[D6LM] You're the Best

[Manny Donos]

Manny had been uncharacteristically quiet during the trip out to the farmland. Not entirely quiet, though; even quiet Manny would try a joke from time to time. But a bit quieter than usual.

He was also without his usual outer vest for the first time. Instead, he was dressed in simple traveling pants and a tank top. He also wore his new blaster, strapped to his waist with a belt.

He glanced at Raven, and then at the mysterious bag she'd made him bring.

[Raven Cadera]

The silence from Manny struck her as odd, and she kind of wondered what the reason was.

Maybe thinking it was because of last night, she gave him a solid pat on the shoulder. "You fought well yesterday. Be proud." The magic warrior words - nailed it.

[Manny Donos]

"Yeah... I did, didn't I?" Manny smiled, then frowned, then tried to do both at once. It came out decidedly weird.

"I'm not sure how many I... you know." He drew a thumb across his throat, making a gagging sound. "Two, three maybe? I was just shooting. I didn't even think about it."

[Raven Cadera]

"I didn't keep count, to be honest." There had been a point in her life where she just stopped having a kill count.

"... Was that your first time?" she asked, almost gently as if she was asking about something completely different.

[Manny Donos]

Manny gave her a sickly smile. "Yeah." He said.

"Is that what it's always like? When was your first time?" He had some vague memory that asking about someone's first time, especially a lady's, was a rude question, but he couldn't think of why at the moment.

[Raven Cadera]

"For some, yeah. I've heard many say that the first time they shoot someone they feel sick... but I think that might be most sentients' reaction to a real encounter with death and mortality." Even Raven was capable of deep thoughts sometimes.

"First time I killed a guy?" She took a deep breath, stumbling a bit through her own memories. "I don't know if he died, but I stabbed a guy... many years ago. Caught me stealing and he grabbed me. I took his knife and drove it into his gut." There was a strange calm in the way she spoke, how she seemed so very unbothered by the violence and brutality. "I remember being very afraid in the moment, but... I dunno, guess I didn't feel so scared anymore after, since he let me go, and I ran away."

[Manny Donos]

"Oh, I was sick." Manny chuckled. "Although part of that was Lysa. When she blew that guy's arm off..." He shuddered.

Still, it seemed to calm Manny down a little, even if it didn't exactly cheer him up. "Many years ago, huh?" He studied her... not that there was much to study. "And stealing? Were you already on your own then?"

[Raven Cadera]

Raven had kind of thought that had been a really cool moment, but she figured Manny didn't want to hear that.

"Yeah... I've been on my own for a while. I was... pretty young when I lost my family." There was a tension in her voice and she took off her helmet, as it felt weird to have it on now for once.

"How old do you think I am?"

[Manny Donos]

"Uh..." Manny now studied her unhelmeted features. "I don't know. Younger than me. Twenty?" She had a youthful face, but the height and the scars were throwing him off. "Older than Varina, that's for sure."

For a moment, it looked like he wanted to press, but then Manny shook his head. The subject was obviously painful for her.

[Raven Cadera]

"It'll be my nineteenth birthday soon," she said, confirming that she was indeed younger than him. "So yeah, older than Varina, but... not by that much, I guess."

Raven chuckled a little. "We've had different kinds of childhoods. She's a kid that ran away from home, looking for glory and excitement." Not that she had anything against Varina, but a part of her envied her. Varina could actually just go back home, if she wanted to. Raven knew that the younger Mandalorian had a father at least.

"Anyway!" she put her hands together. "You'll probably have to fight a lot more from now on, since it seems your boss Vex is involved in big stuff, as we saw yesterday. So we should put some muscles on that street-rat bod of yours."

[Manny Donos]

"You're eighteen?" Manny said incredulously. He stared at her for a few moments. "Yikes." He finally said. It wasn't entirely clear what that meant.

Likewise, considering Varina, Manny frowned. "Huh." He said. It wasn't clear what that meant, either, except that he was possibly feeling a bit of what Raven had felt. He'd run away too, but from a home, not his home.

"Street-rat bod? Hey, I'm wiry!" Manny grinned at her. "But... what'd you have in mind?"

[Raven Cadera]

"Wiry. Whatever." Raven personally preferred muscles and buffness. But then again, she did hang around Mandalorians who usually preferred to have that kind of physique themselves.

She smirked. "We'll start with teaching you how to throw a punch. That's why we brought the bag. Will be easier on your hands to start with."

[Manny Donos]

"Yeah, wiry!" Manny said, slightly indignant. Geez, how did he keep getting picked on by teen girls?

"Oh." Looking down at the bag, Manny frowned, then offered it to her. "Is that what this is? A punching bag? Huh, okay. Alright. I'll show you what I've got." Manny said confidently. He wondered if he had anything.

[Raven Cadera]

She snickered and took the bag from Manny. It wasn't particularly heavy, but it felt... kind of solid?

"Sure thing, wiry guy." Putting the straps around her arms, Raven held up the bag in front of her torso. "Go ahead then, show me what you got."

[Manny Donos]

Manny frowned. "But... won't it hurt you when I hit it? I mean, you're behind it. But okay, you're the expert. Here I go." Grinning, Manny took up something like a fighting pose (made famous by the main character from the Alone and Dangerous series), and took a swing at it.

His knuckles scrapped along the edge of the bag.

"Owwwwww...!" Manny hissed, bringing his hand to his mouth. "That really stings! Like, a lot." Grimacing, he shook his hand, before staring down at it. It looked like he did lose a tiny bit of skin, in fact.

[Raven Cadera]

"It's full of padding, so don't worry about it," she assured him. Not that she would tell him that this was how young Mandalorians first started to learn hand-to-hand, before they upgraded to just sparring without such bags. Most opponents wouldn't be so nice and cushiony.

Her eyebrows went up as Manny managed to... fail spectacularly. "Shit, you ok?" Raven actually seemed a little concerned when she saw his knuckles.

[Manny Donos]

Manny hissed and shook his hand one more time. "Uh... yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Just a scratch." His voice was about a quarter of an octave lower than usual.

He cleared his throat roughly. "So... what'd I do wrong, anyway?" His voice was back to normal.

[Raven Cadera]

Putting down the bag, Raven started taking off her gloves. Thick ones that were meant to withstand bruising and cuts in a fight. "Looks to me like your fist didn't connect straight on, and ended up dragging. Don't try to be fancy, just... ball up your fist like so," Raven held out her hand, now without a glove on as she showed how it went from open to closed, "don't squeeze it closed, but try to make your fist an even surface."

Holding up her closed fist, she put it against the palm of her other hand. "Like so. A flat surface has less chance of sliding off or hurting your knuckles. But just to be safe, maybe you should wear these?" Raven offered him her gloves.

[Manny Donos]

"Yeah, okay." Manny chuckled. "I guess I should probably do that." He slid on the gloves, one after the other.

This time, he concentrated a bit more, and his punch at least struck on-target, although without much force. He hit it again, with the other hand, similarly not very hard. "So... unf." Manny grunted, hitting the bag again. "If your... if you were alone since you were a kid, how'd you learn this stuff?"

[Raven Cadera]

"Mandalorian children start learning from an early age. We play-fight, we shoot targets, we learn to hunt..." Raven didn't quite grunt as Manny was hitting the bag, but maybe there was something like it. "I knew how to throw a punch pretty early."

Though learning how to actually fight decently unarmed was still something she had to master.

"I was... about nine... ten years old when I lost my family. So I wasn't a tiny child, as such. A lot of it I learned on my own, figuring out what works. I've also had a very good mentor teaching me here on Kamda."