Training, it's a good thing (Open)

[Yulia Sokolov]

For some reason Lia was wired today. She thought that it might be because of the coffee, but she hadn’t had any more than usual. Instead she had just woken up in a good mood and that had just stuck, a ridiculously good mood. As such she was ready to pretty much face any training challenge she was faced with today. Per usual, she didn’t look at her list, though by now she more or less knew it. However she did had her forgetful moments still, especially after her accident. She figured that this would go away though. It was already starting to in fact. It was caused by the head trauma and as that healed up, so did the accompanying side effects. Still she felt a need to challenge herself today, so she tried to remember if it was some of her regulars or some new students. She knew that they had a tendency to switch around so it could be either.

Maybe it was her anxiety level that was to blame? It felt really low today, and that usually was not so much the case. Still, if it was, she was not about to complain about it. Good days had been a rarity in the last few weeks, average days were fairly constant, broken up by bad days, which were more frequent than she would have liked. Still none of this was generally caused by anything other than Lia just being in an awful mood. Maybe it was the physical therapy too. She currently needed a brace for one of her ankles to run, but things had evened out considerably if she took the long term damage to her leg into account.

But instead Lia waited in one of the larger rooms. She’d see if this was a big group or just one, and the idea that it would be a surprise actually got her a little more fired up. It was not as if she had a lesson plan for training sessions, though she did track each of her students and had individual working points for them. Then again, unless it was a very basic level class then it was hard to really do anything one might consider universal. As such it was not as easy as planning a normal academic class, not that Lia did anything of that sort.

[Jordan Scholl]

Jordan was not exactly sure why he'd gotten Ms. Sokolov for his power trainer. Did he really deserve to have to deal with the scary Russian lady all the time? It always left him feeling slightly drained, which might have happened with any power trainer, but somehow it always felt worse when he was training with someone he was slightly afraid of.

Then again, this might have been some sort of punishment that he deserved. After all, he'd had an opportunity to work with some of the nicer trainers. But after running away screaming bloody murder from Thomas Lajoie, as well as throwing fits about some of the others, they'd finally stuck him with someone who wouldn't be intimidated by all of his different tricks.

The good news, of course, was that he was really learning how to hide better from his power trainer. Which was supposedly a good thing if your power was invisibility.

He found out that Ms. Sokolov had booked one of the large training rooms. Cautiously he eased the door open and stepped inside, bracing himself for whatever punishment was in store for the day.

"Uh, Ms. Sokolov?" he asked timidly, staying in his place by the door. "I'm ready." He forced himself to repress a wince, though his legs may have shuddered out of visibility for a moment. "Do you have anything ready for me today?"

He didn't think anyone else was coming in today, but he couldn't remember for sure. His schedule only said to meet at this time on this day, as they'd planned last week. Sometimes there were one or two other people who worked at the same time, but since no one else was around, it looked like he was on his own.

[Yulia Sokolov]

Lia smiled and nodded as Jordan came into the room. He wasn’t a bad kid, not at all, it just seemed like he ran out of steam so quickly when he was going through training. Maybe she was pushing him too hard? She wasn’t exactly sure of the gap there. It was her job to find out though, and so she would if she could. Maybe it was one of the exercises she asked him to do, maybe she was making him switch in and out too quickly?

She had heard some about Jordan before he was assigned to her, mostly the incident with Thomas Lajoie. Still Lia was made of slightly tougher stuff than some of them, not that she was anywhere near the kind of abrasive that she had gone through. Then again Hammel had its own personality, and protective law, and she asn’t that sort of person anyways.

However from what Lia could tell this reputation did not always proceed her. Instead she was the scary one. To Lia it all seemed kind of silly, and simply blamed it on the military mannerisms. She was slowly shedding those, well sort of . Some of them were just plain good manners and habits to have.

Then Jordan’s legs disappeared and then flicker back into view. Lia blinked a few times. Between that and his tone she was able to gather that something didn’t seem quite right.

Lia looked carefully at Jordan for a few seconds before her brow furrowed a little. She looked at the list of things she had made to go over with him, but then slipped it back into the folder. “No Jordan, I don’t have anything right this minute. Are your legs ok? Why don’t you sit down for a minute?”

Lia closed the folder. “Is everything ok? You seem rather anxious. Are you alright?” She asked it as gently as she could. She wasn’t sure what to say to this boy to make him feel better, or at least a little more comfortable.

[Jordan Scholl]

Quickly Jordan shook his head. "No, no, I'm fine," he said, stepping into the room. "I don't need to sit down, thank you." But the fact that she'd asked meant that his legs probably had gone all wobbly for a bit. He hated when that happened.

He walked across the large room toward where Yulia was standing, but stopped at a nice safe distance away. Three yards was still nice and safe, a good bubble.

"I'm fine, Ms. Sokolov, really," Jordan said nervously. Why was she being so nice? He wasn't used to her being nice, he was used to feeling like at any minute she was going to order him to drop and give her twenty. In theory he knew she was a nice person, she wouldn't do anything too mean like kill him, but something about her manner still freaked him out.

"So, um. I guess...you want me to work on my endurance or something? I...I..." Jordan wasn't particularly fond of training either, and he always wished it ended a lot sooner than it did. Preferably about five minutes after it started. "I guess I'm good for today." Which meant no sick notes, real or forged.

What was really making him worried, though, was the change he was sensing in his teacher. It made him wary, most of all--had something happened that she wasn't sharing? Was there some sort of mind control going on here? Maybe his teacher was a robot. Being around Mia had made him suspicious of all sorts of different possibilities.

He decided to watch very carefully for signs that she might be a robot. The first sign that something was wrong, he'd be out of there and going to find someone else to deal with what was bound to be a robot apocalypse.

[Yulia Sokolov]

It was clear enough that if Jordan wanted to talk it was not going to be to her, and Lia mentally shrugged. Well that was fine, he probably had some little school buddies who he could work things out with, or that was what she had gathered from the very little American television that she watched. Still she felt a little wary of the student.

This was not uncommon in Lia’s students though. She guessed it was because of the ex military background combined with where she was from. She supposed that made her some sort of intimidating, and she could work with that. Still Jordan seemed to be in a good place for training, at least according to what Lia was seeing right now. He was asking her about it, and that was always a good sign as far as she knew. Then again, back at Odarennyi they were hardly if ever asked, to say the least.

“Yes, your endurance at this point it what we need to target. Really we can approach this in two ways. Your endurance in being able to be invisible for a longer period of time, or your endurance when it comes to recovery from such are our two options at current. Hmmm.” She took a second look at the file on him.

“Now do you have a preference Jordan? Which one do you feel like you are most comfortable with?” She’d start with that and go from there. She’d build a little confidence in him before hitting the harder stuff. Lia stood up proper and when to put the file with a few others. One step landed a slightly mechanical hitch, just due to the damage lately done to her ankle.

“So Jordan, do you have any particular long term goals that we should work on? I know you were transferred to me rather recently and I do have some notes, I’d like to hear it from you if I might.”

[Jordan Scholl]

Jordan shifted from foot to foot. "Um..." he said, thinking. "Both, would probably be good...but I guess I'd rather be able to stay invisible longer." He had plans, once he got this whole thing under control. Some of his plans involved sneaking away from the school at night, not that he'd ever tell anyone.

He was a little nervous of that file she was reading. What all was in there? Did it have some sort of secret information about him? Warning everyone to be careful? He really wanted to know, but the only way to find out would be to steal it. Or potentially ask Mia, but that would be doing it the easy way.

As his teacher stepped forward, Jordan noticed the hitch in her step. He frowned, brow furrowed, as he tried to remember how long that had been there. He vaguely seemed to remember her being in a cast, but hadn't it been her arm that was hurt? And that was a while ago, all the way back in spring. He might have to do some research. Or maybe she just sprained it walking inside. Either way it only meant one thing: better chance of a clean getaway if something went wrong.

"Uh, er," Jordan stammered, jerked back into the present by the next series of questions. "Yeah, um, long-term. Uh, I guess...I want to be able to be invisible for longer, and, um. Maybe see if I can turn anything else invisible with me? Like, if I'm carrying it or something? Like, right now my clothes disappear with me, but they keep getting ruined. And I get really dizzy when I use my power. So maybe figure out how to stop that?"

He hadn't really listed out the difficulties with his power and the goals he had in mind for it. He'd always just had this eventual dream that someday he would be able to go invisible for as long as he wanted, without any side effects, and would even be able to make other things face with him, too. And instead of trying to build to that, couldn't he just, you know, have it?

"I haven't really done anything other than just try to turn it on and off, really. Everyone's mostly just been trying to get me to work on that."