They can track him? "I can't just leave you to fight them on your own," she tells him. (Also he's really strong and attractive and she doesn't want to. Even if maybe she should. Does she get more than one potential true love? She's pretty sure she does but can't remember for sure and now is not the best time to check.) "How are they tracking you?" 

"I was taken during an attack on my world. They operated on me and implanted a tracking device of some kind into my back. They've hunted me ever since. I've hunted them back. It's the only way to survive. I tried removing it before, doctors have tried removing it for me too. Nothing has worked."

"I don't think I can help with that," she admits, "but I bet if I help you fight them off we'll find more people to join up with us and one of them should be able to help you." That's how it normally works, right? A group of disparate heroes, joining together to fight off the forces of darkness and save the world? Or wait, he said world, didn't he. Does he mean planet or does he mean... she wants to ask but doesn't want to give away too much just yet even though she really really really wants to ask. (Maybe she can think of a clever way to do so?) 

"Life isn't a storybook."

Normally, yes, but in this case... "Give me the benefit of of the doubt," she says. "I can help you, even if I don't look it, and if you stick with me things will get better." That's how it's supposed to work, right? For her, anyways. 

"Alright, you'll need to find your own food. We'll go through the ring tomorrow." Dusk has crept up on them while they were talking. Ronon starts walking looking at the ground and the plants around them.

Food she has! "I brought some food with me," she says, sliding her backpack off of her shoulder. "I could share some of mine with you if you share some of yours with me?" She should probably try to make the stuff she bought from the vending machine last longer, once it's gone she's probably not going to eat chocolate for a while, let alone have another snickers. (And plus she's reasonably certain that her food is going to blow him away, and that should help. Maybe also she should try to save it to show other people she's special too, now that she thinks about it. Well, she did buy a lot.) 

"Okay, I still need to find food first. I have some jerky but I save that for when I can't forage." He doesn't stop walking.

She slides her backpack back onto her back. "Okay, I'll come with you and help, then," she says. Though she's not going to be much help is she. She has no idea what she's doing. Maybe she can try and learn by watching? She did choose that power that lets her learn skills from her companions, right? Does he count as a companion now? He probably counts as a companion now, and if he doesn't well him and his gruff voice and his muscles are going to be her companion, so there. As long as she can figure out how to get the tracking thing out of him, which admittedly some of what she said was based on what she believes from the notebook and what if it isn't true? Well, too late now. 

He grabs leaves from specific plants and certain kinds of mushrooms from the ground. Occasionally he stops and digs up the root of a plant with a knife he had stashed somewhere on his body. He seems to rotate between a few different knives. She starts to pick up the pattern of which plants to take and which ones to leave pretty quickly.

He notices and corrects her the couple times she's making a mistake.

She's surprised when she starts to notice the pattern, and starts helping out tentatively at first, but with more and more confidence as he doesn't say anything... until he does. And then she's more cautious for a while. She doesn't want to pick the poison plants! Well, she supposes she can eat the poison plants just fine, but she doesn't want to poison her companion whose... name she doesn't even know? "What's your name, by the way?" she asks. "I'm Jenna, by the way. Jenna Sawyer. What's your name?" 

"Ronon Dex. You learn quickly."

"I do, don't I!" She grins, delighting for a moment in the fact that she is and it's the magic doing it and she has magic but then she remembers that that makes no sense to him and turns her face back into a slightly less delighted face so he's not confused by it. "I can learn a lot, if you'll teach me," she tells him, "and I'll learn quickly." 

"After we stop for the night, I'll see about teaching you how to fight."

"I'd like that!" How does that even interact with her battle powers? Will what he teaches her help her be better in general? Will the battle powers (awful) get in the way of her learning to fight? Well, she supposes she'll find out. She points at a mushroom that she's pretty sure is safe. "That one's good to eat, right?" 

"Yes." After not too much longer they arrive at a cave. Ronon doesn't seem surprised. "We'll stop here for the night. If you haven't fought much before it might be better to fight before eating. Some people throw up at first. Otherwise, we can eat and fight later."

She doesn't want to throw up the last of her snickers and doritos, that would be an awful, awful waste. "Let's fight first, and eat after, then." Though possibly she's immune to throwing up? Why is she going to throw up? Well, better to be safe than sorry. 

"You probably want to take of your bag and put it off to the side."

"Right. Yes. Thank you." 

She slides the bag off of her back and puts it down near the edge of the cave wall, then turns back and tries to activate her battle senses, however they work. Maybe if she attacks him like... she doesn't words for it, but there's something she might be able to do and might be able to get a hit in? His defenses are not entirely down right now, even though he probably thinks she's not very dangerous (understandable) so he's still on his guard, but... less so than he would be if she attacked him right now? She's not sure how to make sense of what she's sensing. 

He waits until she's back in the middle of the clearing and then he attacks. He doesn't pull any knives out and he's not trying to hurt her just gauge her skill but it might not be obvious to her that this is the case.

What the-- 

Jenna was already sensing on him so she caught it just in time to block his attacks but she didn't actually expect it to happen but why is he attacking her full force? She leans into whatever magical senses she has to try and keep him from hurting her while trying to figure out why he's doing this, being defensive rather than offensive (for the moment) because she doesn't want to hurt him. 

It's only after a few seconds of blocking his attacks that she realizes he's not attacking her to kill, but to spar, to test her, and she relaxes a little. She blocks another attack and then goes for what seems to be a weakness in his defense (though her senses are confused by it), matching his relative strength (sparring, not trying to hurt him) with her own attacks. 

He smiles at that. She scores a small hit. He takes it up another notch going a bit less easy on her. He stops being quite so straightforward and adds in some feints.

Oh excellent!! Feints she can deal with... probably? She can't read his mind, even with her battle senses and intuition and whatever else is going on here, he gets in some tricks and she takes some hits (and they hurt! Not too bad but they hurt!) until she stops going for the feints and starts thinking about how to attack and where and if he's actually open. And having done feints she tries some feints of her own. Maybe if she moves here like this it'll trick him into doing this and then she'll get another hit in on him? 

That works. He clearly takes it as a signal to step up again. He's not holding back by much at this point. There's a few more exchanges and she even lands another small hit but in doing so she opens herself up and he exploits that opening to mess up her stance and knock her on her back. He manages the fall so she doesn't land badly and then he's kneeling above her his eyes boreing into hers. "Good spar."

Oh. Oh hello. That's... gosh, looking up at him, him all strong and muscular, both of them all sweaty from having worked out together... she wants to kiss him. It would be a terrible idea to kiss him but she wants to anyways. "It really was," she says, still staring up at him, eyes maybe possibly slightly dreamy. (She should maybe possibly kinda stop being so dreamy? But look at him. Look at him. Dang he's attractive. She wants to kiss him. She should stop staring at him.) She shakes the look out of her eyes. "It really was. Should we go again. Should you teach me more? How does this work?" Oh no she's staring again stop it.