((Collab between Double and Arty Fox))

A cloaked Seth lay on one of the comfy couches in the Ruler of the Sea's lounge room. True, he could have gone back to his quarters, but there wouldn't have been food or drink there. At any rate, the Nobody appeared to be asleep, his hood pulled down over his eyes like a cowboy does with their hat. There was minimal activity around him. A handful of moogles were playing cards on the other side of the room, but apart from that the lounge was more or less empty.

"Hey has anyone seen Seth." Mac asked peeking into the common room. 

The moogles simply jabbed a finger(?) towards the snoozing mound on the sofa. 

"Thanks. Hey Seth, you awake?" There was an odd edge in Macs tone that wasn't quite anger as he stood over the sofa and jabbed Seth a few times in the shoulder. "Seth wake up, I need a favour."

Seth grinned at the computer-head's first question, "Hmm... nope. Don't think so. But if you'd like to leave a message with your name and future whereabouts I'll get back to you as soon as I-" but Mac clearly wasn't amused and asked again in a more frustrated tone, "Alright, alright, what do you need?" Seth sat himself upright and popped some joints in his neck before lazily pulling back the hood.

Mac very much wished he had eyes to roll at Seth's reply but sadly as he didn't and he settled for just moving onto the favour he was about to ask.

"I want you to punch me in the face." A short shrug as if the request were an everyday thing. "Well more accurately I want you to help teach me to fight without magic." Mac spat out the last word like it were something extremely bitter and his hand strayed into his pocket. "The person I was training with said it was a bad idea, but I thought you might take at least some pleasure in beating the stuffing out of me."

[i]"I want you to punch me in the face."[/i]

Seth gave a small shrug and then his fist went flying. Then Mac spoke again and the punch that would have went right through his computer-screen face instead stopped just short of it. Well, shoot, and here Seth thought this would be a simple favor. Clearly that wasn't the case, instead Mac wanted him to... teach him? At this, the Nobody offered his signature shrug.

"Fighting's not necessarily about being the faster or stronger combatant." he said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, "To be honest, as long as you're smarter than them, then strength isn't as much of a factor." that sounded strange, coming from the guy who consistently showed himself to be inhumanly strong and agile when he needed to be. Clearly he'd learned his share of tricks, "But if you really want to learn some tricks, then I have to warn you first. The techniques [i]I[/i] practice are very tricky to use. Fail to use them right, and you end up harming [i]yourself[/i] more than you harm your enemy. Still interested?"

He had flinched when Seth had almost thrown a very hefty punch. "But being smarter won't do you much good when you're a bloody smear on the ground." Mac gave a frustrated sigh. "Anyway really it's not like I don't have enough power or anything, or at least I like to think so."

With his other hand Mac scratched at the back of his head where the cable emerged next to all the little ports a computer screen had. Even without a face a thoughtful look washed over him and the glossy surface of the screen almost appeared to glaze over.

"Nah, wouldn't be a useful thing if I wasn't. Wouldn't worry about the getting hurt thing either; repacked my own innards once which was fun" Mac quickly snapped back to the present. "So mate, what sort of techniques have you got up your sleeve then? Hundred man punch or something along those lines?"

"Oh, good." Seth responded, his wide grin not faltered. He didn't say anything when Mac asked about the techniques. Rather, he just stood and nodded for Mac to follow. Better to show rather than tell, he decided. But as they walked he did decide to give a hint or two.

"Incidentally, did you know that whenever you strike an opponent, their body always puts forth a natural resistance to the force of your attack? That's perfectly normal, of course, since the skin and bones tend to act as a natural armor of sorts for the more vulnerable inner organs." as he said this, he led them to the ship's holodeck, and after a moment he opened the door and in they went.

"This natural resistance can be found in just about any matter, organic or not. And it makes damaging them more difficult, where you would otherwise require a much greater amount of strength than you can physically muster. At least... that's how it [i]normally[/i] is." by this point Seth had started a simulation that would put them in a rocky canyon of sorts, surrounded by rocks and boulders.

"But if you can find a way to circumvent the resistance, you can damage an object or person far beyond what you are otherwise capable of. Like [i]this[/i]!" And without warning, Seth casually punched a boulder, and it dissolved into dust. It didn't crack, it didn't break into smaller rocks. It literally [i]dissolved[/i] into a pile of dust.

Watching Seth had caused a level of fear to stir in Macs stomach that he hadn't visited for a long time. It was that hair raising mixture of equal parts desire for the power the thing to be feared had and the natural instinct to run very far away.

"Jesus..." Mac whispered in awe. "How did...how did you?"

The logical part of Macs mind, what little wasn't suddenly wondering why he wasn't running away, took a moment to point out something to him; they were in a holo-deck.

"Wait a minute this is a holodeck." A phrase Mac never thought he'd live to say. "Are you pulling my leg or something?" He then strode up to another boulder and gave it hard knock fully expecting it to shatter as well.

it did not. "Never mind, continue."

Mac didn't buy it at first. He tried to repeat the action against another boulder, rightfully pointing out that this was a holodeck. He banged his fist against the rock only for nothing to happen. Now, Seth [i]could[/i] have explained beforehand how the holodeck works. That it uses its energy supply to generate the physical mass of objects within a simulated environment, and then used a holographic projection to give it its color and texture. For all intents and purposes, these were real rocks. Seth could have warned Mac about this, but chose instead to let him learn on his own.

"What I pulled off is actually simpler than you think." Seth then held up his left hand, letting it form a hypothetical wall that he slowly collided his free fist into, the knuckles all striking simultaneously, "This sort of punch, while efficient for some opponents and some obstacles, still faces the issue of having its true power severely reduced by the target's natural physical resistance. But what if you had a way to strike twice in a single punch? Like, say, this..."

He repeated the punching motion, but this time made the row of knuckles closest to his fingertips touch his hand first followed instantly by the back row touching second, "If this were sped up into a full speed strike, the rows of knuckles impacting separately would turn one impact into two. Plus, the first row of knuckles are the ones met by all the resistance. Timed correctly, the second row strikes immediately after, when the natural resistance has already been used up against the first row. A single punch can then become a devastating weapon capable of breaking an opponent's body from the inside out. That's why this technique was given the name Fist of Destruction."

Mac tilted his head to show his confusion as he tried to understand how the Fist of Destruction worked. In some vague way it made sense but even after many years surrounded by Fae magic and wondrously ludicrous things happening to him his mind continued to cling to logic. At the very least Mac was happy to see that the move focused on punching, which Mac considered himself to be fairly decent at.

"Okay, I think I get it." He didn't sound certain but clenched his left hand into a fist and held it up. "So I hit something with my fist but try and focus on hitting with the knuckles of my index and middle finger." He gently punched the air before twisting his fist to let the other knuckles hit the same space. "And then twist like this?"

"You're not messing with me are you?" Mac tried his best to hide the accusatory tone from his voice, he was understandably a bit weary of Seth known for his tricks and pranks. "Because I'm fairly certain punching like this would probably break someones fist rather than actually do anything."

Seth offered his trademark shrug, "Well, I [i]did[/i] say it was tricky to use, didn't I?" he turned as if to leave the holodeck, but spoke up once more, "In fact I remember saying that it could harm [i]you[/i] more than your enemy if you don't do it right. That wasn't an exaggeration. You really do have to have crackerjack timing with the impacts in order for the technique to be useful for you. But I'm sure you'll figure that out on your own." with that he was gone, either back to napping again or perhaps even to grab a bite to eat.