The Ranch

Spitting Death In The Face (1)

"The first round goes to Team Poseidon! Let's quickly get a move on now. The next song will be..electronic rock! Kai, come up the stage. Kane, please come on the stage."

The worst opponent for Kai, yet the best opponent for the sake of the team. Kane chose this song for no other reason than he liked the genre and it's more his style.

Henri pats Kai's shoulder," Give It Your All." He means that literally. Only those at the edge of death can make breakthroughs and surpass limits. For Kai's sake, fighting someone leagues ahead of him will be good experience, as long as he doesn't get wiped across the floor in two seconds. Henri pushes him from behind.

~~~~~~~

Yeah, just gotta give it my all!...my ass. So corny.

Sigh, at this point I have no expectations of winning. I'll have to hope Basile wins the last fight.

As for this...I guess I have the freedom to wing it.

~~~~~~~

Feeling no sense of pressure or burden to carry, Kai becomes relaxed. Seeing Instructor Kane's head peeking above the edge of the stage, Kai comes up with an interesting idea.

He stands straight and puffs out his chest, putting on a bravado," Sup, Instructor."

"You're relaxed." Kane asks with amusement.

"Course. A tournament should be fun and all."

"...good way of looking at it." Kane smirks. "But you sure you aren't too relaxed. I'm not gonna go easy just cuz you're Tih's friend."

Kai thumps his chest," I can take it." He states confidently.

Kane narrows his eyes. Light blue pierces through, staring at the arrogant boy. Kane's usually a pretty chill person. There's always a light atmosphere around him and he's easy to talk to and joke around with. He likes to treat people with respect and ignores the island's power hierarchy, but only to those that deserve it.

Kane is a proud person. One of his few peeves is when people act like they're above others without the ability to back it up. He can tell Kai isn't faking his slackened body and relaxed expression.

"Kid, don't go overestimating yourself, especially on this island." His voice is lowered an octave.

"Oh? Then come at me." Kai throws that typical hand gesture seen in movies. He's always wanted to do that.

Grasping the perfect timing, Simon D announces the start of the second round," Three, two, one, dance!"

The song starts and Kane immediately moves in. He's using a claymore, a sword that looks nine points similar to your standard medieval knight's sword.

The first thing he does is chuck the claymore in the air underhanded. The metal creates a steep arc fifty to sixty feet in the sky. It stays in the air for so long, it almost a seems as if time has been frozen.

Meanwhile, down below, after throwing his sword, Kane completes a complex king tut while making his way over to Kai. He winks at the camera on the beat, stirring up the audience with sheer style points.

G-dog watches him play around with stomps, jabs, chest pops, and arm swings from Krump; and animation, dime stops, gliding, and waving from Popping. "He's got the confidence, I'll give him that." He looks impressed. "The moves are still rough around the edges, but it's not complete ametuer hour."

...Okay honestly, it's really cool. Even though it's not perfect, it has this really good flow that fits incredibly well with the electronic music, exciting the crowd with a bubbling feeling in their gut.

James takes the time to inform the crowd as Kane lays out move after move, slinking his way over to Kai," Krump is freestyle. First-class in aggression and good for this fast-paced song. Really good for intimidation, and for our dance arts we use popping for feints a lot.

James grimaces from second-hand embarrassment as he moves his eyes to the other side of the stage.

Kai starts off with a lot of showy air moves that he's learnt and practiced in Parkour class. Freestyle is definitely not for him, that much can be seen by everyone. His moves aren't coordinated and he's relying too much on power moves to keep his dance entertaining, or at least that was the goal. Sadly it doesn't quite reach the mark.

"The whole routine's a mess. No structure, no tempo, not balancing the power moves with other stuff in between. That can't be good for his stamina." Louis feels pained on behalf of Kai.

He's right too. Kai's moving too fast for the song's tempo, like he's trying to it as fast as possible, making him tire quickly. Kai hears the judges comments and tries to lay off the power moves and instead goes for a shabby attempt at happy feet and a running man he saw on the streets once.

A failed emulation of a basic dance move that doesn't work because, even though the steps are simple, Kai doesn't take in consideration the music genre or tempo. How they don't mesh well. Kai is overestimating himself, thinking it would be easy to time them right. Thinking, if Henri's opponent could do it, so should he.

This way of thinking is caused by a fundamental problem with Kai's experience on the island. Tih is constantly surrounded by bigwigs, the top brass. Over time, Kai created his own skill gap in his mind between regular soldiers and Instructors. And there is. The problem is how far apart he made that gap and where he placed himself on that gap.

Kai doesn't socialize with those at his job, the other students in class, or anyone aside from Tih. He's grown more comfortable with the new group they've formed, but outside of that small team, Kai doesn't try to associate with others. This is what he's used to, he's satisfied with this.

Back onto the topic, he hasn't had a lot of experience with the common everyday soldier, and at some point placed himself among them, on their level. You could call it his arrogance as a newbie.

Even one year can have such an important impact on the islanders. That's twelve trials they have to go through. During the first couple years on the island, newbies go through dramatic changes, both physically and mentally. That's why each generation comes to the island a couple years after the one previously, so the island doesn't have to deal with two batches of newbies or more all at once.

Kai, who hasn't even been here for a year, can not even come close to comparing to an average soldier's strength, adaptability, and courage. So of course he wouldn't be good at something he's trying for the first time. Something he doesn't have talent for or even a full understanding of.

Instructor Kane has noticed that. And, he'll make sure to use that against him.

(Authors note: Kai:what was with comparing me to a student part all about?
Because I have a test tomorrow at I'm reflecting myself in you)

...was zebra really the best I could come up with?