Young cadets learn quickly. The flaw now is not that that he can see the move coming. In fact, Megatron has to quickly change his stance in order to parry the saber. However, his arm is a poor choice of target, given their current weapons and relative heights. The strike barely misses the mark and connects with his blade instead, leaving a light scorch mark on his armor as they grind and glow together.
“More like that! If you had feigned for my arm to hit my leg, you may have actually hit something. As it stands…” The larger warrior put his full weight behind their locked blades and pushed against the saber, letting Smokescreen feel his strength. “Now you find yourself stuck in a physical grapple with one who is much larger and stronger than you. If you don’t get out of this soon, you’ll be on the ground.”
“Dang, thought I could disarm you that way!” Arms make bad targets, he learned that pretty fast. Megatron’s a pretty good teacher, he’s gotta be honest. Smokescreen’s even proud of the marks he gave to Megatron, here, even if it’s not really anything.
Whoa, Smokescreen’s backing up some when Megatron’s using his full strength there. He’s not kidding about the stronger part. Larger and stronger, though? The stronger part’s really bad, but the larger part…
“What’s wrong with being on the ground?” Smokescreen’s going to duck some, taking advantage of how slow he thinks Megatron would be if the other bot had to duck down to get back into a grapple, grinning if this manages to work.
This actually does take the warlord by surprise, not because it’s a technique he hasn’t faced before, but because he hadn’t expected it of Smokescreen. Ducking down to get out of reach of a larger opponent is an excellent strategy, even (perish the thought) clever. Megatron is not as slow as one might expect for a mech of his size, but rather than lowering himself to follow Smokescreen, he takes a few quick steps back and puts his blade between the speedster and his legs.
“Fair enough.” That was the closest he would get to complementing the maneuver, but it was clear that Megatron was pleased. It had been so long since he’d sparred with anyone so new to a technique, yet he was picking it up so quickly. Megatron flicked his blade upwards, attempting to catch it against Smokescreen’s saber to destabilize his stance. If his smirk is anything to go by, the old mech might even seem to be enjoying himself.
Megatron's back up 