An Interesting Way of Fighting

We'll leave aside the actual conception of Escorpión for this one, but I don't think it's just my obvious bias that makes it the most interesting Torna Level IV special (besides Addam's evil, evil comment at the end of Hadron Impact...).

"Say, Minoth. Fancy giving me a whack at those gunknives of yours?"

Couldn't they just have one normal day without this stupidity? The Golden Twin Mesa was a hell of a sight - or rather, Turquos Plateau looked beautiful as the view from it. But no, Addam just had to go and make it cockeyed.

"Did you somehow get even nuttier since I last saw you, Prince? Why on earth would I do that?"

Addam only laughed - the answer was yes, he was even more of a (handsome) moron. "Come now, didn't I hear you fawning all over the way Lora and Jin pass their weapons back and forth? I myself was quite taken with it too, when we first fought against them."

Minoth scoffed. "Sure, and if you were actually listening in that airhead of yours you would have heard that I was talking about their bond, not the mechanics of what they were doing. In fact, I believe I mentioned that caveat specifically."

"Their bond?" Addam asked, a little too pointedly inquisitive to be truly genuine. "Yeah, their bond. Driver and Blade, Blade and Driver, all that. Look at you, Mr. Man About Torna - do I really have to spell it out for you?"

"Well, no, but I thought we could approximate well enough." Well enough for what? For a Rhogul to come swooping in, knock him on his ass, and leave the prince holding his depowered weapons? To what end? "Oh please, Addam, you don't want that." "I'm...not sure what you mean, but nevertheless. You want to try with just the mechanics, then?"

Something suspiciously familiar, yet in a dreadfully unfamiliar way, was stirring in the general vicinity of Minoth's chest. If anything deserved a distraction, that feeling did. "Fine, I'll humor you." He handed the weapons over still reluctantly, with a drawled "I want those back, you hear?"

Addam immediately set to fiddling with the mechanism of the barrel, left hand slotted firmly into the space between the blades, much to Minoth's chagrin. He seemed to be preoccupied with attempting to pull the handle out, which was pretty stupid - you had to push it in to temporarily disengage the lock before it would swivel, of course. But, Minoth let him have a go, because it beat the secondhand embarrassment that would surely come of watching the prince actually try to use the damn things.

"So how do you work these, anyway?" Addam muttered, more to himself than Minoth would have expected. "I should have Hugo take a look, I'm sure he'd be fascinated." Oh, no way. Minoth reached out and snatched the weapon away, momentarily vascillating on whether or not he would actually make a show of what the trick was, before simply snapping the handle into place and flipping the gun over to hand it back - holding it by the crystal mount, not the handle.

Of course, like the clown he was, Addam accepted the offering by grabbing the magazine release (more of an instant refill button on a cartridge-less gun) and trigger almost simultaneously, letting loose a spray of bullets in the direction of some stray Survee Antols (and likely more or less right through Minoth's chest if he hadn't swiftly ducked aside). They were about to swarm over, bristling at the affront, but Minoth made a tired clicking noise between his teeth that quelled the surge, for the time being at least.

Then, he sighed. "All that engineering you people do in Torna, and you've never held a gun before?" Without waiting for Addam to answer, he ambled over behind the prince and mirrored his posture, right hand over right hand and shoulder over shoulder. Addam's grin was sly, opportunistic, chin tilted impossibly sassily in the tight space between their mouths.

"Well, Minoth-" "Shut your trap, Prince. You can kiss me later." He could feel Mythra's bore gaze drilling myriad photon-sharp holes in the back of his head, and he didn't want to rile that beast any more than was strictly necessary. "Oh, can I?" Minoth gritted his teeth. "You didn't hear me say that."

Scanning the mesa for an easy and unprovokable target, Minoth eventually decided on a patch of fluorescent nettles about thirty paces away. They were both incredibly straightforward to make out and fairly obviously binary in their status of alive or dead, as well as being plentiful throughout the surroundings and hard to actually take out, slim and willowy as they were, so they'd be good to practice on. And, they weren't sentient, so they couldn't fight back either in physical form or inside Addam's head - the prince wasn't as much of a wholesale pacifist as Jin, but he didn't much like needlessly harming wildlife, Minoth knew.

"Okay, Addam. Follow where I'm aiming." The implicit instruction was to align the identical weapons, one on top of the other, but somehow Addam received the notion as an invitation to crane his neck up higher and observe the target vicariously from the direction of Minoth's gaze. Idiot. Minoth reached around his left side as best as he could and shoved the muscular arm into place.

"Is your index finger on the trigger?" "Oh, no, but it is now, don't worry." "Take it off." "Oh." "Now press the other button just underneath the crystal - once."

A fresh round of bullets appeared, floating around the barrel. He had to readjust the wayward arm yet again before they tried a first few shots, but nothing hit, leaving only splotches of dead and deader yellow-brown grass in the wake of their impromptu training session. Addam had no punitive discretion either, squeezing off whole rounds at a time de facto instead of being judicious with his ammunition. Not to say that he was wanton, but skillful? Not a chance.

After yet another skyward look, seeking an infusion of strength, Minoth nimbly repossessed the guns, and with a practiced flourish (one that was a little bit unnecessary, if he was being honest) spun them from hand to hand as he snapped on the safety, unlocked the handle, swiveled the hilt, and whatever else he needed to do to drill in the impression that these weren't toys and they were his like nothing else, things that couldn't be learned and were precious representatives of skill hard-won. Too bad Addam wasn't really paying attention, only peering into the distance at Lora, Jin, and Haze all talking and laughing together.

Heh. They were complicated, just like him. He treasured that aspect to his weapons, secretly. To any casual observer, they were just haphazard collections of gears or Bladekind whatnot draped in excessively gluttonous quantities of bravado. Regardless, they, whether the pronoun denoted the weapons or the duo of him and his experience, were serviceable enough, even affable. But try to get any closer? Well, it was like he'd said. You didn't want that.

Having steeped in his spiraling, self-exploratory, and perhaps even pretentious airs for a little bit too long, Minoth plied the end of a dagger to rotate Addam by the bare shoulder in his direction. The prince was properly shocked by such an event - killed the whole mood! He handed the weapon over with wordless gravity, making no motion towards any target besides himself and thus its twin.

"You want me to...spar with you?" Addam asked tentatively. "I'm not asking you to use it to assassinate His Imperial Majesty, that's for sure," Minoth quipped back. Addam shook his head, absently weighing the dagger in his hand. "Won't I hurt you?" Cute. Twirling the one he still held with careless fingers, Minoth replied, "I don't plan on it, do you?"

Every reluctant stab Addam made was met with the perfect block, some even barrel-to-barrel such that Minoth could wrest the second dagger away from his sparring partner and demonstrate a flashy dual-wielding move. Eventually, they decided to handicap Minoth and give Addam an edge by handing the Blade the Driver's greatsword to defend himself with against two knives. It made, unfortunately, no difference, because you couldn't rightly multiply a measure of agility and balance that added up to approximately zero in the first place.

Well, not that the exercise was entirely without merit. To be sure, it was very beneficial to be able to watch how the prince's chest worked underneath his armor as he scrapped fruitlessly to get a slice in, how the petite tuft of hair on the right side of his face swung from side to side with the effort, how sweat beaded on his cheeks and shoulders from the heat of the day. The sparring itself was child's play, so Minoth had plenty of time to observe. Time well spent, though he'd never say so. In truth, he was probably indulging in a privilege undue. But, who was to say? It couldn't hurt to stare just a little while longer.

When they'd finally sheathed the blades (Addam with the heaving ache of a good man done a long day's work, Minoth with cagey possessiveness), the unwilling professor made his final pronouncement. "Your aim's terrible, my prince, and you look about to fall over when you use the daggers." If Addam was disheartened by these words, he didn't show it. "Have faith, Minoth! I'll learn in time - after all, you're such an able teacher, I'm sure."

"Oh, I'm sure," Minoth mocked back. "Too bad you can't teach style." And just what had happened to not talking about the power or technique? Addam mused to himself. For all her standoffishness, Mythra had first handed him the hilt of her gigantic, unorthodox sword without so much as a "You better not fuck it up, you dumbass." (Language! he'd thought, but he wasn't her father, and they weren't exactly polite company in general, so he hadn't said anything.)

They, his Blades or facsimilies thereof, were very alike, after all, and then again couldn't be more different. The same went for Jin and Haze, and yet they... Standing off to the side, composed as ever, Hugo gave him a forlorn look that was anything but knowing, compassionate and maybe even sympathetic but not empathetic, never empathetic. Just like relating to the common people, the Emperor, partner Blades always in perfectly reverent and supportive tow, couldn't hope to really, truly understand the dynamic. An interesting way of fighting? More like an interesting, and in the end futile, way of bonding.

*homoerotically shows you how to use deadly weapons that are an extension of my own self except we're both pining like idiots*