Training Session - Laurie, Yvette and Logan (backdated to November 10)

[x-penance.livejournal.com]

Following up on Yvette's suggestion about training with Logan, Laurie tries to be receptive to a lesson in stealth.



Laurie tugged at the collar of her trainee leathers and stood beside the porch at the back of the mansion, waiting for Logan and Yvette. She'd told them she'd meet them here, but she'd gotten a little enthusiastic and arrived earlier then the time she'd mentioned. It gave her time to steel herself anyhow, and considering how nervous and jittery she felt, that wasn't a bad thing.

Taking a deep breath, she let it out in a controlled expulsion, bringing to mind the meditation exercises she'd gone over with Dr. Samson.

There was a sound behind her and the back door was opened, Yvette appearing in her own set of trainee leathers. Unlike Laurie's, hers had no sleeves, being a similar design to Kyle's, and there were no boots on her feet, just her usual socks. The brand new leather creaked as she moved, and she pulled a face. "I think it will be the challenge to be silent in the uniform, yes?" she said, by way of greeting.

"At least until you break it in a little, yes," Laurie replied with a grin, looking over her friend with an assessing gaze. "You look good in that."

"Thank you," Yvette replied with a smile. She had butterflies of her own, more from excitement than nervousness - after all, she and Logan had been doing this sort of thing on and off for a while. "So, are you being ready?"

"As I can be," Laurie noted with a wry smile. "I'm trying to make sure I don't leak all over the place at the moment, since a tense Logan is probably going to be a difficult to train with Logan."

Logan seemingly appeared out of nowhere. "Ladies." he said. He was in his traditional flannels and jeans, no uniform in sight. He also had a smoke clenched between his teeth. "Let's get you nice and warmed up. Follow me." he said, taking off at an easy lope off towards the woods.

Yvette paused only long enough to take off her socks and gloves once she reached the ground, stuffing them in a pocket, before following Logan in her trademark all-fours run. She'd gotten less self-conscious about how she looked doing it over the years, and it really was more comfortable for her body-wise. She glanced over her shoulder at Laurie and grinned. "Come on, Laurie!"

Laurie paused for a moment to watch the two dash over the mansion lawn toward the wood, they seemed to have an economy of movement that she would be hard put to match. But, she hadn't been a state champion long distance runner for nothing, and while it had been awhile since she'd practiced daily, she still had endurance to spare.

"Coming," she called out to her friend, setting off after the two at an easy pace, not fast enough to catch either but enough to keep pace.

Logan set a fairly hard pace - not one where both girls couldn't keep up, but one where they'd have to work to do so. He glanced back to see Yvette on all fours scuttling after him like a demented crab on crystal meth and Laurie behind keeping pace. "MOVE IT, COLLINS!" he hollered around his stogie as he entered the final stretch of their one-mile warmup jog.

Yvette huffed sightly - the pace was requiring her to put a degree of effort into it that she hadn't really done since the surgery and she was realising just how unfit she'd gotten in the intervening time - and looked back to Laurie. "Nearly there, yes?" she panted.

"We can hope," Laurie noted, catching up to Yvette in a few strides, she hadn't kept as much of her form as she'd hoped, even with the regular X-men training of the past weeks. Her breathing was even, but she could feel the slight strain in her calves from the run. She hadn't come close to the wall yet, but a few more miles and she'd be there.

Out of deference to Yvette's still-tender insides, they kept the run to a single mile. He pulled to a stop deep in the woods that surrounded the Xavier Institute. "There. That should get us nice and warm." he said with a grin. "And out here's a good place to work on stealth." he added. "I'd say about half of stealth is technique - how to walk, how to stand, how to move. The other half's mental." he said with a grin. He glanced down at Yvette's foot-talons and grinned. "OK, Knuckles, we'll start with you. If you want to walk quietly, how do you think you'd go about it?" he asked.

"The thing is to be patient," Yvette replied with a small grin, still a little out of breath but quickly recovering. "To take the time and not to rush. To tread lightly." She had straightened up when they'd stopped, but now she dropped to all fours again, to demonstrate. "But also to be sure of each step, before you are taking it. Which is why it is good to make sure you have the balance." She picked her way across the small clearing, managing to only barely rustle the fallen autumn leaves. She slid her hands and feet carefully under the leaf cover, making sure of each step before she took it.

Laurie watched her friend with a smile, taking in what Logan had said, and then seeing how Yvette moved slowly, watching carefully where she placed each move she made. She looked to Logan, waiting for his next words, she knew when to be silent and listen, despite proof to the contrary.

Logan himself moved across the dry leaves with barely a rustle to be heard. "Takes some time to build the knack." he admitted. "All right, Discharge, your turn. Knuckles, step back about twenty meters, sing out if you hear anything." he said.

Laurie looked at the ground, noticing the scatter of dry leaves and branches that made up the forest ground cover in this part of the woods. How anyone had been able to move across that quietly she couldn't say, but she didn't want to do badly here. Only thing to do was just do it, she supposed. She took a step forward, sliding a foot across the ground to try and move the ground cover out of the way, and then set her other foot down softly on top of what looked like slightly wetter leaves.

She continued with this until she reached Logan and Yvette, having heard several cracks and rustles along the way but unwilling to give up after only one try.

"How'd I do?" she asked her friend softly, a soft blush having suffused her cheeks at the amount of mistakes she'd obviously made.

"Not so bad, for the beginning," Yvette replied, as generous as ever. "It is not such the easy thing to do, especially in the autumn, yes?" She glanced up at Logan, hoping he'd go at least a little easier on Laurie for her sake.

"All right. Not too much brain-damage to have to undo." he mused to himself as he crouched down next to Laurie. "Look close. When you step, you step like this. Even distribution of weight at all times. Don't let any one part of the foot push down too hard or you'll make noise. If you can't pick up the basics today you can talk to the elf to work on body-control and core muscle control." he said. "Knuckles here has it easier, her feet are naturally wide and disperse her weight more." he noted. "You do not want to push off on the balls of your feet if you can possibly avoid it."

"So you use your heels, or do you mean you try to always place your foot flat?" Laurie asked, making sure she understood what he was trying to show her. She didn't have their natural balance, and cross country running was a different skill entirely. She figured he meant Kurt, when he talked about 'the elf'.

"Flat." he said, well, flatly. "You do not want to rock your foot. Not with your levels of body-control." he said. "If you absolutely have to roll your foot, roll along the outside of your foot." he added. "OK, now we practice. Trade off, Discharge and Knuckles. One listens, one moves. Start at ten meters, then when you both pass that move it back two per." he said. "Stop when you get to twenty meters back." He got an idea for another drill to work on and it made him grin around his stogie.

"Use the toes to be feeling out the place to step, yes?" Yvette suggested. "My feet have the advantage, yes, because the toes are so long and can be gripping more, but you can be doing things not so different." She demonstrated, sliding her long toes under the leaf cover and then letting the rest of her foot drop carefully down once she was satisfied there was nothing that would make a noise. "Of course, it is helping that I can be using the hands also," she admitted, with a grin.

Laurie flattened her toes out in her uniform boots, it was hard to feel anything through the leather soles but she eventually came to what she thought was as good as she was going to get when she had to wear footwear. Having a physical mutation on the level of Yvette and Logan was far more beneficial then she'd ever previously surmised. Lack of footwear requirement being just one of the benefits, she supposed.

"I think I've got it," she noted to Yvette, placing a foot carefully flat on the ground and looking closely at the detritus around her before she placed her next footfall. A twig snapped, and she winced slightly but continued on, one mistake was not a reason to quit. "Is it always slow? Or do you get faster as you learn?"
"It gets faster with the practice," Yvette assured her, pleased that Laurie wasn't letting her mistakes get to her. "Like the baby learning to walk, yes?"

"A very big baby," Laurie said with a grin at her friend, taking another step, this time without a sound. She contained her own sense of accomplishment, continuing to look at the ground till she was halfway across the clearing. "How'm I doing?"


"Keep practicing." he said, leaning against a tree as he watched. "It's easy when there's no stress. No objective. No pain." he noted. Yvette was doing about as well as he expected and Laurie had actually womaned up and was taking instruction without breaking down into tears and/or cloud of pheremones.

He'd given himself even odds that she would.

Laurie continued through the clearing, flinching less and less each time she heard the snap of a branch. While she hated not being able to get this immediately, she figured tensing up would simply make the entire process that much more harder to do. Instead, she breathed in mentally as well as physically and stuck it out.

"Is he always so full on?" Laurie whispered to her friend when they drew level. She remembered the one other time Logan had tried to show her something, she'd been certain he was trying to bully her, but perhaps she'd been mistaken. He had certainly seemed to think so the last time she brought it up.

"Yes," Yvette replied in the same tone. She knew Logan's sensitive hearing would pick it up any way, but she had been asked a question. "To him, it is the difference between coming back from the mission and... not coming back. So it is important that we are taking things the serious way."

Laurie nodded, but said nothing further, concentrating back on her movement and the leaf litter under her feet. It explained a lot though, especially why he was so hard on her, and perhaps even why Garrison had been hard as well, the two certainly trained together enough.