[COMBAT HELPER] Heart and Home

HuniPi · Post by **HuniPi** » Thu Oct 12, 2023 11:43 pm

Heart and Home had just finished sharing her story when she heard the call for a show of strength. She was about to keep moving on because she personally didn't think too much about her own strength when it came to physical things. She was strong enough as for what she needed to be as far as she was concerned. Normally, she wouldn't have approached because she shied away when violence was involved but there were three reasons that made her amenable to participating.

One, this seemed to be less about the pleasure of destruction and more about an eagerness of the blood rush.

Two there was an option to fight a dummy instead of another actual kin. It made Heart more comfortable with the idea of attacking outside of an actual need for self-defense or hunting.

And Three, this was something Forward by Choice would be interested in, far more than mote gathering or story sharing.

HuniPi · Post by **HuniPi** » Thu Oct 12, 2023 11:44 pm

Heart waited for her turn at the dummies, trying to keep herself calm and not unnerve herself from participating. The sound of hooves or horns striking another body, the sight of kin falling to the ground, she couldn't say she liked any of it. But at the same time, it didn't actually frighten her. She was expecting to feel worried and concerned, which she was to an extent but not in a life-threatened way. This was meant to be more a display of movement and strength instead of a show of dominance and pain.

She found the longer she watched, the more she actually found the gestures and strikes beautiful. Yes, there was bruising and some blood involved but it didn't seem too bad? The kin who were in matches against each other weren't coming out too terribly injured and no fights outside broke out. Who knows, depending on how her turn against the dummies would go, she might find it in herself to challenge someone.

There was an available dummy now, and Heart trotted up with a giddy, nervous energy about her. She took a few steps back to wind up before rushing forward to ram her shoulder scales against the dummy. She braced herself for impact and heard the crunch of splintering wood.

((oh boy mulligan it is))

HuniPi · Post by **HuniPi** » Thu Oct 12, 2023 11:45 pm

It hurt, yes, but hitting anything should hurt. It wasn't excruciating, in fact it wasn't even to the levels that would deter anyone. But she was a solidly built doe and if her time in the caves were anything to go by, had a rather high threshold for pain. She pushed away the memory of the scalding water when she'd gone fishing, instead focusing on the rough hew of the wooden dummy's surface. It was looking a little cracked already, likely a combination of her momentum and the amount of power she put into the initial charge.

Encouraged by this discovery, Heart decided to lean into the sensation and swiftly turned in order to strike a blow now with her haunch. There was a surprising amount of force in this, enough, in fact to completely shatter the dummy.

She wasn't even breathing all that hard after! Oh, perhaps they purposely built flimsy dummies so it wouldn't hurt the other kin too much. Yes, that was the likely explanation behind its destruction. Or the one she got was just flimsier than others. It was still satisfying nonetheless.

Who knows, this may encourage her to ask Forward to oversee her training for friendly spars?

((okay lemme reroll the 2 and 5. Final roll 1, 1, 1, 1, 6 = is this 30?))