| Just Another Session | |||||
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| What: Carol takes Jocelyn out for one of their training sessions. | |||||
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So, Carol had picked up Jocelyn and they had gone to some fairly remote location. Islands were popular. So was remote farmland, and that was where they were today, at some remote farmland in New York state. An old, abandoned farm that had a lot of ancient, heavy equipment that nobody had really done anything with for years. There was plenty of space and nobody around.
Jocelyn had been forced to fly under her own power, since she'd finally gotten to the point where she could sustain it for awhile, and so she'd brought her mask and such for the flight over. But, once they'd arrived, she had pulled her jacket off to reveal the green tanktop she was wearing for today's workout. She knew Carol was likely to push her today, in some capacity or another. Having completed a warm-up run, Jocelyn was taking a drink of water from the jug of water she'd brought with and was waiting for Carol's next set of instructions, whatever they may be. Honestly, these sessions varied quite a bit, so she never knew if this was going to be a power-focused session, combat, a workout from hell, or some mix of all three.
"So, wanna tell me why you fell off the face of the earth a while back?" asks Carol innocently as she takes a drink of her own water. She's decked out in a USAF tanktop of her own, and sweatpants... of course, she has the benefit of being able to just change into her costume and back at will. Minor molecular conversion powers rock!
"I figured you wouldn't like it if I just kinda dropped in on you while you were away..." she adds, not stating explicitely whether she could have or not, but the implication is there!
Anyhow, let's start with some basic warmup sparring, shall we? Or more to the point, let me see how you've improved since the last time." She grins, stepping out onto the hard packed earth. After all, she's counting on the fact that you're not all supercharged yet so that she can take hits easily. If she's wrong and you've been sneaky... she may be in for a surprise.
Yeah. Some people have to do it the old fashioned way. Jocelyn really wants to ask for a quick-change costume watch or something for Christmas. Or her birthday. Whichever birthday that was. She just kind of had three birthdays in the span of a week, so she should totally get three years worth of gifts! As for Jocelyn not being supercharged, she hasn't immediately charged herself, no. But she has been working on charging herself up more quickly. After all, she'd been thrown into a few unpleasent situations. "Framed for murder. Had to go clear my name," Jocelyn replies simply. "It's been fixed".
The girl puts the jug down and shifts into a beginning stance, quickly charging up her toughness and dexterity by drawing in a bit of gravimetric energy. She shoots forward, lashing out with a very fast series of two jabs, an uppercut, an elbow, and a set of three side kicks. When she got her reflexes going, she was disgustingly fast and accurate. Carol would notice that with each strike, the girl's strength was growing stronger and stronger as she got her strength charged up. However, it wouldn't be until the final attack in the sequence that she'd be fully charged physically.
It's a good thing for that Carol has enhanced reflexes, and little flashes from her Seventh sense. She was assuming you'd need to reach out and charge up with energy that was more... readily available. You're getting better at this than she expected. She can't reach out and just tap into stuff like that. Her absorption is more passive than that.
Then comes the wrinkle. She has been using terran martial arts forms to help you learn and develop. It's not that she's better than you are these days. She has used lots of these tricks in the field, and has tons of confidence in her ability, but it's when she catches your fist from that last attack series.. yes, literally catches the fist, she grins and says, "Let's see how you handle something out of this world." and she adjusts her stance. There's something almost -wrong- with it. It just seems odd. This is what happens when she draws on her Kree knowledge and begins fighting in the martial arts style of an alien race. A race that is all about war and conquering too... agressive, but just different!
Jocelyn is a touch quicker than Carol, but Carol is superior when it comes to strength, and Jocelyn knew from experience that a punch from Carol could leave a lovely little bruise, even with her enhanced toughness. The girl slips easily into a more defensive mode, quickly blocking and dodging as many of Carol's blows as she can. She's not just blocking though, but she's watching what Carol is doing. Picking up on her kinetic movements just a shade ahead of what Carol does gives her a little bit of warning to certain weird moves. Still, a couple of clever strikes find their way through to Jocelyn, one being double-feint (at least that's what Joce calls it) to her right shoulder and a hard kick that just plain blasts through her defenses which catches her in the midsection.
The girl responds, however, with something a bit more unexpected. She starts coming towards Carol in a more aggressive manner, adapting some of the ideas of Carol's Kree style into her own movements. They're not the same, because she lacks the skill and training, but she was watching to see how those moves worked, and she starts mixing a couple of the more simple ones in with her style. She was nothing if not adaptable, though she certainly wasn't pulling off any signature moves. Just mixing in a couple basics here and there to try and throw Carol off, especially since it meant she was probably playing a little more to Carol's strengths for the moment. But, it made for a good learning opportunity!
"Good, good reactions." says Carol. She's not going full strength here anyway. She is trying to teach, not trying to beat you to a pulp. You reading the kinetics, and her listening to that little voice in her head... it makes for quite a show if anyone was out here to watch. As you come in on the agressive side though, she falls back, gives a little ground.. taking a hit here and there. Her style doesn't generally involve trying to avoid all damage so much as allowing hits at oblique angles, or on locations she can brace against. So you'll hit her shoulder, or a braced thigh before she throws in another twist.
Her ability to fly is not from generating thrust using her internal energy reserves.. it's more of a levitation effect and she launches into a jump kick and then just doesn't land... she spins in the air and twists like some Wire-Fu practitioner before angling another kick towards your back as she comes down to land behind you. Ignoring physics... that's cheating!
Everyone had their little tricks. Jocelyn's style, at least against Carol, was to try and avoid and block, because she knew Carol's strikes could push her pretty hard on the pain tolerance scale. While she knew Carol held back, she knew Carol wouldn't let her know when she left a blatant opening either. "Thanks," the girl says. Yeah, they'd make a pretty good show out here if anyone was watching. But, that wasn't likely out here, but that was perfectly fine with the teen.
She continues the strikes until Carol pulls off the flying trick. Okay, now that wasn't fair. Jocelyn's timing gets thrown off and while she blocks the first jump kick, she doesn't catch the strike to the back until it's almost too late. However, it does get through enough to send Jocelyn down to the ground. But, the girl quickly twists around so she's supporting herself on her arms and pushes up and forward, aiming both her feet at Carol. If she strikes, she'll use Carol as momentup to flip backwards and land back on her feet, facing the older woman again.
Yeah, the fact that you recover quickly does help. Carol lifts arms and lets your feet strike her crossed forearms.... this gives you the springboard you need, and she drops back a half pace, her traditional way of disengaging. "I know, I know.. I cheated. But, you can't always count on your enemies to fight fair, right?" she asks as she inclines her head and walks over to grab her water bottle beside yours, tossing yours to you as she picks up her own.
Jocelyn steps back as well when Carol disengages and goes to grab her own water jug. "In an actual fight, there isn't really such a thing as fair," Jocelyn says. "At least when you're fighting for your life and not in some sort of competition". She never really considered Carol's flight to be cheating. Just something Jocelyn hadn't accounted for yet. It would be something she'd pay attention for in the future. "What was that style you started using? Kree?" she asks. "I tried to adapt some of it into my movements. They were a little bit odd," she admits as she takes a swig of water.
"Yeah, something I picked up when I ... well, when I absorbed a whole host of knowledge from the crazy machine I got my first powers from." Carol shrugs, "It did help that I'd already been a trained fighter, but trust me.. having sudden muscle memory of martial arts you've never used starting to interrupt your already trained routines... screwed me up early on." She grins then, but the grin fades before she adds, "So, you wanna talk about this murder frameup and how you handled it? You know..I do have a lot of connections in the government... you could've asked me for my help." She doesn't sound hurt that you didnt come to her, just... confused as to why you didn't.
"Would it be something you'd be willing to teach?" Jocelyn asks the woman. Because, well, it seemed useful, and something most people wouldn't understand is something Jocelyn would be perfectly happy to have at her disposal. Most of her counters didn't work as well against it without modification, after all.
She sighs a little. "Well, see, for me, when my powers first manifested, I had no idea what they were. Happened to me when I was doing a demo for some television execs or something for an MMA deal that was in the works. And having no idea what was happening or why I could see all this extra stuff...". Jocelyn gestures around her, indicating the general energy around them. "I Overloaded. My toughness must have kicked on instinctively, but you can imagine the results".
She really didn't like thinking too much about it, so her way of dealing with it was to get through the story quickly. "Anyway, a lot of people back on the circuit didn't like being beaten by some kid. So they set some evidence up to make me look like I'd gone to blow the place up, since my body was obviously never found. When I found out, well, I didn't have the nicest childhood, and I spent a lot of time fixing some of the mistakes I spent then. I couldn't sit around to watch that work get wrecked again, so I went to go clean it up. Nobody got hurt," she assures Carol.
"Anyway, as to why I didn't ask for help, well, a lot of people have been asking me that. I think I'm still getting used to the fact that there are actually people who will help me. I've never had that before," Jocelyn explains. "So I don't immediately think to ask. I think about how I can go solve the problem myself. It's something I have to retrain, I suppose. Does that make any sense?" She has no idea if Carol can understand that sort of thing.
Carol... being kind of a headstrong go-getter herself... understands perfectly. "In the service... we called that Initiative. See, I wasn't asking because I thought you should have handled it differently. I merely wanted to know your reasoning." Carol takes another sip of her water and then adds, "For what it's worth, I'd have happily helped out and not thought any less of you, but I -do- respect that you handled your own business."
Setting down that water bottle, she grins... oh, that evil, malicious grin of hers. "And now, it's time for maneuverability training... aerial maneuverability."
"I know that, now that I've had a chance to think it through. I guess I figured if I asked for help, I'd find myself locked up at the mansion because I was a kid". Pause. "Umm, oh yeah. I kind of discovered my birth certificate years ago was faked. I'm actually nineteen". Yeah. Awkward age transformation, go!
A look is given upwards even as Jocelyn lifts a few inches off the ground. "Alright," she responds, though with a little bit of worry. Flight was easily her weakest skill. "And you never answered my first question," she points out.
"If I didn't plan to teach you, I wouldn't have shown it to you." replies Carol as she lifts gracefully into the air. "Now... might wanna juice up that toughness, we're going to be doing high speed... obstacle course." And she gestures towards the grove of trees off to the south before turning and flitting in that direction.
"If you come up over the top of them at all, you start over. If you hit more than three, you start over. You have one minute to get through a mile of trees." Yeah, there's a lot of trees there, a small woods you might say. She lifts up over the trees and gestures to a point in the distance. "I marked off a mile last time we were out here, so... you're up." she offers with a grin.
"Already did," Jocelyn says. She slips her mask on, however, just because it would give her a little more protection from the high speeds. A minute to go a mile. She'd need to hit sixty MPH heading through those trees, and she could max at one hundred MPH. So she should be able to at least do alright moving at a relatively sane speed, right? Reflexes juiced up too, because otherwise she'd have no prayer, she nods and whips off towards those trees. It takes her about thirty seconds before there's the first THUD-SNAP as a tree branch gets sheered off. Ten more seconds and there's a three more snaps. The girl then flies up and out of the forest to the 'starting line' to repeat the process again.
Cringing at each impact, Carol stays hovering up there to observe. She tried the course herself the other day without you out here, and she had to take a couple tries to get through it herself. And she's really good at maneuverability... one of the better ones that can fly actually. When you go in for your second run, she goes to the starting line and holds out the bottle of water... assuming you're going to need to make a third run.
Jocelyn will get better with each run. She'll accept the water somewhere around the fourth or fifth run. Fortunately, she's pretty tough, and doesn't get too dinged up. She never slams straight into a tree trunk, for example, so she never splits a tree in half. Around the eight run is when she'll complete it for the first time, but in a minute and a half. The tenth time through, she finishes it in fifty-six seconds without a single snap sound coming from the forest.
The girl comes flyng back to collect some water. She is, as is par for the middle of a training session, soaked in sweat, but like usual she doesn't complain. "Do I do that again to try and do it faster? Or something else?" she asks the woman. Carol was in charge, after all!
"That, is entirely your call." offers Carol. "Sometimes, the best training is the stuff we make ourselves do." She grins and lifts into the air again. "Feel like some.. follow the leader, Air Force style?" she asks as she gestures off into the distance. "Try to stay on my tail... and see how long it takes you to recover and get back on it when I evade." And that said, she shoots off. She won't accelerate beyond your speed.. but her instincts and training have turned her into a crazy-good flier. Rolls, twists and such... she doesn't really try too hard to shake you so much as just trying to push you -juuuust- past what is normally your limit. Like usual.
Well, maybe later, since Jocelyn was now needing to tail Carol. The girl shoots off towards Carol, trying to keep on Carol's tail, staying about fifty feet back as a goal. Which seems far, until you consider the speeds they're flying at. She has a lot of difficulty keeping up with Carol, and has to repeatedly push herself speed-wise to catch back up when Carol does shake her, which happens more than the girl would like. Still, she certainly does improve, eventually realizing that the rolls and twists Carol does are actually meant to just throw her off or dodge something, and the trick was to recognize which was which. Or at least that's how she views it.
It took a lot more work for Carol to develop her instincts, but that was from the seat of a fighter plane, and without superhuman reflexes. The chase goes on for a while, until she can see you are starting to get a bit fatigued. But she keeps it up for a few minutes beyond that, and then goes in for a landing. "Okay, that's enough for today. What say we grab a bite somewhere now? Gotta fuel up y'know?" she asks with a grin. "Maybe we can pick up some pizzas and take'em back to the mansion to make you even more popular."
Tailing the woman, Jocelyn nods. "Alright, though we'll see how popular that makes me," Jocelyn comments with a laugh. She'll retrieve the things that she brought and follow Carol on back to the mansion, after getting the pizzas first, of course.