2013.05.06 - As Suggested

It's Monday afternoon, after classes, and Jocelyn had made her way down into the Terminal. Why? Well, she wanted to make it a point to get to know some of the Young Allies a bit better, and Spider had mentioned they should all start practicing together. That was something Jocelyn could always get behind. She'd stored a couple changes of clothes at the Terminal as 'training clothes' just in case she needed them, but didn't really keep anything else here (though she made it a point to restock the fridge every so often).
She wasn't sure who all was going to be down here today, and when she walks in, she doesn't see anybody initially. "Huh. Nobody here," the woman comments as she sets her bag down on one of the chairs and looks up at the huge television. "I really don't quite get how people can love television that much to get something that big to watch it on," she adds to herself, shaking her head with an amused smile. It just wasn't her thing.
One computer is on, however, showing a screen of minesweeper, caught mid-game. The person playing it becomes apparent quickly, as there's a gust of wind and Lor-Zod is suddenly there in the Terminal, part way to the chair at that computer. He's stopped, however, on noticing Jocelyn, and waves, "Hi."
"Oh, hey there Lor-Zod," Jocelyn responds to the guy. "How're things going?" she asks as she steps around to face him properly. She doesn't recognize the game herself; she doesn't play computer games, even the most basic ones like Minesweeper. Really, her and technology were not the best of friends. "Sorry, I didn't notice you down here," she admits to the boy. Some of the others who were staying down here must be out, she figured. Or sleeping. Who knew?
Lor-Zod shrugs with a smile, "I wasn't here, until a few seconds ago. I was helping get some people out of a car accident a couple miles away. Faster for me to tear the door off than to get their big equipment to do it." He sits down at the computer, but doesn't go back to the game yet, facing Jocelyn instead.
Blink. Blink. A few seconds? Jocelyn just shakes her head at that. "Wow. And I thought I was doing good when I hit managed to run a mile in five minutes or flew a mile in under a minute," Jocelyn responds with an easy grin, the girl obviously joking. She didn't have superhuman speed or anything of that nature. "Usually I would have caught the kinetic energy from your movement, but I wasn't looking that way". She'd been looking at the television! "Everyone is alright there I take it". As she's guessing he wouldn't have left if it weren't safe for the people.
"Oh, you get Spider's text? We should train together sometime, figure out how the other one works and all that stuff. You up for that?" she asks Lor-Zod. It also made for a good way to get to know someone, Jocelyn had found. A couple of her best friends had been made while training together, after all.
Lor-Zod shrugs again and says, a little shyly, "I don't know how fast I run or fly, haven't really done the math." He pauses, and says, "I know it took me about an hour to fly to a place called Tibet. And I went running the other day and it was about half an hour to run to a city called Los Angeles." Then he brightens at the talk of training together, sitting up as he says, "Sure! That sounds fun."
"That's pretty fast," Jocelyn says easily. And by pretty fast, we mean ridiculously fast, but whatever! "Works for me. So, you have what, strength, speed, toughness, flight, healing, and the breath and vision thing, right?" Jocelyn is remembering her encounters with Superman. "Take away the breath and vision and add in energy manipulation and that's what I've got, so maybe we should try a spar first, see how things go?" she suggests to the guy. "I've seen you fight a few times hand to hand. You're pretty good at that, aren't you?"
Lor-Zod reaches to close the game on the computer and then hops back to his feet. "Yeah, sparring sounds cool." He shrugs to the last question, "My mom's been teaching me since I could walk, but I'm not as good as I should be. When she was my age, she was twice as good as me." Or so he believes, anyway.
Heading over to where she stores a small backpack, Jocelyn grabs it. "Okay, let me change quick," Jocelyn says. She steps inside and changes, coming back out in a pair of black workout pants and a green tanktop. She heads over towards one of the tunnel areas used for sparring, charging herself up physically with some thermal energy. She slips into a defensive stance as she does so. "Alright. I can take a pretty good punch, so don't be afraid to use some force behind your strikes, and I'll do the same," she suggests. They needed to know what the other one could do. "And we're all trying to improve anyway, so that's somewhere to start. I don't know if I know the style your mother has taught you though. I'm guessing not though," she admits. She wasn't a Kryptonian, after all!
Lor-Zod, of course, didn't need to change, already in his 'costume' from his recent rescue. He takes up a stance opposite her and says, smiling, "Probably not. I don't know how many people on Earth know it, except my mother and I. It's called Horu-Kanu." He waits just a moment, then goes into a series of punches and kicks, testing Jocelyn's defenses.
Having pretty good defenses, Lor-Zod will find that Jocelyn seems able to block or dodge most of his strikes, as long as he doesn't utilize his super speed, and even then her reaction time is quite fast for a human. She starts countering after a few strikes, and it'll be pretty evident to Lor-Zod that she's had a lot of training herself in hand-to-hand combat. A feint is aimed for his head via a left jab, while the real blow she attempts is a strike towards his shoulder, meant to make it a bit more unpleasant for him to throw punches with that arm.
At first, Lor-Zod holds back, likely still worried about hurting Jocelyn. Very quickly, however, it becomes apparent that physically they're about an even match, and that Jocelyn is well ahead of him when it comes to skill. His moves become more defensive, but he still falls for the feint and catches the blow on his shoulder. "You're really good," he comments then.
"Thanks. Been training since I was a kid myself. Was going pro before my powers manifested," Jocelyn explains, though she's continuing the sparring match as she talks. "What is this form you're using called?" Jocelyn asks as she attempts to land a solid punch in Lor-Zod's stomach. There are some openings for Lor-Zod to take at times, given she doesn't know his style at all, that he can take advantage of. She has figured out they're pretty evenly matched in terms of blows they can take and give out, with Lor-Zod being a bit stronger and her being a bit tougher. It meant she had to think about dodging and blocking instead of absorbing every blow.
Lor-Zod answers, "Horu-Kanu," as he takes advantage of one of those openings to hook a punch in at her side, and then raising his other arm to block an expected counter. "It was a really old form on Krypton, I think. My mother's a master. My father knows it too, but he's more of a strategist."
Ooph! Jocelyn bites her lip and counters, getting blocked by the arm that Lor-Zod throws up. She attempts a quick but strong kick to the boy's knee before going for another elbow attack, this one aimed at the face. She figured he could take it, as it seemed Lor-Zod had figured out she could take his blows as well.
"Interesting. Would you mind teaching it to me sometime?" she asks, curious. She did like learning new styles where she could. "I can help you develop your skills as well," she adds as a suggestion.
Lor-Zod twists aside to avoid the attack to his knee, but without using his super speed he can't avoid the elbow to his face. Indeed, though, he can take it, stunned for just a split second but otherwise unhurt. He smiles and says, "Sure." Then he adds, "Sparring with you is a lot more fun than with my mother. Maybe don't learn as much, but at least nobody's bleeding." He lets loose a series of kicks to try to get Jocelyn defending low, then jumps a little into the air to punch from above in the moment he's airborne.
Part of it was that they were using vastly different styles, and styles that the other was unfamiliar with, so it was harder to do as much learning or teaching. But this session was to establish an idea of what the othe could do. Jocelyn was perfectly fine with that. The learning would come later.
She blocks the kicks with her legs, which means she's able to keep an eye on what the guy is doing. It also helps she can see that very brief build-up of kinetic energy before the boy jumps, so she's ready for the punch. Instead of getting struck, she reaches out to attempt to grapple the boy's arm and use momentum to throw him down the tunnel a little bit. She also takes to the air.
"Care to add another dimension to this?" she asks. "Non-physical powers as a viable option?" Because Jocelyn wanted to see what the boy could do aside from punching and kicking, too.
Lor-Zod is caught totally by surprise as she grabs his arm, and gets thrown down the tunnel... not very far, he catches himself quickly, but still. He grins and says, as she opens the field, "Alright." He takes to the air and immediately lets loose with a blast of heat-vision.
That's when Jocelyn's energy absorption powers kick in. She can see the heat coming, and so she starts absorbing it. The beam from Lor-Zod strikes Jocelyn, who doesn't even try to dodge it. However, the blast from Lor-Zod doesn't appear to bother the teenager in the slightest before she releases a blast of her own thermal energy, aimed right at Zod. She's also making sure that if it misses, she can yank it back so it doesn't break anything. She didn't want to cause any actual damage to the place!
And Lor-Zod isn't there when the energy blast would reach him, a massive burst of kinetic energy likely felt by Jocelyn as he flies at high speed around behind her, and tries out a power Jocelyn mentioned earlier and he's seen used, but never tried: He tries to blow a freezing wind at her.
Wow he was fast. Jocelyn has excellent reaction time, bordering on superhuman actually. But she's not quite quick enough to get fully out of the way of that freezing breath, and her left arm and torso get frozen before she can counter by absorbing that thermal energy. However, she can still at least fly, as her legs aren't frozen, nor is her head. She's kind of a floating ice cube with one arm, two legs, and a head that can't really move much, as her long red hair is frozen to her back.
"Nice," she comments, focusing a hot thermal pulse not at Lor-Zod, but rather inside her little ice cube prison, which after a couple pulses, frees her. Some of the ice drips off onto the ground as water, and the rest just shatters from the internal blasts, falling to the ground.
Lor-Zod pauses to let Jocelyn unfreeze herself, and asks, "You're ok, right? That didn't hurt you? It was my first time trying that," he admits. Then he smiles and says, "I think we're a pretty even match, except my speed."
"Pretty even, yeah," Jocelyn responds. "And I'm fine. A little chilly, but I've spent some time in some very cold places, so it's no big deal. And actually, I have a theory for cutting down your speed a little bit, though I didn't get to try it out," the teenager adds. She wasn't actually sure if it would work or not, of course, and actually using it in a fight would be tricky, but it might work. It might not.
Lor-Zod considers, and then asks, "Want to try, before we stop? I can go full-out, use my speed and you could try to stop me? 'Cause, if it works on me, I can try to figure out how to counter so enemies don't use it, and you can use it on fast enemies too if it works."
A nod is given. "We can give it a go," Jocelyn says. And what she's going to do is try and drain the kinetic energy that Lor-Zod uses while going at super-speed to slow him down. She can drain quite a bit of energy, and so the idea is to keep that kinetic energy from ever actually letting Lor-Zod move at his accelerated speeds. Of course, in an actual fight, she still has to get the draining effect on him, but that was a puzzle for another time. First it was time to see if she could actually do this.
Lor-Zod nods and then smiles. And then he's flying in circles around Jocelyn. Indeed, he's much slower than normal. He's still fast compared to an average human, but it slows him down enough that Jocelyn can easily keep up with him and even outfly him now. He laughs, though, "Yeah, it's working."
Well, how about that. "Well, that seems to work better than I thought," Jocelyn says. "Going to stop draining in three seconds". And she does, so that Lor-Zod doesn't get caught unexpectedly and go slamming into a wall. "Anyway, yeah. Pretty even. Though hey, I've got a couple things I need to take care of. Maybe do this sort of thing regularly, three or so times a week to teach each other the stuff we talked about?" The various hand to hand training.
Lor-Zod stops before the three seconds is up, and then nods quickly with a grin, "That'd be great. Thanks." He waves then as she goes and says, "See you later!" And, he returns to the computer he was on to find another game to play.
Category:Log