Chiron Academy

Chapter 16.4: Getting Hit On

Wyatt fell back into his regular fighting posture, his hands high, elbows tucked, and his chin low. He danced back and forth a little bit, moving on the mat.

"How do you think your little friend is making out with the Crow?" Amy asked as she fell into her fighting stance. 

"Oof," Wyatt replied making a face," the concept of Sally making out with anyone is not something I want to contemplate." 

He turned his gaze over his shoulder to where Sally and the Crow were standing. They were standing around in silence, as was the whole class, really, waiting for the next section to start. Even though they'd been together the whole first half of the test, Sally's eyes were still glued to the Crow at with a palpable sense of wonder.

Amy's face scrunched up in disgust.

"Ewww," she replied, trying to stifle a laugh. "That is not what I meant."

Wyatt's mouth grew wide into a smile, as she laughed at his joke. The light that streamed through the high windows of the gym caught the blonde highlights in her hair. It had his guts squirming. 

Very lightly squirming. A highly platonic squirming.

"Hey guys," Achilles said, appearing suddenly over Wyatt's shoulder," can you quiet down during the test, please?" Achilles whispered to them. "It's very disruptive to the rest of the class."

A sense of guilt overcame Wyatt. He hadn't seen Achilles approach but he guessed they had been pretty loud. They had at least been sort of whispering at first, but they had been pretty much just speaking normally for a while. 

"Yeah, sorry," Amy responded humbly.

"Sorry," Wyatt mumbled in apology.

Achilles just nodded as he recommenced his slow meandering walk amongst the different partners. 

"Punchers, ready," he belted. "Jab, Jab."

Wyatt pulled his gloved hands dutifully back, his gloves resting against his brow. He had plenty of time before Amy brought her slow-motion jab into contact with his gloves. 

They stood in silence as they waited for the next punches to be called. The moment stretched on uncomfortably. Without their conversation to fill in the gaps, it really was quite a long wait.

Around them, there were a lot of furrowed brows and some people were doing practically snail-paced strikes. Wyatt wished they would hurry up. This really wasn't that hard.

"Jab, Jab, Cross," Achilles called out.

Wyatt pulled his gloves into a straight block, feeling the slight pressure from the anemic punch Amy delivered, then pulled his hands back down into his usual guard.

He wasn't particularly worried about any of the rest of the test. It was very easy to block punches that had been loudly announced for you, especially when you didn't even have the option of dodging. He could basically autopilot the rest of the class.

He noticed that Amy held her hands a bit differently than he did. Instead of a traditional boxer's guard with the hands head out front she held her hands pulled back a bit at either side of her head. It was a bit different than he'd seen before certainly different than they'd done in class. She said she'd done kickboxing, maybe it was a holdover from that.

"Jab, Cross, Hook!"

Wyatt pulled his hands up once again, in plenty of time for the first two punches to hit weakly into his gloves.

It wasn't that this wasn't useful, he admitted to himself. Many of the people around him looked like they could probably use this, and it probably a good drill. It's was just sooo slow. No one on the street was going to give you this much leeway to figure out what punch to throw. And there certainly were no big boxing gloves in a street fight.