settling down
Jan 3, 2012 16:13:18 GMT -5
Post by Tybalt on Jan 3, 2012 16:13:18 GMT -5
In the wake of Tybalt's takedown of one of Doom's more boisterous soldiers, the rest of them seemed in a curious state about him. He was terrifying, well-disciplined, and Doom himself took interest in him; every day he was in the gun range learning how to use different kinds of firearms, generally under instruction from the dictator himself.
He truly spent every hour of the day studying, learning to aim, forcing himself to become as skilled as possible in as short a time as possible. And when he was not learning to fire a gun he was in their gymnasium, not speaking to a one of them, practicing with weapon after weapon, sweat dripping from him naked pores, every grotesque scar on his torso glistening. In spite of being a well-proportioned and handsome man it went unnoticed; he looked like a hulking golem to all who witnessed him, long hair damp and lank and clinging to his neck by the time he was finished demolishing the latest dummy; there seemed to be no end to the numbers Doom himself allowed him to deface and obliterate.
He had no other recreation, took his meals in his rooms, and ended each day with a long shower in the locker room, avoiding contact with everyone, and going to his bedroom hollow-eyed.
It was a week later that, with Doom elsewhere (for no man would risk humiliating himself in front of the godly sorceror twice), the man who had been bested approached Tybalt again with a challenge in his voice, although Tybalt had picked up very little Hungarian in his time there. He looked up, a little confused, tired and exhausted. His voice could be a bark when he called for something - water, he knew that word, or another dummy, and he had swiftly learned the names of each weapon, told by Doom himself - but it was a mumble now. "What? Repeat," he said in a somewhat slurred voice, for in his Italian accent everything was somewhat slurred.
It clearly took him a moment to even recognize who this man was, which hurt his pride more than the subsequent second defeat did. As the man was picking himself up, other men actually backing off for fear of his humiliated temper, Tybalt behind him could be heard to say, "You're mad?"
When the man turned on him to begin shouting, Tybalt clearly did not understand anything he said, only getting the gist of it. Tybalt shrugged, looking down at his hands. In that moment he seemed intensely vulnerable; the physical threat he posed suddenly paled in comparison to his devastating nakedness in this social context.
"I.... show you. Maybe."
He backed off, almost more spooked by Tybalt's failure to rise to his challenge. But another man stepped forward almost more out of pity than curiosity, a desire to not see another man humiliated simply by his own skill outstripping that of a prideful man (kindness was a trait strangely nurtured in Latveria), and said, "Show me."
Tybalt backed up and motioned him forward.
It was a strange beginning to the weeks that followed. Not much differed in that time; he grew frightfully good at guns (Doom graciously offered him the chance to decimate a failed robot; the results were quite terrifying, and alternatively pleasing), continued to spend every moment practicing and to take his meals alone. But working out in the gymnasium had expanded to teaching Latverian soldiers hand-to-hand combat, escalating to allowing them to fight each other and then critiquing the results in broken Hungarian.
They still did not quite see him as an equal, though. How could one see an outsider who came bearing emotional and physical scars and deadly knowledge as any sort of equal? But he had finally earned respect from them in place of distrust. Doom would surely be pleased.
He truly spent every hour of the day studying, learning to aim, forcing himself to become as skilled as possible in as short a time as possible. And when he was not learning to fire a gun he was in their gymnasium, not speaking to a one of them, practicing with weapon after weapon, sweat dripping from him naked pores, every grotesque scar on his torso glistening. In spite of being a well-proportioned and handsome man it went unnoticed; he looked like a hulking golem to all who witnessed him, long hair damp and lank and clinging to his neck by the time he was finished demolishing the latest dummy; there seemed to be no end to the numbers Doom himself allowed him to deface and obliterate.
He had no other recreation, took his meals in his rooms, and ended each day with a long shower in the locker room, avoiding contact with everyone, and going to his bedroom hollow-eyed.
It was a week later that, with Doom elsewhere (for no man would risk humiliating himself in front of the godly sorceror twice), the man who had been bested approached Tybalt again with a challenge in his voice, although Tybalt had picked up very little Hungarian in his time there. He looked up, a little confused, tired and exhausted. His voice could be a bark when he called for something - water, he knew that word, or another dummy, and he had swiftly learned the names of each weapon, told by Doom himself - but it was a mumble now. "What? Repeat," he said in a somewhat slurred voice, for in his Italian accent everything was somewhat slurred.
It clearly took him a moment to even recognize who this man was, which hurt his pride more than the subsequent second defeat did. As the man was picking himself up, other men actually backing off for fear of his humiliated temper, Tybalt behind him could be heard to say, "You're mad?"
When the man turned on him to begin shouting, Tybalt clearly did not understand anything he said, only getting the gist of it. Tybalt shrugged, looking down at his hands. In that moment he seemed intensely vulnerable; the physical threat he posed suddenly paled in comparison to his devastating nakedness in this social context.
"I.... show you. Maybe."
He backed off, almost more spooked by Tybalt's failure to rise to his challenge. But another man stepped forward almost more out of pity than curiosity, a desire to not see another man humiliated simply by his own skill outstripping that of a prideful man (kindness was a trait strangely nurtured in Latveria), and said, "Show me."
Tybalt backed up and motioned him forward.
It was a strange beginning to the weeks that followed. Not much differed in that time; he grew frightfully good at guns (Doom graciously offered him the chance to decimate a failed robot; the results were quite terrifying, and alternatively pleasing), continued to spend every moment practicing and to take his meals alone. But working out in the gymnasium had expanded to teaching Latverian soldiers hand-to-hand combat, escalating to allowing them to fight each other and then critiquing the results in broken Hungarian.
They still did not quite see him as an equal, though. How could one see an outsider who came bearing emotional and physical scars and deadly knowledge as any sort of equal? But he had finally earned respect from them in place of distrust. Doom would surely be pleased.