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      Chokeholds
~ A Moment of Haven ~
---------------------
	For all of the learning he had received in such things, it had 
never been in a group setting.  Maybe that was to his advantage.  He had 
the tendency to focus on individuals or pairs rather than the class as a 
whole.  Duo assured him that that was more than acceptable, so long as 
his attention was not exclusive or biased.  Heero would reserve judgment 
on Duo's opinions that it was, in fact, preferred.

	He walked the disorderly rows, eyes trying to take in everything 
at once, wanting to do right by his students.  Manning's feet were too 
close together.  Heero paused for a moment to correct his stance.  Diaz 
was tense, but Heero let it pass for now.  He would loosen up as the 
course progressed and his confidence grew.  Just a soft word to bring it 
to his attention, and then Heero began his study of the next pair.  
There was a hole in Alphand's defense, but that wasn't part of today's 
lesson.  Heero would save the nitpicking for agents who were a little 
more advanced.

	He came to Rockenwagner's side and received a nod from the 
resting agent.  "Everything alright here?"

	"Yeah, sure, we're just, uh, between rounds, yeah?"  
Rockenwagner glanced over to his sparring partner for confirmation.  
"Just strategizing."

	"You know what you're supposed to be working on."  The 
instructions had seemed fairly straightforward to Heero.

	"Hell, it's easy to *say* 'get out of a chokehold'..."  He eyed 
his partner again with a good-natured grumpiness.  Carlisle was a good 
head taller than he was.  "I'd say the best way to get out of one was 
never to get into one to begin with."

	Heero's smile was minimal, but present, if one knew where to 
look for it.  "I'd agree.  But you need a plan B."

	"Uh, pull out my gun?"

	"We're concentrating on non-lethal escape techniques right now."

	"I doubt I'd manage to kill him if he had a chokehold on me."

	This was true.  It represented one of those things Yuy was still 
working on.  If he wasn't trying to kill someone, that normally just 
meant he'd avoid aiming for the head or the heart, and a few of the 
major arteries.  There were plenty of other hit locations offering 
superficiality.  Unfortunately, the Preventers organization still 
regarded this as a use of lethal force.  They were oddly inflexible 
about that, despite promises to immediately perform first aid after the 
suspect had been neutralized.  "You can't count on having a gun.  Are 
the techniques we discussed not working for you?"

	Rockenwagner scratched his nose.  "I don't know if I'm doing it 
wrong or what, but I can't seem to get any leverage on this guy."

	Heero measured the lengths involved and recalculated his advice.  
"Have you considered a heel to the groin?"  He smirked faintly when 
Carlisle took a wary half-step away from them.  "It's really a very 
underexploited weak point."

	Not far from them, Johnson finished slipping out of her 
partner's grip and laughed.  "Not by me, it ain't."

	"Agent Johnson does seem to make good use of it, however," Heero 
agreed amiably.  "There is no honor among men in the battlefield."

	Caulfield also let out a bark of laughter.  "Come on, Rock, get 
in touch with your feminine side!"

	Rock was busy glaring at Carlisle's crotch, causing the larger 
man to edge away again.  "I still don't see how I could get enough 
oomph."

	Heero stepped into position and turned his back to Carlisle.  
"Grab me with a light hold."  There was a pause during which nothing 
happened.  Heero looked over his shoulder.  "Just as you were doing with 
Rockenwagner earlier."

	Carlisle eyed him uneasily.  "I don't want to be getting in 
touch with my feminine side."

	"I promise I won't plant my heel in your groin," Heero answered 
dryly.  He waited for Carlisle to do as instructed, and once the hold 
was finalized, Heero quickly got him off balance, loosened his grip, and 
flipped him.  "You leaned forward to grab me.  Don't do that."

	The agent blinked at the high ceiling of the gym for a moment 
before reaching out to take Heero's outstretched hand and regain his 
feet.  "I can see the disadvantages of that now, thank you."

	"What's the proper stance in this situation?"  Heero turned and 
presented his back again.

	A moment of analysis yielded the obvious answer.  Carlisle 
wrapped an arm around Heero's neck and pulled back slightly, taking 
Heero's heels off the ground.  "Kill your leverage."

	"Correct."  Now the lesson shifted back to Rock.  "Kind of him 
to support me and get me closer to my target.  Now I'm free to use my 
legs against him."  He slowly and unthreateningly demonstrated the 
maneuver he had been describing earlier.  "I kick my foot up and get him 
in the groin."

	Johnson glanced eagerly to her partner.  "Ooh, hey, can I try 
that?"

	Her partner danced away swiftly.  "Hell, no."

	"Aren't you wearing a cup?"

	"That's to prevent trouble, not invite it!"

	Rock echoed her.  "Can I try?"

	Carlisle's grip shifted from an effective head lock to whatever 
he could use to maneuver Heero between them to use as a human shield.  
"Hell, no."

	Heero took advantage of the lax positioning to free himself 
easily from Carlisle's hold, this time ending up with Carlisle in a mild 
arm twist.  He released the agent after he was sure his point had been 
made.  "The groin is a vulnerability, yes, but it becomes even more of a 
vulnerability when you live in fear of it being exploited.  If you want 
to win a fight, you have to be willing to put everything on the line."

	It seemed Johnson was far too amused by the men's squeamishness.  
"How about you let me kick you all in the nuts once or twice, and you 
can practice fighting through the pain?"  The snickers of the few other 
women in the class joined her own.

	"Oh, God!" someone wailed faintly from the far corner of the 
class.  "Make them stop!"

	"It's not a terrible suggestion," Heero said mildly.  He paused, 
noticing the collective flinch of the men in the class.  "I'm not 
suggesting we take Johnson's offer up.  What I mean is -- to get back to 
our original lesson -- it can be a useful exercise to be choked out, or 
nearly so, if you've never had the experience.  You need to be able to 
distinguish between a move that will succeed in choking you out, and one 
that won't.  You should also learn your limits, to know how much time 
you have to work with, and because you've had the experience before, 
you're less likely to panic in the field if it ever happens.  The same 
goes with bone-breaking or dislocation holds."

	"You want us to break our bones?" an agent asked rather 
skeptically.

	"It would be impractical to handicap you for as long as it would 
take for your bones to heal.  However, passing out doesn't have any 
lasting effects."  He paused, frowning faintly.  "Unfortunately, the 
higher-ups asked me to remove that from my syllabus.  If any of you 
would like to see how it feels, though, you know where to find me after 
class."  Hmmm, uncertain silence, plus just a little nervous laughter.  
Not a good sign.  They were near the end of class.  Maybe it was time to 
move on to the last set.

	"Have you ever been choked out?" the skeptical agent asked.

	"Yes."  Heero wasn't in the habit of doling out advice he 
wouldn't be willing to follow himself.

	"Have you ever choked someone else out?"  Agent Caulfield's 
question had more of a challenge to it.

	"Yes."  He wouldn't be very qualified to teach this lesson, 
otherwise.

	"In the field?"

	"Yes."

	"Wait, so you are a field agent?"  The way Manning asked it, it 
sounded as if there had been some debate or confusion.

	It was a legitimately tricky question.  "I have been," he 
answered calmly, not letting on that he was merely skirting the edge of 
'field agent's definition.

	Caulfield threw yet another gauntlet at him.  "I looked your 
record up.  You don't have field certification."

	Heero wondered if he ever would.  Did he want it?  He was fairly 
certain that, if the Preventers had urgent enough a reason to send him 
out in the field, they wouldn't mind that he wasn't certified.  For 
daily life, he was still undecided.  "I don't need it to teach this 
course."

	"Heh, those who can't, teach?"

	Johnson rolled her eyes.  "Oh, for god's sake.  Grow up, 
Caulfield."

	"Hey, I got every right to know what a guy's qualifications are 
to teach this class.  I'm supposed to put my life on the line, depending 
on the stuff I learn here, right?"  He turned back to Heero.  "So you 
had field clearance then, huh?  What happened to it?  You lose it?"

	"What do my records say?" Heero asked with a mild curiosity.  
Unfortunately, to the unHeero-initiated, it came off as somewhat dry and 
sarcastic.

	"They didn't," Caulfield answered flatly, appearing annoyed.  
"You didn't have much of a record at all, actually."

	He was glad his record wasn't covered with obscenely large 
'confidential' and 'top secret' tags.  That information was probably 
stored somewhere other than with the personnel files.  He wondered what 
his position in the department was.  Special ops?  Maybe he'd be curious 
enough one day to find out.  "This is a young organization.  I'm sure 
most of us don't have much of a record yet."

	"Aw, come on, man," Diaz put in.  "You've been in this class 
this whole time.  The guy obviously knows his stuff."

	"That doesn't mean he's ever used it out in the field," 
Caulfield retorted.

	"He just said he has."

	"Maybe I don't believe him."  His eyes met Heero's evenly.  
"What kind of field experience do you really have?"

	It was a valid concern.  The rules were entirely different out 
in the field, and not in a way that could be understood by someone that 
hadn't been out there.  But the story of Heero's prior experiences was 
on a very need to know basis, and Caulfield definitely didn't need to 
know.  "I received job-related injuries.  I haven't yet been cleared for 
field work again."  There, that was nicely sort-of true.  He'd joked 
about it often enough that he was beginning to wonder if it was more 
than sort-of true.  His medical history was more than sufficient to 
cause anyone to blink twice.

	"'Job-related injuries'," Caulfield repeated, falling just short 
of openly disdainful.  "That could be a PTSD, nervous breakdown, 
couldn't-handle-it sort of thing, for all we know."

	Oh no, if there was one thing he was very careful to keep clean, 
it was his psych eval.  If that ever came up questionable, he wouldn't 
even be a free citizen, let alone a field agent.  It may have taken some 
long and tiresome work, but he'd managed to convince the shrinks that 
his unique background had not left him unable to cope with daily, 
'normal' life.  It was a little grating to have it brought up again.  
"Do I appear 'traumatized' to you?"

	"You never know about these things.  You could be completely 
normal, and then one day, BAM!"

	Heero knew the jab was a feint, probably intended to emphasize 
the man's point, or possibly to test him, to see if a surprise attack 
would rattle him.  He really should have just stood passively and let 
the man punch air and get on with it.  He really shouldn't have grabbed 
the man's wrist and pulled him into a behind-the-back disabling lock.  
But he did.

	After that, he probably should have released the man 
immediately.  An apology was possibly in order, but probably not 
necessary.  He maybe could have then invited the agent to discuss this 
in a gentlemanly fashion after class.  But he didn't.  He just wasn't in 
the mood.

	"It's a little closer to nerve damage, actually," he said evenly 
next to the agent's ear.  His tone was somewhat conversational, but not 
particularly friendly.  "And despite that, I can still kick your ass.  
Are those qualifications enough?"  He waited a few seconds, and took 
Caulfield's silence as assent.  A few seconds more, and maybe just the 
slightest increase in pressure just to drive home the point, and then 
Heero released him.  Caulfield fell to his knees, and Heero coolly 
assessed the rest of his class over the agent's head.  "Dismissed."

	No one felt like pointing out they still had a few more minutes 
until the end of class.  They quickly and efficiently vacated the room 
under Yuy's stony watch, and only after they got outside the room did 
they burst into chatter.

	Heero heard the beginning of their remarks as the door closed 
behind them, and then deliberately stopped listening.  He closed his 
eyes, took a deep breath, and released it with a sigh.  Good job, Yuy.  
Good job.



_________________________________________
This piece of fiction is the intellectual 
property of the little turnip that could.  
The basis for this fic, i.e. Gundam Wing, 
Kyuuketsuki Miyu, et al., is the property 
of someone else.  The author can be con-
tacted at jchew at myrealbox.com.  This 
has been an entirely automated message.
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~jchew/misc/gw.html

last modified : 12/20/2007 23:05:22 PST