"I'm up next!" Artemis called, jogging into the ring and smirking at her opponent. Even with his gadgets they were pretty evenly matched, and their routine matches pretty consistently alternated between them as victors. Without his gear, she truly believed she had the upper hand.
But there was one thing she hadn't taken into account—Robin was no longer just sparring.
Wally he had beat relatively swiftly because the speedster didn't use all the spare time he had to think through a situation. He knew that Artemis was a real threat, but she was a threat that more on his level and not in a way that Superboy was a real threat. There was always that little extra push you had when your life was really on the line versus just training, and at the moment Robin was no longer just training.
Without his suit, he couldn't take a hit like Artemis could. He could take a serious hit, but still not like she could without padding (hence why she didn't feel the need to even cover her stomach in her simple uniform). He wasn't on her level anymore, which mean he had to compensate by acting as if this fight would actually decide if he lived or died. Switching a thought process like that was important, because he knew that was how he was going to win this entire bet.
Self preservation was a powerful thing when you knew how to direct it.
He cleared his mind as she got into a ready position across from him, a cold assurance in her eyes that would be her downfall.
He quickly cataloged what he had against her: flexibility, intelligence, speed, and humility. Although he was smarter and faster, it wasn't by a very wide margin so he wouldn't rely too heavily on those. Humility was an advantage that no one would even guess at, considering what a show-off he was normally, but Batman had beaten a sense of realism into him therefore he knew where his faults were, whereas Artemis tended to overestimate what she could do when she got competitive. He would beat her there if he just kept his mindset it reality—meaning reminding himself that he wasn't stronger or more talented than her, and he had to remember that and act accordingly in every choice made during this fight.
Flexibility was his key weapon here. As a born-acrobat, he'd always been flexible and he'd barely needed to keep at it to maintain it, but he did anyway which earned himself some truly impressive contortionist-like abilities. He rarely got to use them considering he was always wearing a stiff Kevlar suit and a cape that typically got in the way if he got too fancy, but neither would be a problem for this fight.
And Artemis was going to learn just how flexible he was.
"Artemis… Robin… training session: freestyle combat… ready… begin." The robotic voice sounded out, and Robin tensed. Artemis was both a defensive and aggressive fighter, depending on her mood. He had to be ready for both at any given moment.
Today, she was a bit of both. She was confident in her ability to beat him, but she'd just seen Kid Flash get his face handed to him for being overzealous and was compensating.
She lunged herself at him, but then ducked down and sliding past him. He neatly cart-wheeled out of her range, keeping one eye on her bow arm in case she went for her arrows. He suspected that she might not even resort to that until he'd at least gained one point on her, considering her over-confidence.
He flipped backwards as she took one step towards him, and she tilted her head curiously.
"Jumpy, are we?" She teased lightly.
He merely grinned, not giving an answer.
They repeated this process several times of her approaching him—both single steps and faster lurches to close the distance—and every time he flipped or spun or rolled to keep her at the opposite side of the ring. His toes danced along the 'out of bounds' line playfully, and she smiled as if she knew what he was doing.
He did it to villains—annoy the hell out of them until they got angry and lost their temper. She was calling him on it and purposefully smiled, not letting herself get angry.
"Ugh, do something already." They heard Green Arrow mutter, but Robin neatly ignored him.
Well, he did spare the older archer a stuck out tongue next time he flipped by that side of the ring to get away from Artemis, but that was beside the point.
The minutes dragged on, and only Artemis seemed not to be getting bored, forcing herself to stay on alert and not get angry. Her pride wouldn't let her just take her bow out and shoot at him, thinking that was what the acrobat wanted. Except, by doing this and forcing herself not to get angry, she was diverting a lot of mental energy away from actually trying to get Robin and merely sustaining the willpower to continue to go after him without using her arrows.
Which, he appreciated.
Because the second her blue eyes faded just a little bit, Robin's back-flip out of the way twisted mid-air into a complicated move he hadn't used since he was in the circus, switching trapezes in the middle of a jump. His lithe body completely changed direction in space without touching the ground, and instead of getting away from his pursuer, he was suddenly launched directly at Artemis.
She was so surprised when he was abruptly in her personal space that she didn't even have time to breathe out her sharp inhale of alarm before his fist cracked her jaw upward and he ducked to sweep-kick her onto her back.
And then he flipped away again, just in case her temper had finally had it.
"Robin… point 1."
"What?!" Green Arrow complained loudly, and Artemis was positively fuming as she got to her feet, full out glaring down the little demon across from her. Robin laughed, unable to help it.
"That was… really boring." Superboy decided bluntly.
"And anticlimactic." Wally fake-yawned, but shut right up upon the glare Artemis turned and pinned him with.
"Whatever," the blonde archer snapped, and she slipped her bow from her shoulders. "It's on, you little troll."She hissed.
"Oh so you were just warming up. That's reassuring—here I was thinking you were actually trying." Robin said smoothly, and then cackled at the sneer she shot at him.
"Ready… begin."
This time Artemis didn't so much as blink, and had three shots out before the first second of the fight had passed. Now Robin was flipping around the ring to dodge fast in-coming projectiles.
The holographic training ring wall that boarded the outside of the ring pinned the arrows and let them drop harmlessly to the floor instead of impaling the bystanders, so she didn't have to worry about anything but spearing her target with a sharp pole of wood. Or carbon-fiber, if you want to get technical.
Robin went about dodging the best he could normally, and then he felt when the speed and intensity of her shots picked up. He then abandoned his normal routine to really show off just how flexible he could be.
The thing about archery was that a target, once released, was painfully predictably. It was a straight line, nothing challenging about that, not like a bat or a birdarang in which you had to be pretty good at foresight and math to get it exactly on the point you wanted it. All Robin had to do was wait for her to release her arrow, realize where it was going, and then be faster about twisting out of the way of it.
It was harder than he made it sound, but he'd spent his entire life thinking in terms of perfect timing. When he had to jump to catch the oncoming trapeze, when he had to shoot a grapple for the perfect arc to his destination, when he had to toss a birdarang so that it would make a moving target in the perfect place after its round-about trajectory…
Timing was easy. Predicting where an arrow would go was easy. He and Artemis were pretty even in speed, so he could keep up with how fast she was shooting relatively well.
When she went faster, his twisting became more intense, until he heard his teammates and several League Members muttered uncomfortably as they tried to imagine themselves bending their body the way he was now. He smirked to himself, pleased at his ability to impress.
He smiled wider at Artemis finally giving in and letting out a growl of frustration that she couldn't pin him. She was really good about aiming for where someone would be in order to pin them—which was why she could usually get Wally, because even at his top speed she could guess where he'd be in three seconds with alarming accuracy and just shoot for that spot instead of the blur going around the room.
Robin wasn't being very predictable in moving linearly—he was moving like he had no bones in ways that humans shouldn't, and therefore she had no clue where he'd be in the next second because she hadn't known a human being could twist themselves into the position until right now. He was predicting her pretty well, and she was failing miserably at predicting him.
He decided he needed to make a move of his own then, since Artemis actually losing her temper would probably not help him win since she could be scarily competent when properly pissed off.
So on his next flip, he flipped forward some. The next four successive twists out of the way brought him three feet closer to her, and all at once everyone seemed to realize what he was doing—including Artemis because her eyes narrowed and her shooting picked up speed once again.
Her form and skill were actually something beautiful when put into action on display like this, and everyone in their right mind should be very afraid at the threat she posed when like this. But Robin was obviously not in his right mind, not when he was bending in half backwards to duck out of the way of a projectile missing his neck by quickly narrowing centimeters as he got closer to the source. The near misses got nearer and nearer until Robin was fairly certain he could feel the League's tension (Batman's in particular) from across the room without sparing the concentration to look over at them.
Finally, he got to the point where he realized he wouldn't be getting closer before even he wasn't flexible enough to dodge and arrow to the gut. Luckily for him, that distance was about nine or eight feet, which was perfect.
He continued to dodge for five more incredibly close arrows before he landed properly on the balls of his feet and was able to launch himself at the archer before even she had the chance to grab another arrow. It didn't stop her from trying though, and she had the next projectile in her hand and near her bow when Robin got there and suddenly had one arm around her middle and the other on her wrist that had the sharp weapon in its fist to keep it from impaling him.
He let his momentum carry them forward a bit before her inner core pulled herself upright to keep from falling—exactly what he'd expected her to do. Instead of grappling like she was clearly ready to do (and probably claw his eyes out, he was sure) he tightened his one-armed grip around her waist and swung his legs up behind her, using his boneless moves to wrap himself up and hook his ankles together around her throat.
He dropped his grip on her and planted his hands on the ground, using all his core strength to lift her up by that grip and heave her backwards. He quickly righted herself as she hit the ground hard in front of him, rolling onto her hands and knees and coughing violently from being thrown by her neck. He wasted no time or mercy before lurching forward and letting his elbow come down on the back of her neck, and she collapsed—cheek to the floor and clean out of breath.
"Robin… point 2… winner… Robin."
"Ow,"Green Arrow flinched visibly, and the other League members grimaced as well. A fair take-down so far as their standards went, but a nasty one for sure.
Artemis groaned as Robin came and sat cross-legged by her head, grinning at her when she finally lifted her head to glare wearily at him.
"Troll." She muttered darkly.
"Sorry, not sorry." He sang lightly and she huffed as she dropped her head back to the floor for a moment before slowly lifting herself up and brushing the harsh defeat off.
She grimaced as he put a hand around her throat, and then shot him a reluctantly impressed look. "I've never seen that move before." She admitted.
He flashed her a knowing smirk and the cackled. "I'm sure Wally will let us practice on him if you'd like me to teach you," He offered easily, and both of them shared a truce-like smile when they heard the speedster cry out a definite negative down with the others watching on.
"Well, we're already two down for this bet to actually go in our favor." Wally sighed unhappily as Artemis stiffly got down off the training platform beside him.
"It is not over yet." Kaldur smiled, nodding toward Robin. "I will go next. I am curious to see what other surprises about our teammate there are in store for us."
"You sure about that Kal?" Rob cackled with a wink as their team leader got up on the ring.
He nodded with a kind smile in return. "We shall see."