Log: Maya and Pyotr - Do you even lift, bro?

[xp_echo]

Maya and Pyotr finally meet. Things do not explode.



Pyotr was in his normal form. This was hardly unusual, but the loud German dance metal and the clang of weights hitting weights, the smells of sweat and pain, the grunts of exertion - these were familiar to Pyotr. A balm. He loved testing himself, pushing himself to his limits and maybe, just maybe a little further. And today he was on fire. He was pushing up near a personal best for him and that had him fired up.

Maya, however, was running a little late this morning for her workout. She’d spent last night putting the finishing touches on an assignment due today, and she'd definitely meet the deadline but she hadn't missed a leg day yet and wasn't about to start now, not even for College. She felt Pyotr before she saw him, as her body tried to adjust to best tackle whatever was coming before she clamped down on her power hard. Given that she was within the grounds of the mansion, she had no reason to be on edge and so her power could just calm the fuck down, honestly. Maya dropped her gym bag at the door and took a swig of water as she eyed the large Russian. She wasn't impressed.

Not like this place was her private domain, so she'd just have to deal. Maya shrugged silently to herself before heading over to begin setting up her space.

Pyotr was so in the groove he didn't even notice Maya's entrance. He was doing a deadlift, stacking a truly impressive amount of weight onto the bar training towards failure. One rep. Two. Three. Four. But the fifth, that one he was barely able to get his legs locked out and get the bar where it needed to be. "Da!" he shouted as the weights hit the floor with a resounding bang.

Maya, who only had her cochlear implants turned on when she had to deal with the hearing world was not the audience for such displays. She made no reaction to the noise, or the exclamation but continued to set up the weight bench she’d be using. While Xavier’s did include several machines, some designed especially for the super-powered crowd, Maya tended to prefer the old-fashioned bar and free weights.

Pyotr finally twigged to the presence of someone else in the weight room when he caught her racking up some weights to do a bench press. "So sorry, apologies!" he told her as he lunged for the radio to turn the music off. "Hello. I don't think we've met. I'm Peter." he said with a friendly wave.

Maya would have missed his greeting entirely had she not been facing the floor-length mirror that covered one wall of the gym. She liked to use it to make sure her position was right when she was lifting. She contemplated ignoring the wave before finally turning to greet Pyotr.

"We haven’t," she replied, giving him a once over as her memory popped up several helpful options that would take him out as a threat. A few of them were completely unhelpful given they related to powers she did not possess. Still, he wasn't bad-looking for a white guy. She shook her head as her powers suggested several things that looked like fighting, but weren't. None of that. "Maya."

"Nice to meet you. If you need a spotter, don't hesitate to ask," he said in a gym-rat friendly sort of a way before moving back to his weight bench to contemplate his next leg workout. Curls sounded like a good idea so he started to stack weight - a very healthy amount of weight - to do a few sets with.

Given that she was missing almost every other word and he probably had no idea she was deaf, she paused him after only a moment. Maya held her hand up in a pause gesture before she moved over to the gym bag she’d left at the entrance to the room. She crouched to pick out the outer parts of her implants and slipped them into her ears.

“You can say that again, now that I can hear you."

Pyotr frowned, then shook it off. He wasn't sure what all that was about, but maybe she couldn't hear him over the music or the sound of the weights. "Hello. I'm Peter. If you need a spotter, let me know."

"I’ll keep that in mind," Maya replied as she turned back to roll out a mat to start her stretches. "I’ve seen you on the journals."

Pyotr frowned slightly at that. Maybe it was just him but he kept getting a hostile vibe from the woman. Couldn't be about him, he just met her. So, logically, he reasoned, she must be pissed off about something else. Her decision. He turned back to his bench press and began to just _stack_ weight onto the bar.

Maya watched his progress with a decidedly unimpressed air as she started the first of a long program of stretches Matt had developed for her. They were a pain in the ass and took forever to complete but they did help with her flexibility and her often bad mood.

"Let me guess? Some kind of mutant strength power, right?"

He turned back to face her again. "Yes," he said simply. "But I'm not using it. This is what I do when I'm just me," he said with a smile. "I wanted to warm up before I started my actual workout for today," he said. Hence the 1.5x his bodyweight bench press. For starters. "If I was to come in as Colossus, I could lift everything in the room, yourself included," he added. Not as a boast, but as a simple fact.

"What’s your max unassisted?" Maya asked, curious despite her natural distrust of anyone new. "I’ve only just started lifting."

"My personal best is sitting right around 225 kilos on the bar," he said. "Not looking to push that today but this is just a warmup" he added. "Going to be pushing curls, work biceps, and forearms," he said, and then paused. "And you?" he asked politely.

"Bodyweight at the moment, I’m just starting out," Maya noted as she stretched, thinking about what he’d said. "Eventually I’d love to get up to something like Becca Swanson and do 800 pounds or more. But I need to keep the agility too so it’s a balancing act."

Maya seemed to relax into the conversation as they moved to something she enjoyed, rather than the random small talk that she loathed with the passion of a thousand suns.

He did some mental math in his head. “Pounds, then, I take it?” he asked. “If kilograms, well, that would have to be part of your mutation,” he said. “As I am now I can bench twice my weight and squat maybe 3x and change,” he said. “As Colossus, well, my upper limit is in multiple tons range.”

"Pounds, yes," Maya said, not mentioning the arrogance of assuming people in another country would follow your way of seeing the world. Maya had promised Darcy and Topaz, and a few others now she came to think on it that she’d be less of a shit. "That’s an impressive amount. Molly will finally have a danger room buddy."

She was making an assumption but she figured he’d be being put through the GenX training. Nobody who came to the mansion really got out of it, at least not the first week of orientation anyhow. Which mostly consisted of 'How not to freak out the locals with your super special mutant powers' She suspected if they'd allowed it, someone in the mansion probably would have put together some kind of welcome kit complete with stickers and Xavier pompoms by now. Not that she would have minded Xavier pompoms, those would have been sick.

"Why Colossus?"

"As a name? Because I see myself standing across the world, protecting those behind me," he said simply. "Plus I like it. You are..." he said, straining his memory to pull her nom de superhero out of all the reading he'd been forced to do. "... Echo, right? Why Echo? Because of your hearing?" he asked, honestly curious.

“Echo because it’s what I do,” Maya responded with an incredulous expression, wondering if she should reevaluate his hotness level. She supposed not everyone could have looks and brains. She pushed herself into a split, resting without apparent strain. She’d get blocks out later to really push it but this was just for warmup. "My power copies what I can see and what it can reproduce."

He frowned at that, not catching the connection. "Right. Sorry," he said, then turned to go back to his giant pile of weight, eyeing it carefully before taking his position under the bar. Time to pick up the heavy thing and then put it back down, Pyotr.

"Do you need a spotter?"

Let it not be said that Maya couldn’t recognize when she’d been a little too hostile toward a new person. Besides, Matt, Kyle, and especially Garrison would kick her ass for being mean if Pyotr complained. Not to mention Topaz and Darcy giving her that ‘I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed’ look. She still couldn’t quite figure out when she’d adopted so many people who knew just how to make her feel bad about being an ass.

Pyotr sat up to look at her. "This is just warming up," he said. "But thank you for asking. If you need one I'd be happy to as well." he offered.

"Mostly just stretching today, and a little leg work, so I should be fine," Maya responded, amiable enough now that she’d decided to give Pyotr a chance. At least as much of a one that she gave anyone. "You trying to up your limit for a particular reason, or just the challenge?"

"Both. The challenge is me pushing my ability to be as strong as I can be." he pointed out. "And as a practical matter, the stronger I am as Pyotr, the stronger I am as Colossus. So working out in this makes me stronger, faster, and tougher in the other. It works out pretty nicely." he said. "And, my apologies, I do not recall offhand which team you're with. I'm an X-Man," he said with a proud smile. "Their walking wall as well as the strongest person on the team by far and away."

"I'm an X-man. Welcome to the team," Maya replied, turning into another stretch that would give her just that little bit more reach when she really needed it. "I take it by the wall comment, you've got a meat-shield power?"

He was obviously strong, and apparently stronger than Garrison if this conversation was anything to go on. She'd have to check out the training logs the next time she was nearby the Danger room. She liked to make sure she knew what was coming up, and how she could use her teammate's skills to both their advantages.

By way of demonstration, Pyotr disappeared, to be replaced by the seven-foot-and-change metallic form of Colossus. "Something like that," he said, his voice still recognizably his but a notch or two deeper. Fuller. His attire shifted with his new form and he was pleased enough for it. Nudity, however accidental, might just be sending the wrong note. Especially to someone as prickly as she appeared to be. Then he shifted back to his flesh-and-blood form.

“Confidence is good,” Maya noted, and couldn’t quite help the smile that tilted the sides of her mouth. What was it about men with confidence? She had no idea. “Just try not to overdo it. Pretty sure Gar is hard at work making a danger room run you can’t tough your way through as we speak. It’s like the Kobayashi Maru, except Canadian rather than Starfleet.”

Pyotr, who wouldn't know Starfleet if it bit him, just smiled as her reference sailed right over his head. "Well, whatever challenge he's concocting, I'll do my best to overcome," he said. "That's why we train, other than personal improvement and aesthetics."