[GP] training day

[st_oryinsilence]

There was a trope that in prison there wasn't much to do except work out or read. As colorful as Madonna Inn might be, it was still a prison. And look, somebody had put together a library.

Put fifty some people, many of them military, adventurers, vigilantes, or superheroes of one stripe or another, in a prison with none of the urgent missions or near-death experiences they were used to, the fitness center was going to be a popular place. Maybe almost as popular as the bar.

... Probably not quite that popular.

There were free weights and weight machines, treadmills and ellipticals, yoga mats and exercise balls. A room set aside for classes, if someone decided to lead. A large square had been taped over an area of the floor off to one side as a make-shift sparring space. Sports equipment had been brought back from Bonesville for those who preferred more organized games. And those who had been stuck here longest remembered there hadn't always been a salmon ladder.

In other words, something for just about everybody. And you could usually find someone in there if you were looking for a spotter, workout buddy, sparring partner, friendly competition too.

Comments

[st_oryinsilence]

Maya spent a lot of time in the gym, just as she had for years. Between training for the Olympics, the revenge that hadn't gone the way she expected, coming Echo and Ronin and Echo again, going up against the Hand, and fighting as one of the Avengers, she had to stay in shape. No super-strength or invulnerability or chi of Shou-Lao or adamantium claws and mutant healing for her.

Today she was working on the heavy bag, circuit training basics and moves she'd picked up from people she had fought or fought alongside. Punches were fine, and hits with the knees, but the bag needed more support if she was going to get real kicks in. "Hey," she called, when she caught someone walking by in her peripheral vision. "Could you hold the bag for me?"

[st_arkintern]

"Sure."

Peter presses his hands against the sides of the bag -- not close enough where Maya might inadvertently strike his fingers, but close enough to the front where he's not going to have any problems holding it steady.

"I know it probably looks like I can't do this stuff," Peter tells her, "but I'm actually stronger than I look."

Peter & Maya

[st_oryinsilence]

As the kid moved into position to hold the bag, Maya moved so she could still see his mouth and what he was saying. There was something about his walk and his stance that was familiar. And the shape of his mouth confirmed what she'd subconsciously recognized.

"Peter?" Maya stopped herself before calling him Spidey, since he wasn't in uniform. He moved like him, and looked like him only a lot younger. This guy didn't have a wife back home he wanted to protect. "Peter Parker?"

Re: Peter & Maya

[st_arkintern]

Peter almost drops the bag at the sound of his name.

Almost.

It's not his name that's surprising, it's the way she says it. The familiarity he's already heard in a few voices already.

Peter swallows and cracks out one single syllbale:

"Y-Yeah?"

Re: Peter & Maya

[st_oryinsilence]

Maya didn't hear the crack in his voice, but she saw the uncertainly in how he had to swallow before getting out the word and the tension in his posture.

"You're probably from a different timeline or something like that. Or from the past from my perspective. I'm Maya. Lopez. Also called Echo, and yes, I can read your lips even through the mask." He'd been so not happy at Clint when he found out, and it was a way to confirm she knew his other name as well, without saying it, if he was keeping it secret.

Re: Peter & Maya

[st_arkintern]

"Yeah," Peter agrees. "It's good to meet you, Ms. Lopez. Or do you prefer Echo? Or Maya? I think people feel uncomfortable sometimes when I call them mister or misses." Mr. Stark seemed to be okay with it, but that was just about it.

Still holding up the bag in case she elects to start her workout, Peter asks: "Are you from the same timeline as Kitty or Piotr or Emma or Ms. Rasputin?"

Re: Peter & Maya

[st_oryinsilence]

"Maya is fine." As Avengers, they'd mostly only seen each other in uniform, so Echo and Spider-Man (usually Spidey) had made more sense. But here, they're people first, heroes second.

"There's a lot familiar in what Kitty and I know, but I remember events she doesn't. I don't know about the others." She hadn't talked with them enough to know to compare.

She started a series of kicks with her right leg - high-low-high-low-knee-knee-clinch – she could repeat. "Are you from the same timeline as any of them?"

Re: Peter & Maya

[st_arkintern]

"No," Peter says, shaking the head; he has to steady himself against Maya's kicks -- she's pretty strong. "No one's timeline here sounds anything like mine. It's kinda weird, though. All these people know me, and I don't really know anything about them."

It's a little like being at a family reunion and not knowing all these relatives that seem to know everything about you.

"Are you a mutant too?" he asks. Everyone who knows him and is here seems to be a mutant, but he doesn't want to make any assumptions. "Or are you a superhero because you were bit by a spider or are a god or have all this fancy tech or something?"

Re: Peter & Maya

[st_oryinsilence]

Maya laughed and shook her head, changing her stance to work the other leg. "There's nothing 'super' about me. I'm a great mimic, a quick learner, and that makes me a really good fighter. But I have to work at it." She and Clint had that in common, a couple of exceptionally skilled but unpowered people running around with mutants and super-soldiers and sorcerers.

[st_x5_494]

His inside voice said Hell yeah I will! but Alec managed a smile and a nod as he walked up to hold onto the bag for her. "Don't send me flying half way across the room now."

Or maybe, by her, he'd be okay with that.

Alec & Maya

[st_oryinsilence]

"You keep saying that, I'm going to start thinking you're the one who can send me flying halfway across the room." Maya took up a stance to work her right leg and still be able to see Alec if he talked. Two high kicks, two low, four working their way up the bag, and then again. Each repetition was an exact match, down to the slightest shift in weight and point of contact.

Re: Alec & Maya

[st_x5_494]

Alec watched appreciatively. First because, well, she was hot. Second because he could appreciate good technique. He could see how she could kick mutant ass.

"I am full of surprises." He grinned wryly.

Re: Alec & Maya

[st_oryinsilence]

"Yeah?" she asked, backing a step away from the bag, her eyes on him. "You feel like backing that up in the ring?" She nodded toward the sparring area, currently unoccupied.

Re: Alec & Maya

[st_x5_494]

His grin widened. The ring was quite possibly his most favourite place to be, or maybe that was the bed. Both were pretty up there in places. "You bet."

He moved around to the area as well. "No holding back?" Just a confirmation of consent and reassurance. He'd feel like an asshole if he broke something.

Re: Alec & Maya

[st_oryinsilence]

"Just a friendly spar," she clarified, "but in the field you can't ask the other guy to hold back." She'd held her own against Logan – who hadn't actually been trying to hurt her, when she was attacking out of panic and half out of her head from fasting – waves of the Hand's assassins, Super-Skrulls more than once. It would be fun, finding out just what surprises Alec had hiding.

"Let's see what you've got." She winked and started toward the ring.

Re: Alec & Maya

[st_x5_494]

The wink spurred him on with excitement like a kid at Christmas, even if he knew she could probably, most definitely, kick his ass.

He entered the sparring area, his stance taking one of someone with military training as he began to circle to the left - he'd wait to see what move she'd make first.

Re: Alec & Maya

[st_oryinsilence]

Maya had told him she was a boxer, but as she also began to circle left, her movements were light and languid, almost liquid. Then her arm exploded forward, a jab at his sternum borrowed straight from Jet Li. She let the action of drawing her arm back spin her away and the opposite direction.

[st_alksthroughwalls]

"Sure." Flashing Maya a smile of greeting, Kitty quickly finished wrapping her hands and then moved into position behind the bag. Strength to strength, she and Maya were probably about evenly matched, so she wasn't worried about getting flung, but she did make sure to set her feet carefully, the way Scott had taught her a thousand years ago.

She popped her head around the side of the bag to make sure Maya could read her lips and offered, "When you're done, you want to go a few rounds?"

Kitty & Maya

[st_oryinsilence]

"Love to." Maya needed to find good sparring partners here, or she would get out of practice. And new fighters meant new additions to her vocabulary. Kitty was one of the X-Men; it should be a good workout, not that Maya could judge how well they were matched without knowing what Kitty's mutation was.

Working through her leg and combo drills took about five minutes, and left Maya loosened up and ready for the spontaneity of a good spar. "Anything I should know," she asked in the pause for some water, "before we try to kick each other's asses?"

Re: Kitty & Maya

[st_alksthroughwalls]

Kitty grinned at the question and turned herself to the barre for another round of stretches, since she'd tightened up a bit between then and holding the bag for Maya. Since there was a mirror, she figured Maya could see her mouth, but she took care to speak clearly in case the reversed image of her mouth made it difficult.

"Probably a lot," she said with neither arrogance nor false modesty. In the crowd Maya ran with, Kitty didn't need the latter. "The most important parts are I was possessed by a demon ninja with thousands of years of martial arts knowledge and when he left, I kept a lot of it, and that I phase shift. I can let you pass right through me." Implied was that in a practice spar, she wouldn't. Not the first time at least.

Re: Kitty & Maya

[st_oryinsilence]

It probably said something about the timelines they were from that Maya accepted 'demon ninja possession' as something that could happen. "I've fought more than my share of ninjas," hordes or swarms of them as Ronin, "but never a demon ninja. This should be educational." Phasing would be a problem for another day.

When Kitty had limbered up again, Maya moved to the sparring area and a neutral ready stance. "Shall we?"

Re: Kitty & Maya

[st_alksthroughwalls]

"Yeah, let's," Kitty said and moved into a position in the now empty sparring circle. "But before you bring it, anything I need to know?"

Kitty had a decent sense of Maya's capabilities from what she'd written on the teaching sheets and who she ran with. But there was a lot to be said about getting a summary from the fighter's mouth.

"Like, do you have some kind of signal for if I need to tap out and you can't see my mouth?"

Re: Kitty & Maya

[st_oryinsilence]

"Tapping out works. The floor, if I can see your hand, or me, whatever is easier to reach. Three taps is good, so I don't blink and miss it. Or stomping on the floor. I can usually feel the vibrations of that." Or with Kitty, Maya supposed she could phase out of the way, if she needed to, but most opponents wouldn't have that option. It was harder to explain how she was so usually aware of the smallest, barely visible movements, picking up on tension in ways most people overlooked. But obvious was good when sparring.

With them both looking ready, and nothing else Maya could think of Kitty needed to know that wouldn't be better discovered in action, she began to circle slowly, keeping her gaze focused on Kitty.

Re: Kitty & Maya

[st_alksthroughwalls]

Kitty nodded an acknowledgment, recognition that Maya would be particularly attuned to any kind of signals from a sparring partner she didn't want to hurt clear in her eyes. Still, Kitty had felt it was right to ask. Putting the burden of adaptation onto Maya wasn't fair, no matter how gifted she was.

A flicker of a playful, almost conspiratorial smile crossed her lips as Maya started to circle. It reminded her of something one of her teachers had told her almost an eternity ago: with two deadly and well-matched opponents, the battle is fought before bodies are joined, and will as frequently be finished with a single blow as with both bleeding out by degrees.

Since this was a spar and not a battle, Kitty winked and closed, lifting her knee as though to deliver a front kick. When she judged she'd telegraphed that sufficiently, she rotated on the ball of her foot to offer a roundhouse kick instead.

Re: Kitty & Maya

[st_oryinsilence]

Before the rotation, there was a subtle shift in tension in Kitty's core, and Maya moved to block the kick where it came from rather than Kitty's feint. A flow quickly developed between them, attack and defend, dodge and advance, well-matched opponents finding a balance that kept them both engaged and actively working to push the other harder, until muscles burned and they were both sheened in sweat.