Daniel hadn’t had to fight this hard in some time now, and this damned body of his, even with clothing that strapped all of the uncomfortable bits down, was so hard to make cooperate. It wasn’t that it wasn’t equipped with the right muscles, but that he was constantly reminded of its wrongness. Even when he’d got himself a short haircut, it felt off. The clothing that was supposed to allow him freedom of movement felt restrictive and designed to emphasize his figure, something he didn’t even want to have. 

But that didn’t stop him from forcing it where he wanted it to. He had always been good at metaphorically standing his ground and making the immovable move. In this case, that was his body. And he was moving it like his life depended on it. It didn’t, of course, but he had also learned over the years that sometimes, working like your life depends on it is the only way to get things to go your way. 

Job interviews are awful. It would be hard to find someone who disagrees with that, and yet, as a society, people keep having them. To perform a degree of social literacy in front of a jury of people, something often unrelated to the actual position that is being applied for, is designed to put people on the back foot. Eventually, all this often does is filter out the people who are good at lying about their experience from the people who aren’t. This is not even going into personal biases and societal and institutional discrimination. It is an outdated system, and should be done away with. 

The owners of Pat & Jenny’s Gym, Pat and, surprisingly, Jenny, agreed with that sentiment wholeheartedly. For one, they had no use for people who were good at talking their way into a position they couldn’t also hold for five minutes without sweating. They’d had people show up who had clearly been there because they figured the job would be easy, which had led to some stumbles early on in the Gym’s history. There was also the fact that neither Pat or Jenny were particularly good with words, and they knew that a particularly vocal person could probably talk them into a corner. 

Which was why Daniel was currently beating the absolute snot out of Pat & Jenny’s resident and heavily padded martial artist instructor. He’d originally applied to be a personal trainer, but his resume, written out on a piece of white paper in a functional but far-from-eye-catching handwriting, had caught Pat’s eye for its mention of experience with fighting. Of course, Daniel hadn’t been able to put all of his experience on it, nor what it exactly entailed. He looked like he was in his twenties, and he figured he could only account for about a decade of training; he’d made sure it looked like it had been his life. Because it had been. Jenny had made a small note of how un-girly the handwriting was, and how Daniel had looked when he’d handed in the resume, and the name at the top. 

The first thing he’d been asked to show was his ability to perform certain acts of athleticism, which hadn’t been that hard. It had been more than two months since the accident now, and he’d been running and exercising religiously. He’d learned over time exactly what the limits of a body felt like and even if this one wasn’t his, by the gods he was going to make it do what he wanted it to. No cartwheels or handstands, and lifting weights was damned difficult with so little basis for muscle mass to work with, but given a wooden sword he could do drills for hours. After Pat and Jenny had seen that, they’d asked for Bobby, the ‘sensei’ they’d hired last month to step into Hall B with them please, if he didn’t mind. Bobby had grinned when asked to spar with the short girl for her job interview. 

Bobby was exactly the kind of person Pat and Jenny had tried to avoid hiring, but he’d been very good at selling lies, and he knew just enough about Taekwon-Do and Jiu-Jitsu to make it look convincing. He’d figured he’d knock a small girl on her ass and get more affirmation about his skills and maybe even raise. He hadn’t expected the girl to insist he wear additional padding and a boxing helmet while she stood there in what looked like a teenager’s workout outfit. 

He also hadn’t expected her to be so… intimidating. He was a foot and a half taller than she was, and yet he had the feeling he was being confronted by someone like his father, a stern older figure ready to show him how much of a kid he still was. It was something in her stance, in her eyes. 

What Bobby didn’t know was that, for the first time in his life, he was in the same room as a warrior. And this warrior was, first off, not a girl. While he was working with a body that wasn’t even his, it is, as they say, a poor craftsman that blames his tools, and Daniel never blamed his. When Daniel started to approach, Bobby found it hard to know exactly what to do, almost paralyzed in fear. 

What Bobby also didn’t know, and what his body did, was that he was in the presence of what was, essentially, a creature more dangerous than him. It had gone into fight, flight or freeze and with the eyes of Pat and Jenny on them, it had opted for the latter with no easy alternatives, though it was clearly considering them. He didn’t understand why the hair on the back of his neck stood up or why he was sweating as this short person sized him up, or why his heart jumped in fear whenever they made eye contact, but his body clearly did. It was trying to urge him to jump out the window. 

The first hit, eventually, was his, as Daniel stood two feet in front of him. Bobby opted for a high chest kick, hoping to knock the girl down before the fight had even begun. It would’ve been a good strategy against an inexperienced opponent. A kick like that can hit like a mule and knock the wind out of you, and rattle your skull when you hit the ground. That kind of disorientation is something battle-hardened fighters spend years completely overcoming. Of course, some fighters had realized they were suddenly in a much smaller body and opted not to get hit at all.

Daniel was not an inexperienced opponent. He sidestepped the kick and, considering the opponent’s padding, began a swift series of blows on Bobby’s joints, followed by several body checks to keep him off-balance, hooking his own foot behind Bobby’s to make him stumble. 

This went on for several minutes. To an observer, this looked a little bit like a mouse-sized cat toying with a cat-sized mouse, but Daniel was simply conserving strength, expecting his opponent to try something stupid but dangerous, as well as trying to keep from actually causing long-term harm. He was a teacher, after all. Sure, he had no experience with fancy martial arts, but fancy martial arts are often more art and less martial. An experienced pit-fighter will kick your ass with experience, grit and a mean streak that no amount of tai-chi can easily overcome, no matter what kung fu movies will try to tell you. 

Eventually, Bobby tried something stupid, foregoing the little martial arts training he’d had with a tackle. Daniel, having anticipated this, met Bobby’s chin with a rising knee. Bobby made a sound that would have been, to a desperate elk, particularly attractive, and went down like a sack of bricks.

There was a moment of silence in Hall B, which Bobby had failed to get renamed to ‘The Dojo’, until Pat, who had been sitting on a folding chair in the corner walked over to Bobby and Daniel, the former sitting up with a groan and the latter doing stretches. 

“That was… uh…” Pat said, displaying his trademark eloquence. Daniel knew what he meant and nodded. 

“Thank you. I hope that was an adequate display of physical ability. I can teach others to stay fit like this,” he said. 

“Well,” Jenny followed up, her hands on her hips and the daggers in her eyes currently pointed at Bobby, “I think we were wondering if you’d be interested in teaching self-defense instead.” She paused. “Or both, really, if you have the time.”

Daniel considered this for a moment. If people here needed to learn how to defend themselves, he could do that. “Certainly,” he said, and then glanced at Bobby. “Would that present a problem?” 

“Not at all,” Pat grumbled. “A position just opened up.” Bobby seemed to realize his trial phase had not gone his way, didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say, but just as importantly, his jaw went -click- when he opened his mouth. 

“I’d be happy to,” Daniel said and offered his hand. Pat shook it and was surprised at the lack of vice-like grip. After the display he’d seen, a part of him had expected Daniel to crush his hand between steel fingers, but the handshake was remarkably… normal. Unbeknownst to Pat, that was because Daniel had overcome the toxic habit of trying to assert dominance through pointless displays of strength decades ago. 

“So…” Jenny asked as she watched Bobby slink away, “is Danny like… a nickname?” Daniel blinked a few times. 

“No,” he said. “It’s Daniel.”

“That’s an… interesting name for a girl,” Pat tried. 

“It would be,” Daniel said, defying them both with a calm stare. “Not a girl.” Jenny just shrugged and walked to the door with a smile. 

“Cool,” she said, “neither is my boyfriend. You’ll do fine here, Daniel.” Jenny held the door open and nudged at it with her head. “Come on, I want to go grab lunch and I have someone to fire.” Daniel blinked again. That wasn’t the reaction he’d been expecting, and not the one he’d had at  the hospital. Jenny’s casual acceptance of his name hit harder than he’d expected it to. Grabbing his bag, he followed her to the exit. 

“Thank you,” he mumbled, his brow furrowed, not knowing what to think and so resorting to thinking of everything at once. He was lost in thought all the way home, his body heavy after a fight that had been his first in months. It had been a good workout, sure, but it also made his body that much harder to ignore. It was because of this that, when he walked past the multimedia-store Sally had once worked at, he didn’t look inside, and didn’t see his old face, as well as that of Eliza as she used to look, plastered on a poster taller than him. 

When he got home, Eliza herself was sitting at a table, poring over a series of papers with a frown on her face as intense and deep as his. When their eyes met, there was an immediate buzz in the air. Not that Daniel had been in a bad mood, but his body ached in the way that a shower wouldn’t fix, and Eliza clearly had a bone to pick with reality in general. He ground his teeth for a moment. 

“How did it go?” Eliza asked curtly. 

“Good. Was offered a job after fighting a bad instructor.”

“Of course you picked a fight,” Eliza scoffed. “Typical.” Daniel’s eyes bugged out at the accusation of… what, exactly? He dropped his pack and walked closer, carefully. 

“What,” he started, “is that supposed to mean exactly?” Eliza leaned back and glared at him. 

“You’re The Great Hero, Daniel,” she said. “Of course you have to resort to physical violence to get what you want. It’s typical of men like you.” The way the word ‘men’ burned on her tongue, the way she spat it out didn’t sit well with him. Navigating his own masculinity was a fight against expectations of his current body by both himself and his environment, and he didn’t appreciate it being reduced to something like this. 

“Listen, Eliza, whatever is going on with you, it isn’t my business,” he said, trying to stay calm, “but I’m not interested in trying to box up to you when I’m…”

“Shorter than me?” she asked, standing up, thunder in her eyes. “Feel intimidated because I’m tall, is that it?”

“No, that’s not--” he said, and he balled his fist, his feet automatically spreading a bit to give him a more defensible stance. He’d fought someone not half an hour ago. His body remembered what to do. 

“Feeling threatened by a more aggressive male in your space, Hero?” Eliza snarled, and there was something in her voice, something he couldn’t put his finger on. Something was off. 

“No, I didn’t--”

“Do I make you feel uncomfortable, Daniel, with how much bigger and stronger than you I am? Do you feel unsafe around me? Is that why you went to go pick a fight? Is that it?”

“Stop,” Daniel said, steadying his breathing. 

“Why? Am I getting thr--”

“No,” he said. “This isn’t about me.” Eliza froze. She was shaking, and Daniel saw what he’d missed before. That red line around her eyes that indicated she’d been crying. The marks on the back of her hands where she’d cut herself shaving her arms one too many times. 

“You--” Eliza said, and her voice cracked slightly. 

“What happened?” Daniel said, taking a step closer. Eliza was shivering more obviously now, her lower lip betraying the inner turmoil she was trying to keep down. 

“At work…” she began and Daniel ignored the one tear that ran down her face… “I have been… learning… But what is persuasive for them… they seem to view me as… aggressively…” Daniel heard the creaking of her fingers as her knuckles grew white, “masculine.” Ah. Daniel put a hand on her arm. Tears were flowing more freely now. 

“I can relate,” he said softly, his high-pitched voice like nails on a chalkboard to him. 

“What do you see, Daniel? When you look at me?” There was a pleading tone to her voice that was heartbreaking. He took a deep breath. 

“The Evil Demon Dragon Queen,” he said with a soft smile, and before he could get more out, her arms had wrapped around him and he heard her weeping softly into his shoulder. He didn’t even realize the stress was washing off him in heaving sobs until after he’d been crying himself for a minute as well. Neither of them said much more that evening. Eliza made food. It was pretty damn good, and she blushed when Daniel told her. They both slept on their respective sofas, wordlessly agreeing not to speak about it.

Elamimax

Gosh, these two <3

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