Xaviers!

The rhythmic sound of fists slapping against punching bag echos through the rec center.

Thuk. Thuk-thuk. Thuck. Thuck-thuck-thuck!

Nika is breathing hard as she bounces on the balls of her feet, wearing shorts and a training top that shows off her defined abdominal muscles and well-toned shoulders and arms. Her short hair is swept back with sweat and she launches into another series of blows. Straight punch into swiveling on one leg, bringing her heel around to slam into the punching bag, followed by a short jab with the same foot, spinning her back around with an elbow blow, followed by a series of punches. Fastened to her forearms are metal rods that end in grips she's holding and following the regular series of punches and kicks a faint glow spreads over the rod on her right arm and her fist snaps forward in a perfectly straight line that rocks the punching bag a good four or five inches back before swinging back into a kick with the ball of her foot, leveraging it into pushing herself up a good four feet into the air.

Hanging in the air for the blink of an eye the metal brace glows again and her arm comes down at a 45 degree angle on top of the punching bag and there's a loud pang as the chain fastening the bag to the ceiling snaps and the heavy bag is driven to the ground, a noticeable dent where Nika's fist drove into it. She lands in front of it in a slight hunch, back rising and falling as she pants, holding her fist in her left hand as she catches her breath.


((open))

"Maintenance is just going to love you," says a voice from over her shoulder. "Might take some of the heat off of me for once." Tereza's standing there, dressed in shorts and a tank-top but no shoes. Her hands are taped a bit as if she was going to be doing some bag work herself.

Nika's still panting as she looks up at the voice, letting go of her hand to run her fingers through her hair.

"You're welcome." she deadpans. "Guess sometimes you just need to break something to let off steam..."

"Break something, drive really fast, drink too much. Everyone gets by in different ways, sometimes with all of that at once," she smirks as she bends down to scoop up one of the broken links. "So what did the poor bag do to you?"

"Complicate my job with confusing non-sense. Make me look like an idiot. Again." she sighs, giving the punching bag a half-hearted kick.

"People around here excel at that, so it's not exactly surprising that the punching bags are at least passable at it to." She steps closer, grabbing the bits of chain still connected to the bag and dragging it out of the way. "What is it you do exactly?"

"Imbue objects with momentum and lock them into trajectories." she says, leaning down to pick up the broken link of the chain. It glows faintly as she holds it balanced on top of her index finger and it just keeps hanging there when she moves her hand. She snaps her fingers and the piece of metal rockets across the room too fast for the eye to follow and stopping as fast as it sped off. After a moment of hanging there her power dissipates and it falls to the ground.

"You?"

"Not what I meant, but still nice," she says appreciatively. A shard of ice appears in her hand and she tosses the 'dagger' into the air before it comes to rest in her hand as a small ball of ice. "I create and manipulate ice into various shapes. Had a side of lycanthropy piled on that several months back." She tosses the ice ball at one of the walls where it shatters.

"Ah, family curse?"

"No. The family curse is a little different. Picked a fight with the wrong person. Or the right person, depending on how you want to look at such things," she says, extending a hand. "Tereza Rozanov."

"Ah, I thought your accent sounded familiar. Nika Novak." she says, firmly shaking Tereza's hand. "As far as I understand it's a... manageable affliction? For a while the Symkarian government tried to stir up panic around Transylvanian immigrants carrying it into our borders."

"I'm sure people have differing opinions on how 'manageable' it is, but I'm not about to try to bite you or anyone else, if that's what you're asking."

"I see no reason to inherently mistrust it. Plus I'm not sure you could if you wanted to." she adds with bit of a cocky smirk.

"You're that confident?" She grins back, obviously taking it as a challenge.

"Just stating the facts." she totally doesn't brag. This is a kind of interaction she actually gets, which is a nice change of pace after the mess with Jez and Katarina. "I'd be happy to demonstrate if you want."

"I'm sure maintenance can handle a little more damage," she says, squaring her stance up a bit.

"Loser has to break it to them?" she grins, dropping into her own stance which is much more loose and flowing, moving on the balls of her feet.

"Sounds fair," she says, springing forward without waiting for a response. As she moves forward, her right fist comes forward in a slightly cagey strike, just to test the waters.

Tereza is definitely faster than Nika expects, but instead of taking a defensive stance she squares her shoulders and holds her arms parallel to the ground, sliding backwards a good three feet. The braces on her arms are infused with her power and just pulled her along, feet only barely touching the ground, leaving her free to immediately launch into a spin-kick aimed at Tereza's arm.

Tereza brings her arm up in a half-block, but it still takes the blow. She grunts and backs off a few steps, shaking her arm a little. "Good one," she says, flicking the arm up as a human-sized fist of ice springs up from the floor to try to punch Nika in the back of the knee.

She did not anticipate that oblique of an angle of attack and her knee buckles. She let's herself drop completely and rolls to the side before trying to sweep Tereza's legs in the same movement as pulling herself back up into a crouch.

Obviously such an attack requires some measures of concentration, so Tereza can't quite get out of the way of the leg sweep. She lands hard on her shoulders, but manages to flip it so that she ends up in a crouch as well, though hers is a distinctly more feral stance. Her eyes flick to gold briefly as she gets defensive, watching for Nika to make the next move.

Nika notes Tereza's hesitance and shoulder checks into her with next to no lead-up or footwork to warn her it's coming, carried purely by Nika's power yanking her forward by her braces, leaving her arms pretty sore.

The shoulder check rocks her backwards with a growl and she tries to roll with it, trying to send Nika on past her with more force than style.

There's a brief moment that Nika doesn't budge. Or rather, her arms don't and she lets out a pained grunt from her own momentum and body-weight threaten to dislocate her joints before she manages to turn her power off, the braces no longer fixing her in place and letting her go tumbling over Tereza and landing with a thud on her back. With the air knocked from her lungs she knoes she's not going to get her body to cooperate as fast as she needs it to and instead activates her power again, making herself slide across the floor and away from Tereza to buy herself a moment to recover.

Tereza pulls herself back up, some joint popping back into place as she does so. "You're quite the fighter," she says with some genuine admiration. Still, she lunges for Nika, trying to pin her.

"I like to think so." she manages to get out, bringing her knees to her chest to try and catch Tereza mid-pounce and kick her backwards.

Tereza obviously didn't expect her to recover so quickly and Nika catches her quite easily, tossing her backwards into a tumbling roll across the floor.

Recovered or not, pushing Tereza off herself like that does take a lot out of Nika and when she gets to her feet her legs are definitely a bit shaky from the sheer effort.

"You actually fight like a dog." she says, then quickly adds "That came out wrong..."

Tereza pulls herself to her feet slowly. Her irises are golden yellow and she blinks a bit, but the color doesn't go away. "Yeah, dog isn't exactly flattering. I know at least one person who'd be very offended at that comparison."

"It's... tenacity. And trying to overwhelm your opponent. I didn't mean to insult."

Tereza waves it away, "I'll take it in the manner in which it was intended." She looks at Nika's condition, "We should probably both sit down."

"I'll concede that you'd probably win a sparring match eventually." she says with bit of a tired smirk. "The full extent of my power's got a bit too much stopping power to bring into it."

"I have some unfair advantages and the cafeteria is going to hate me later. A bit more prep and you probably could have taken me. Someone trained you well."

Despite being tired Nika manages to pull herself up into standing up straight. "Symkarian Royal G--Academy." she nods. "I like to think I could have nailed you to the wall if I absolutely had to."

Tereza raises an eyebrow at the sudden change, "Yeah, you probably could have. Good thing we're on the same side then."

"Right, yes, sorry. I've been told I take this a little too serious at times..."

"You do seem a little... intense... no offense."

"Only because it's important. There's a lot of expectations that go with me being here."

"Other peoples' expectations or yours?"