He blinks at that but-

Gives a brief, unpractised, perfunctory almost-bow, and then readies himself to meet an attack.

She falls back into a fighting stance, first, to make absolutely sure that he's prepared, and then she does. She starts gently, but doesn't stay gentle for long, quickly matching her apparent capabilities to his, pulling her punches just enough to avoid leaving bruises. He'll notice fairly quickly that it's surprisingly easy to bluff her - there's something odd, there, if it was really that easy to mislead her she wouldn't be so competent in an actual fight.

Yeah, he's a bit suspicious about that, but for now, will use it to his advantage. He's pulling his own punches, but definitely has far less experience doing that than she does.

She consistently dodges any that'll hit too hard. It's actually pretty good feedback, if he manages to pick up the pattern.

Why yes, he does notice a pattern, and pretty quickly. And he starts doing better at pulling his punches.

She flashes a sign to DZ, when he goes a couple minutes without hitting too hard. "Good."

He looks startled at the praise, but hides it quickly behind another feint and attack.

She's getting better at catching the feints, but not so good that he can't tag her, yet. And on they go.

He actually seems to be enjoying this, even if he's surprised when he recognises that. After a while though, he starts to flag a little.

She keeps going for half a minute or so, and then slows and signs to DZ again. "She'll stop whenever you're ready."

Ira hesitates for a moment. "A breather would be appreciated," he says. "Time to grab a quick drink."

She disengages as soon as he does, and goes over to talk to DZ.

Ira crosses over to his satchel, pulls out two bottles of water. "Deskyl?" he says, tilting one towards her.

She nods, and the bottle goes light in his hand as she points at it.

He lets go of it, and turns his attention to the other one, opening it and taking a long drink.

It floats over and she drinks as well, still signing with her other hand.

Ira perches on the box beside his satchel, and watches her and DZ while they sign as he sips on his water.

Eventually though, he puts his bottle to the side, tilts his head at Deskyl.

Their conversation - if it was one, it looked rather more like Deskyl was giving DZ a status update - has wound down, by then, and she hops back up, ready for another round.

Then they can go back to sparring.

It's fun!

She takes a more proactive approach, this time, taking advantage of the fact that he's not going to hurt her to point out the weaknesses in his defensive style, falling back to demonstrate a correction every time she manages to tag him.

The major noticeable weakness is probably that he doesn't precisely have a defensive style. Not a coherent one at least.

He takes the corrections though. (And is there surprise that her tagging him when he fails to block her doesn't, really, hurt?)

She calls a halt after a bit of that.

    "She says she's not impressed with whoever trained you," DZ relays. "You're doing well with what you know, but it looks like they didn't even try to teach you how to defend yourself properly."

Ira snorts. "How d'you know I didn't just ignore them when they tried?"

    "You wouldn't know as much as you do. Or it'd be more random, what you do know. There's a pattern to what you don't."

He shrugs. "I guess they just weren't that invested in my survival."