Another Way of Speaking
He moved stiffly, the smooth wood of the hanbō catching itself in the uneven grip of his palms as he slid his hands to near either ends of the staff. It felt strange in his hands, unfamiliar. Dimly, he remembered he hadn't sparred using the staff for years, ever since he'd learned the moves needed in Jaeger Bushido, sparred in the kwoon to find potential Drift partners, and then got partnered with his dad. At first, they'd still sparred, just to keep up with each other, to keep the compatibility between them active and fluid. But when the U.N had started to close down the Jaeger Program, there had been less and less time to do that.
Dirty boxing, that was the style he preferred, the style he talked in – all sharp retorts and wide swings and quick jabs, slipping in a rude knockout when he could. "It's always the punch you don't see coming that puts you down", he remembered reading somewhere.
But it hurt too much to move that way now, his still-healing skin raw and feeling the abrasion beneath the bandages around his chest, thighs, and calves. Most of the burn scars had been caused by the circuitry's suit electrical circuits. He didn't understand how that could happen when he hadn't been the one who'd transferred controls of Striker Eureka over to himself and taken on a neural load that had been squared instead of merely doubled. The technicians, when he'd eventually approached them, said cautiously that they thought the interface between his drivesuit and the locked-down harness in the escape pod had been jostled by the explosion from the payload, causing rogue electrical signals to spread through his suit, transferring through the relay gel covering his body and causing the burns.
He shook his head once to clear it.
Clack went the staff against the wooden dummy.
A frustrated breath escaped him, and then a small hiss. Weak. That had hurt.
Clackclackclack.
He dropped the hanbō and flexed his hands, wincing.
"Hey there."
He didn't turn, couldn't be bothered to turn at the sound of his father's voice, quiet and unsure, almost tentative. Without answering, leaving the surviving Marshal of the Hong Kong Shatterdome to stare after his back, he strode out as quickly as he could, keeping his pained breaths to himself until he was out of sight.
-
Twelve months. That was the time the U.N had given him to sunset the PPDC. Herc Hansen gave a sardonic huff to himself. At least that was four months longer than the time they'd given Stacker to shut down the Jaeger Program only a few years ago.
They still had some time to go.
Right now, his priority was his son, even if Chuck didn't seem to want him around. The younger Hansen hadn't talked in the six weeks he'd been rescued along with Raleigh and Mako. His antagonism towards Gipsy's pilots hadn't been present; he just hadn't wanted to talk.
Herc gave a sigh and flexed his right arm. It'd been broken when he had been thrown against the wall of Striker's conn-pod, after detaching himself from his harness, and all because Leatherback had hit Striker's head. It was a damned rookie move made by the longest-serving Jaeger pilot in the program, and the fact that his broken arm had made him unable to deliver the payload with his son ate at him.
A dull twinge of pain through the brace he wore told him he wasn't that young any longer, his bones taking longer to heal. Through gritted teeth, he slowly flexed and stretched his arm, desensitizing himself to the pain. And then he headed to the kwoon.
-
Maybe he shouldn't have placed his hand on his son's shoulder. Maybe he shouldn't have touched his son at all, because now hanbō clashed against hanbō, one moving with all the ferocity a body in pain could muster, and the other simply rising up to block the attacks.
Wrong, it felt wrong, Herc realized. It wasn't that he or Chuck weren't adept in fighting with staffs. All cadets had to first learn the 52 positions of Jaeger Bushido, after all. But that hadn't been what Herc had learned was the most successful style for him, the easiest one for his son to muster. The recoiled force that trembled down the staff was harsher than the ones that moved down his fist and ended at his elbow when he threw a good punch.
He backed away, holding his hands up and then catching his son's eyes. He let his staff drop to the mat.
And then he raised his arms, fists just level with his nose, and dropped into a slight crouch.
Chuck froze, eyes wide, nostrils flared. He stared at his father, hands losing grip structure on his staff.
A loud clatter echoed through the kwoon as he flung the hanbō away from him with more force than he'd intended, and then he mirrored his dad, gritting away a wince as dried skin stretched painfully. He glanced at Herc to see if his dad had caught his pain, but the older Hansen's face remained blank.
Short bounces on the balls of their feet, forward, jab, duck, weave, twist, jab. Fists connecting lightly with flesh, light contact, still-healing bodies protesting even that. Grunts, hisses, angered shouts accompanied moving fists and feet, became body shoving against body, twists and hooks turning into a shove against the wall.
Taptap – taptap.
Herc froze, the feel of two fingers tapping insistently against his forearm distracting him. A quick glance at Chuck's face, and he slowly, gently, loosened the hold he had.
Six years since anyone of them had tapped out, said they were in pain, said it was too much.
"Want a beer?" he ventured.
A smirk, a retort of an expression used instead of sharp words, a short swallow as he wet his throat. "Thought you'd never ask, old man."