Tintin applauds.

"Now, then. Shall we fight?"

"Yes. Outside?"

"Naturally." He leads the way, again, and Sendhei follows excitedly. Horan does, too, and Raziya doesn't want to be left alone inside the house so she GUESSES she can go.

And, when they're outside and they've established the ground rules (no weapons, no sorcery or tech, no groin shots) -

Tintin spars in the asari style. Elanorela is a martial art that has been honed over thousands of years. Evasion is a dance, but strikes are efficient and viper-quick. He's never not in motion. Really this style is supposed to be augmented with biotics and a sword, but there are provisions and affordances for any circumstance, such as "your amp has burned out" or, in the asari case, "you risk a massive brain hemorrhage if you use your biotics again before seeing a doctor". Under any circumstance, a practitioner of Elanorela must be a deadly weapon. Tintin has taken this lesson to heart.

Taharqi has never seen anything like that in his life. It's beautiful, and yes he does see what Tintin means when he says it's like a dance.

His own fighting style is not too dissimilar, in the sense that he also favours quickness and agility. His people are not used to fighting wearing much armour, and so the way to survive an attack is to not be hit by it. He specialises in dodge rolls and feints, and there is something to be said for the fact that he is used to being agile while carrying heavy weapons made of metal; he can go faster than most people, and the focus on subduing his opponent rather than killing him makes him try to go for an attrition strategy of sorts, trying to dodge and simultaneously land the occasional hit to wear his opponent out.

It's not really enough. Tintin has both a genetically enhanced metabolism (over Taharqi's tiredness after the journey) and, as has been explained, a fighting style that has seen thousands of years of improvement. He feels like if he managed to get Tintin in a full grapple that might do it, but what he gets instead is very thoroughly defeated.

Tintin ends up kneeling on Taharqi's chest with his hands demonstratively encircling Taharqi's throat.

"Yield?" he asks quietly.

"I do," he says, grinning, and his audience starts clapping.

    "Was it that good?" wonders Sendhei aloud.

"Was -"

Oh. Taharqi is being horny about this. ...not that Tintin was being entirely unhorny about this, admittedly.

Perhaps he will teach Taharqi about restraint. He leans down and presses a chaste kiss to Taharqi's lips, then hops off. "Sendhei, would you care to teach me one of your dances now? I think I have enough energy left over for a lesson."

    "Really? Wow, okay, sure."

Taharqi himself laughs and gets up. "I'll get us some food, it should be about done now."

Oh, it's no fun making fun of Taharqi when he just goes with it.

Tintin is not running at full energy, but he can attentively watch Sendhei demonstrate the steps and repeat, even if he's not running at full capacity. When there is food, he calls a short break to eat an amount of it which is, per his usual appetite, absurd.

Contrary to what he may have demonstrated to Tintin, he does have self-control!

And most of the things Sendhei will point to Tintin will be slight changes to the way he already dances rather than entire new moves or anything like that. It is, as Taharqi said, more of a shortcut for a way of thinking about things than anything inherent to the movements, although this "way of thinking" is hard to put to words and easier to tell after the fact. He will also teach some of his own dance moves and then once Tintin gets it he'll try to work with Tintin to get to the same mind state with Tintin's own dancing style.

Food does indeed arrive, and Taharqi did indeed take Tintin's disproportionate appetite into account when cooking it. It's so much nicer than the travel rations, what with the existence of any seasoning and a lot more variety. Even the food magic itself is more potent, this way. More and better ingredients, and all.

It takes Tintin a little while to grasp what Sendhei is pointing to, but once it clicks, it clicks. "It's - you're right, it's hard to word right - it's not like meditation and it's not like flow state but it is kind of? Show me that again?"

When he tastes the food, he makes an absolutely indecent noise. "Taharqi, you are a delight."

    "This is better food than I've had since I got exiled, gods," agrees Raziya with her mouth full.

"At least half of it is the magic," says Taharqi. "And having been able to gather any ingredients at all."

        "Master, he was flirting with you," says Sendhei.

"One, yes I know but I'm pretty sure he wanted me to show some restraint earlier. And two, stop calling me that."

Tintin flinches very slightly when Sendhei says "master", then relaxes when Taharqi tells him not to call him that.

"And you've done admirably!" he says, after swallowing. "With the restraint, I mean."

    "Are you his slave, then?" wonders Raziya of Sendhei.

        "Well—"

"No, he just does it to get under my skin."

        "And it works every time," says Sendhei, grinning widely. "He has a huuuuge bone to pick with slavery."

"Of course I—no, nope, not taking the bait."

"I feel the same," Tintin mentions. "You may be pleased to know that no civilized polity in the galaxy permits slavery, where I come from - though the uncivilized ones do, and I don't think we're doing nearly enough about that. Personally I think we should've flown into batarian space three centuries ago and liberated them at gunpoint. But that's why I'm not a politician."

"Are you just using the word 'civilised' to mean 'doesn't have slavery'?" wonders Sendhei.

"No, they're shit for other reasons. - well, Ilium has a kind of slavery and they pretend to be civilized, but they're actually just a pirate haven with delusions of grandeur. And Omega is a rancid hole in the ground, and the Batarian Hegemony is a tyrannical, genocidal horrorshow. Defining any of them as civilization gives them far too much credit."

"It does kind of make me sad that in your world you still have slavery despite... having so much stuff. I had hopes that when people had enough stuff they would not want to have other people."

"It turns out that wanting power over others is one of the very few things that can't be replaced with sufficiently advanced technology. Except, as I would have it, bullets."

"It's really not that bad. Other than the exile thing, I guess. But I had food and a place to sleep and nice company—" he winks at Raziya when he says that "—and I could dance all day long."

"Well. I'm glad you had a better time of it than some."

Shifting gears! "Who wants to hear a story?"

    "His stories are pretty great," Raziya tells Sendhei.

        "Awesome, I'm in."

"Let me get everyone some pillows, then." And pillows are fetched for sitting or lounging or whatever.