The Jenova Cells

[The_Cell]

The arena was partially filled with a few other trainee's most carrying wooden swords and spears, she waves shly distracting a few. Eventually they were led by the Arena Master to a free spot, she thanked him and waited for him to go.
"So little strange stalker, shall we duel...only for some fun." she said with a grin. "We will go easy on you promise.

She wanted to test her human form although she could, like the previous her morph into other beings it was a lot more taxing on her resources and a lot less tuned as she'd prefered the human form. She stretched, letting the cells within form a bone to click as would be natural. She grinned and clenched her fist and opened it up again, a backhand would be swift she thought whilst a punch more direct. Her naturally amplified cells would provide the needed mass to cause pain if she wanted but it would be to easy, no she'd play fair after all its by testing the waters that she might ascend to becoming a god.

"You can use your little knife if you like."

She fell into a defensive stance, ready to counter with a block but she'd be more then willing to let herself get stabbed so she had a firm grip on that knife of his.

[Silence]

Alder almost instantly flicked his wrist to send the dagger in the sheathe up his wrist into his hand whilst falling into his standard stance when using a dagger (weight evenly distributed, legs slightly bent while he rested on the balls of his feet, left leg back, right arm holding the dagger before him to ward off attacks as best as the small weapon could, the aim of the stance was to go over or under the swing of a larger weapon and then move in quickly to close to a range where his smaller weapon was more effective)... almost. However, he stopped himself before the reflex of a repeated action took over. She had no weapon, so really, he actually was the one who should be doing the warding off, while she tried to get inside his swing. That, and did he really want to advertise exactly how good (or not so) he was at this?

Then again, it would also be useful to find out how good she was. So maybe... Alder took a quick glance at the defensive stance that she had fallen into and resisted the urge to grin. Instead of attacking her, he took a step backwards, drawing a knife from his belt and a coin from his pocket as he did so. The knife, he tossed to his left hand while he held the coin in his right, fiddling with it as he thought. Alright, that would force her to come towards him, so he could try to ward her away from him by making wide swings of his dagger, and then dart in if her guard dropped. However, the boy took no stance other than the clumsy, off balance stance that he had taken when he had first fought the cell in the catacombs, although he did correct a few of the more obvious flaws in the stance, such as putting himself on the balls of his feet rather than the soles of his feet and by placing his centre of gravity a little more central over his feet rather than so far backwards that he was in danger of falling over without being pushed... had he really been that bad once?

Alder watched his dagger as he raised it in front of himself rather than Jenova. It was the biggest difference he had noticed between those who fought in the arena to train, and those who just hacked away at wooden targets. The latter watched themselves, the former watched their enemy. Also, the latter rarely had such stable footwork or as nimble movement as the former, instead having merely built up endurance, aim, power and speed of their strike. That was why such training could only take you so far.

Technically, he had mastered the use of the dagger long ago and knew excactly what he was doing wrong, (in fact, he was slightly better with a dagger than he was with a bow, and he was as good with that as he was ever going to be short of just being stronger and more dextrous) but Jenova didn't need to know that. Now then, how to go about this fight to see how good Jenova was? He was certainly not going to be using any of the tricks he used when fighting seriously, no matter how good she was. As far as the image he was presenting, he had a fair amount of raw skill, but no experience behind it, which meant that he didn't really know how fighting worked. Alright, he could see how good she was on the offensive easily enough. All he had to do was to hold his dagger before him and then act as if he was intending to counter attack as she moved towards him, muck that up as if surprised at something in the way she approached him, and then simply try to avoid her swings as best he could without a proper stance or any of his usual tricks. If he could pull that off, he would 'recover' and throw a few short stabs at her to see how she was on the defensive... then it would just be a normal duel with him playing down his abilities a bit. Whether she could gain the upper hand again would be up to her, but if she couldn't, then he would probably have no problem with her physically if it came down to it... unless she too were faking. That was always a possibility... the other possibility was that he would get swatted aside like a fly almost instantly, which would mean that he would not stand even half a chance in a direct confrontation even if he were fighting properly. Either way, he would have learnt something from this duel and she would have learnt no more... hopefully.

All of this went through the boy's mind in an instant, his coin having barely moved over three of his fingers. Now, he just needed to wait for her to forfeit her defensive stance in return for attacking, because he was not going over there. Losing the offensive on purpose was difficult... making it look like an accident was even more so, and he didn't want to risk mucking it up. Gaining the offensive was something he didn't need to fake, if he could do it at all.

((Feel free to godmod as necessary... you should have a rough idea of what Alder will do now))