The other day while I was at work,
I gave a death glare to a toddler at work who had suddenly came to my side and reached up to tug on my wrist with both of his hands. He probably wanted nothing at all, his intent was harmless, but as his small hands went around my wrist and his muscles flexed his grip, every alarm in my body went off. I snatched my hand back, backpedaled a step and was suddenly on the balls of my feet. He'd come out of nowhere.
You see,
last week at Numac, I got caught twice with the full brunt of two roundhouse kicks, meant to cut me in two at the waist, but managed to block them just at the last moment with my arm. The incoming shin dealt a lot of damage to my forearm at the area really close to my wrist-- nothing's broken, but the bone bruised and even a week later, even touching it hurts. So even when some little kid just tries to hold my hand, it feels like someone is trying to break my arm. Naturally, probably not unlike anyone else out there, my usual reaction to the sensation of my arm getting stressed to that extent is that my 'killer intent' comes out, I can't even control it.
This is the second time that that's happened. When I injured my foot way back in february or so, while I was at work, an errant kid was running past me at work and stepped on my instep, sending shooting pains all the way from my foot right to my head.
I think that this is where a certain amount of training is necessary, but I have no idea how to go about it. The thing is, I've developed a few reflexes from a standstill non-combat situation. I roll with damage, I absorb hits, I bend to prevent joint damage, I go limp or breakfall when my balance dissapears. Doesn't always work but if a situation arises that my body is accustomed to, it reacts on it's own. I've prevented a lot everydaylife injuries from having some of those things hardwired in over the years. But there are occasions where I just overreact.
And while a self-deffensive reaction is useful... I think it's bad because it's ... "auto-pilot." I mean, if the world were full of dangerous people, maybe that would be useful. But the fact is, there are more normal, non-hostile people out there in modern society than there are hostile people, so that kind of reaction to accidents is just too much. I suppose I just need to be more aware about my surroundings and process everything in real time instead of reacting to things so much.
That said, there's something really different about children. They're completely different as far as their 'intent' signatures go, and it's something that I noticed while I used to be teaching, especially with students who were very young. Part of their deadliness is that they don't know the inappropriateness or the dangers of what it is they're doing sometimes-- and thus, their body language is different from grown adults. By all rights, unless they're holding sharp objects, anyone shorter than my chest really shouldn't rank very high on a threat assessment, but we shouldn't discount what we know of minjas (midget ninjas). A lot of their ability comes from stealth and the ability to hide their auras in plain sight.
Children just naturally go with the flow of things and in some ways mask their intentions, allong them to deliver critical attacks without us even seeing them coming. They're able to penetrate into my personal space without setting off any of the same alarms that an a adult might, and they get you from angles you don't expect. Not only that, but after they've landed a first attack, the lack of any aura signature laced to the attack makes it momentarily confusing, and leaves you open to a follow up.
Children have this natural ability to them that I envy in some ways. For them, it's so much simpler to just go forth with action without hesitation.
