Log: Adrienne & David North - Sparring session (backdated)

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The two precogs spar to see "who receives the ass kicking".




Juggling a gym bag, cardboard drinks tray with two smoothies, and a bag of food, Adrienne knocked on North's apartment door for her sparring session with the German. "Ninja, it's the naked knight, right on schedule. You'd better not be unconscious on the floor again or I'm going to kick your ass!" she called out in a singsong voice.

The door swung open and David peered out, seeking out her smiling face with a disappointed look of his own. “You’re not naked,” he observed, flipping off his light switches, stepping out of his apartment and kicking the door shut behind him. He relieved her of the bag of food once the lock slid home and his keys were slipped into his pocket. “And we shall see who receives the ass kicking today, ja?”

"I've been banned from being naked in these halls," Adrienne deadpanned, shrugging. "It sends Remy into a frenzy of lust when I am, and Ororo doesn't like that very much. And I don't want to get lightning'd, or worse, frozen to death. Doesn't seem like it would be fun for whoever has to thaw out my popsicle'd corpse for burial... although I suppose I'd be nicely preserved and they could keep me that way until they figure out how to bring me back to life." She led the way to the gym in the building. "You're supposed to be receiving the ass kickings, aren't you? Isn't that the point of training someone? To make sure they don't get their ass kicked?"

“I’m afraid that generally involves kicking their ass until no one else can kick their ass, Non-naked Knight,” David said, a quick eyeroll going missed as he ducked his head to check his phone before sending it to join his keys. He peered into the food bag. “Not to worry, though. If you do somehow end up being dead – by Ororo’s hand or mine – I will look after the funeral arrangements.”

"Aww, aren't you sweet?" Adrienne cooed, rolling her own eyes at him. "Just some wraps and pita chips," she explained of the food he was peering in at. "Eating healthy for training." Not that she didn't normally eat pretty healthy. "I'm pretending I'm doing a triathalon or something," she smirked. "That way I don't focus so much on how bad I'm gonna get my ass kicked. It's been a while since I did combat training."

“That’s all right,” He smirked and pushed open the gym doors, gallantly waving Adrienne in. “I promise there will not be lasting damage. That is, unless it is self-inflicted.”

"Why, thank you, kind sir," she extolled of being waved inside, giving him a little bow before heading in and setting the drinks tray on a bench at the side of the room, along with her gym bag. "So, speaking of self-inflicted damage, how're things going after, y'know, the overdose?" she asked conversationally, pulling off her riding leathers for the gym shorts and t-shirt underneath, then working on a boot with one hand while she pulled her running shoes out of her gym bag.

“Busily,” David replied, starting his routine stretching and warm ups after casually dumping his considerably lighter gym bag by Adrienne’s. He may have taken time off from work so that he would not have to go into the office and face people, but between assuring contacts of his continued existence and reconnecting several intelligence networks that had fallen apart, and getting his act together after its spectacular break down, he had not had much time to think about his near death – just the consequences. “Travelling for work, finding a replacement for my drugs…” Life just went on without much of a pause. His mandatory bed rest had been a mere hiccup in a long line of things.

Lacing up her runners, Adrienne raised an eyebrow at his last comment. "Replacements are good. Have you found one yet, or are you still working out some frontrunners?" She straightened up with a bit of a bounce and started mirroring his warm-up routine. "Mine ended up being university, to begin with," she told him. "'Less free time than I'd had as a model, a more structured schedule. 'Course, my drug of choice was a party drug so that fit for me."

He paused mid-stretch to give Adrienne a long look before he sat on the floor and resumed his warm up. “I don’t think any university would take me in,” he commented. “By replacements I mean alternatives that are non-addictive and will not send me spiralling into withdrawal in the middle of an operation if I’m deprived of them.” Although he was not mentioning the fact that his body chemistry was slightly screwed up as of late, making the task multiple times harder than simply calling up Remy’s contact and arranging a meeting.

"I dunno, I could totally see you rocking a backpack and a hackeysack and a Fine Arts degree," Adrienne joked. "You mean alternatives for power-boosting? That's was what you used the amphetamines for, right?"

“Adrenaline boosting, actually. And I am more of the Finance type.” David stood, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck, obviously wanting to leave behind the topic of his drug problem and the ways it was messing with his life and work. “Ready?”

Finishing her stretches, Adrienne bounced a bit more and nodded her assent. "Adrenaline boosting? Do you wanna ride on my motorcycle some time or something? Go bungee jumping? Dirtbiking?" She giggled a little, dancing around North.

“You know, I was considering purchasing a motorcycle,” he said, tilting his head at her before going to roll out a mat and gesturing for her to join him on it. “Getting stuck in a car in peak hour traffic is proving to be an annoyance.” Or so he was learning, given that he could not rely on his powers to get himself out of traffic jams at the moment.

Adrienne joined him on the mat, not quite sure what he was up to and keeping her guard up. He was a sneaky ninja, after all. "You should! Motorcycles are a great rush. Really handy. Except in the winter," she added as an afterthought. "Vanessa's a really good teacher if you need to learn how to ride. Y'know, it also doesn't hurt that you'd look damn good in motorcycle-riding attire.”

“I do, in fact, know how to ride. I got the crash course version in the military. And don’t get too excited,” he smirked. “What makes you think I’ll be wearing anything different?” He fell into a comfortable ‘ready’ position, knees bent slightly and body positioned towards her, a short gesture indicating that she should be the one to make the first attack.

"Do you have a healing factor I don't know about?" Adrienne questioned. "Since motorcycle gear is armoured, I figured you'd be wearing it to ride one. But hey, you wanna wear your normal clothes and get all smeared into the pavement, that's totally your call. I mean, you-" she chose that moment to lunge at him, hoping she'd caught him off guard with the banter, coming in low and to her right so she could attack his left, since statistically it was usually the weaker side.

He slipped out of her reach, left leg coming up to knock her arm off course, right arm darting forward to tap her on the shoulder with a fist. “I’m sorry, you were saying? I will wear a helmet, of course.”

Adrienne took the tap with only minimal amounts of sticking-her-tongue-out, stepping in closer and hooking a foot around his leg, behind his knee, then jerking back quickly to pull his leg out from under him, centring her own weight. "Helmets aren't going to protect your legs or arms from getting all mashed up and pulpy and useless," she pointed out. "And I don't want you mashed up and pulpy and useless."

“We’ll see,” David had time to say as he fell back-first towards the mat, twisting slightly before the impact came so he could support his body with his arms. Once he found purchase, he trapped her attacking foot behind his knee, and pulled it towards his chest, free foot curling itself around her other ankle with a sharp tug as he helped Adrienne to the floor. “You’re a boxer, yes?” He asked, disentangling their limbs and leaping to his feet as soon as he was able. “Quick with your fists, not so much with your legs.”

"I'm out of practice," Adrienne muttered guiltily as she got up. "Footwork's something I've been drilled on relentlessly by everyone who's worked on boxing with me, but I haven't been keeping it up lately. And by lately I mean in nearly two years. And I'm not used to these full-out sparring sessions during training." It had been a while since she'd done a real-time sparring session instead of a more slow-motion training class. And now she wasn't sure which one this was. "Or is this a sparring session rather than training, and you're just pointing out my weaknesses to piss me off?" she asked with a smirk.

David tilted his head to the side, and a somewhat apologetic expression settled briefly on his face. ‘It’s a habit,” he shrugged after taking a moment to consider his words, body falling into a waiting stance. “Being aware of your weaknesses is one step towards getting them fixed, yes. But it’s difficult for most to have a full-out sparring session with me, given that I’ll be anticipating your moves.”

"Wait, you're using your powers on me?!" Adrienne asked incredulously. "I wanna use my powers too!" She wiped off a hand and touched the mat where they were sparring, using it to get some ideas on what moves he'd anticipate her trying on him. Of course, a precog versus precog fight might prove rather difficult to execute. "This is gonna end up being one of those weird infinite loop things, isn't it?" she chuckled after a moment, then set off to try and land a couple hits, being careful to keep her feet moving as she weighed the options she'd seen in her reading.

His powers had not kicked in yet, but David merely smiled as he waited for Adrienne to take her Reading before launching herself at him. She had upped her pace, feet no longer idle as he dodged her fists, deterring her with sharp chops to her wrists and forearms. He grunted when she landed a hit on his shoulder, shoving it away with the back of his hand and sweeping his leg out in an easy-to-dodge arc.

The punch had set off his precognition almost immediately, irises involuntarily whiting out as possible actions and their outcomes flashed before his eye. Sufficiently distracted by the uncharacteristic acting up of his powers, and thus with only half his attention left on Adrienne, David barely had enough of a presence of mind to curse under his breath before noticing her follow up attack.

"Ooo, advantage!" Adrienne cackled, noticing David's eyes going white. She figured he'd respect her more if she exploited it rather than hanging back and waiting for him to recover fully, even though that would be the polite thing to do. She came in close, buffeting him with a flurry of taps and sweeping his legs out from under again. But before he could get a handle on his powers she had dodged away, reading the mat again in an attempt to incorporate what his powers were telling him about what she might do in the future.

Bloody carelessness is going to get you killed. But David brushed off his subconscious’ snarky warning as easily as he leapt back to his feet and smiled at Adrienne, completely aware of how it looked like when he grinned without visible irises. “Now I’m using my powers. Have you got a Reading on the future, Prinzessin? Good. We can compare notes later.”

The German man did not wait for a reply, choosing his outcome and lunging forward to execute the necessary actions, seeking to overwhelm rather than overpower, drawing the exchange of blows out for as long as possible. Adrienne had brought up an interesting point about pitting their skills against each other as two semi-immediate-ranged precognitive.

The white film had bled away, and sharp blue eyes watched the brunette for tells, noting when she was moving in advance and when she was reacting out of chance, changing up his attacks as soon as she gave away which moves she had foreseen. No, there would be no infinite loops. Not for this round, at least. Adrienne was a little too expressive for her own good.

Though she'd been holding her own, Adrienne hadn't done any sparring since being chased out of the mansion and while she'd been keeping up her cardio work, it didn't take long for the muscles she was attempting to utilize in the sparring session to start aching from lack of use. She'd also forgotten everything she'd been told about telegraphing her moves. North quickly had her on the proverbial ropes, and after a few minutes of him using his speed to batter her, that dark place where the abuse trauma she could still never shake came to the forefront of her thoughts and Adrienne started to panic. She staggered back quickly, tripped on her own feet, and went down hard on her ass.

“You all right, Frost?”

David pulled up and took a step back from the woman to give her time to catch her breath. She would be complaining about aches and bruises for a while, but he was pretty sure that she had given him something to remember the session by. There were more to come, he was sure. It was only the first round, after all.

Adrienne was breathing heavily. She ran a hand over her face, grateful for the time to catch her breath. "Yeah. Thanks. It's been too long since I had a good workout like that. I forgot how intense they could be. We done for the day? Time for lunch?" she suggested hopefully.

David’s reply was in the arch of his brow and the crossing of his arms.