12-01-2009, 10:41 AM
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 The coyote frowned slightly at the youth's smirk. He had some scarring on him, and even though his movements from before had been wrong, there hadn't been much hesitation behind them. He had some confidence, and between that and the scars it was pretty obvious that he'd done this before. Given that he also probably outweighed Nik by a hundred pounds, the coyote got the impression he was going to end up on his ass, or at least wishing he was somewhere else pretty soon. When the wolf was ready, he stepped in again, throwing a light kick which was more a feint than an actual attack. Before committing to it fully, he jumped forward with the other and threw a faux right claw followed by a left to the same target below his chest. One of the hardest parts about fighting wolves when shifted--even though the ratio of coyote size to wolf size wasn't usually as pronounced in that form (barring Jantus of course)--was their added height. As a coyote, he rarely fought someone whose head was low enough to the ground for him to comfortably hit, and when using fit techniques, the head was supposed to be one of the prime targets. It was for this reason that coyote were often out of the loop when it came to fighting at higher skill levels: not all of it was applicable for tiny people. On four legs, sure: further south, there were more coyotes than wolves, and they got plenty of experience quarreling with one another. But up here, well...the 'disciplined fist' had an edge over the 'feral claw,' due to the purely offensive nature of claw-fighting, and the best fighters used a fine blend of the two to mix the stances assumed by fist-fighters while not wholly forsaking the tearing power of their nature-given gifts. As a coyote who never went into combat without his metal baseball bat, though, the best Nik could do was emulate what he'd seen the 'big boys' do when they got into a scrap. If this were a real fight, the coyote would probably lose, and all of his friends right now suspected the same (though it was true that if he actually had gotten the headlock, he might have defied expectation). Nikolov would need words with Jantus after this, as he hated fighting wolves unarmed. This had the potential to be almost as bad as his foolish participation in Skoll's tournament a year and a half ago, when Mala's boyfriend had used size and strength to plow through any cleverness he tried to employ to score the victory. It wasn't exactly encouraging when your mate had to stride into the ring and push your opponent off of your huddled frame. |