[ Ilde Vilmaine had arrived among the hosts with more intimate knowledge of Death than most. Death is a figure that is everywhere, slips into your body with every breath you talk, laughs into your ear with every stumble, hounds baying at your heels. She had joined them all with very little emotion on the concept of death, her only metric was her own survival, something she monitored like a hawk. She would quickly and ruthlessly remove any potential threat before they had time for action. The element of surprise had seemed best to her, when she had little by way of strength or power. She had to be quicker, and smarter.
She had killed a street thug on Avera, he had come too close to her after being dismissed, had set off too many alarms with his aggressive smile, his cronies, the knife he had been flipping in his hand as if it were a toy. She had taken her own knife directly and unhesitating to his throat, pushed deep, twisted, and ripped in one smooth motion that had sent blood spraying, and his body dropping. And she had thought nothing of it until The Prince took her aside, took her knife, banished her from the encampment, and explained to her the sanctity of life or some-such in his own round about way.
It had shocked and offended her. No one had ever dared place their values on her before, no one who was any less than her Godking. How dare he. He would continue to berate them when the rest of her brood caused several more deaths, when the first host died alone in the streets, targeted as one of their members. Ilde was no more sorry than Kylo Ren for her actions, but when Steve Rogers told her he had never killed anyone before-- She faltered. Uncertain if that was a weakness or something lovely about him. So she tried to promise not to put blood on his hands, now that they all belonged together.
She weathered the Prince's blame, reached out to him to learn non-lethal means of defense, but what he taught her amounted to nothing in Concordia. She tried. She tried to pretend to be the girl 'Saffron' who aspired to stardom. Tried to be softer, subtler, but at every turn she found herself more and frustrated by the restraints. Until Mara Jade joined them, and bridged the gap between lies, manipulation, and violence. Concordia even had virtual fighting, where one's imagination was the limit for the destruction, and there Ilde had practiced the things her symbiote could bring to the table, pushing flashes of panic and nightmare as she struck.
She still favors the idea of not fighting at any length, of keeping distance, of always having one more trick hiding up her sleeve to remove herself from an altercation, but... this is for training. And for release. On Concordia she had been unable to throw herself entirely in to her training with Mara and with Bruce, lest they injure her and those injures had to be explained to the gossip streamers who bothered her everywhere she went. It is almost a relief to feel Misato's strike sink in to her fully, to be part of reality again after all those surreal days of pretending to be someone else. It had been distasteful.
The things she had done to end their time there, had been distasteful. Even now, she continues to cultivate some of those seeds and it burns in her gut, a painful winding that makes her more than just a little happy to be hit and to hit in kind.
She faces down Misato with a grimness that has no hesitance nor fear behind it. Their early exchanges demonstrate basic literacy in attack in defense, that a match between them is acceptable, although it is now theirs to discover whether or not it is even.
Misato feigns a strike, but Ilde has been taught to let the opponent move first, to ready for such things. She is ready when Misato's shoulder dips as she pivots her hips to kick. The motion Ilde makes to block the kick to her ribs is fairly small, shifting her right arm down and in to protect her center. The strike strings up her shoulder, but there's no such thing as a painless fight, and she is immediately ready to counter, surging forward to see if she can knock Misato off balance entirely before the other woman returns her foot to the ground. Regardless of her balance, the same elbow just blocked with swings up and around for her head. ]
ilde: a tl;dr of violence
She had killed a street thug on Avera, he had come too close to her after being dismissed, had set off too many alarms with his aggressive smile, his cronies, the knife he had been flipping in his hand as if it were a toy. She had taken her own knife directly and unhesitating to his throat, pushed deep, twisted, and ripped in one smooth motion that had sent blood spraying, and his body dropping. And she had thought nothing of it until The Prince took her aside, took her knife, banished her from the encampment, and explained to her the sanctity of life or some-such in his own round about way.
It had shocked and offended her. No one had ever dared place their values on her before, no one who was any less than her Godking. How dare he. He would continue to berate them when the rest of her brood caused several more deaths, when the first host died alone in the streets, targeted as one of their members. Ilde was no more sorry than Kylo Ren for her actions, but when Steve Rogers told her he had never killed anyone before-- She faltered. Uncertain if that was a weakness or something lovely about him. So she tried to promise not to put blood on his hands, now that they all belonged together.
She weathered the Prince's blame, reached out to him to learn non-lethal means of defense, but what he taught her amounted to nothing in Concordia. She tried. She tried to pretend to be the girl 'Saffron' who aspired to stardom. Tried to be softer, subtler, but at every turn she found herself more and frustrated by the restraints. Until Mara Jade joined them, and bridged the gap between lies, manipulation, and violence. Concordia even had virtual fighting, where one's imagination was the limit for the destruction, and there Ilde had practiced the things her symbiote could bring to the table, pushing flashes of panic and nightmare as she struck.
She still favors the idea of not fighting at any length, of keeping distance, of always having one more trick hiding up her sleeve to remove herself from an altercation, but... this is for training. And for release. On Concordia she had been unable to throw herself entirely in to her training with Mara and with Bruce, lest they injure her and those injures had to be explained to the gossip streamers who bothered her everywhere she went. It is almost a relief to feel Misato's strike sink in to her fully, to be part of reality again after all those surreal days of pretending to be someone else. It had been distasteful.
The things she had done to end their time there, had been distasteful. Even now, she continues to cultivate some of those seeds and it burns in her gut, a painful winding that makes her more than just a little happy to be hit and to hit in kind.
She faces down Misato with a grimness that has no hesitance nor fear behind it. Their early exchanges demonstrate basic literacy in attack in defense, that a match between them is acceptable, although it is now theirs to discover whether or not it is even.
Misato feigns a strike, but Ilde has been taught to let the opponent move first, to ready for such things. She is ready when Misato's shoulder dips as she pivots her hips to kick. The motion Ilde makes to block the kick to her ribs is fairly small, shifting her right arm down and in to protect her center. The strike strings up her shoulder, but there's no such thing as a painless fight, and she is immediately ready to counter, surging forward to see if she can knock Misato off balance entirely before the other woman returns her foot to the ground. Regardless of her balance, the same elbow just blocked with swings up and around for her head. ]