid the widening of his eyes.
"Uh... w-well, I guess that's the case," he said while quickly tugging the trunks back up to hide the strong V-shape that Aashi had no doubt been oh-so interested in, "But I wonder what everyone else got up to while we were gone..."
Aashi nodded as she looked away from the pair as the Matai Skyfish lingered around Ronin's pelvis, saying, "Yeah, speaking of Nekos..."
"HEY YOU TWO! WE GOT TO GO ON A MILK RUN!" Uso shouted from quite a ways down the beach, "STOP PLAYING GRAB ASS AND LETS GET GOING!"
"Aaah," Aashi sighed quickly, then bounded towards the freighter, saying loudly to Uso and Ronin, "I've got to get changed!" A few moments later she was out of the freighter with her stashed clothes in hand. She surreptitiously hid her knives in her lacey blue bra's holsters and let her dress fall over her head as she put it on, the slung her jacket over her shoulder and smiled at Uso, saying , "Ready."
While Aashi took off to get changed, Ronin had made his way off with a grumble to get a quick rinse of a shower. It hadn't taken but a few moments to retrieve clothes after that, hustling only slightly to join the two as he pocketed his sunglasses and pulled his coat on. Despite this nice and sunny weather, ships tended to get cool and he had a hunch this was about the newest members to work alongside Yamataia.
"Alright, let's get going, then. And for the record, we weren't grabbing ass. I was just... kicking her ass."
"That's what it was?" Aashi asked, putting a hand on her hip as it moved backwards. "I can only disagree, but for now," she said, then turned to Uso, "what are we going to be up to today?"
"Gotta make a deal with some lizard people I think," Uso shouted, "We'll work on the details on the way."
Aashi nodded and said, "Need a pilot or does Ronin here fit the bill?"
"I'm not gonna fly," he said rather bluntly, "You can handle flying, Horny-Head..."
"Okay, Creamsicle," Aashi said, punching him lightly on the bicep. "If that's what you say."
Aashi Nath listened as Ronin spoke, picking up the nuances of his tone and the way his body language reacted to what he said. Ronin was proud of his own exploits and less than thrilled with the exploits of others, like those of the NMX and Mishhu and, yes, pirates. Only pirates like pirates, she knew that. She was unperturbed, but noted that he could have withheld that bit of information but had chosen not to. She wanted to know why, but that question was shadowed by the one she had wanted to ask when he changed his statement about being in it for the cash and had added something else.
"So," she began, bringing her face close to his as she pushed her palms on her beach chair and raised herself slighly, "what is this 'bigger picture' you are driven towards?"
Ronin took a moment of dwelling in the moment, his abs glistening in the sunlight for the momentary silence. It was only after another drag and puff of smoke that he let out an initially wheezy and single word.
"Change."
It was spoken with no doubt lacking semblance to the ears of the Iro woman he'd just had the privilege to start getting to know. Aashi, as she were, was an older woman just by how she carried herself and likely had little interest in the affairs of a short-lived being like himself. But the idea of changing Yamatai was something that he shared with many criminal and ex-soldier alike.
"Power armor is the only way we looked at crushing the Mishhu. My bigger picture... it's to use their own technology against them. Mecha-craft has existed but not in the state we saw them unleash against some of our numbers during the war. Power armor bridged it... but there was an untapped power to it. Watching a machine tear a fighter in half like we would paper? It changes your perspective of things."
"Change is an important thing to want. Knowing how to get it is another thing altogether," she said, ruminating on the thought as she lowered herself on the chair and took in a deep breath.
Her lungs were particularly good at filtering out dust and other fine debri in the air and were working well at filtering out the smoke from his cigarette while he drew it in and exhaled near her. A small part of her wished she could get the same head high that others had talked about after they took their drags. She watched him idly, then said, "You spent time fighting several different species, but what do you think those species were fighting you for? They may have wanted change just as much as you do."
"Fighting for change like me, huh?"
Taking a moment to sit with the cigarette in his right hand's grip but with the butt still sitting on the trim, masculine lips for support. After a moment of what must have been some serious thinking, the man broke from his funk and scoffed.
"If that was the case, then I'd hope their change was at least something that was worth getting killed for. NMX, pirates, rebellious forces... they're all just names. Just like there are no doubt scum out there even among all my cat-sisters and brothers in the Yamatai Star Army."
Sitting up, his hand pulled the smokestick free and let out a stream of the stuff before moving his left hand rub his forehead. It took all but a moment before he turned over onto his side to face her from across the short distance between their chairs. And, as such, his mohawk shifted ever so slightly to lazily lean to the side as his shade-covered green eyes set on her.
"I think, though... that maybe you know the same sort of thing. A pirate and a mercenary aren't always so different. With or without a purpose, we fight for a living... so surely you understand the sort of question you're posing at me, Miss Nath."
All too well, Aashi understood, but to understand and be understood were two different things. She wanted more to understand than have him understand her. And he was doing a fine job of making it seem like he had her figured out.
"I know it's likely we have both been through the same things, and, forgive me for doing so, I'm trying to find out which side of the net you're playing from. Star Army seems to be the side of the net you have the most footing in."
"Well," he returned the smoke to his mouth with the brief pause, "They did train and take care of me for the short while I served. My world isn't coming back, so Yamatai is the closest thing to a home I got."
Looking toward the sunny sky, he'd give a rather pathetic attempt at a wave of his hand toward the heavens.
"All that shit out there? That's where I get to play and mess around to try and make Yamatai recognize the potential of these mecha. The Tengu is just one big mess but even then it's fun flying system-to-system for a new fight. But that's why my net isn't so easy. Yamatai and the Star Army are my home... but this way of life? This is what I've grown adapted to."
Aashi nodded her head at the sky as she looked on at it with him and then looked to him, a keener sense of who he was instilled in her.
"There are a million possibilities for what you can grow into and a mercenary and pirate happen to be the ones we landed ourselves in, because we adapted. It seems there may never be a new home from the one you last left, and yet there's always one waiting for you. For me, my home was a planet, and then I wanted to leave it and travel the skies we look at, now. But I didn't get that chance. The next home I got was a cell. That is where I adapted," she said, "to become something that you would have not hesitated to kill. Does that make this way of life, being mercenaries and pirates, does that make it less of a living if it's what we had to do, not what we live to do?"
The final question had pieced together the banter rather nicely, resulting in Mister Takimori rolling back and onto his back with a smile gracing his lips with the death-stick looking like it would fall off with the tiny smoke-trail rising from it.
"It doesn't change it much when it's what we need to do and what we choose to do. I heard there's one girl in Uso's bunch who was seen eating cereal in her underwear. That sort of scene fits more back on some secure world far from this NMX-contested frontier."
His chest rose with a deeper breath, finally letting out a lengthy one that blew the smoke from his nose in another display of a seasoned smoker. But his green eyes looked skyward for that time before looking at Aashi for a few moments. And, of course, ending it with the slightest of chuckles.
"It's certainly not like any other job I've been on before. The day I was hired on by Uso, I got dragged into some rich formal party with her, you know? Would have seen her nude, too, if it wasn't for her body's tech. Thinking about it only helps cement that maybe, for once, this isn't something I'm doing for any other reason than I might just enjoy the oddity of what I've seen on this backwater world."
Aashi drummed her fingers against her chair and looked up to see his spectacled face looking at her. She could feel his gaze even when she looked back to the sky. Only when she looked back at him did she notice he had turned his vision elsewhere. It was odd, the feeling of being looked at as an equal. Being looked at at all, other than for commands. She hadn't talked like this with someone in awhile and something about it felt reassuringly good.
"I've seen a lot worse of worlds, but never stayed on one longer than it takes to unload anything its inhabitants find precious," she said with sly smile. "I wouldn't mind doing the same thing again and again with Uso, and you, I guess. I wouldn't mind doing that again, not at all. But what I really want to know is why you got hired. Were you left for dead with nowhere to go? Or just thirsty for some Uso action?"
A sly smile and a witty hint at what any man would call lust had caused him to almost sputter out in a slip of his professional but grumpy persona. As fast as he had done so, the cigarette coming dangerously close to slipping free and falling onto that nicely formed torso, he covered his mouth while his right hand plucked the cigarette free. Smoke slipped out from the cracks in his fingers as he laughed momentarily, finally moving it away once most of the smoke had finally left.
"Haha~! That was a pretty good one," he said while plucking the glasses off and falling back in his chair with some effort to relax after the surprising chuckle, "But uh... I got hired because she needed hands. I had come off a job and next thing I knew, she was buying on any help. A friend put me through and then I got stuck following her ass around for the day. As for if I'm thirsty, I'm a healthy human male. We're mostly water for a reason... you know, needing to drink. If I earned the right to get aciton with that woman, I'd not mind taking the risk of getting killed from the ensuing fun!"
Aashi said, "I wouldn't dare tempt her to show you just how easy it would be to kill you. You say you almost saw her naked? What would the repercussions have been if you had? I can't pin you down as being the flogging type or not."
"Well, based on how she was taking a look at me while I was getting dressed? I think flogging wouldn't have been the punishment our boss had in mind. I'd wager any man or woman would have killed to have come as close as I did... and just as many would kill to have her checking them out."
Ronin chuckled once more, his grumpy mood softened considerably. Aashi had certainly proven herself different from the common horny alien. She was probably one of the more relaxed of the Iro he had met in all of his time travelling job-to-job.
"Turning invisible as she does... you've not seen her naked, have you? I mean, asking those sorts of questions makes me think you're almost jealous!"
"No, just used to floggings being a regular thing, where I'm from, is all," Aashi replied with a half smile as she turned her head to face the sun. "To be quite clear, I don't think I've had a sexual thought since I went into that cell decades ago and I haven't found the need for one since I've gotten out. There isn't a reason to let that be what you live for. I presume that sentiment lands on deaf ears, though."
"Less deaf and more doubtful. I can't imagine the idea of someone being entirely devoid of a sexual thought. I mean... you're not some asexual alien. Unless I missed something about your kind, you all like to get down and fu-"
He's interrupted as an ash falls from his cigarette and singes his bair chest, causing an immediate curse and slight rise to sit up in his chair. A quick brush knocked it free, giving his non-interested neighbor a view at his strong back for all but a moment before he turned his upper half to face her. The cigarette was running considerably low, the pilot taking the time to speak up while carefully plucking it free.
"Tell you what... why don't you show me what you pirates learn when fighting? I can't imagine being in a cell that long removed your natural instincts as a being that reproduces and your fighting senses. That game of volleyball ended early, so I still got some energy for a mock spar. Whattaya say, Miss Horned-Head?"
"You're in for quite a fight, Mister Creamsicle, let's get this going, then," Aashi said, standing to her full six foot height, not including aforementioned horns. "Do you need any rules? Pull your punches, no groin or head, that kind of thing?" She began to walk over to a deserted area of the beach, expecting him to follow.
Getting up, he couldn't help but shake his head with a sigh at the attempt at a trashtalking nickname. Taking his cigarette as they walked, he would flick the much smaller smoke flying through the air and against some bookworm's head. Of course, he had no interest in seeing who he'd hit before moving along.
As they arrived, he'd give her a pat to her rump before passing her and moving to stand across from her. It was the one free shot he had, one mixed between a fighter's pat and an attempt to get a nice touch to that heiny. Compared to his opponent who stood six feet tall without her horns, the fit soldier was an inch shorter... but he was confident enough in his old training. As a last touch, he pulled his sunglasses off and tossed them into the sand nearby to avoid getting them involved in the scuffle that was sure to come.
"I guess we can keep our groins out of it... but everything else seems fair. Whenever you're ready to lose, let's get this show on the road."
Aashi nodded slightly with her hands to her side, a movement tha could have been mistaken as a bow. She moved her fists up as her feet started moving back and forth. While she held her gaze on Ronin's eyes, she threw two punches out to his abdomen, missing connection on both before recovering her fists to their defending positions and allowing him a chance at her.
Meeting those eyes with his green ones was all it took for him to lower his stance and bring both hands up in an open manner. It wasn't exactly a shared fighting style, but it was disciplined enough that her missed punches gave him the moment he needed. Lunging forward too fast, however, he came face-to-face with the Iro woman in such a manner that they practically smacked lips as he shoved her back as hard as he could. It was a simple manner to attack, but the awkward step to warm up into the fight had thrown off his own attempts and made it hard to do much more than put his own strength to work and try to send her toppling back.
The Iromakuanhe woman simply moved backwards and to the side as she grabbed his wrist and twsited as he fell forward and she moved out of his way. Her hnd was on his wrist as she moved behind him and held it up to his swole back.
"Kissing, already? Tsk, tsk. That doesn't happen at all for me, you know that. Now, tell me you want to be let go and I will. Say the words."
"Tch! Surrendering? This isn't anything yet, kiss or not!"
Rather than submit and let her purely take hold, his body strained in an act of defying the pain and instincts to not move in such a binding grip. Rather, he fell and rolled his body to slip his arm out from behind him while bringing his still free hand to clasp the wrist of the Iro. With his back toward the ground, he tried to keep the momentum of his falling weight and use the hold on her to pull her to the ground in a slam-like manner. Slipping free was possible, of course, but losing so fast would hurt any man's ego!
Aashi slammed her hand down on the ground to take most of the impact before her body hit the sand. It reduced the force minimally and her body was still for half a moment before she felt Ronin let go of her and she rolled away from him and stood up.
"Heh," she said, more of an exhaled grunt than anything, before stancing up again with him.
While she'd gone for a fancy roll, he'd turned and rose to his feet with sand covering his back from his own impact in the sand. As confident as she was and already slipping into her stance, it seemed her opponent wasn't too terribly let-down after scoring a semi-successful take-down.
"Getting reversed after demanding a surrender," he said as he paced around in his stance once more with a slight tug-down of his swimtrunks on his right hip to show some of that nice male form, "I guess you were expecting me to be some weakling. I can safely say you're living up to the tough pirate you were playing out to be!"
"I think you'll find that to be true," Aashi said as she got back into her fighting stance, bouncing on the balls of her feet with her hands determinedly placed, one in front of her face and one tucked against her large chest.
She lept forward, looking at her pseudo-target, his face, while her front fist went forward, only to pull back before it could meet him. That is when her real blow came from her other hand, straight against his belly. His body was too solid to get through that easily and she put her hands on his shoulders, using his body's recoil from the punch as impetus for her knee to find its mark against his face. She stopped just short of it, though, and instead pulled it back and hopped backwards, hands off of him.
The gut punch to his abs had almost knocked all the wind out of him with how sudden it came, but when she backed off and avoided delivering a knee-strike to his face, the man felt more than a little annoyed at being played around with. Rising to stand up sorta straight once more, he cursed under his breath and moved forward with his hands in a low guard. Without breaking their gaze, he feinted a right jab toward her head, then feinted a second time with a left hook that stopped mid-swing, before finally bringing a leg up and around in a fast knee-level kick that would land with enough impact to at least get retribution for the initial strike.
Aashi let out an exasperated and terse , "Ah~" as her foot made contact and instead of letting her body buckle now that one of her legs had the heat put on it, she sprung to the side and bounced back and forth on her feet, trying to bounce off the pain, which soon faded and became a dull pulse of past pressure.
Aashi then stepped her forward left food to the right side, twisted her hips and pivoted on the ball of her foot while taking her right foot off the ground. She had fully spun around and was now facing away from him as her spinning back kick made impact on his shoulder. She held back only barely this time and let her nearly her full strength go into the leg before landing with her right leg forward, hands up and defending.
The powerful kick had landed, but with how easily she had made it to read, it wasn't landing with the force one might have got from a stealthy blow. Instead, he braced for it and only went teetering and stumbling a few steps before fixing his posture with a grunt. The pain stung and ached, but it was far from enough to get him to stop.
"Not bad, Wide Hips... guh... you can certainly throw a k-kick..."
Being a baseline human, even in a state of fitness and prowess as Ronin was, was making this fight almost biologically hard. For each powerful blow he thought he delivered, she threw one back without much more than a moment to recover! This time, he moved in and planned to get off a flurry. Specifically, he'd try to bait out a punch from the Iro woman to take hold of her arm and deliver a nice hooked jab to her hip. All the while, of course, with his own swimming trunks seeming to steadily slip lower and lower!
Aashi blocked one punch after another, sweeping her arms side to side before she saw an opening and went to take it. He pulled on her arm and went to get a punch to her hip. The Iroma woman had hard bones, harder than humans and thick exoskeletal plates on her joints made of the same stuff. When Ronin hit her hip, he was hitting hard bone and Aashi jumped back in surprise at the sheer force he had punched her with, worried more for him than herself.
As she did, she noticed his sagging shorts and her eyes fled from the strong V shape of his lower abdomen, not needing to know where it led, but knowing full well that it was a place most likely as strong as the rest of him. She watched him to gauge the pain he felt, if any, from punching her exoskeleton.
Thankfully, as lewd as his shorts short-malfunction was, her hip had done enough to cause him to draw back with a curse and a look to his hand. It had felt like hitting a brick wall, but those hips looked like something any guy or gal would kill to just grab onto and hold all day! Looking to her with their newfound distance, it took him a few moments to click his knowledge of the Iro and understand exactly what happened.
"Jeez, you sure have some rock-solid hips... I know girls back from my Star Army days who'd have killed for that shape and that toughness! I guess I'll have to punch something different than normal targets..."
"The shape is what I think most want, but the toughness is what most need. I can tell which of the two you most desire, though..." she said, swaying her hips as she walked over to his sunglasses. She picked them up and walked over to him, then put them up to his head. She set them over his ears and against his eyes, looking into the refelction of herself rather than the green eyes she had only just seen.
"You are quite the adversary, I am happy to say you're on the same team as me. You know, I used to be the undisputed champion of the fight club on my ship. I haven't been able to join the crew in a few years and needed that refresher course. I'm sorry if I'm a little out of practice, but it seems it was a fair fight, if I'm being honest," Aashi said as she lowered his hands away from his sungalsses and face.
Getting his sunglasses put back on had certainly caused a pause in the man. From a fight to the nicely-shaped Iro picking up his shades and putting them back on for him? Even though it hurt his pride, and reminded him to rub his stinging hand, he figured that maybe letting the fight end on her compliment spree was a good choice.
"Well... if I'm being honest, you're certainly one of the few women I've met to look as good as they can fight, out of practice or not. I wasn't expecting one of the Iromakaunhe to be someone I can match up against even remotely fairly. Compared to the cats of Yamataia, us humans are jokes... nice to see there's someone in the stars I can still fight."
"Compared to the cats of Yamatai, we're all jokes," she said, mentally enumerating the many things those Neko could do that she herself could only dream of. Her familiar came over to her as she mentally called it and she pet it, soothed by its presence with her. It felt a strong urge to slip through the air and she let it follow its desires as it flew around Ronin, touching him on the shoulders and arms with its slick, flappy wings.
Blinking at the strange manta, his hand moved up to pet and pat the little critter for a few moments. It still hadn't occured to him, it seemed, that the swimtrunks were so close to falling off and leaving him exposed to the deserted portion of the beach. Of course, that meant he'd be bare before the Iro gal... but as he reached down to try and grab hold of his cigarettes, he failed to grab anything. Looking down, his glasses at least hid the widening of his eyes.
"Uh... w-well, I guess that's the case," he said while quickly tugging the trunks back up to hide the strong V-shape that Aashi had no doubt been oh-so interested in, "But I wonder what everyone else got up to while we were gone..."
Aashi nodded as she looked away from the pair as the Matai Skyfish lingered around Ronin's pelvis, saying, "Yeah, speaking of Nekos..."
"HEY YOU TWO! WE GOT TO GO ON A MILK RUN!" Uso shouted from quite a ways down the beach, "STOP PLAYING GRAB ASS AND LETS GET GOING!"
"Aaah," Aashi sighed quickly, then bounded towards the freighter, saying loudly to Uso and Ronin, "I've got to get changed!" A few moments later she was out of the freighter with her stashed clothes in hand. She surreptitiously hid her knives in her lacey blue bra's holsters and let her dress fall over her head as she put it on, the slung her jacket over her shoulder and smiled at Uso, saying , "Ready."
While Aashi took off to get changed, Ronin had made his way off with a grumble to get a quick rinse of a shower. It hadn't taken but a few moments to retrieve clothes after that, hustling only slightly to join the two as he pocketed his sunglasses and pulled his coat on. Despite this nice and sunny weather, ships tended to get cool and he had a hunch this was about the newest members to work alongside Yamataia.
"Alright, let's get going, then. And for the record, we weren't grabbing ass. I was just... kicking her ass."
"That's what it was?" Aashi asked, putting a hand on her hip as it moved backwards. "I can only disagree, but for now," she said, then turned to Uso, "what are we going to be up to today?"
"Gotta make a deal with some lizard people I think," Uso shouted, "We'll work on the details on the way."
Aashi nodded and said, "Need a pilot or does Ronin here fit the bill?"
"I'm not gonna fly," he said rather bluntly, "You can handle flying, Horny-Head..."
"Okay, Creamsicle," Aashi said, punching him lightly on the bicep. "If that's what you say."
