ten_fwd | (no subject)

Current Location: Deck 12, Gymnasium

Entry tags:

(no subject)

He hasn't, it's true, had a lot of energy on a lot of the days he's been here.

Finnick tends to waver between the extremes: some days, he's too listless to leave his house unless Annie drags him, and some days he has the sort of restless energy that drives him to run and run along the breach and then swim for hours, to take a trident and drill himself over and over like he used to when he was in training.

Ever since the Quarter Quell was announced, he and Annie have been training together harder than ever, though neither of them ever really stopped training, not even after they'd won. Not until they wound up here; so much of his time here, Finnick's been too caught up in Annie to want to even be out of her sight.

(He'll never forget what it felt like to think she was dead.)

Now, though, he is restless, and his explorations of the ship have brought him as far as the gymnasium, so he's started to make regular visits there. It helps to keep his mind clear and his body focused. Panem or not, this place is still somewhere he needs to be alert. He can't fall into that haze again. Not with Annie and Katniss here to protect. Not with Prim and Peeta, Peeta for whom he'd risked his life over and over in the arena.

So, dressed in an athletic shirt that hugs his upper body and leaves his finely sculpted arms bare and a pair of comfortably loose pants, he heads for the gym and into the martial arts area. He starts at a punching bag, and it begins as simple boxing. His form's good; boxing is taught around Panem, even in those districts that don't train their tributes. But as he warms to the fighting, it becomes less simple, less orthodox, less like a practised art than a survival skill. He's not just punching now; he's kicking, high and low, striking with different blows, and if there's a pattern to the drill, it's not easily recognizable.

What is recognizable, however, is how many of the blows he lands would incapacitate or kill a human opponent, if delivered with the right speed and power.

That becomes even more obvious when he moves on from the kickboxing to collect a staff and start running through moves on one of the mats, moves that sometimes look like he's practicing for a sword, and sometimes for a spear. It's with the staff in his hands that he looks truly dangerous, moving with a natural grace that's deceptively easy to watch.

Finnick learned to fight to kill.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Despite needing to take it easy for a while longer, Akito still does need to keep his body strength up. This means regular visits to the gym with Steve, doing cardio and the occasional resistance training to make sure his muscle mass didn't atrophy while he was in a coma. His stamina is low - frustratingly so, and Akito often finds himself wondering if it's a result of his injury or if it's just another result of having a weak body in general.

On the days that he goes without Steve's company, Akito warms up with cardio and resistance, then moves straight over to a free-standing kicking bag and begins taking his frustrations out on that. His body remembers what his mind does not - the way to hold his body and the flow of energy from one leg through to the other. Each kick hits its target with a satisfying smack until Akito aims for the highest one; a quick jump and an aerial roundhouse kick that connects hard enough that the target snaps off, leaving Akito landing on the ground with a squeak of surprise.

Okay. So maybe he has pretty good leg strength and form.

Ziva did as well--skills drilled into her by her father, honed by practice with her brother, even at a young age. Further perfected by her service--military, Mossad, NCIS. She could and has killed people with her bare hands.

It took practice. Discipline. And it calmed her mind, something she desperately needed after the last few weeks.

The gym was hardly deserted at the hours she usually frequented it, and she didn't expect it to be now, later than she usually preferred. She wasn't disappointed.

She watches, as she moves to the mats and begins stretching out--and she recognizes him, a young man who seemed to have some connection to her assigned roommate. Judging from how often she's seen him around. He's skilled, she can tell. Enough to challenge her, she thinks. She can see the potential killing blows in his strikes on the sandbag, and his work with the staff even more so.

"Would you care to have an opponent?" she asks lightly, prepared to go to the bag herself if he refuses. But she's curious, and there's no harm in asking.

So many of the luxuries Fatima had enjoyed back home--regular access to food, a comfortable bed, a training gym--she'd lamented in Zelien. Having regular access to them again still felt strange. Something she couldn't trust. Which was why she walked around with a blanket in her bag, with as many pears as she could carry. As though, at any moment, the bottom would fall out and she'd be scrambling again.

The gym was another matter. She'd explored it a few times, finding the alien and the familiar side by side in new and interesting ways. It had been a long time since Fatima exercised for exercise's sake. Plenty of running for her life, sure. Beating up Dean Winchester, of course. But training? Actual training?

A part of her was reluctant. As if, by accepting that she could exercise for pleasure, she was finally accepting that she was free from COMPASS, for better or for worse.

But the day finally came.

She didn't have appropriate clothes for a workout, but she had one of Sam's shirts in her bag. Putting it on, along with a pair of leggings, she made her way inside. And she tried to forget about the fact that it smelled like him and she missed him so much it hurt.

The punching bag was her favorite. And it had been a long time. But as she crossed over, she noticed a guy performing some strange combination of martial arts she'd never seen before with a staff. Idly, as she made the pretenses of stretching, she watched. Her mind absently filled in a story. It was a way to pass the time.

Yuna had been taking trips the the gym usually three times a week at the most random hours of the day. She was used to fighting things head on and training her body was secondary to that. Since she has been on the ship she has spent more time with form and muscle training than she did trying to fight. She still felt uneasy practicing magic on a space ship so she stuck with simple combat moves.

She didn't bother changing wearing her usual clothing as she walked into the large gym. Her eyes were immediately taken in by the boys technique and she found herself staring as he practiced. She wasn't shy so she walked forward waiting until he had a lull in his set to speak.

"Want a training partner?" She didn't mind if he said no but he looked strong and she wanted someone that would challenge her in a fight.

THWACK!

The sound is loud, when Finnick's staff is suddenly halted by the impact of another staff, held in the strong grip of a pair of clawed, green hands. The creature - clearly not human - strikes an impressive figure, broad-shouldered and standing at six-foot-four. He's dressed in black; not his usual leathers but pants and a long-sleeved shirt made out of cloth, loose enough to not hinder his movements. His long, white hair is tied back, and yellow eyes not unlike a reptiles studies Finnick with clear interest.

"Would having an opponent interest you?"

This is not what the old Wraith had planned or sought after when he entered the gymnasium, having simply thought to give himself some exercise and clear his head now that the demanding work he's been doing in the lab is finished. He'll be needing new habits and routines now, he knows this. So when he happens to see a human who appears to know what he's doing, who looks like he could put up a challenge, it's simply too tempting not to step in.

Marika didn't. Learn to fight to kill that is. Her sword work is almost pure Flynning.

(If she kills someone, even if it's 'killing' and a staged part of the show, it's with a gun. Swords might be a weapon, but mostly they are a symbol.

Talking is, of course, the very best weapon.)

Still she stops, practice cutlass in hand, and watches while Finnick destroys wave after ghostly wave of... attackers? Opposition at the very least.

The movement is actually prettier than he is.

Okay... so, was dreaming of Zeetha a sign or a warning? Either way, it had Agatha out, hunting for some place to work out. If she honestly couldn't find one, good. She could go back to bed. But if Zeetha showed up and she hadn't even tried...

It was hard to tell the difference between her training, and her trying to kill someone, but Agatha was mildly sure it was actually possible for it to be more painful... Maybe.

So she managed to get the replicator thing to give her an adapted version of the brown training dress. Her adaptation covered more of her chest and included tight thigh length shorts. She pulled a great coat over the mess and kept it closed, in case she didn't find anything.

Unfortunately... she did.

She sighed when she found the gym. Now she had no choice. But... at least without Zeetha pounding on her with a long stick, she should gather less bruises... right?

And then she saw Finnick, with his staff, and sighed again. She watched until he seemed to be at a natural break, then approached. "If I come in to train, are you going to hit me with that thing?"

Laura spends a lot of time in the gym, or training on the holodecks, training is always how she's filled her free time. Reading novels, braiding her hair, doing her nails, are activities that would never occur to her.

She arrives after Finnick, and curious, finds a place to watch him, crouching down and balancing on a thin bar. He intrigues her, he is one of the first people she's seen training with any degree of lethality.

"You need an opponent."

He hasn't actually spoken with Johanna's roommate, but he's noticed her. Johanna, he knows, can take care of herself. She'd ably proven that in her first Games, and again in the Quarter Quell, even if he hadn't known just how many ways she'd found of taking care of herself, standing up for herself, ways that he'd been too frightened to take.

He and Johanna, though, they watch out for each other, in a guarded way that doesn't admit to anything more than a similarity of circumstance, for all that's only a fraction of the truth. And so he'd paid attention to who her roommate was, has watched the woman when he's seen her around the ship. There are things about her that interest him, so when she calls out to him, he pauses, the staff halfway through a motion that, were it a trident, would knock away a weapon and leave him able to stab at his opponent's chest.

He straightens, resting one end of it on the staff, and studies her. Shorter than him by a few inches, but with a definite strength in her stature and confidence in her bearing that he'd noticed before. He can't pick her accent, but he's heard many here of which that's true.

She'd probably say the same of his, faintly district as it is.

He nods. "If you're up to it," he tells her, slipping into the cocky confidence he wears so readily.

"It's Ziva, right? Ziva David?"

He'd noted the name when he'd consulted the computer to find out where Johanna's room was.

He's aware of what's going on around him in the gym, because a tribute who doesn't pay attention is a tribute who winds up dead, and he's been taught that over and over again, and taught it himself. Because sometimes, having seen what someone else doesn't is the difference between living and dying, and a victor needs all the edges towards living they can get.

So of course he notices the petite teenager working out nearby. Notices, assesses the tiny frame, judges the age -- mid to late teens, hard to pick the age. Hard, even, to pick whether it's a boy or a girl. There's a lot more strength than it looks like there should be in that small frame, to judge by the kicks, and there's a nimble agility there, too.

Of course, mentors don't get to see their opponents' fighting skills prior to the arena, but they learn to make quick judgments about who has them.

So Finnick watches, sidelong, with interest, his hands twirling the staff so he doesn't look entirely idle.

It's only when the kid makes an impressive but entirely too flashy kick that leaves him breaking the target and falling to the ground with a squeak.

"You all right there?" he asks, dryly.

Picking himself up and brushing himself off, Akito finds he isn't embarrassed by what happened - he's too intrigued. What else does he need to learn about his muscle memory? The man's question doesn't surprise him, but it does startle him from his contemplations.

"Un! Yeah, I'm fine! Just trying to figure out what I know, ne?"

"Enjoying the view?"

He doesn't say it with any sign of annoyance. Actually, Finnick's tone is light, more dryly amused than anything, as he pauses in his pretenses at attacking to swing the staff up behind his back and twist it, moving it from one hand to the other, wrists flicking to make it spin behind him.

He's been watched, all his life, by strangers, because he's beautiful. He's still getting used to the fact that here, that's all it is. He's good-looking, in the way that draws stares, but here there's none of the hungry edge to the looks that he'd seen so often in the Capitol, where to be good-looking and famous turns a victor into a commodity.

There's no such edge to the way the woman's watching him, but he'd still noticed. He might not be in Panem anymore, but that doesn't stop twelve years' worth of watching, listening, and noticing what's happening around him.

They'd told him at the Academy if he didn't notice things, he'd be dead, and he still lives by that every day.

It's done him as well in the Capitol as it did in the arena.

It was a testimony to Fatima's intense loneliness that her immediate response wasn't something coy or flirtatious. She just...wasn't in that place. And a part of her wondered how long it would be before she stopped missing Sam every second. Probably a long time. You never really got over your first everything. At least, that's what she'd been told.

"Bojutsu or Naginatajutsu?" she asked instead, going into a full and real series of yoga stretches.

Frankly, she wasn't as well-versed in the styles involving a bo that she probably should have been. It was a clumsy weapon to carry around the streets of LA. Conspicuous. And frankly, anyone carrying one really ought to wear a sign that said 'I'm carrying a bigass stake. Ask me about it.'

Regular-sized stakes were much better.

It takes a certain sort of alertness to focus both on the rhythms of what is, to him, a drill and the room around him, but it's an alertness that any tribute needs if they're going to stand a chance of being a victor, so it was instilled in Finnick at the Academy, over a decade ago, and it's an ability that's been useful to him ever since. In his life, where the arena was supplanted by the games of the Capitol that seem so different and yet are not, it can be just as useful at a party as it was in the arena.

So he's aware of her presence, even if he hasn't looked at her properly. He's not surprised when the girl speaks. She's been standing there for a while, watching.

Finnick straightens from his lunge. His tousled bronze hair is damp with sweat now, and his shirt is clinging to his skin, outlining the muscles in his torso. He gives the girl a quick, assessing look, up and down. About the age of the oldest tributes. Slender and short, but her stance speaks of self-assurance.

And she's just been watching him spar. Even if people here don't know who he is or what won him his fame, she's seen the strength and ability in his blows. She has some idea what she's up against.

He knows better than to dismiss an opponent based on height or weight. His regular training partner, after all, is Annie.

"Sure," he says, taking a step back and nodding, an invitation to her to join him.

He really wasn't planning on using the gymnasium. More just see what was available.

But that had changed when he'd saw the young man. The same young man he'd seen around his room, they were neighbors but they'd only passed each other, he thought. Still, he hung back and watched, studying. He'd well aware of the difference between being trained to fight and fighting to survive - the latter matches his own 'style' as much as he has one. As much as it's been years since he's needed it.

But he knows lethal when he sees it. And if he's not mistaken - and he doesn't believe he is - then he's one of the people who live in the room where there was recently something of a loud argument.

He's normally silent when he walks, he has to make an effort to make sound. "I fear to ask how long ago something put a staff in your hands."

As alert and aware as Finnick is of his surrounds, always is, this man very nearly approaches without notice. He sees him only just before he speaks, and that's enough to get Finnick's attention, though he doesn't pause, doesn't turn, until the man addresses him. Then he straightens, spins the staff with a lazy flicking motion of his wrist, and jabs one end of it firmly into the mat.

The man's one of his neighbors, but he's not sure which of the two names that had been read out after Annie and Peeta's belongs to him.

"It was a trident."

Finnick says it in a matter-of-fact way, because it's little enough of a secret. Though he'd kept his skill with a trident so secret before his first Games there wasn't even one in the Cornucopia for him, all of Panem had made the assumption he'd grown up wielding one when they'd seen him in the arena.

Training aside, they'd been right.

He smiles, a flash of amusement dancing in the corner of his mouth.

"My parents were fisherfolk. I've been using tridents since I was a kid."

He always pays attention to how people react to his flirtation. Or how they don't react to it, which is more the case here. His comment had been casual, but it would have melted some of his fans in the Capitol, and from many people, it would have gotten a blush or a shy laugh. Something, at least.

No such reaction from the woman in the leggings and the baggy shirt. No reaction at all except to start stretching.

He blinks at the question. Blinks because, like so many things people have said to him, he has no idea what she's talking about. And as much as he hates to admit ignorance to a stranger, this is one situation where he's going to have to.

"Sorry," he admits, his smile apologetic. "You've lost me."

Yuna stepped forward getting a feel for the mat while watching the boy in front of her. She held out her hands as if to reach for something and then paused part way through. “Do you care what weapon I choose to use?”

She was able to use so many skills that she tried to keep them all practiced. Inevitably some fell to the wayside and she hoped to pull from them now. He was quick and so she knew that she would have to be quick as well. After a moment’s thought a soft glow formed in her palm reaching out to form unqiue sword. Her fingers curled around the familiar metal as it solidified in her hand. The blade shifted and moved like water looking unlike most other weapons.

"Is this alright?"

Fatima glanced up from a toe-touch, the shirt sliding down along the plane of her back, reminding her of Sam's fingers. "I can't place your style," she said. "It looks a little bit like Bojutsu and a little bit like Naginatajutsu."

And, frankly, a little bit like American Gladiators. But she'd learned long ago that no one placed that reference.

Multiverse or not.

"My aunt was trained in both. Is. Is trained in both. She tried to teach me but it just...wasn't my thing."

"I don't think it has a name."

Certainly never one that he's heard, and certainly neither of the words she'd said. They sound completely unfamiliar, and he's good with words, has studied them, in his own way, as he learned his victor's talent. (For all the good that study did; the poetry he publishes is consciously bad, though the Capitol laps it up. He can write well, but nobody sees the results when he does, nobody save Annie in the poem he'd given her the day she'd asked him to marry her.)

Even if the spearfighting style they'd taught at the Academy had a name, Finnick had added more than enough touches of his own to his technique that he no longer really fights like they taught him. At the Academy, it was always wisest never to show too many of your best moves. After all, you were going to wind up in the arena with one of the people you trained with.

"Call it fighting to survive meets spearfishing."

It's less inaccurate than his glib tone makes it sound. His hands are still dancing on the staff, but he draws it out from behind his back now and holds it in front of him very much like he would a trident.

"An interesting combination for a homebrew," she said, managing the faintest whisper of a smile. "But that works."

She rolled slowly back up straight, one vertebrae at a time, pressing her palms together in front of chest. She had never really used yoga for its meditative qualities. Too impatient, too angry. But she had to admit, even when she didn't use it for that purpose, it had a certain calming effect on her. It helped her to focus, to push away the extraneous emotions she didn't want to feel.

Even if only for a little while.

Although, she supposed wryly, talking shop was also good for her.

"Have you had to fight a lot of seabass lately?"

He'll apologize, later. He learned too young to sneak, too ruthlessly to hunt people, too thoroughly to never bee seen or heard until he chose to relieve himself to unlearn those skills here - even if he's trying to not frighten people around him.

"A trident then, my mistake." There's a quirk to his mouth that is there and gone in a flash - a slight smirk and then back to something more neutral. Given he's seen Finnick practicing moves that are meant to kill, he's not trying to offend. Bad form to start a war with the neighbors.

"My home, my condo over looked the bay. It was a small island, all three major cities overlooked the ocean. I've watched fishers for years, of all manners of catching. I've no doubt the son of them would use one - but fishing isn't what those moves were designed for." He wasn't sure if Finnick was lying about being the child of fishermen - but he didn't believe for a second that Finnick had wielded it as anything less than a weapon of conflict.

The trident he'd had with him when he arrived, that he'd taken from the Cornucopia in the arena, is still in his and Haymitch's room, where he can easily reach it from the bed if he needs, suddenly, to fight. He's seen no reason to think he will, but it's the way of victors to expect danger.

(Haymitch sleeps with a weapon. So does Annie, when she's alone.)

His neighbor had no way of knowing that the staff served as a substitute, just as it had done in his training, when the use of an actual bladed weapon was dangerous, would have run the risk of having the Academy shut down and the victors who ran it shot.

"Sounds like a nice place," he says, with a flickering smile of his own and a lazy ease in his words. "I miss an ocean view."

There'd been one in his home back in the fishing village where he was born and lived as a child. There isn't one in the expansive mansion he'd won with his victor's crown.

"You should see what I can do with a rope."

He taps the end of the staff on the mat so that it jumps, a little, and with smooth motions of his hands, picks it back up and twirls it a few times in front of him, before he lunges into a move that's classic spearfishing, stabbing down at the mat like he were cleaving the water ahead of a fish.

"But you're right," he says when he looks up. "Those moves were made to kill."

If he sounds unapologetic about that, it's because that's who and what he is, and has been for half his life: first a trainee, then a tribute, then a victor. Perhaps nobody here but those from Panem know that fact, but there's little use in hiding it.

It's as much a part of him now as his fisherman's heritage.

Edited 2015-04-01 14:37 (UTC)

"It was, yes." He missed it. "I always enjoyed living near the water." And far from people, though on Genosha that wasn't possible. But looking back at it, he had favored living on or near the water.

"Not something I tend to carry with me."

He had a chain, but that was coiled around his forearm and hidden by his sleeve - and mostly just for fidgeting. Still, he watches Finnick move, the spearfishing moves familiar.

"I've seen them before." And he'd hear that tone - not that he judges for it. He's been trained to kill for a long time, and had killed people long before he'd picked up a knife.

A tribute who doesn't pay attention is a tribute who's dead. And someone caught in Snow's games who doesn't pay attention misses the little details that can tell him when a situation's going wrong.

Finnick pays attention. So he's startled when the shape moves into his peripheral vision, a shape he hadn't heard approaching.

He's even more startled when a staff smacks against his, held with an iron strength, and for just a moment, his green eyes go wide, almost frightened. He's seen, in passing, many ... beings here who don't look human, even human as it is in the Capitol, which is sometimes so altered that it's barely recognizable, but his opponent now is something he would, until he saw those others in passing on this ship, have dismissed as a mutt. A horrific creation of the Capitol designed to frighten, to fight, to kill. But whatever -- whoever? -- this is, it has a voice, deep, resonant, and intelligent.

Those eyes, though, look like something out of a nightmare, and Finnick feels himself tense, in an instant. He pushes back against his opponent's staff automatically, defensively, like it's not just a sparring match.

A victor's instincts run deep.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 1 of 4