Gym - OTA

[treadswater]

There was a time when Annie was in a gym at least six days out of seven. Ages eleven to sixteen, during her time at the Career Academy (a slightly grandiose name for quite a glorified school club, but it wasn't until Annie was a victor herself that she recognized the self-depreciating humour in the name). Before school and after school, training and training and training. After that, when she was washed out, no gyms, but she kept up the physical activity - and exceeded it, fishing being what it is. As a victor, she ran most mornings, or swum. Worked out. Sparred with Finnick. She'd noticed if she didn't, her mind got worse, her fits of hysteria (anxiety attacks, Beverly had called them) more frequent.

But it's been six months since she's done anything properly physical regularly. When her mood's been stable, she's turned the holodeck into a running track, but that hasn't been nearly anything like five or six days out of seven.

She's twitchy, which goes a way to explain how she winds up in the gymnasium, trailing her fingers over the bo staffs in their rack. She'd been good at spears in the Academy, and although the idea of stabbing now makes her uneasy, she's still good at wielding a staff. She can get her fiancé (tall, built, twice her size and lethal) on his back.

Annie picks up one of the staffs and hefts it, giving it an experimental twirl. It's well-balanced, and she smiles, quiet and shy and delighted.

But despite that delight, and how practically she's already dressed (boots, trousers, simple blouse under her loose jacket, hair braided), she doesn't make any further movements towards any of the practice mats.

Comments

[treadswater]

Knowing what to do has never been the problem for Annie Cresta. She knows. She can watch, analyse, react, all trained to be dirty and competent and, if possible, showy.

Actually doing, now, that's the issue, isn't it?

The twirl of the staff slows as the dark-haired woman passes, and finishes as she walks onto the mat. But Annie doesn't put it away. It's too obvious, oh someone is here, I should run. And, besides.

The woman's movements are fascinating. Trained, clearly, but not really how Annie knows. Some movements are familiar, but only because there are only so many ways to really kick.

She rests her staff on her shoulder, the movement relaxed and comfortable, and watches. She's maybe being obvious about it, but it's interesting, and so she focuses. Analyses. Tries to see the patterns in what the woman is doing.

[aehallh]

Irian was not an intelligence officer for over fifteen years without knowing when she's being watched. This time, though, she's not bothered by the attention: it's curiosity, she guesses. Not someone who's trying to figure out her fighting style in order to exploit it later. She could be wrong on that count, but she doesn't think so.

There aren't actually a lot of kicks involved in this particular form; llaekh-aer'l is about grounding oneself in the Earth, and the feet usually (not always, but usually) stay put. Failing Earth, the metal of a ship's deck will do; it's the same thing, anyway, where the Elements are concerned. She completes the sequence she started, focused, without rushing, and only then glances over to the other woman in the room.

"Am I interrupting?" she asks, and there's the very slightest breath of humor in the otherwise dry words that makes it clear she knows she was being watched. She doesn't seem offended, though, pausing a moment to take the human woman's measure; one of her own hands moves, casually, to sweep a loose strand of her hair back behind one pointed ear.

This girl, whoever she is, knows at least something about combat — it's in the set of her body, the casual way the staff rests over her shoulder. Irian doesn't have to know human kinesics, specifically, to recognize that much.

[treadswater]

The humour is dry, very slight, but Annie didn't spent ten years out of the past twelve with the victor Naia Barros without being able to pick up on humour that's more suggestion than anything else.

So, she smiles back. A little.

"No. I, uh. I wasn't really gonna do anything. Just...was curious."

She swings the staff down from her shoulder, wincing only a little when she realizes where she'd held it - it's a bit too obvious, a bit too comfortable. She holds the staff in both hands (small hands, slender fingers) and lets her arms hang down in front of her. It's still casual, comfortable, but without any real chance of swagger.

She hopes. She's a small woman, even by district standards, and she's spent a lot of time relying on appearing frail, mad, to be safe. Not a threat. (Outside her Games, anyway. In them, she knew how to fake a Career's confidence well.) She can, and does, look at people, weigh them up and speculate on threat-levels. Potential ways of killing them. Always. Everyone.

(Despite how comfortable she winds up being around other people who are trained in violence.)

Her muscle tone has softened during her time here (although her loose clothes would hide it anyway), and her gaze is darting, shy and nervous, but her stance is balanced, feet shoulder-width apart. Unconsciously grounded.

"Um. If, if you don't mind? The, the style. It's." She doesn't say coherent, although she thinks it. There's an elegance to the way she sees people train in hand-to-hand that she's not used to. Instead, she finishes with, "Is there are a reason you're keeping your feet on the ground so much?"

Rocky terrain, maybe, where it wouldn't do to stumble.