04 / 28 / 10 - Jean-Paul, Kelsey, Nadia
It's easy to tell those who have come back to themselves from those who haven't. As if there is a weight off their shoulders, or they've just heard good news. Great news. Fucking fantastic news.
My greatest fear is that Remaal al-Sahra will strike before we finish. Move to retrieve Tamara themselves since negotiations -- well. They haven't called back.
It isn't her going back or them taking her that I worry about, but rather some tragic accident. Her death. If they took her, if she went back there would still be hope. We can just steal her away again. That's how we do things: we can't reach al-Sahra's ranking pieces, so we whittle away at their pawns, pulling them from the board. We can't bring down their organization, so we kick pebbles--
I am tired of writing about them. Talking about them. Thinking about them. Maybe it is the weight of the Langleys; maybe it is being trapped, bound to the ground; maybe it is how little we know for how much we've done.
Maybe it's something simpler.
Maybe it's all of it.
I want to fly.
=XF= Gymnasium - Training Facilities - Chemeketa Military Base
The enormous room caters to a wide variety of athletic tastes and boasts the usual complement of sports equipment. The floors are mapped out with designs for a basketball court, while in another corner a huge cushy blue rubber mat is rolled out at the center of a variety of gymnastic equipment, and stretches beyond to surround a set of punching bags, heavy and light, that hang in one corner. A climbing wall stretches hiiigh above. A smaller, long studio room with a window set into the wall is located right off the entrance. Inside, mirrored walls are bisected with a bar and the floor is religiously kept smooth and clean. Sitting outside the room is equipment for dance and fencing.
Dinner will be served soon in the cafeteria, but Jean-Paul has lost track of the time. Running, jumping, climbing tr-- walls ... and now he's in front of the punching bags. It hangs with a vague series of curves suggestive of human anatomy, narrowing in at the 'waist' and broadening at the 'shoulders'. Knuckles taped and dressed in track pants of black and a super-classy wife beater, he is moving through a series of snapping kicks, all delivered to the same point on the bag. Even without his mutation, he's fast.
Jean-Paul is not the only one who has sought physical activity: Nadia is sans canine companion, but otherwise bears fairly solid evidence of being just-in from a run that probably involved a great deal of bouncing up and over things as well as going around them. Her hair is bound back into a long ponytail, and while her workout wear of track-pants and black t-shirt is slightly classier than JP's wifebeater, it is only just. As she enters, at a long and slightly sidelong sidle, she is taping her hands.
Jean-Paul glances over at Nadia, marking her in his peripheral vision and giving her a brief nod. The noise of foot striking bag is a steady, rhythmic sound that does not falter at her approach. His placing is precise, and his balance is quiet good.
Nadia's answering nod is coupled with a sliver of a smile, genuine but slight. She takes a moment to watch Jean-Paul, to take in the lean lines and precise placement -- but where someone else might get a welcoming brush of empathic hello, he does not. Instead, smile still slight, she moves to take up position at one of the other bags. Her steady rhythm, once she settles into it, is a mixed bag between hand-strikes and kicks, but she is not quite so precise as Jean-Paul. Not quite.
While Nadia is getting all PERVY at Jean-Paul (2 out of 3 people surveyed agree!), he is fairly focused on what he is doing. It's not the world's most exciting routine, it's true, but precision is important. He looks over at Nadia, watching her to try to determine the flavor of her style. He is a kickboxer. She is a ... (perv) ...?
It is not Nadia's fault if Jean-Paul is easy on the eyes. Her style, (beyond perv) is a little bit harder to pin down: it bears a solid grounding somewhere, but like many aspects of Nadia (many, many aspects, both deliberate and non) there is influence from many hands, many teachers. (There is a little al-Sahra in there, a little Jean-Marie, a little Pete, a little Remy, a little--) It is the weight of his eyes on her that finally draws her attention again, and she takes a smooth step back from the bag to tip her face up to his, eyebrows lifted. Hello?
She's a mutt. Got it. Shaking his head when she looks toward him, Jean-Paul rolls his shoulder to shake away the idea that he might have something to say. Instead, he shifts, moving to work his other side in a series of high, sweeping kicks. The arc described by his leg puts a slightly higher demand on his body, and his breath comes a little faster at the end of an already quite long workout.
Totally a mutt. Nadia breathes a breath that is not quite a laugh, but is definitely acknowledgement. Okay then. If there is a linger in her look, it is in appreciation of his technique -- but she turns back to her own workout before it can stretch too long. Nadia will never be a brawler, but there is something sharp-edged and potentially brutal about the application of fists to bag, over and over.
For all the precision, there's an edge, a strength, a grace that is lacking in Jean-Paul's strikes, as if he isn't quite /on/: ill, perhaps, or just off his game. Or maybe there's something else wrong entirely. He finishes shortly enough, and steps back, sweating and breathess, to wipe his brow with a towel at his bag. He picks up his bottle of water and takes a sip, watching Nadia absently.
In contrast (isn't it always), Nadia moves like she is finally back on hers, like she's just come out of a long illness and regained her strength. (Or, or, like it is something else entirely.) The more she focuses, the more she finds her rhythm, the looser her shields get: unintrusively so, but there is an increased background awareness of the people (person, singular) in her presence. She moves like a fighter, yes, but there is a joy in this that is absent from many other things. All good things must come to an end, however: eventually her blows slow, cease entirely.
As Nadia's shields dip, Jean-Paul stands revealed as a knot of strained tension: like a rubber band stretched, stretched, stretched that can't possibly have much farther left to go before it snaps. Fatigue is a constant, low-level thing, such that he isn't even aware of it. It barely shows, except as a slight shadowing in his eyes ... but then, most people have been losing sleep for one reason or another, lately. He stands up against the wall near the punching bags with a towel tucked over his shoulder and a bottle of water in hand. He has been Working Out and now he isn't. When Nadia stops, he looks away.
Kelsey is a brighter spot to Nadia's senses than Jean-Paul. That is not to say that she is a bright presence to the naked eye: she is not bubbly or beaming. But there is a sense of relief there, like a breath that was held and can now be sighed out into contentment. She is secure now. She is safe. Her power warms in her head, filling her mind with presence and language. Dressed in workout clothes, her bag slung over her shoulder, Nadia earns her first glance on the basis of movement -- even if it soon stops. Jean-Paul's presence is noted soon after and earns the slight hint of a smile, though nothing too large, considering. She settles near him along the wall, tosses her bag down, and greets him with a quiet but warm "Hey." She uses the wall for balance to start off with some one-legged stretches.
Nadia hooks a hand around the top of the practice bag, sets her forehead against it for a long moment. She is a little greedy in her lapse: she doesn't bind awareness back down until after Kelsey has crossed her mental awareness, as well. If there is a commonality of attitude it is here: she is whole again as she peels away from the bag to begin the routine of cool-down versus warmup. (If her heart goes out to Jean-Paul, she keeps that tucked away, to herself.) They both get, in their turn, a nod and a shivery, slivery smile. "Hello, Jean-Paul. Kelsey."
"Hey," Jean-Paul says, monosyllabic greeting turned toward Kelsey and Nadia both. He doesn't quite manage a smile, but he looks a little less like someone killed his puppy as he takes another sip from his water bottle.
"Hey," Kelsey replies to Nadia. Her gaze on Jean-Paul is quickly assessing, but she works to keep worry and sympathy off of her expression. She sets her forearm on the wall above her head and sets her forehead on it as she stretches out a thigh. "Good workout?" It's hard to tell who she's talking to. Maybe both.
Since it is hard to tell, Nadia answers, "Yes." Even at the end of her workout, she is still a little restless. Good for cooldown, bad for -- not being restless? Something. She is still moving, stretching here, shifting on her heels there. Once she has answered the question, she turns it on Jean-Paul with a lift of eyebrows.
"Mm." Agreement vague, Jean-Paul tips his head. His breath has yet to even out entirely again, coming just a little fast -- but returning fairly readily to resting state. He isn't bothering to stretch. He is going ball up into a tiny cramp and die.
"Anyone heard anything yet?" Kelsey asks quietly, refraining from lifting her head from her arm, but shifting it to be able to look at at least Jean-Paul -- and maybe a little glimpse of Nadia if she's close enough. The subject of her question remains unspoken, but there is a sober weight to her words that suggest its importance.
At least Jean-Paul has water, which Nadia is absent. She is probably close enough -- but if she isn't, the shake of her head is probably lost.
"No." Dragging his thumb along the arch of his brow, Jean-Paul says, "Waiting. Just -- waiting."
"Right." Kelsey lets out a long breath and drops her arm so she can switch which leg she's stretching. She settles her newly-freed hand against the wall lightly, but doesn't resume her previous positioning. "Fuck."
"It is hardest," Nadia finally speaks up again, with a little look from Jean-Paul to Kelsey, then back. "Waiting."
"Yes." Hand falling, Jean-Paul press his fingers against the wall at his back. He leans, head tipped backward, and then rolls his shoulders forward with a forward bow of his head. Stretching away from the wall, he straightens. "It is."
"Least we actually know who this guy is now," Kelsey says, though her tone is not all /that/ enthused, considering the clean background check analysis dug up. "I mean--" She twists to set her back to the wall and stretch first one arm over her head, falling silent.
Nadia laces her fingers together against the back of her neck, even though she isn't leaning against the wall, too. "Does that-- help us? We have his name, but that can be changed."
Jean-Paul shakes his head, tension coiling briefly tighter before he makes an effort to release it. He drops his towel down toward his bag and then scoops both up in a grab. "I'm going to go get something to eat," he says instead.
"It--" Kelsey's scrapes her teeth across her bottom lip. "--depends. But -- no, nothing immediately useful." She glances at Jean-Paul as he grabs his things, lips briefly pursing. "I'll see you later?" Her words holds just slightly more weight than your average farewell, marking it as an actual question. Or request, even, of a quiet sort.
Nadia's expression skews habitually frownish, and she unlaces her hands to drop both at her sides. "That is what I thought," is quietly frustrated -- but she looks up, looks over at JP and nods, once. "I will see you soon," she says. It is weighted, but differently than Kelseys: assurance-intent, rather than question-hope.
"Sure," Jean-Paul says, without weight at all. It's absent, with a nod tipped back over his shoulder toward Kelsey and Nadia as he makes his way toward the locker room and the showers. "Later," he says to them both.
Kelsey nods back silently with the mildest of eases in her expression. She switches which arm she's stretching and watches Jean-Paul go for a moment before drawing her eyes away to the neutrality of the punching bags.
Nadia lingers long enough that her exit is not on Jean-Paul's heels, though when she makes hers -- after a lifted wave goodbye to Kelsey -- she aims out, rather than toward the locker room. She will, apparently, get her shower at home.
Kelsey's hands are occupied in her stretches, but she does lift her chin in a responding farewell to Nadia. Eventually her stretches are complete, her hands are wrapped, and her workout commences.
JP: not very good company.
My greatest fear is that Remaal al-Sahra will strike before we finish. Move to retrieve Tamara themselves since negotiations -- well. They haven't called back.
It isn't her going back or them taking her that I worry about, but rather some tragic accident. Her death. If they took her, if she went back there would still be hope. We can just steal her away again. That's how we do things: we can't reach al-Sahra's ranking pieces, so we whittle away at their pawns, pulling them from the board. We can't bring down their organization, so we kick pebbles--
I am tired of writing about them. Talking about them. Thinking about them. Maybe it is the weight of the Langleys; maybe it is being trapped, bound to the ground; maybe it is how little we know for how much we've done.
Maybe it's something simpler.
Maybe it's all of it.
I want to fly.
=XF= Gymnasium - Training Facilities - Chemeketa Military Base
The enormous room caters to a wide variety of athletic tastes and boasts the usual complement of sports equipment. The floors are mapped out with designs for a basketball court, while in another corner a huge cushy blue rubber mat is rolled out at the center of a variety of gymnastic equipment, and stretches beyond to surround a set of punching bags, heavy and light, that hang in one corner. A climbing wall stretches hiiigh above. A smaller, long studio room with a window set into the wall is located right off the entrance. Inside, mirrored walls are bisected with a bar and the floor is religiously kept smooth and clean. Sitting outside the room is equipment for dance and fencing.
Dinner will be served soon in the cafeteria, but Jean-Paul has lost track of the time. Running, jumping, climbing tr-- walls ... and now he's in front of the punching bags. It hangs with a vague series of curves suggestive of human anatomy, narrowing in at the 'waist' and broadening at the 'shoulders'. Knuckles taped and dressed in track pants of black and a super-classy wife beater, he is moving through a series of snapping kicks, all delivered to the same point on the bag. Even without his mutation, he's fast.
Jean-Paul is not the only one who has sought physical activity: Nadia is sans canine companion, but otherwise bears fairly solid evidence of being just-in from a run that probably involved a great deal of bouncing up and over things as well as going around them. Her hair is bound back into a long ponytail, and while her workout wear of track-pants and black t-shirt is slightly classier than JP's wifebeater, it is only just. As she enters, at a long and slightly sidelong sidle, she is taping her hands.
Jean-Paul glances over at Nadia, marking her in his peripheral vision and giving her a brief nod. The noise of foot striking bag is a steady, rhythmic sound that does not falter at her approach. His placing is precise, and his balance is quiet good.
Nadia's answering nod is coupled with a sliver of a smile, genuine but slight. She takes a moment to watch Jean-Paul, to take in the lean lines and precise placement -- but where someone else might get a welcoming brush of empathic hello, he does not. Instead, smile still slight, she moves to take up position at one of the other bags. Her steady rhythm, once she settles into it, is a mixed bag between hand-strikes and kicks, but she is not quite so precise as Jean-Paul. Not quite.
While Nadia is getting all PERVY at Jean-Paul (2 out of 3 people surveyed agree!), he is fairly focused on what he is doing. It's not the world's most exciting routine, it's true, but precision is important. He looks over at Nadia, watching her to try to determine the flavor of her style. He is a kickboxer. She is a ... (perv) ...?
It is not Nadia's fault if Jean-Paul is easy on the eyes. Her style, (beyond perv) is a little bit harder to pin down: it bears a solid grounding somewhere, but like many aspects of Nadia (many, many aspects, both deliberate and non) there is influence from many hands, many teachers. (There is a little al-Sahra in there, a little Jean-Marie, a little Pete, a little Remy, a little--) It is the weight of his eyes on her that finally draws her attention again, and she takes a smooth step back from the bag to tip her face up to his, eyebrows lifted. Hello?
She's a mutt. Got it. Shaking his head when she looks toward him, Jean-Paul rolls his shoulder to shake away the idea that he might have something to say. Instead, he shifts, moving to work his other side in a series of high, sweeping kicks. The arc described by his leg puts a slightly higher demand on his body, and his breath comes a little faster at the end of an already quite long workout.
Totally a mutt. Nadia breathes a breath that is not quite a laugh, but is definitely acknowledgement. Okay then. If there is a linger in her look, it is in appreciation of his technique -- but she turns back to her own workout before it can stretch too long. Nadia will never be a brawler, but there is something sharp-edged and potentially brutal about the application of fists to bag, over and over.
For all the precision, there's an edge, a strength, a grace that is lacking in Jean-Paul's strikes, as if he isn't quite /on/: ill, perhaps, or just off his game. Or maybe there's something else wrong entirely. He finishes shortly enough, and steps back, sweating and breathess, to wipe his brow with a towel at his bag. He picks up his bottle of water and takes a sip, watching Nadia absently.
In contrast (isn't it always), Nadia moves like she is finally back on hers, like she's just come out of a long illness and regained her strength. (Or, or, like it is something else entirely.) The more she focuses, the more she finds her rhythm, the looser her shields get: unintrusively so, but there is an increased background awareness of the people (person, singular) in her presence. She moves like a fighter, yes, but there is a joy in this that is absent from many other things. All good things must come to an end, however: eventually her blows slow, cease entirely.
As Nadia's shields dip, Jean-Paul stands revealed as a knot of strained tension: like a rubber band stretched, stretched, stretched that can't possibly have much farther left to go before it snaps. Fatigue is a constant, low-level thing, such that he isn't even aware of it. It barely shows, except as a slight shadowing in his eyes ... but then, most people have been losing sleep for one reason or another, lately. He stands up against the wall near the punching bags with a towel tucked over his shoulder and a bottle of water in hand. He has been Working Out and now he isn't. When Nadia stops, he looks away.
Kelsey is a brighter spot to Nadia's senses than Jean-Paul. That is not to say that she is a bright presence to the naked eye: she is not bubbly or beaming. But there is a sense of relief there, like a breath that was held and can now be sighed out into contentment. She is secure now. She is safe. Her power warms in her head, filling her mind with presence and language. Dressed in workout clothes, her bag slung over her shoulder, Nadia earns her first glance on the basis of movement -- even if it soon stops. Jean-Paul's presence is noted soon after and earns the slight hint of a smile, though nothing too large, considering. She settles near him along the wall, tosses her bag down, and greets him with a quiet but warm "Hey." She uses the wall for balance to start off with some one-legged stretches.
Nadia hooks a hand around the top of the practice bag, sets her forehead against it for a long moment. She is a little greedy in her lapse: she doesn't bind awareness back down until after Kelsey has crossed her mental awareness, as well. If there is a commonality of attitude it is here: she is whole again as she peels away from the bag to begin the routine of cool-down versus warmup. (If her heart goes out to Jean-Paul, she keeps that tucked away, to herself.) They both get, in their turn, a nod and a shivery, slivery smile. "Hello, Jean-Paul. Kelsey."
"Hey," Jean-Paul says, monosyllabic greeting turned toward Kelsey and Nadia both. He doesn't quite manage a smile, but he looks a little less like someone killed his puppy as he takes another sip from his water bottle.
"Hey," Kelsey replies to Nadia. Her gaze on Jean-Paul is quickly assessing, but she works to keep worry and sympathy off of her expression. She sets her forearm on the wall above her head and sets her forehead on it as she stretches out a thigh. "Good workout?" It's hard to tell who she's talking to. Maybe both.
Since it is hard to tell, Nadia answers, "Yes." Even at the end of her workout, she is still a little restless. Good for cooldown, bad for -- not being restless? Something. She is still moving, stretching here, shifting on her heels there. Once she has answered the question, she turns it on Jean-Paul with a lift of eyebrows.
"Mm." Agreement vague, Jean-Paul tips his head. His breath has yet to even out entirely again, coming just a little fast -- but returning fairly readily to resting state. He isn't bothering to stretch. He is going ball up into a tiny cramp and die.
"Anyone heard anything yet?" Kelsey asks quietly, refraining from lifting her head from her arm, but shifting it to be able to look at at least Jean-Paul -- and maybe a little glimpse of Nadia if she's close enough. The subject of her question remains unspoken, but there is a sober weight to her words that suggest its importance.
At least Jean-Paul has water, which Nadia is absent. She is probably close enough -- but if she isn't, the shake of her head is probably lost.
"No." Dragging his thumb along the arch of his brow, Jean-Paul says, "Waiting. Just -- waiting."
"Right." Kelsey lets out a long breath and drops her arm so she can switch which leg she's stretching. She settles her newly-freed hand against the wall lightly, but doesn't resume her previous positioning. "Fuck."
"It is hardest," Nadia finally speaks up again, with a little look from Jean-Paul to Kelsey, then back. "Waiting."
"Yes." Hand falling, Jean-Paul press his fingers against the wall at his back. He leans, head tipped backward, and then rolls his shoulders forward with a forward bow of his head. Stretching away from the wall, he straightens. "It is."
"Least we actually know who this guy is now," Kelsey says, though her tone is not all /that/ enthused, considering the clean background check analysis dug up. "I mean--" She twists to set her back to the wall and stretch first one arm over her head, falling silent.
Nadia laces her fingers together against the back of her neck, even though she isn't leaning against the wall, too. "Does that-- help us? We have his name, but that can be changed."
Jean-Paul shakes his head, tension coiling briefly tighter before he makes an effort to release it. He drops his towel down toward his bag and then scoops both up in a grab. "I'm going to go get something to eat," he says instead.
"It--" Kelsey's scrapes her teeth across her bottom lip. "--depends. But -- no, nothing immediately useful." She glances at Jean-Paul as he grabs his things, lips briefly pursing. "I'll see you later?" Her words holds just slightly more weight than your average farewell, marking it as an actual question. Or request, even, of a quiet sort.
Nadia's expression skews habitually frownish, and she unlaces her hands to drop both at her sides. "That is what I thought," is quietly frustrated -- but she looks up, looks over at JP and nods, once. "I will see you soon," she says. It is weighted, but differently than Kelseys: assurance-intent, rather than question-hope.
"Sure," Jean-Paul says, without weight at all. It's absent, with a nod tipped back over his shoulder toward Kelsey and Nadia as he makes his way toward the locker room and the showers. "Later," he says to them both.
Kelsey nods back silently with the mildest of eases in her expression. She switches which arm she's stretching and watches Jean-Paul go for a moment before drawing her eyes away to the neutrality of the punching bags.
Nadia lingers long enough that her exit is not on Jean-Paul's heels, though when she makes hers -- after a lifted wave goodbye to Kelsey -- she aims out, rather than toward the locker room. She will, apparently, get her shower at home.
Kelsey's hands are occupied in her stretches, but she does lift her chin in a responding farewell to Nadia. Eventually her stretches are complete, her hands are wrapped, and her workout commences.
JP: not very good company.