Secluded Section of the Beach, Tuesday Early Evening

[not_in_the_book]

Ronan dropped a basket -- with light finger foods, mostly fruit and vegetables; a half-dozen bottles of water; and a half-dozen bottles of Gatorade -- on the beach, rolling out his shoulders.

"So," he said, grinning at his sparring partner, "winner gets first choice of food?"

[For the one, and for SP.]

Comments

[not_in_the_book]

Ronan dodged the throw, rolling away and back to his feet as smoothly as he could, and hoping that this spell worked the way he wanted -- calling up another wave, this time from the side, while preparing a shield to throw on top of Kaidan, keeping him down, when he (hopefully) was once again flat on his back.

Assuming this all worked, and he was right about how Kaidan's biotics worked, the shield should keep Kaidan from using much in the way of his biotic abilities -- it depended on how much space to move Kaidan actually needed, how precise of control he had over his muscles and the movements required to manipulate the mass effect.

[not_a_whiner]

Kaidan was moving now, away from the ocean, as fast as he could.

Not fast enough-- he slammed into the ground and felt the weight of the shield a second later. Well, shit.

Still, he wasn't immobile, and his fine muscle control was very good, thank you. His fingers itched as his hand moved back-- he was putting some faith into the idea that, one, Ronan's shield would respond to warp the same way most kinetic barriers worked, and two, that Ronan would think the ensuing blue glow was just the biotics cooling off.

So he stayed put and focused on making the warp field tug and push at the finer molecules of the shield.

[not_in_the_book]

Back in high school, Ronan might have considered that done with -- but, while his experiences out in the galaxy had been almost entirely positive, he had learned a thing or two while working in clinics in rougher parts of cities.

Which would be why he was taking what he hoped would be a few extra moments of Kaidan recovering -- because he was assuming Kaidan would recover -- to lay out a more complicated spell all around them. One of Ronan's beloved nested/layered spell circles, each node altered gravity within itself in a different way.

So you could be walking from .5G to 3G to .25G, step to step. Ronan held his ground in one of the few 1G nodes in the circle, waiting for Kaidan to get up.

[not_a_whiner]

The shield shredded above Kaidan a few seconds later and he went quickly up to his feet. Took a few steps to get into a better position and... noticed the spell, yes, as one foot tried to float away while the other one clung very tenaciously to the ground.

He grunted as he had to shove extra energy into the simple feat of bringing the ground below his feet back to 1G while it felt like Ronan had just put up over a dozen Singularities. "Neat," he said, and watched Ronan for his next move.

[not_in_the_book]

And that move would be... letting the giant spell circle dissipate as he wavered a little where he stood, his eyes going a little glassy.

[not_a_whiner]

Well, Kaidan... could probably go for one more move himself without risking making the upcoming migraine even worse than he could already feel it was going to be.

But he wasn't going to.

"Call it a draw?" he said, dark energy very slowly dissipating off of him.

[not_in_the_book]

Ronan nodded, sighing with relief. "Yeah, draw works," he said, letting himself collapse back onto the sand.

"Soooooo I need to not do that spell again. Ever."

[not_a_whiner]

Kaidan made a passing attempt to wring some of the water out of his uniform shirt as he went for the basket. He leaned over and dug around until he found some of his migraine medication. "Well, it was pretty impressive," he said, "For about five seconds."

[not_in_the_book]

"Thanks," Ronan said, rolling over and getting, shakily, to his feet. "You've got some interesting skills yourself."

Stumbling over to the basket, Ronan grabbed a bottle of water and chugged it down before doing the same with a Gatorade. Letting himself fall to the sand again, he grinned over at Kaidan. "So that was fun," he added. "Even if I'm going to be paying for it for the next week."

[not_a_whiner]

Kaidan took some of his meds and chased it with a bottle of Alliance-mandated protein shake. "If we do this again, I think we need to add a few rules to this thing," he said, and ran a hand through his hair. "Starting with me wearing my armor... and you not flinging bodies of water around."

[not_in_the_book]

"What?" Ronan asked, and, because he's Ronan, continued, "You don't like when I get you all wet?"

Reaching into his claudication, he pulled out a towel and tossed it at Kaidan.

Always know where your towel is.

[not_a_whiner]

Kaidan huffed out a laugh-- definitely laughing at you, not with you, Ronan-- then caught the towel. "Thanks," he said, drying off his hair first - it was drippy. "More armor, less crazy stunts," he added. "I think that's probably a good guideline."

[not_in_the_book]

"But crazy stunts are what I do!" Ronan insisted, laughing back. "Armour sounds good, though, yeah. What's it designed to stand up to?"

[not_a_whiner]

"Biotic attacks, gunfire, explosions," Kaidan said. "Just your run-of-the-mill stuff."

You know. If you were Kaidan, and you used to run after people who did crazy stunts on a regular basis. Crazier, in fact, than what Ronan had just pulled.

He glanced up.

"And, uh... hate to break it to you, but what you do these days? Is teach high school kids how to go camping."