Throwing a Chance [Private with Nym & Jericho]

[Jericho Galley]

Jericho sat down on the ground, fiddiling with a large knife as he thought. He hadn't really thought long and hard about what had happened to him. To people he knew, to people he fought alongside and ate with. To people he had loved. And now those people thought him a traitor and a coward. Maybe he was, running from them all and hiding in the one place they couldn't get him. He had been so preoccupied with trying to blend in and studies that he hadn't prossessed it all yet.

He stared down at the ground as he remembered the crew that had surrounded him on that beach. His parents had been there, but their allegiance with the crew and anger towards him had seen them on Blackhand's side. Then he thought of everyone who hadn't been there. Quite a number of them. He imagined their faces and names, counting them off. So many of them killed by that Grimm and the sea. All because he thought someone else more important who was doomed to die.

He wasn't deaf to Nym's words, and it would be a long minute before he spoke, blinking his wet eyes open. "Some of them died. It was my fault. Maybe later, but I'm done talking about it for now, ok?" He crossed his arms and let out a breath, his Helping Hand moving up to rub his eyes and clear the building tears away. "And I wouldn't try to cop a feel." He said with small sniffle. "You're cute but I know you could cut me in half."

[Nym Magenta]

"Too bloody right, n' don't'cha forget it," Nym quipped back with an upbeat tone. He wasn't in the mood to get emotional and teary eyed and she could respect that. She didn't always get to choose when her emotions overwhelmed her, but not everyone was like her. Pushing as hard as she could wouldn't get her anywhere. This was progress of a sort. Plus, it would be a real shame if their only memory of spending the afternoon throwing knives was Johnny devolving into tears. She'd rather score a few bullseyes and take that away as her own highlight.

"S'yer turn t' show me 'ow it's done, mate." She was willing to quit, or at least take a back seat while she was ahead. That last volley had had a couple of winners in it. It was a good point to let Johnny have a chance to show off. It would also give him a chance to get up and do something rather than sit down and mope. Nym could really use the example, too. Being able to feel what was right and how to throw something was the objective, but seeing practical examples and trying to imitate them was how she got there. That, and a lot of practice.

[Jericho Galley]

Nym being upbeat and moving on from the subject made him smile and push back the emotions that would continue to making him cry. That would be a very poor first date, or, whatever hangout this was. He winked what he could back at her after her quip before pushing off of the tree he leaned against towards her. "Too right, my turn."

He took the knives she had and put two in his right hand while his left held one. He narrowed his eyes on the book being used as a target, knives held loosely in his grip. With smooth and strong strokes, he released one blade after another, first with his right hand, then his left, and right once more. They dug about an inch into the book, two spaced about two or three inches apart and the third below them in the center, it's handle slightly hanging downward. But Jericho wasn't done yet. He retrieved the large knife and another non-standard throwing knive and with a second of mental work, he threw them as well. They stuck in at far point in the book but their handles continued moving, angling them across the book's cover.

With all five knives now in the book, they formed a smiley face. Jericho turned to Nym proudly. "How's that for showing 'ow it's done, mate?"

[Nym Magenta]

Nym was glad to see that her turn away from the more serious subject back to throwing knives was having the desired impact. It was Johnny's turn to show off. Maybe Nym could argue that she had him beat in power, but the precision department was all his. At first she wasn't able to make the connection. Why make a little triangle shape with where his knives were landing? But as the final two fell into place and formed a crude but unmistakable smiley face she looked down at the grass and shook her head. That was impressive. He didn't just know how it felt to hit a bullseye, he knew how it felt to have the knives land wherever he wanted them to, however he wanted them to. If he had to fight someone there was little doubt about his ability to be dangerous with them.

"Bloody absurd," she muttered, looking back up to Johnny. "I c'n barely 'it the target n' yer doodlin' on it. That's some skill ya got. You got any otha' tricks? Can ya sign yer name on it, too?" That seemed like an impossible task, but she could already imagine him drawing a J on the book with enough knives. Given some patience, he probably could.

[Jericho Galley]

Jericho couldn't help but let out a little laugh and smile at seeing how impressed Nym was. It made him proud as well, the first time he'd felt that in a long while. Then she challenged him with more. He smiled wider and showed teeth. "You bet I have other tricks! Here," He took one large knife that he hadn't thrown and tossed it straight into the air spinning. Jericho stood underneath it, looking up as it arced back down towards his face. He release his Helping Hand and summoned it again above him.

The summoned hand caught the blade inches before it would have plunged into jericho's face, then it lowered very softly to rest the point on his nose. The tip dug into the skin a bit, but once his hand released it he began balancing the knife there. He only lasted about ten seconds before it fell and he caught it in the crook of his boot. He tossed it back up and caught it.

"Now, I'll sign my name." Jericho said with a nod and threw the knife at a tree. He did the same thing as before, releasing the Aura that held his hand together and then reformed it where the knife was going. The hand caught it before it hit a tree, then carved the letter "J" into the bark before the hand pushed the knife into the bark at the center of the letter. He went over and took the knives out of the book that made the smiley face and threw one at the tree. At first he almost carved an 'e', carving in the first middle line and curving upward before he remembered that that was the very wrong name he should be writing. So he turned that curve in tight to end up where the middle line had, making a very squished 'o'. The rest of Johnny's name would be written correctly with the remaining knives, each knife getting stuck in the center of each letter as if it had been thrown there.

[Nym Magenta]

Nym gave Johnny a half-hearted slow clap with a bit of a smirk on her face as she watched his knife balancing trick. That one she'd done before. With aura, it made the risk involved quite low. Balancing it wasn't that easy, but it wasn't quite as showy as the smiley face. She...probably wouldn't have been able to quite catch the knife like he had, though. "Hah, noice!" The catch with his boot was just a tad bit more impressive. Some balls and bigger objects were easier to catch with a foot, but knives weren't a uniform shape and they didn't always fall how you expected! She had to foot it to him, it was a slick trick.

The next trick got a good laugh from Nym. "Alright, Johnny, colo' me impressed, then." Her tail swished excitedly in the air behind her. That wasn't exactly how she'd been expecting him to sign his name, and maybe it wasn't the world's greatest display of knife throwing finesse, but it was damn clever, and certainly a trick that only he was capable of with his semblance. It was the weirdest 'o' that she'd ever seen. She was sure he was about to make that an 'e'! But it wasn't that strange to make mistakes while trying to show off. "Don' think I'd quite be able t'do that even with some practice."

[Jericho Galley]

Jericho was absolutely over the moon at how happy and impressed he had made Nym. Her tail swishing, she was shouting in that cute accent of hers... It had been so long since he'd felt this happy with someone else. "Yeah, you'd need quite the talent to be able to do what I just did." He nodded. "But you should have seen my friend Badger! He was able to balance a knife on his nose and on the toe of his boot, balancing on his other leg!" Jericho smiled at the memory. It slowly faded as he realized he had used the past-tense. Badger was one of those faces he hadn't seen on the beach, trying to kill him. Wish he had. Funny to realize you wish someone was alive to try and kill you.

Jericho didn't want to slip into another slump so he shook his head, clearing it out. "He was the one who taught me that." Jericho nodded slowly. After a moment he continued. "So, do you have any tricks up your own sleeve? It's not all just a loud chainsaw cutting through Grimm, right? What you got?"

[Nym Magenta]

"Bloody 'ell," Nym muttered as Johnny described his mentor's talents for balance. She could perfectly picture how difficult it would be to balance something on her nose or with her foot on it's own, but doing both at the same time on one leg was one hell of a parlor trick. It didn't seem very applicable to a fight, but not all knife work had to be. The question of tricks was turned back over to Nym. What did she have up her sleeve?

"Oi, don' say that like that's so simple, eh?" Her tone was amused, she wasn't taking any offense. "'M pretty calculated with 'ow I swing it. Ain't all mindless, y'know. If yer swingin' it with anythin' less than the intent t' k-...t' take out what yer swingin' at in one blow then yer wastin' effort. Ev'ry swing's gotta be a threat, n' f'you wanna be a real threat you gotta know what angle of attack's gonna be the most effective. Fightin's just as much thinkin' as it is hittin'." Johnny...might have already known that. He might not have! Some new students didn't really have that all figured out yet. Maybe they could feel it, but they hadn't put it into words they could understand.

"S'nice t' 'ave tricks up yer sleeve, too, though...hmm...well, there is one thing I c'n do s'a bit of a trick." She reached up behind her head and grabbed her weapon. It was still in it's neutral form, resembling an engine attached to a handle. "Used t'do this outback, but...usually 'ad t' do it with a boomerang." Nym pulled back and then hurled her weapon towards the targets they'd lined up, keeping her hand outstretched, a look of focus on her face. Whisper arced unnaturally, spinning horizontally as it smacked one of the books off the table and continued to fly, powered by a new device that gave it a certain degree of independent flight. Nym moved her arm with slight motions and Whisper wrapped around a couple of trees before coming straight back towards her in a "U" shaped flight path. It took out a soda can before Nym caught it with a satisfying impact. "Still learnin' 'ow t' make it fly the way I want it to, but I c'n take out some cans no problem."

[Jericho Galley]

Jericho had gotten into more than his fair share of swordfights. What Nym was saying was true to a point. You want your strikes to actually mean something, to hit hard and cut through and damage your enemy. You wanted to hit hard and fast before they can get a leg up on you. You deal with threats the fastest way possible. Jericho could think of some times when you may want to feint, to lock your opponent's weapon, and so forth. But those weren't really 'strikes' so to speak. And edge alignment was an incredibly important part of sword fighting. A slight error in your angle could mean the difference between a dead foe and a hurt and pissed foe.

Jericho put his hands on his head in amazement as Nym threw her massive weapon and it flew around the trees, hitting a book and a soda can before it returned to her hand. "Aha! Wow!" Jericho exclaimed as it moved through the air. "How are you... How does it do that? Is that your Semblance? That's insane! It looked like it was floating!" Needless to say, he was absolutely flabbergasted. His head kept swiveling back and forth to Nym and to where the weapon had been thrown. "How did you do that?!"

[Nym Magenta]

Nym grinned, her enjoyment of Johnny's praise written all over her face. This particular trick had been something she'd put a lot of sweat into making. It might be a while before she would reap the rewards in a fight, but getting to see someone else's reaction to it was a nice treat. "Heh, nah, it ain't me semblance." She turned her weapon towards him, pointing towards where the handle met the base of her engine. "S'all dust. Gravity dust tooled t'make Whispa' float. I c'n spare ya the technical mumbo jumbo, but I c'n always make 'er come back t' me n' I c'n control 'er flight path too. S'a little tricky when the chainsaw's runnin', but it was worth the effort." She holstered it on her back.

"I got otha' tricks, too, but none of 'em are as flashy's that is. I c'n throw myself 'round by slammin' the runnin' chainsaw inta the ground. I c'n flood the engine with dust t' spit it out where the chain's runnin' so I don' 'ave t' switch t' me chain gun if I need just a little extra range. S'not everythin' I know 'ow t' do, but s'the highlights." There were other tools, tactics, and tricks in her arsenal. You didn't get to year three at Beacon without learning a few things, but it would have taken all afternoon for her to go over everything she knew how to do!

[Jericho Galley]

"Gravity Dust? You can control it's flight path?! Shiver me timbers, you're way smarter than I am! My weapons are just swords with guns on them!" Jericho laughed at the insane amount of things Nym could do with her weapon and how it was designed. It truly was incredible. He sorta of just sputtered and rambled about that for a minute before stopping himself and asked,

"So, what is your Semblance then? I showed you mine, could I see yours?" He said, then added, "That's not me trying to cop a feel or anything, just to let you know."

[Nym Magenta]

Nym shook her head and waved off the compliment. She wasn't that much smarter than anyone when it came to technology. "Nah, mate, I 'ad a bloody load of 'elp makin' it. Neva' would'a been able to put it t'getha' without some'a the friends I made 'ere. 'Fore I came t' Beacon I could barely do maintenance on me weapon, much less make it bloody fly." She was no genius. She just had ideas and friends who could put those ideas into practice.

Nym raised an eyebrow at his peculiar wording, but didn't go any further than that. It was a fair question, but he might not like the answer. "I don' really like t' tell people what me semblance is, mate. It's...complicated t' explain. But, mostly, gives me a bit of an advantage in a fight if someone don' know what it does 'cuz all they see is..." Nym trailed off before channeling her semblance. Her golden irises glowed a bright sky blue for half a second before the color evaporated out of her eyes like mist. Johnny didn't have a lot of friends, but...you could never be too careful about who you talked to. "We stay friends long 'nuff I might tell ya, though. It's...it ain't personal or nothin', s'just...well, everyone's got secrets they don' just tell anyone, right?" He could probably understand that.

[Jericho Galley]

Jericho nodded. He didn't make his weapons either, they were gifted to him. Pretty simple things, though he's had an idea to improve upon them since arriving at Beacon.

Then Nym withheld her Semblance. Stay friends long enough? Not personal or anything? Everyone had secrets? Yeah... he knew that all too well.

A tiny part of him said that maybe Nym had found something suspicious about him, but he tried to kick it back. Aside from some sailor lingo, nothing had slipped. He was interested what her eye change was all about, maybe it affected her sight somehow. A wider field of view? That would certainly give her an edge.

"...Yeah, I can understand that." He came to say at length, nodding solemnly until he looked down at the ground. Sure, he had told her his Semblance, but it wasn't like he had told her the truth about where he had come from either.

"Secrets..." He muttered as his eyes turned to up to her. He smiled despite himself and lifted his head back up. "I like you, Nym. What say we throw some more knives and we head on back, yeah?"

[Nym Magenta]

"I like me too," Nym said with a self assured grin. "Yer not so bad yerself, Johnny." She wasn't just going to leave him hanging like that! She'd give him a compliment in turn. This whole knife throwing routine had been a nice way to kill some time. She hadn't known what to expect when going into it, but it had turned into a very fun little activity.

"Yeah, I could still use some bloody practice. Yer drawin' faces ova' there n' I'm barely hittin' the target. Be a shame to leave the score so one sided, eh?" There was no way she would even it up unless he started throwing them blindfolded, and even that wasn't a guarantee! If he was really, really good he might still out throw her. Still, it wasn't about winning or losing. It was the game itself. If she played enough she might be able to take a few rounds off him eventually.