Log: Maya/North - Lessons

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North gets played into teaching Maya how to fight. It works out. Now Wade owes North all the alcohol.



Eleven pm was an odd hour to be in the mansion gym, to be sure, but it was a small thing to be fazed over when it came to Wade Wilson. So when his colleague had sent him a text demanding a fight, and all he had planned for the rest of the night was a tumbler of whiskey and some time with a damaged cuckoo clock, David had obligingly rearranged his schedule. In fact, with an unnamed restlessness building in his gut, an avenue for physical exertion was something to be looked forward to.

There was someone else in the gym when David entered. A slight figure of a young girl whom he covertly sized up as he crossed the room.

At the gym. He tapped out the message to Wade single-handedly, dropping his gym bag to the side to grab a mat. Hurry up.

"You seen Wade?" Maya asked, stopping her stretches as she caught sight of the strange man. She had her Gen-X P.E outfit on - figured it was better then jogging gear for this sort of thing. "He told me to meet him here?"

"I have not." North replied shortly, arching a brow at her before glancing back down at his phone.

There is a child waiting for you here as well.

Wade's phone buzzed in the center console. He was twenty minutes into the hour long drive to the city. Waiting until a stop sign, he checked the message before typing back a quick reply.

Emergency contact meeting thing, teach her to knife fight properly. So much alcohol for you later. Promise.

Stop testing my nerves, Wilson.

You're my favorite German. Kisses!

"How do you know Wade again?" North asked, dropping his phone on top of his gym bag and hoisting the mat a safe enough distance from the wall.

Maya's expression closed over, going from calm to suspicious, bordering on hostile in a second.

"Who wants to know?"

"The guy whom Wade just appointed to teach you how to knife fight, apparently," he replied, going back for a second mat. He paused for a moment to look at her. "David North, the asshat's colleague."

Maya gave him a once over, not so much contemptuously but not particularly warmly either.

"You want to show me some ID?"

"No. Do you want to show me some ID?" North kicked the mat in place and cocked his head at her, expression even. He had heard some random snippets of stories about Wade and his new charge -- enough that he know who he was talking to, but not enough that he had gone out of his way to pick up her file. Though, on hindsight, he probably should have.

"I'm fourteen," Maya replied with a put upon sigh as if it explained everything. She flipped herself to her feet with no visible strain. "So...what? Mercenary or a spy?"

"Apparently, I am a teacher tonight." He stripped off his sweatshirt so that the dark wifebeater he had on underneath would allow her to see his movements better. A flat leather case was produced from his bag, which he laid on his mat to begin stretching. "How is your hand to hand combat?"

"Non-existent," Maya replied honestly, shaking out her arms and legs as she waited. "I never figured I'd need to know any of that stuff."

The arched brow she received in reply was followed by a quiet sigh. Knife fighting was seen as a dirty kind of skill to most, and not without reason. Wade had better have a damn good reason for bribing him into putting weapons in her untrained hands. "And what powers do you have?"

"No idea," Maya responded, a grin breaking through her normal scrowl. "I do keep attacking people when they startle me though."

A line many people he knew could put in their resumes. Decisively snatching the leather case back up, he tossed it on top of his bag before moving to stand in the centre of the mats and gesturing for her to join him? "Attacking how? With bare hands?"

Maya joined him, before giving him a once over glance - not the type of guy she'd want to get into a fight with in the normal run of things.

"Knives mostly - a game controller - I don't really seem to do the bare hand thing."

"Hn. Regardless, we shall start with the bare hand thing. To lower the chances of you inflicting accidental damage with the knives." North cocked his head to the side. "You will work hard, ja?"

"No, I'm going to waste both our times by not listening and only putting in a token effort," Maya replied with an eye roll. "What do you think?"

"I think you are 14," North said. "And now I think you are going to fall down."

It was all the warning he gave her before kicking her feet out from under her, catching her by the shoulders before she could land butt-first on the mat. "But you do not want to fall down like this and land on your spine, no. Try again."

It had been unexpected but seemingly not enough for whatever set off her abilities to make an appearance and Maya grunted softly as she once again felt her feet go out. It was a different movement from a fall in dancing, unfamiliar but she thought she did okay the second time.

"That okay?" Maya asked, flipping to a crouch before standing again.

If she noticed the slight undercurrent of need for approval in her tone, she made no outward sign of it.

“Yes. Now you do the same when not given warning. Do not worry. You will have many opportunities to practice.” North grinned and made as if to trip her again, but smoothly aborted the action to stand next to her and demonstrate the next drill. “You dance, ja? Dropping and rolling should be easy enough.”

***

Maya was actively sweating - feeling like she'd just tried to learn an entire Bolshevik Ballet choreography in under an hour.

To say her brain was somewhat mushy was an understatement but she stood straight in front of North. She would not be the first to blink when it came to training, she hadn't when she was training as a dancer and she wouldn't do it here.

Which was fairly impressive considering that North had put her through her paces. And then some. The old spy cracked a faint smile, which spoke volumes about how pleased he was then, and tossed a towel at the teenager's face.

"Maybe soon you will get to play with knives," he said. "Without losing control over yourself first. How fast can you run a mile?"

"I don't know?" Maya replied, suspicious. If he made her run a mile after all that she was going to put sugar in Wade's gas tank in revenge. Okay, she wouldn't but she'd certainly think about it a lot. "I don't run a lot - why?"

"Homework," he said, toweling himself off more out of habit than necessity. "Run a mile a day. Two if you get bored. Helps your stamina and gives you time to meditate. If I ever have the opportunity to sic you on Wilson, I would like you to have a 35 per cent chance of stabbing him, at least."

Which was not impossible, given how unnaturally fast she seemed to be picking up on the forms -- He would not count out the possibility of that being a part of her unknown powers. "Would you mind describing one of your attacking episodes for me?"

"Which one? The time I tried to gut Wade cause he startled me when I was with my Dad? Cause that was weird," Maya responded - picking up her bottle of water and taking a swig. She'd had to refill a couple of times during the lesson. "Or the time I tried to attack Marie-Ange when she caught me in Wade's room? Or, and this was a fun one...not. The time I attacked my roommate cause they got all aggressive after I pissed them off?"

"All of them," he said, stacking one mat atop the other. "Is figuring out your powers not one of the reasons you are here?"

"Sure, but you have to feed me while I do it, I'm starving," Maya responded, throwing the towel she'd been using over her shoulder and pointing herself toward the showers. "Meet me outside in about half an hour?"

"I will be here," North shrugged, long since resigned to the fact that food was used as barter around these parts of town and around this crowd. He returned the mats and made for the pull up bars -- may as well try to break a sweat while she washed off the stink of their work out. "Good work today."