~ Tнє Pαяα∂σχ Hσυѕє ~ now back to regularly scheduled chaos

Zuko nodded, unable to hide the small smile as he took in Sal’s reaction. He didn’t do it for the reaction, of course, but he couldn’t help but feel a little bit proud of himself for being able to pull it off as flawlessly as he had learned how to. He was good with the dao blades. It was the one thing he could say without hesitation or caveat that he was really, really good at. He had trained for a long time to become so.
“I can see the difference already,” Zuko said, moving forward to inspect Sal’s stance from a different angle. He frowned, glancing at the way Sal’s foot was positioned on the ground.
“May I?” he asked, leaning down to adjust the other boy’s foot. He didn’t want to do so without permission. “If you don’t have a proper stance, you’re going to be easy to knock off balance. It starts with… well, it starts with being grounded, but flexible. You have to be able to move if you want, but not be moved by anyone else.”

Zuko gave a sharp nod, feeling the way his hand was seconds away from slipping out of Sal’s. Maybe he should have tried to hold onto the glass longer… though he wasn’t sure his hand would have liked that very much. He was already probably going to need to find a reliable way to patch that up when he blinked home, if the House didn’t do it for him. He didn’t look forward to explaining to Uncle Iroh where a cut that bad had come from. With any luck, he wouldn’t have to.
With a quick glance at Sal, Zuko forced himself to breathe, then pushed against the wall and launched himself up onto the platform they had been standing on. It wans’t as graceful as either Ty Lee or Azula would have been, but it was good enough to get him back on solid ground.
He rolled to a stop, eyes wide as he stared up at the ceiling.
“Are you… okay?”

“True,” Zuko replied, carefully adjusting Sal’s foot into a steadier position. “But it’s all based on this one position. You have to keep coming back here, because otherwise you’re going to be pretty easy to knock off balance. It doesn’t matter how many fancy tricks you can do with your swords if you aren’t steady and grounded.” He didn’t’ realize it yet, but the strategy he was talking about could easily have fit into the ideas of Earthbending. You couldn’t be a balanced fighter unless you embodied all four elements, whether you realized it or not. If that had been pointed out to him… well, he may not have reacted very well.
“Do you feel the difference?” he asked, standing up and meeting Sal’s eyes. The other boy was difficult to read, but not much harder than most other people were. Zuko… wasn’t always the best at reading people in the first place.

“Swell,” Zuko replied, sarcasm coating his words. He was breathing hard, unable to look away from the ceiling as he tried to reconcile what he just did with what he had anticipated. He had been ready to fight someone to save someone else. He had been ready to protect a stranger. He hadn’t been ready to fall, and it was only thanks to Sal’s quick reflexes that he was even alive. He forced his eyes closed for a long moment, trying to push away the image of falling. The fear of Sal shrinking further and further into the distance as he fell down into something that may or may not even have a bottom.
“Thanks,” he breathed, finally looking over at Sal. “I… wouldn’t have been able to hold on long enough to do that, without you.”

Zuko took a step back, crossing his arms as he tried to assess Sal’s stance. It wasn’t perfect, but it was his first time holding the dao blades. It was difficult to tell what was just because of Sal trying to compensate for the swords and what was actually a mistake in the stance. There were some things he couldn’t fix in this short amount of time, but if there were any tweaks he could make…
“The blades are heavier than what you’re used to carrying,” Zuko observed, approaching again to lightly adjust the position of Sal’s arm. “If you hold it like you were, the tip is going to lean down, which means it’s going to be a lot harder to gain momentum unless you’re performing a very specific set of strikes. It’ll be easier to control with te tip flat or even raised slightly.” Zuko knocked the blade tips up by about an inch, then glanced at Sal to see if the other boy noticed any difference.

Zuko knew the House was probably going to act fast, if the change in the room had been any indication. They probably needed to focus on getting out of this room, but he allowed himself a few more moments to just stare at the ceiling and breathe. He wasn’t sure he was going to be able to get up without being at least a little bit shaky. Adrenaline was a hell of a drug, and they had both felt it in the extreme in the past several seconds. Zuko had been in plenty of life or death situations like that, but none of them had ever been so unexpected. If Sal had hesitated for even a second, Zuko would be dead. It didn’t matter how permanent or temporary the deaths were if they still had a psychological effect.
“Me too,” he managed, searching the ceiling for some sort of pattern. Something to ground him and focus on.
“Oh…” he glanced over, brow furrowed. “Do… you mind being called Fisher? It was just… the first thing that came to mind. It… suits you.”

“Right,” Zuko replied, frowning a little bit. “I can’t build up the muscle you would have after a few weeks of working with these, but that’s alright. You’d be able to control them a little bit better with more practice, but it’s not vital. If your arms get tired, just let me know and we can take a break.” He sheathed his own blades, glancing over Sal’s stance one more time. The other boy was a quick learner, remarkably so. He was getting it, and he wasn’t asking any stupid questions.
“That’s better,” he confirmed, a little bit of pride in his tone. He smiled, a rare expression from him. “You look a little more confident with it, too. Now… if there were something directly in front of you, how would you instinctively try to hit it?”

Sal Fisher | Training Room | strider

“Too bad I probably can’t take these home,” Sal commented, holding the swords as steady as he could. He’d have liked being able to practice with them after this room…he knew they might not get to do this again, unless the House let them. Which meant anything he learned here, he would probably forget within a week.
It would be fun before that, though. And maybe he’d figure something out.
He caught the smile, hesitating a little. Had he seen Zuko smile before? He was pretty sure he hadn’t…Zuko didn’t seem the type to smile much. Sal thought he might want to make it happen more often.
He dragged his brain back to the words, concentrating on what Zuko was telling him.
“I guess…It probably depends on what it is, right?” He replied, looking ahead of him again. “I’m guessing you wouldn’t fight a demon the same as you would a normal person. And neither of those would be like how you tried to break the glass.”

“Can you get anything like them in your world?” Zuko asked, tilting his head a little bit. “I… don’t really know if they’re common where you’re from, but if you can find a set, they don’t even have to be battle worthy for you to get used to having them around.” He knew it probably wasn’t realistic, but… part of him wanted to continue this beyond this room. Part of him wanted the chance to actually show Sal what it was like to fight with dao blades. He wanted someone to spar with. He wanted to watch the other boy – his friend make progress.
“If uh… if you don’t have anything in your world, you can use mine when we blink in together. If I have them. I don’t get to carry them around as much as I’d like.” Zuko searched Sal’s gaze, hoping he hadn’t offended him with the offer. He didn’t mean to insinuate that they had to keep practicing if Sal didn’t want to, but… Zuko wanted to. He just had to hope the feeling was mutual.
“You’re right,” he said, returning to the question at hand. “Lets say that something was me. Someone stronger than you, a little bit taller, but otherwise just a normal person.”

Sal Fisher | Training Room | strider

Sal glanced at the swords, considering them for a moment. He didn’t think he could get swords, exactly, but maybe something similar, if he worked at it…
It wouldn’t be ideal, but he was pretty sure he could figure something out, if he put his mind to it.
“I’ll think of something,” he replied, looking up to meet Zuko’s eyes again. “It probably won’t really be swords, but maybe props or something. You can get a lot more if you don’t care about quality.”
He wanted to keep practicing. Maybe they hadn’t actually done that much yet, but still. This was fun, and it was interesting to try and learn something Zuko knew so well. Like being introduced to his world, just a little bit more.
He nodded, focusing forwards again and picturing Zuko standing in front of him, swords a mirror image of Sal’s. He narrowed his eyes a little, thinking.
Then, hesitantly, he swung one of the swords forwards, aiming for imaginary Zuko’s legs. It seemed like a better idea than going for his torso, which he could protect with ease.

Zuko crossed his arms, watching Sal’s preliminary attack. It wasn’t a bad move, though Sal wasn’t holding the blades perfectly. It was his first time using them, though – Zuko couldn’t expect perfection. He hadn’t been perfect the first time he had picked up dao blades, either. He knew first hand how difficult it was to be expected to be perfect at something your body hadn’t learned yet. Azula was a prodigy. Zuko was advanced for his age, but nowhere near her level when it came to bending.
“Don’t get anything that will hurt you,” Zuko warned, frowning a little bit. “Bad quality can fall apart really quickly, and you don’t want something sharp to go flying. At the end of my training I was allowed to make my own blades. I think… if the House ever lets that happen, we should make sure you get some quality ones.” He shook his head, instead focusing on what Sal had done when he had ‘attacked.’
“You have good instincts,” he said, nodding approvingly. “I’m not here to teach you where to aim or how to choose what to use on an opponent. That’s the sort of battle sense that you have to develop on your own. What works for me may not work for you. But… did you feel the blades getting unbalanced near the end of your strike?”

Zuko glanced over at Sal, then gave a small nod. It was a basic summary of it, but it wasn’t inaccurate.
“It’s… sort of about tradition, I guess,” he added after a moment, glancing at the charred and shattered glass leading out into what still seemed to be a chasm of some sort. What would have happened if he had fallen in? Had the House planned for him to? Did they have to fall through in order to get to the next part of the room? In order to get out? It wasn’t exactly something Zuko wanted to test. “My family has been made of firebenders for… well, since the Fire Nation was founded. It’s sort of… about keeping up our culture and making sure that the Fire Nation stays a place our ancestors would be proud of. Firebending is about power, but it’s also the lifeblood of my nation and my people.”

“Yeah,” Zuko replied, his small smile returning. “It was a long process, but I worked with my master to make them.” He was fond of them, too. Not that he would say that on the off chance Sal thought it was weird… he didn’t know why the other boy’s opinion of him mattered, but it did. It mattered a lot.\
“That makes sense,” he added, lifting up his own sword so Sal could see the way he was gripping it. He tightened his grip, then loosened it so the blade hung limply. “Here,” he said, taking the blade with his other hand so that he could demonstrate without it. “When you go for a strike without a sword, you get a lot more power if your hand is tensed in a specific position. If it’s just sort of limp, you lose a lot of your power, and you can hurt yourself. The same is true with the blades. Your wrists have to be flexible, but your hand can’t be flaccid.” He took his sword back, demonstrating the same principle with the actual sword.
“You know,” he commented, leaning back, “You know a lot more about me than I know about you.” His tone was light, but it was clear he was interested. “What’s New Jersey like?”

“Yep,” Zuko replied, sitting up the rest of the way. “There are the Water Tribes in the North and South. And there’s the Earth Kingdom. The Northern Water Tribe has waterbenders, but there are also other waterbenders elsewhere. I don’t know details, but I know they’re not just concentrated in the North. And the Earth Kingdom is full of earthbenders.” He frowned a little bit, unsure if he should mention the war. Sal didn’t know much about him, and telling him he was in the middle of a war didn’t seem like a great idea.
He didn’t have to worry about it for too long, though, as the room started to shift around them. At first Zuko thought it was just changing, but it quickly became clear that the walls were getting closer. He stood up suddenly, reaching out a hand to help Sal up. It looked like the gap where the window had been had changed itself into a long hallway, but it was the only way out if they didn’t want to get crushed.
“We need to run.”