Peek: The Eye of The Tiger

Rocky idly chews his mouthguard as he eyes his opponent.  The match hasn't started yet, so he is free to let his teeth and mind wander.  How did he ever get into a position to be sparring with Coach Thedeim's Conduit, let alone being securely in the lead for matches?  A foe like Fluffles should be as far out of his reach as the sky.  He thinks back to how he got here.

Rocky never really considered himself to be particularly bright, even for a zombie.  Teemo has tried to point out that's rather philosophical for a supposedly stupid zombie, but Rocky's mind always wanders when he tries to bring it up.

The zombie scion also wonders why Coach Thedeim puts so much effort into him.  He even intends for Rocky to be his first dedicated boss!  A zombie!  So of course he works hard to live up to that expectation.  Starting out was very strange, even the other scions say Rocky has been getting more of Coach's weirdness than usual.  The hand coverings were very strange at first, as was the mouth guard.

At first, he hated the restrictions.  No clawing?  No biting?  His next instinct was to try kicking, but Teemo made it clear that was forbidden, too.  How was he supposed to be a boss with all these restrictions?  The bond gave him flashes of concepts to answer the question, and Teemo did his best to explain.

And so Rocky started training, with Coach nudging him in the right direction.  He could even sometimes hear music through the bond while he trained.  It was always just outside his perception, gone if he tried to focus... but if he just let the rhythm guide him, he found himself getting better and better.

Clumsy swipes slowly refined into hooks, jabs, and more.  Stranger ideas started to float through the bond, then.  Fighters throwing fireballs, or screaming and gaining huge spiky hair.  It made no sense to Rocky, but the idea of fire appealed to him.  He started working that concept into his burgeoning title.  Coach and Teemo have been calling him a Boxer, so he'd gain that title, certainly.  But he wanted the glimpses of power that having fire would bring.

He even went to Thing for advice.  The zombie was worried the hand would not want to deal with him, but Thing is actually pretty sociable... at least with Rocky.  Maybe he just doesn't like leaving the lab?  Either way, with him and Teemo, Rocky was able to gain fire affinity with his new title.

And then Coach had Teemo drop a bombshell.  Fire can be so much more than just fire.  He still doesn't quite understand a lot of what Teemo and Coach have tried to teach him, but one point stuck out to him.  Stuff is made of stuff.  Like a boulder can be made of a bunch of grains of sand, a grain of sand is made of a bunch of... stuff.  And fire is part of how that stuff moves.

Stuff wiggles, like when he's bobbing and weaving when in his proper stance.  He's moving without going anywhere, which is what hot stuff does.  And if it stops wiggling, it's cold.  It's Ice affinity.  Once that relationship clicked in his rotten brain, Rocky found he could manipulate ice, too, and Coach had a lot of advice for how to use just that simple idea of stuff wiggling differently.

Fluffles' hiss brings Rocky back to the present, so he properly seats his mouth guard and takes his stance.  Trying to explain their affinities was going nowhere, so sparring will have to do.  And for Rocky at least, it does wonders.  He can feel the kinetic affinity of the Conduit trying to grab him, to throw him, to hit him, to tear him apart.  But he is a boxer, and kinetics is just fancy talk for punching.

Of course, he's a featherweight compared to a heavy when it comes to Fluffles' attacks, so he does his best to avoid them, rather than block or absorb the impacts.  He also throws his own affinities at his sparring partner, launching the fireballs that fascinated him early on with one fist, while the other launches orbs of frost.  Learning to juggle the affinities is one of the tricks Rocky is most proud of.  It requires a fair chunk of his mana, but very little is actually spent with that technique, despite the dramatic effects it produces.  Move the heat out of some stuff and into some other stuff, throw the energies, repeat.

The kinetic affinity of Fluffles sings to him as they fight.  It's so close to him he can practically taste it around the guard in him mouth.  He takes a few hits, even as he dances around... and has an epiphany.  Fire and Ice affinities are upper body.  Kinetic is lower.  Fire and Ice move without going anywhere, Kinetic moves without wiggling!

He can feel the affinity solidify as he swings both arms, one full of fire, the other full of ice.  Kinetics moves stuff, so now he can actually move the hot and cold things, instead of just sending the energy.  Fluffles' eyes widen as a swirling vortex of heat and cold barrels towards him, and he hastily erects a shield to stop it from hitting him.

Luckily, Rocky's kinetic control is still weak, and the attack falls apart on the shield.  Still, Fluffles is impressed, and Rocky is very happy.  Ever since he got the Ice affinity, a strange concept has dripped through the bond every so often, but Rocky couldn't manage it.  But now, he thinks he can.  Coach likes to call it Antipode.  Rocky doesn't know what it means, but he likes the sound of it.