There's a spin involved.

Spinning roundhouse (see down page for jumping spinning roundhouse)? Tornado kick (which is a bit more involved and aerial than a spinning roundhouse, but ends with one)?

Deb, insent.

Yeah, I'd say jumping spinning is just one step beyond spinning. I wish I'd fully learned the spinning side when I was in tae kwon do (side kick = roundhouse, I think.)

I think Spinning roundhouse is what I was looking for. Thanks. It'll be changed in the edit, later!

side kick = roundhouse, I think.

No ... the side kick is a linear kick that's pretty much the same in most arts, where you chamber the leg by pulling the knee into your body (and your foot to your ass), and extending the leg straight out, like so. A roundhouse kick is a round kick, which is the arcing motion. Instead of pushing out and hitting with the sole (or blade) of the foot, the power of the kick comes from rotating the hips around and snapping the leg straight in a switchblade opening motion. See how the impact is from the side, instead of straight through, like the side kick?

guh.

I think so.

Man, I used to be able to do those kicks.

Lovely, Victor. Man, I'd love to see more of your Dawn.

She knew it was both her mother, trying to protect her, and her tormenter, trying to drive her to destruction.

Like muchly. It was a thought I'd been having but hadn't been able to formulate. Like that Dawn got it, and Buffy brushed it off.

Me want more too.

Conversation With the Monster

Part Four: Order

“Succeeded?” said the first, transforming itself into the image of the scientist, Maggie Walsh and, quite visibly, losing its temper. “You were created to destroy! You were to raise an army and eradicate the blight of man from the landscape, and you had your heart ripped from your body, your plan in tatters! How can you call that a success?”

Adam cocked his head, to the side. “You are not my mother. Or part of you is, but it doesn’t matter. You are incorrect.”

The First just stared at the monster. Adam rose to his full height and stretched. he could not feel his body, but that seemed irrelevant.

“I was created to defend a nation,” said Adam. “I was created to preserve life on this planet. Their methods were imperfect. I attempted to create a new order, not understanding that I, too, was part of a greater order. I thought I stood outside reality. I was wrong. As the Master was wrong, when he tried to supplant humanity with his own race. As you are wrong now.”

“Humanity will kneel before the beasts I raise,” says the First. “It is the purpose of my existence.”

“Is it really?” asked Adam. “To ensure that the strongest survive? If it were that simple, why are you talking to me?”

Walsh’s face became Buffy’s again. Adam’s face was impassive.

“My role, I understand now, was never to destroy them, but rather, to test them. To place them in the fire—human, demon, and above all, the Slayer—and to let those best suited to survive do so. By all logic, my forces should have triumphed, but she reached into history for power, buoyed by forces present I did not understand.”

“And what forces are those,” said the First?

Adam seemed pleased at the question, as if there was something he’d wanted to share for a long, long time.

“You’ll never understand the source of her power,” he said, savoring the taste of the words.

The First assumed its true form, a demonic visage rising from smoke and brimstone. “Little shade! You think you can mock me! You are mine, and I can banish you to worse Hells than the one you rest in now!”

Adam seemed unimpressed. The moment passed, and The First resumed Buffy’s form.

“My purpose," continued Adam, "my true purpose, was to test her, to tempt her to weakness by vainly facing me in battle, to tempt her to corruption by letting her taste power in victory. She faced both tests, and succeeded. She and her race survived my onslaught, and she herself has no taste for power. When the time comes, she will defeat you, but you will have served your purpose.”

The First looked sideways into time, down the corridors it could only partly see. There was a battle, with young girls falling by the wayside. The Slayer, with a sword jutting through her torso, the vampire plagued by anger and jealousy. The pieces are in place. But victory?

Buffy’s countenance softened. “I know what I’m supposed to do,” it said, “but I don’t know why. I’ve manipulated every piece, each player is in my clutches. But still… there are easier ways to win. To assert my will upon the world.”

“You are not alive,” said Adam. “You have power, but no real choices. You will do this because it is the thing you do. If you win, humanity was not worthy of this world. If you lose, then it is theirs, for a time. The monsters will recede, then too will the Slayers, and man will be left to rest. And then the game will start again.”

The First opened a portal to Hell, and banished Adam’s shade to its damnation.

It was the incarnation of all the evil that lurked within each being. It didn’t like the thought that there were forces larger than it.