Doug and Laurie log: Dojo

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After the problems with Garrison, Laurie decides to try somewhere outside the school to get some training.



Laurie paused at the door to the Jujitsu school Dojo, watching as people passed by her and into the room. After her conversation with Ororo about the dangers of relying on her powers totally, she'd decided that she needed to get serious about the physical training. Unfortunately, she very much doubted Garrison would be interested in taking her back as a student, and besides, perhaps having an outside instructor, one who didn't know her from a bar of soap would make the difference.

She'd seen this place advertised at the Westchester library that last time she'd been there but hadn't had the nerve to actually come here till now. There seemed to be a good range of people inside, from teenagers close to her own age to people who might have been in their sixties.

Laurie wondered what the protocol for such things was, the whole 'joining a martial arts school' thing. Did you just go and talk to the person who looked the oldest? Was there some sort of secret handshake required, or maybe some weird martial arts bonding ritual?

She wished she knew someone here, that would make it easier.

Standard operating procedure at the dojo was that whenever a prospective new student came in, with that distinctive nervous not-sure-what-to-do look, that Master Lee would motion one of the black belts over to talk to them. The black belt would introduce the person to things, and do their best to put them at ease.

This evening, the black belt who got the somewhat imperious gesture was Doug, and he made his way all the way across the floor and bowed at the edge of the training space before he turned and saw just who the prospective new student was. "Laurie?" he asked, somewhat confused.

Laurie was tempted to look around for the genie for a moment but instead she smiled in a somewhat half-hearted way. "Hey Doug, I didn't know you went to this Dojo."

"Um, yeah. I have for a while now." Doug made a slight gesture toward his belt. "So, ah, what brings you here?"

He could guess, but it was probably a good idea for Laurie to say the words rather than assume.

"I, um...well, they said on the flier that they teach Jujitsu, and so I thought I'd come along and see what it was all about, and ask if they could train me." Laurie said, words almost falling over each other in her nervousness.

She paused after she'd said the last, waiting for him to shoot her down. She supposed she could always find some other place, but the research she'd done showed this place had the class times and location that she wanted.

Nervousness radiated off Laurie in waves. It didn't take a mutant talent of reading body language to tell Doug that. Nervousness was pretty normal for a beginning student. He smiled reassuringly. "Master Lee is a good instructor," he told her. "Tough, but fair."

Good lord, was he tough, Doug thought, remembering the evening spent on his knuckles while he was lectured about courtesy and respect. But Laurie would have a while before she saw the tougher side that Master Lee showed to his more experienced students.

"What...I mean, um, do I need to actually do anything? Or can I...is it okay to watch for a little bit?" Laurie asked, attempting not to fidget, finally clasping her hands behind her back in an effort to control herself.

"C'mon," Doug said, nudging her gently toward the floor. "I'll check with Master Lee and see if I can walk you through some basics." He ducked ahead of her to where Master Lee was directing his students. A short conversation led to the older man waving Doug back toward where Laurie stood with a nod. "Okay, so the first thing to learn about is that we bow when we come on to the floor..." he told her, demonstrating as he did.

***

Laurie stood before Master Lee, her urge to fidget almost overwhelming. This was someone new, someone she didn't know and who would have authority over her. Despite Doug's assaurences that everything would be fine, she wasn't sure she really believed him. She'd had as much experience with people being uncomfortable, or downright hostile with mutants as she'd had with people being accepting and kind.

"M-Master Lee?" she asked quietly, voice barely carrying over the noise of students warming down from practice.

Doug had ducked off to change out with Master Lee's permission, disappearing into the back where the locker rooms where.

"Have a seat, Miss Collins. I don't bite." Master Lee said, gesturing at the twin rows of chairs in the front of the school.

In twenty-five years of teaching jujitsu, he'd never bitten a student yet. "Douglas mentioned that you just graduated from the same high school that he went to." He said, pausing to leave the obviously utterly terrified girl an opening, if she was willing to take it.

"Yes, Master Lee." Laurie replied, sitting in one of the chairs he'd indicated, her hands immediately resting in her lap in an attempt to hide her nervousness. "Only just recently, and it was...you see, um. Well, I guess you could say it was a 'special' school, for people with specific gifts."

Her attempts at hiding her nervousness weren't helping at all, and in fact were like a giant beacon that suggested that Laurie was in fact, just slightly to the left of terrified. "You don't complain about push ups in Russian, do you?" Master Lee just barely glanced over his shoulder towards the locker rooms. "If I have one more smarty-pants white belt in my school complaining about push ups in Russian..." There was a touch of sternness in his humor, but mostly the short Asian man was grinning.

"Noooo, just English for me." Laurie noted, smiling back tentatively. "You um...you know I'm a mutant, don't you?"

"Unless Douglas has been lying to me about why he speaks fluent Korean, Russian and Greek, and swears under his breath in languages I don't know." Master Lee turned to look over his shoulder at Doug, who had just emerged from the locker rooms in the back, to say dryly "Yes, Douglas, I still hear you muttering about pushups." and returned his attention to Laurie. "The nature of your school is not a secret to anyone who pays attention, and Miss Collins, I pay -very-close attention to my students. Is your gift going to cause you any problems training? Or give you any advantage, which you will conveniently forget to tell me about for over a year?" Another significant look at Doug.

Doug shrugged blithely. He could either continue to wallow in the mistakes he had made, or he could joke about them. "I heard someone using me as an object lesson again," he said wryly as he walked up to the conversation, a gear bag slung over one shoulder.

"I can effect people physically when I want to." Laurie admitted, feeling extremely uncomfortable. "Make them sleepy, or high or other things. It's...well, I release pheromones."

"When you want to. I expect that you will not want to in my school, at all. And that you have control over it?" Master Lee wasn't asking a question, so much as making a statement of expectation. "I'm not going to prevent you from studying here, but if this means you will need private instruction, I need to know now." If the girl was this nervous just discussing taking classes, she needed to study some kind of self-defense as soon as possible, just to learn to perform under pressure.

"I've got more then enough control for a martial arts class, Master Lee." Laurie noted with a nod, shoulders tensing. She couldn't 100% for sure say that she'd never leak but he didn't need to know that. As long as she made sure to take note of when she was getting too worked up for control, she'd be able to exit the room in time before any accidents happened.

Master Lee raised a questioning set of eyebrows briefly, glanced at Doug almost too fast to be noticed, and then nodded. "You can start in the evening white belt classes. If the schedule is a problem later, once you start college classes, you can move to the day classes. The material is the same." He turned to look at Doug more fully. "Can you get Miss Collins a uniform from the back, Douglas? A.. size four."

"I'm in? J-just like that? Oh man, I promise I won't let you down. Seriously, Master Lee. Thank you so much." Laurie babbled, relief showing almost perceptively in her face as her shoulders finally relaxed.

"I run an open school. If I didn't, I wouldn't make any money." Master Lee said, quite plainly. "Once you have been to a week of classes, I will sit down with you and we can discuss tuition and fees. If you hate it, I'm not going to charge you."

"I guess I'll see you tomorrow then." Laurie replied, getting up from her seat.

It wasn't so much that she ran out of the place, just that she moved very quickly and then slumped against the wall of the Dojo outside, attempting to get back some sort of composure.

After a brief one-on-one conversation with Master Lee, Doug headed out of the dojo to where Laurie was still holding up the wall. "Hey. I'm going to grab some pizza, since I generally try not to eat before class. You wanna come with?" he offered.

"Lifesaver." Laurie replied with evident relief. "I was just trying to decide whether I wanted to head back to the mansion now, or go get something to eat. You just saved me from the choice."

"Then follow me. I know a place." Which, for Doug, was something like the way Forge declared a Law of Science. For that matter, Doug wasn't sure that his ability to 'know a place' wasn't actually one of Forge's Laws of Science. Forge was occasionally a bit odd about that sort of thing.

Laurie eyed him in a curious fashion for a moment before simply shrugging, and following on behind, somewhat like a small duckling might follow its mother. Had said duckling been blonde and over 5 feet, and the mother have a five o'clock shadow.

Doug frowned slightly at Laurie's quiet acquiescence. He made himself a mental note for later, then turned his brain towards the importance of deep dish pizza as his stomach growled noisily. It was a short walk to Tony Anthony's, and the rumbling from Doug's stomach increased when he opened the door and inhaled the smell of the restaurant. They were seated quickly, and Doug ordered without having to look at the menu. "So, what did you think?" he asked Laurie after their drinks had been brought to the table.

Laurie blinked at him for a second, and then tried to think about what he could have been asking about. The pizza, or the Dojo? "Um...it sounds nice?" she ventured a little uncertainly.

"Like I said, Master Lee is tough, but fair," Doug repeated. Laurie was definitely nervous, so hopefully he could put her at ease a bit. "Want to hear some of the gossip about the other students?" he asked with a grin.