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[h3][color=662d91][i][b]Alexander Polawski[/b][/i][/color][/h3][i][b][color=662d91]Location:[/color][/b][/i] Standing outside of the Chapel -> Moving through the streets of CMB with Freedman
[i][b][color=662d91]Skills:[/color][/b][/i] N/A
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	Voices began to speak to Alexander, voices he'd heard many times before over his long and hard life. Voices he knew to be far away, or more likely, dead. The sound of raindrops hitting the concrete ground around him, the never-ending rattling of tiny drops colliding with the rooftops and his heart pounding in his ears couldn't drown out the voices that spoke to him. He wanted to tell them to stop, to go to Hell and leave him alone. The voice. One voice. 

	He recognized it through the rain, underneath the thin canvas of an umbrella protecting from the hail of rain from above. Freedman. Freedman? Why was he there?

	Alexander didn't turn to face Freedman as the two men stood there, keeping his gaze out at sea just like his confessor was doing. He had the same distant voice he knew from fellow sorry sods who'd seen some shit, mostly from himself. Listening to what the good man with his words of wisdom himself confessed to Alexander, Alexander could naught but nod along, captivated by each and every word flowing in-between the raindrops. Death, murder, prison and scars. It was getting to him. Not only what Freedman revealed about himself to an emotionally wrecked Mugsy on one-and-a-half leg, but the fact he did reveal his story. 

	Alexander looked for a brief moment at Freedman at his side, taking a breath as long as a bad year of many bad years, before looking down at his soaking wet shoes, as if he as thinking to himself "Should have gone for combat boots or Wellingtons today. My feet are wet…" His thoughts were far, far away from that though. Everything he was just told all made sense, awfully good sense. [color=662d91]"I know…I think I know. I've been living with this for nearly fourty years now, though I kept on picking up baggage along the way. Perhaps you're right, I hope it at least. Thana, Thalia and Manny, they're all I have, perhaps they see someone else that who I see every morning I wake up…"[/color] 

	Ol' Mugsy wiped his face clean of raindrops and tears with his already wet and dirtied hands from the ground, holding in a wave of emotions he knew he could cope with out there on the street. They were the type of emotions he dealt with lying in bed, tightly holding onto a pillow and crying himself to sleep. Now he was to follow Freedman back to his place and get changed. Why was this man so good to him? 

	Pity? Love for your fellow man? Devotion? Perhaps he as just a good man with a bad past, like himself. 

	[color=662d91]"I really hope you're right about…about me, and about what you said about living with it. Some days I cope with it better, but other…other days I can smell it as if I was there. It clings to your nose, no matter how much you wash yourself or stuff smokes up your nostrils. Napalm…burning flesh…and the rain, not to mention the screaming and shouting…I'm just so fucking tired of it…"[/color] 

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[h3][color=B8860B][i][b]Nigel[/b][/i][/color] [i][b]&[/b][/i] [color=dc143c][i][b]Thalia[/b][/i][/color][/h3][i][b][color=lightgray]Location:[/color][/b][/i] Gymnasium (K7)
[i][b][color=lightgray]Skills:[/color][/b][/i] [color=#B8860B]Hand to Hand[/color], [color=dc143c]Hard Martial Arts[/color]
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[center][h3][color=darkgray]Previously:[/color][/h3][/center]

	The sparring session started awkwardly for both Nigel and Thalia, resulting in neither being able to catch advantage. After a touch of light banter from both of them, Nigel was the first to inflict a meaningful, physical hit. First blood, as it were, goes to the Neo-Roman. But the blow seemed to bring out something more aggressive in Thalia, who is now pursuing the contest as such. 


[center][h3][color=darkgray]Now:[/color][/h3][/center]

	A light growl escaped Thalia's lips as she continued to push forward. As each jab and counter developed, she instinctively tilted her head slightly behind the lined-up shot for greater protection and accuracy. It was an effective technique in a marginal sense, but thusfar had not been able to penetrate Nigel's defense. She gave note to his footwork as she pressed on, her mind processing what his style and technique choices might be. But for the life of her, Thalia couldn't tell what she hell he was about. Then it came to her - he didn't have one. She was fighting someone who was moving off of instinct and personal experience. That changed things. Thalia was a pressure fighter, as were many in her family. She used to be pretty good at it, too. But what many people didn't realize about her before it was too late was that she was a switch hitter. It was this quality that she hoped to exploit. Moving with a series of nigh formulaic combinations, she kept the pressure on Nigel to hopefully [i]re[/i]act rather than [i]act[/i]. The instant that it became predictable (and her more vulnerable), Thalia growled through gritted teeth, bringing her steel hand around to bear for a single, devastating blow to her opponent's body that, from the look of the setup, might be a sternum-cracker. Call the medics. Possibly court martial Thalia. Inform next-of-kin. But THAT blow never came. 

	This opponent was no mere street-thug mugging the well-to-do citizens of Rome. No, she was an Amazon, one-handed but still capabable of dealing a good blow to those opposing her. Nigel had to give it to her, for even though he'd gotten in a solid blow at her, she was still standing and ready to strike out at him. She focused herself onto him, clearly attempting to get a gauge on him so that she could strike. Nigel was not trained in this kind of combat, but he'd proved a worthy opponent at his first strike, and so was determined to keep up a good match. Stepping back and forth, arms raised as Thalia came in for the attack, he was ready for the strike at his torso...

	It was a feint. A full setup for a punch that she had no intention of throwing. Instead, she tensed and leapt as high as her muscles would allow, finally giving her a height advantage on the much larger Nigel. Using the momentum of gravity reasserting herself, Thalia brought her other hand down in a devastating overhand right, kicking her legs behind her for momentum. Her hit was finally true, hard knuckles making formidable connection to the side of Nigel's head, right in front of his ear. It was only when she landed that Thalia realized she was roaring something primal, and her metal arm was already cocking back for a follow up. 

	The failure as not only a complete surprise, a painful surprise, but shameful. What his neo-legionaire soldierarly mind had expected to be a powerful punch at his body, transformed itself into a precision strike at his head. A bolt of pain jolted Nigel to the opposite side of Thalia's attack, his ear ringing like the roars of Carthaginian war elephants. He could see stars blinking before his very eyes in a world which rocked harder than the sea at the Pillars of Hercules. 

	Nigel brought in a long breath of air before counter-attacking, though his blow was ill-aimed. He'd aimed at punching her somewhere further down her torso, hoping to either deflect or obstruct the coming strike of her metal hand, but his blow failing to flank her defensive posture. He'd called himself a Son of Mars, and so far he was losing the war. 

	Inertia carried Thalia to a low stance, her metal arm still poised at the ready. The defiant, animalistic roar had subsided, a sort of purge of her frustrations that gave way to a colder, less emotional woman. Her focus seemed to sharpen considerably even as her muscles tensed, waiting for the appropriate opening. Then she saw it: the telltale contraction of muscles from her opponent that let her know an attack was coming. Keeping low, Thalia dropped even further. Her remaining flesh and bone hand trailed on the ground from where she was crouching, giving her a balancing point. She pivoted from this point, moving to Nigel's less defended flank. That's when she made her move. 

	Compressed energy erupted as the pixie-cut Mestiza streaked forward, her metal arm brought to bear on the back of Nigel's knee. Her smaller, leaner body didn't have enough power to compete with the man in a fair contest of strength, but she had two things working in her favor in this situation: 1) a metal arm, and 2) an unwillingness to participate in a fair contest of strength. As soon as connection was made and she saw the initial telltale wobble of Nigel's leg compensating for the sudden, involuntary shift in balance, she wrapped both arms around his calf and [i]stood[/i] as hard as she possibly could. Their positioning was suddenly reversed as Thalia found herself high on her feet, whereas Nigel was now mid-air and horizontal, descending to become one with the floor beneath them. 

	It was true then, what people said. Humilitas occidit superbiam. Humility conquers pride, or the modern phrase of "Pride comes before the fall." In the case of Nigel "Sportacus" the Scholar, it came in a literal sense. Thalia's manouver had caught an already disoriented Nigel by surprise, and when he realized the world was turning on its side, it as already too late. The small but fierce Thalia lifted Nigel up to the point gravity did the rest. Nigel fell down hard onto the floor, luckily not hitting his head as hard as the rest of him did. More than anything he got the air knocked out of him, signalling the results of their first skirmish. 

Thalia was the victor. 

	Nigel fought for a breath of air, coughing as his lungs no longer were deflated, looking up at Thalia as tall as she was. She was quite the woman, like no one he'd met, besides those medieval reenactors before the End. [color=#B8860B]"I...yield. Are you not...entertained?"[/color]