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Jul. 8th, 2004 01:42 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsShinobi and Illyana have a chat in the gym Wednesday evening. Discipline is discussed; a pledge is unexpectedly made. He even makes Illyana laugh. (Mark your calendars.)
Illyana had only been running for thirty minutes or so, and she was already getting tired. Her legs ached; her breath came in gasps; and she was royally irritated. This was unacceptable.
She dragged herself through the last ten feet, brushing sticky hair off her forehead and cursing herself for being so damn lazy. Four months of doing nothing -- what had she expected? Given, she'd spent some time being coddled in the medlab, but she knew she'd been years better than this in Limbo. Millenia better than this. Present-Illyana and Limbo-Illyana were not from the same physical planet.
Of course, Limbo hadn't exactly been a flat track in a temperature-controlled environment, and she'd been chased by demons most of the time she'd been running there, but that just meant that she was even worse off than she'd thought. The lack of adrenaline was no excuse. She'd expected to be better than this, some stupid little girl whose legs felt like jelly and who was gulping down water like she hadn't seen any in months. This was her second time in the gym, and she wasn't any better than she'd been her first day out.
She wanted results. Annoyed, she drew a hand across her forehead and smoothed the wrinkles from her t-shirt, taking deep breaths in an attempt to stop hyperventilating. She leaned against the wall for a long moment, frustrated; looked up when she heard footsteps.
Approaching footsteps, no less. After he'd entered the gym and spotted Illyana, Shinobi decided that starting in on his own workout could wait - besides, his legs were still vaguely irritated with him about the new ritual morning runs Scott was dragging him through, and more than that, Illyana looked like she was due a break. And maybe a drink.
"You look like you're having fun," Shinobi mused wryly, lifting his water bottle to offer a slight wave in greeting. "You alright, Illyana?"
Seeing Shinobi, she felt her face turn an even more attractive shade of red -- she hadn't thought anyone else used the gym much 'round here, a misconception she was very much suffering from now. "I'm fine," she said, swallowing her need to breathe in favour of the shreds of her pride and standing up straight. Her half-smile was wan. "Just a bit out of breath, that's all."
Shinobi's grin was sympathetic. "It happens. Most often to me, the last couple of mornings. I'm a pretty pathetic sight in the mornings." With a shrug, he considered for a moment before wordlessly offering the water bottle, and cast a thoughtful look over the gym. Possibly to offer her an opportunity to guzzle down water and catch her breath relatively unseen, or possibly just to try and figure out what instrument of torture to subject himself to first - either was equally likely.
She waved his water bottle off -- almost imperiously -- and indicated that she had her own. "Thank you," she added in an attempt at politeness. Couldn't hurt. Her breath was slowing now, thank all the gods, major and otherwise. "I just haven't been -- keeping in shape, I think is the term. I didn't think it would be so bloody hard to get back into it."
"That's the right term, and that makes two of us," he agreed, inclining his head and letting his hand - and bottle - fall back to his side. "I *thought* I was in pretty good shape, but obviously, Mister Summers holds himself to a *much* higher standard than I do. Did." He puzzled over that for just a moment before shaking himself, waving a hand to dismiss the train of thought. Not important. "If you wanted help getting back into it, he'd probably be willing to at least write up an exercise regimen for you. But if you're not quite that insane, Doctor Bartlett likely could give you some less slave-driver-esque suggestions."
"I think I'll stick to running for now," she replied, dodging the subject ungracefully; she was slightly thrown by the concept of an 'exercise regimen'. You did what you had to, didn't you? "It's just I haven't done anything for a while, what with the lack of mortal danger. Makes it harder to keep things up." She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth, and fell silent immediately after, annoyed with herself, her inability to be subtle.
It didn't seem to bother Shinobi, at least. "Mortal danger seems to find this place every once in a while, though it *has* been pretty quiet around here for a few months now," he said thoughtfully, absently deciding that exercise could definitely wait, in favour of sitting down comfortably on the floor, to try and make his legs stop grumbling at him. "...well. Apart from disaster-that-could-have-been-worse, anyway."
She snorted. "That's an interesting definition for a disaster," she said, amusement clear in her eyes. "I've noticed it does seem to come in varying degrees, though. I've just been through the one since coming back, but I'm afraid I left the mass slaughter to those more suited to it."
"Angelo, Jono, Clarice and Amanda could have gone to help Sarah," Shinobi reasoned, looking up with a humourless smile. The footage from the tunnels that Scott had shown him wasn't going to be going away anytime soon. "It could have been worse." A brief pause, and then he was shrugging, looking down as he unscrewed the top off his water. "I think that filled the school's quota for the next.. month, month and a half? Something like that. Something'll come up next month, just like clockwork. You get used to it."
She refrained from commenting on her vision of acceptable losses, since she strongly suspected it would not be appreciated. "I'm just getting accustomed to the catastrophes being so far apart," she said, shrugging. "Not to mention the fact that people seem to enjoy them altogether too much."
He chuckled, nodding and bringing his bottle up for a quick drink before offering a response. "Oh, some of them do. This school isn't exactly entirely full of pacifists and law-abiding citizens," he observed wryly. "Jono and Sarah have declared themselves the school's Monsters in the Basement, Angelo was in a gang before he came here.. as for Clarice and Amanda, they're very loyal friends, sometimes to a fault. I should really talk to them about that.. I'm trying to train myself out of that habit, myself." He made a face. "Moral ambiguity may be comfortable for some of us, but personally, I'd like to give living the *legal* way a test drive. It looks a bit more.. well, sane."
Illyana rolled her eyes, flashing malamute-blue at the ceiling. "They throw that word around so carelessly. Monsters. As if humans are capable of it." She shook her head. "I find it quite troubling, Amanda's -- well, never mind, it's not really important. People here seem to think that morality is directly proportional to the stupidity of an action -- the more, the better."
"Morals are tricky," Shinobi grinned, leaning his head back against the wall. "The way I see it.. Jono and company wanted to go and help Sarah. That, in and of itself, is fine. Perfectly healthy reaction. It's natural to want to help a friend when they're in trouble. But when you realize that helping them would more than likely entail killing a half-dozen people, and *still* want to go instead of letting someone *trained* handle it? Then you're just being an idiot." A pause. "And I'm including myself on that little piece of judgement."
She quirked an eyebrow. "An interesting inclusion," she said non-commitally, shifting her weight to stretch a cramp in one of her calves. How could four stationary months have done away with seven hard years? "I think I made myself fairly clear on the subject," she added, half self-deprecating, remembering distantly her frustration-motivated, long-winded comments. She took a long drink from her bottle. "But I must say that I'm not wholly impressed by the entire ordeal. Too many people who think their first instinct in a situation is automatically the best. Bad survival tactic."
"Very bad survival tactic," he agreed, matching her somewhat self-depricating tone. "Learning to think in a crisis takes practice.. and really, a lot of these kids are.. kids. Things *have* happened here, and they're not exactly new to the realm of violence, but before, they were acting in self-defense. This was a very different ballgame, but I don't think any of them really stopped to think about that before opening their mouths." He shrugged helplessly, and sighed. "On the plus side, the rampant stupidity happened in sight of the faculty, and they're *not* happy, so things like thinking will definitely be addressed. Which is good, because I could use a bit of help learning to think clearly in a crisis, myself. My mind likes to think it's a tactical one, but honestly, it isn't. Not yet."
"It's hard," Illyana said simply, refusing to remember exactly how hard, fiercely staying in the present where, she reminded herself, there was nothing she could do about the past. "It requires practice and discipline -- not things, I think, that many of the students here appreciate. It means taking harder paths and doing harder things." She sighed, looking, for a moment, old and tired. It faded quickly, replaced strictly with annoyance. "It means really being loyal to people, not just paying your respects at the door and pretending that your bravado will do them any good."
"There are a lot of things the students here don't seem to appreciate," Shinobi agreed tiredly, offering the girl - no, *woman* - a slight smile. "Doing the hard thing is.. well. Hard, obviously. I'm pretty sure Scott's preparing a sledgehammer to try and drive the discipline I need into my head whether I like it or not, which happily, I *do*. Enough that I'd like to save him some trouble, if I can. It's just not an easy thing to practice. There aren't many hard choices that I can make on a regular enough basis."
She was silent for a few moments, considering this. "No, there aren't really. Not here," Illyana agreed finally. "But discipline is something that can be learned in anything. And it's good for more than hard choices," she added, gesturing at the track wryly. She paused. "Wanting the discipline is important. Accepting that you need it is harder than making it happen." She said it without implication, matter-of-factly: This is the way it is.
"I suppose I could try to quit smoking," Shinobi said slowly, with an expression of distaste on his face. He *liked* smoking.. but he had to admit, he probably wasn't going to find a better way to test his discipline than by trying to kick an addiction. "I'll be pouted at and teased mercilessly if I do, but that just makes it all the more challenging, doesn't it?"
She looked very amused. "It might make keeping in shape a bit easier, without all that tar and smoke," she murmured, in a tone that made clear she had no idea why people would purposely inhale addictive substances. "And you could regard it as a starting point."
He nodded in very reluctant agreement, and though he'd deny up and down that it happened if it were to come up in conversation later.. he whimpered. "Self-improvement isn't very fun," he said mournfully.
That elicited a rare, if short, laugh. "No, I suppose it isn't."
Illyana had only been running for thirty minutes or so, and she was already getting tired. Her legs ached; her breath came in gasps; and she was royally irritated. This was unacceptable.
She dragged herself through the last ten feet, brushing sticky hair off her forehead and cursing herself for being so damn lazy. Four months of doing nothing -- what had she expected? Given, she'd spent some time being coddled in the medlab, but she knew she'd been years better than this in Limbo. Millenia better than this. Present-Illyana and Limbo-Illyana were not from the same physical planet.
Of course, Limbo hadn't exactly been a flat track in a temperature-controlled environment, and she'd been chased by demons most of the time she'd been running there, but that just meant that she was even worse off than she'd thought. The lack of adrenaline was no excuse. She'd expected to be better than this, some stupid little girl whose legs felt like jelly and who was gulping down water like she hadn't seen any in months. This was her second time in the gym, and she wasn't any better than she'd been her first day out.
She wanted results. Annoyed, she drew a hand across her forehead and smoothed the wrinkles from her t-shirt, taking deep breaths in an attempt to stop hyperventilating. She leaned against the wall for a long moment, frustrated; looked up when she heard footsteps.
Approaching footsteps, no less. After he'd entered the gym and spotted Illyana, Shinobi decided that starting in on his own workout could wait - besides, his legs were still vaguely irritated with him about the new ritual morning runs Scott was dragging him through, and more than that, Illyana looked like she was due a break. And maybe a drink.
"You look like you're having fun," Shinobi mused wryly, lifting his water bottle to offer a slight wave in greeting. "You alright, Illyana?"
Seeing Shinobi, she felt her face turn an even more attractive shade of red -- she hadn't thought anyone else used the gym much 'round here, a misconception she was very much suffering from now. "I'm fine," she said, swallowing her need to breathe in favour of the shreds of her pride and standing up straight. Her half-smile was wan. "Just a bit out of breath, that's all."
Shinobi's grin was sympathetic. "It happens. Most often to me, the last couple of mornings. I'm a pretty pathetic sight in the mornings." With a shrug, he considered for a moment before wordlessly offering the water bottle, and cast a thoughtful look over the gym. Possibly to offer her an opportunity to guzzle down water and catch her breath relatively unseen, or possibly just to try and figure out what instrument of torture to subject himself to first - either was equally likely.
She waved his water bottle off -- almost imperiously -- and indicated that she had her own. "Thank you," she added in an attempt at politeness. Couldn't hurt. Her breath was slowing now, thank all the gods, major and otherwise. "I just haven't been -- keeping in shape, I think is the term. I didn't think it would be so bloody hard to get back into it."
"That's the right term, and that makes two of us," he agreed, inclining his head and letting his hand - and bottle - fall back to his side. "I *thought* I was in pretty good shape, but obviously, Mister Summers holds himself to a *much* higher standard than I do. Did." He puzzled over that for just a moment before shaking himself, waving a hand to dismiss the train of thought. Not important. "If you wanted help getting back into it, he'd probably be willing to at least write up an exercise regimen for you. But if you're not quite that insane, Doctor Bartlett likely could give you some less slave-driver-esque suggestions."
"I think I'll stick to running for now," she replied, dodging the subject ungracefully; she was slightly thrown by the concept of an 'exercise regimen'. You did what you had to, didn't you? "It's just I haven't done anything for a while, what with the lack of mortal danger. Makes it harder to keep things up." She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth, and fell silent immediately after, annoyed with herself, her inability to be subtle.
It didn't seem to bother Shinobi, at least. "Mortal danger seems to find this place every once in a while, though it *has* been pretty quiet around here for a few months now," he said thoughtfully, absently deciding that exercise could definitely wait, in favour of sitting down comfortably on the floor, to try and make his legs stop grumbling at him. "...well. Apart from disaster-that-could-have-been-worse, anyway."
She snorted. "That's an interesting definition for a disaster," she said, amusement clear in her eyes. "I've noticed it does seem to come in varying degrees, though. I've just been through the one since coming back, but I'm afraid I left the mass slaughter to those more suited to it."
"Angelo, Jono, Clarice and Amanda could have gone to help Sarah," Shinobi reasoned, looking up with a humourless smile. The footage from the tunnels that Scott had shown him wasn't going to be going away anytime soon. "It could have been worse." A brief pause, and then he was shrugging, looking down as he unscrewed the top off his water. "I think that filled the school's quota for the next.. month, month and a half? Something like that. Something'll come up next month, just like clockwork. You get used to it."
She refrained from commenting on her vision of acceptable losses, since she strongly suspected it would not be appreciated. "I'm just getting accustomed to the catastrophes being so far apart," she said, shrugging. "Not to mention the fact that people seem to enjoy them altogether too much."
He chuckled, nodding and bringing his bottle up for a quick drink before offering a response. "Oh, some of them do. This school isn't exactly entirely full of pacifists and law-abiding citizens," he observed wryly. "Jono and Sarah have declared themselves the school's Monsters in the Basement, Angelo was in a gang before he came here.. as for Clarice and Amanda, they're very loyal friends, sometimes to a fault. I should really talk to them about that.. I'm trying to train myself out of that habit, myself." He made a face. "Moral ambiguity may be comfortable for some of us, but personally, I'd like to give living the *legal* way a test drive. It looks a bit more.. well, sane."
Illyana rolled her eyes, flashing malamute-blue at the ceiling. "They throw that word around so carelessly. Monsters. As if humans are capable of it." She shook her head. "I find it quite troubling, Amanda's -- well, never mind, it's not really important. People here seem to think that morality is directly proportional to the stupidity of an action -- the more, the better."
"Morals are tricky," Shinobi grinned, leaning his head back against the wall. "The way I see it.. Jono and company wanted to go and help Sarah. That, in and of itself, is fine. Perfectly healthy reaction. It's natural to want to help a friend when they're in trouble. But when you realize that helping them would more than likely entail killing a half-dozen people, and *still* want to go instead of letting someone *trained* handle it? Then you're just being an idiot." A pause. "And I'm including myself on that little piece of judgement."
She quirked an eyebrow. "An interesting inclusion," she said non-commitally, shifting her weight to stretch a cramp in one of her calves. How could four stationary months have done away with seven hard years? "I think I made myself fairly clear on the subject," she added, half self-deprecating, remembering distantly her frustration-motivated, long-winded comments. She took a long drink from her bottle. "But I must say that I'm not wholly impressed by the entire ordeal. Too many people who think their first instinct in a situation is automatically the best. Bad survival tactic."
"Very bad survival tactic," he agreed, matching her somewhat self-depricating tone. "Learning to think in a crisis takes practice.. and really, a lot of these kids are.. kids. Things *have* happened here, and they're not exactly new to the realm of violence, but before, they were acting in self-defense. This was a very different ballgame, but I don't think any of them really stopped to think about that before opening their mouths." He shrugged helplessly, and sighed. "On the plus side, the rampant stupidity happened in sight of the faculty, and they're *not* happy, so things like thinking will definitely be addressed. Which is good, because I could use a bit of help learning to think clearly in a crisis, myself. My mind likes to think it's a tactical one, but honestly, it isn't. Not yet."
"It's hard," Illyana said simply, refusing to remember exactly how hard, fiercely staying in the present where, she reminded herself, there was nothing she could do about the past. "It requires practice and discipline -- not things, I think, that many of the students here appreciate. It means taking harder paths and doing harder things." She sighed, looking, for a moment, old and tired. It faded quickly, replaced strictly with annoyance. "It means really being loyal to people, not just paying your respects at the door and pretending that your bravado will do them any good."
"There are a lot of things the students here don't seem to appreciate," Shinobi agreed tiredly, offering the girl - no, *woman* - a slight smile. "Doing the hard thing is.. well. Hard, obviously. I'm pretty sure Scott's preparing a sledgehammer to try and drive the discipline I need into my head whether I like it or not, which happily, I *do*. Enough that I'd like to save him some trouble, if I can. It's just not an easy thing to practice. There aren't many hard choices that I can make on a regular enough basis."
She was silent for a few moments, considering this. "No, there aren't really. Not here," Illyana agreed finally. "But discipline is something that can be learned in anything. And it's good for more than hard choices," she added, gesturing at the track wryly. She paused. "Wanting the discipline is important. Accepting that you need it is harder than making it happen." She said it without implication, matter-of-factly: This is the way it is.
"I suppose I could try to quit smoking," Shinobi said slowly, with an expression of distaste on his face. He *liked* smoking.. but he had to admit, he probably wasn't going to find a better way to test his discipline than by trying to kick an addiction. "I'll be pouted at and teased mercilessly if I do, but that just makes it all the more challenging, doesn't it?"
She looked very amused. "It might make keeping in shape a bit easier, without all that tar and smoke," she murmured, in a tone that made clear she had no idea why people would purposely inhale addictive substances. "And you could regard it as a starting point."
He nodded in very reluctant agreement, and though he'd deny up and down that it happened if it were to come up in conversation later.. he whimpered. "Self-improvement isn't very fun," he said mournfully.
That elicited a rare, if short, laugh. "No, I suppose it isn't."
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Date: 2004-07-08 08:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-08 08:14 am (UTC)Then they find out. The hard way.
HA!
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Date: 2004-07-08 11:39 am (UTC)HEY! Ironic precognition is -my- department.
*dies laughing*
no subject
Date: 2004-07-08 12:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-08 04:18 pm (UTC)