strangetrip | [GP] training day

Current Location: fitness center

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[GP] training day

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.

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"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?"

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.

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?"

"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?"

"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.

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.

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.

Kitty quickly lost track of who fell or disengaged and how. They acted, reacted, adjusted, countered, struck and blocked out of pure instinct, learning each others' minds along with their moves. It felt phenomenal to pour herself into the rhythm of combat without restraint, like she poured herself into the music when she danced, aided rather than impeded by Maya's participation.

When it came to an end, it did so without signals or speech, a simple, mutual step from aggression to respect, a small bow of heads in gratitude, and then Kitty burst into a bright, happy smile. "Oh my god, that was fantastic!" she managed, breathless with both the exercise and sheer delight.

It had been a dance of sorts. Like her first fight with Daredevil, before she knew who was under the mask, had been practically choreographed gymnastics. Moving in sync, balancing each other, and Maya's laughter reflected back Kitty's smile.

"We have to do that again," she said, equally breathless, but pumped too.

"Hell yeah," Kitty agreed, beaming and at the same time battling the impulse to rush across the space between them to hug Maya. She didn't think they were close enough for that yet, or maybe after that spar, they were.

"Any time you want. Dance would be fun, too."

"Isn't that what we just did?" Maya grinned. After that spar, she felt like Kitty would know what she meant. And hopefully hear the agreement to dancing in the future too. She thought again about the first fight with Daredevil, and how they'd passed it off to the kids who saw them, as a playground repeat of her play. Her play that had been, in its way, preparation for finding the man she believed had killed her father.

Maybe she'd tell Kitty the story, sometime.

Kitty grinned right back at her, hearing things said and unsaid. That was the great thing about getting physical like this with someone: you learned a lot about them in visceral ways the brain couldn't get in the way of.

"Feel like hitting the sauna?" It would be good to bake out some of the soreness before it set in, plus they could talk.

"Yes." Strange's place had been lacking in certain amenities, and as much as Maya hated being stuck here, she could appreciate the things she'd missed while they were in hiding. After a work out like that especially.

"Talking in words will be easier too," following from the talking with their bodies they had just done. Bodies said a lot, always had to Maya. But lip reading in the middle of a fight could be tricky.

"Sometimes I wonder if that's why I learn so many languages," Kitty said, half to herself as she collected her gear, but enunciated clearly enough that she was sure Maya could read. "Looking for ways to express in words what bodies and numbers say more precisely."

Because some things, even things there were plenty of words for, weren't easy to speak. From the conversation they'd just had, though, Kitty thought Maya probably understood a lot of those things already.

All physical movement was language. It was the first language Maya had learned, and how she had learned all the others she knew. "We need the other languages, because most people don't know how to read bodies and movement." Retard. She had seen that word over and over on people's lips, in their eyes, their actions. Long before she knew what it meant, or the rest of them figured out that it wasn't her.

As she spoke, she gathered her own things, confident Kitty wouldn't try to talk over her and would wait until she had Maya's gaze again before speaking. She'd been obviously careful so far to make sure Maya could see her lips when she spoke.

And Kitty did wait for Maya to stand again and join her before she replied. When she did, she said, "Dance and fighting, and quantum mechanics for that matter, are all about the translation of solid matter into energy and movement. A big part of learning was helping me ease the dissonance of having such an ambiguous relationship with physicality."

Which, having said it, she realized maybe she hadn't needed to. Then again, it wasn't a thing she tried to share with many people. It was worth putting it into words for her own sake.

Edited 2018-03-18 04:03 (UTC)

"An ambiguous relationship with physicality?" Maya repeated. "Because of your phasing, you mean?" Enough members of her team – and people she ended up facing in a fight – had powers, she accepted it as normal, but it was still a different experience than her own. That was one of the things she and Clint had in common.

They walked together toward the saunas. "It probably isn't a surprise we didn't get a lot of time to talk about powers and learning to deal with them, the times I was working with other people. I'm curious."

Edited 2018-03-22 05:14 (UTC)

Kitty issued a murmur of agreement before she realized Maya wouldn't hear it, and then said aloud, "Yes," to the clarification and, "It would be easier to show you some of it."

She gestured ahead of them to the sauna. "In the privacy of the sauna if you don't mind. It's not a secret that I have abilities, but I'd prefer not to show them off to the public at large."

Maya had been talking about more generally having powers, since as far as she knew, she wasn't technically powered, just a talented normal human. Like Clint and his ability to hit a target. But if Kitty was willing to show her, she understood not wanting to do it so publicly.

She nodded her understanding, and as they got to sauna added, "The only actual mutant I worked with was Logan, and, well... he's Logan."

"Mr. Voted Least Likely to Share a Feeling Ever," Kitty agreed, lips twitching in a grin. "Unless it's 'Grouchy'." Oscar-style.

Kitty set all her stuff on a chair, grabbed a towel, and quickly traded her clothes for the towel. When she opened the door of the sauna to let them both in, the heat of it hit her like a wall of baked sand. It took a moment to catch her breath.

Once she did, she stepped inside and settled on a higher bench, waiting for Maya to come in and close the door.

The sauna wasn't the Chief's tipi, but stepping into the wall of heat took Maya's breath in a way that was familiar enough to niggle at the back of her mind. Twice as much in the quiet once she closed the door behind them.

She stretched out on a bench, head toward Kitty. "In my case, I think he maxed out his sharing allotment the night we met," she said, picking up their conversation and twining it with the direction of her thoughts.

"Then it's probably lucky you didn't have to spend a lot more time with him. He doesn't get less angsty on closer acquaintance." Logan was always a safe topic and target. Even the people who loved him, like her and Rogue and Jean, hated him about half the time.

"But he helped me a lot when I was younger. He even gave me on of his broken claws to use as a blade." She wasn't sure how, exactly, to segue back to her powers and learning to use them, but the heat felt good, it made her tone quieter and lazier and she figured they'd get there when they got there.

"I was on a vision quest," Maya explained. "Hadn't had anything to eat or drink for going on four days, middle of the night, massive thunderstorm, and there he was, suddenly lit up by a flash of lightning." He'd helped her too, that night, and was gone before she could tell him so. That had had to wait until their paths crossed again, and a quiet moment in the Secret Avengers temporary headquarters. "I thought he was a spirit guide. I'm still not sure he wasn't. In a way."

"Why are mentors and spirit guides always grumpy?" Kitty's tone was light and the question almost playful. "It's like they think we wouldn't listen if they just talked sense."

Jean and Storm hadn't always been grumpy, and neither had the Professor, but she didn't think she'd call them spirit guides, really. Kurt, though, Kurt had been...not grumpy, just morose a lot of the time. He still fit the profile.

"If he helped you, I'm glad he found you." That was more serious, because Kitty knew how hard their lives could be without friends and guidance.

"Grumpy, cryptic, or both." The Chief had been good at cryptic.

"Personally I prefer using stories, art, and dance, but I guess those can be cryptic too."

[GP] training day

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