Observational skills

"Let's shake on it," she said. Her eye contact didn't waver. Her clawed hand extended my way.

I knew Ashley. I knew that she had her tells, and one of those tells was that she tended to go very still and quiet when poised for the attack. Swansong had done it with Beast of Burden. Before any outbursts, there was often a moment where she was more terse, quiet, as if something below the surface was simmering, and a part of her was trying to keep it from losing control by doing nothing.

Which was ironically what I wanted her to do.

*****

Ashley stared me down, pupils narrowing and then disappearing entirely, until her eyes were pure white. She wasn't trying to bluff. She was challenging me on my convictions, with the implicit threat that she would slash me or use her power to annihilate me.

I called her Ashley in my head because in this moment, in that dangerous frozen position, her mannerisms were one, the same, and both.

*****

"Truce yes, but I'm not stupid enough to come down there and shake your hand. Besides," I said. I pointed to the mask I wore on my lower face. "Cold."

*****

I flew back another ten or twenty feet, feeling a horrible kind of sadness welling in my upper chest, to the point it hurt to breathe.
Damsel had been planning something, and as I retreated, she lunged forward. She created a ball of power in one claw, and a lateral blast in the other, as if to push the ball out my way. The ball unfurled, traveling a surprisingly long distance.

If I hadn't been wary, that might have grazed me.

From Within 16.4