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Post by Noa on Feb 23, 2020 21:17:09 GMT -6
Even if she could not properly quantify it, she could sense it somewhat in the amount and intensity of activity it took for him to reach the same point of tiredness that he had reached in the beginning.
And fortunately for the creature, after those first few sessions of returning to their endurance training, he no longer felt that twinge of soreness that he had. Once it became a settled habit, his body adjusted. Any further reluctance on his part was for the task itself, or the anticipation of the weariness he would feel at the end of each session.
And if that weariness kept him out of trouble, so much the better. He had been growing increasingly restless as of late, and while there was something like a tenuous peace between him and Aster for now, Rabbit knew that any such thing would be forfeit if the creature proved himself to be genuinely hostile or destructive. She did not believe it to be the case, but the assurance that he had fewer resources with which to pursue mischief was not unwelcome either.
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Post by Noa on Apr 14, 2020 18:59:34 GMT -6
There was, of all things, a plant based tournament coming up. Originally, Aster hadn’t meant to enter; tournaments were generally work-intensive, and these days he had enough on his plate without adding a new creature to the mix. Now that he wasn’t in the heady stage of acquiring and training up his first few creatures, and actually had a good foundation with several of the ones he lived with, he figured it was better to work on refining the ones he had than to go tearing off on a new project. But as it turned out, Azalea was eligible. In which case he changed tack and took this as an opportunity to motivate himself to start working with her again. He checked in on her on a daily basis, and they worked together on occasion to review all the things she did know, but they hadn’t done any new work in a long, long time. Funny thing. The last time he’d worked seriously with her was in preparation for an aquatic tournament, come to that. The thought made him feel a little guilty, though he wasn’t entirely sure why. But rather than teaching her any new moves or working on combat maneuvers, he decided that maybe a trip to the gym would be a good way to start things off. Maybe he was taking a page from Rabbit’s book with this; she had been working with that half breed at the gym on a daily basis for god knew how long now, and though he wasn’t following their progress closely, even he could see that it was having some effect. And it was one of the first things they had done together, though back then it was as a part of his rehabilitation rather than actively working towards any kind of gain. It seemed as good an option as anything to get back into the swing of things. {Where are we going?} said Azalea over the ribbon. Hers was pink, and Aster tended to wear it under his clothes. He didn’t much care for the color himself, but it helped differentiate hers from Avander’s and Grunty’s; and she liked it. It matched her horns. “The gym,” Aster replied. “You’ve never been, but Grunty and Avander have both gone.” Azalea knew both of them at least in passing, especially Avander, as Avander had free run of the property. Theoretically Azalea did too, though she tended to stay in the pond, where she had an easier time moving. She wasn’t necessarily a slouch on land, despite the way she looked--- having just the two front legs and all--- but she was much faster in the water. They’d had to travel overland to their destination. There were no canals in the city, which made transporting larger aquatic beasts a bit of a challenge, but fortunately Aster didn’t own any Pliathor, and Azalea could move outside of the water. It looked awkward, a sort of hopping motion with her front legs tucked in, not unlike a Majikiuma, but when she was in the mood for it, she could match Aster’s sprinting speed just by moving like that. They made an odd looking pair, to be sure, when Aster checked in. But the woman at the counter wasn’t the type to pry into your private affairs, so long as the creature you brought in looked as if it would behave; and Azalea knew her manners pretty well. She took one look at them and waved them past, at which point Aster led Azalea to the area set aside for agility training. 1
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Post by Noa on Apr 14, 2020 19:00:00 GMT -6
“We’re here to work on your speed,” he explained. It was, for better or for worse, the kind of gym training Aster was most familiar with. If there was one thing tournaments had drilled into him, it was that speed was generally one of the deciding factors, if not the deciding factor, in a fight. Barring an exceptionally impenetrable defense, it was usually the faster fighter who won, and if the discrepancy was too high, the slower combattant had a lot of trouble even hitting the faster one. So more often than not, if he came here with a creature to work on anything, it was generally their speed.
… Having said that, however, Aster was aware that his usual approach might find some snags if he tried to apply them to Azalea. Even if she wasn’t water bound, she didn’t have the same shape that his other creatures did either.
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Post by Noa on Apr 14, 2020 19:00:41 GMT -6
Thus far he had done this agility training with two drakes and a Thundergug, and all of them had had the full complement of legs--- which was to say, four. Not that being two-legged precluded a creature from using a lot of the same strategies, but there was a big difference between creatures who rested their full weight on those two legs, and a creature like Azalea, who mostly used her front claws to grasp and attack, rather than as a primary form of locomotion.
“Hmm,” Aster said, frowning slightly. Azalea cocked her head, sensing that something was amiss, but not knowing what it was, and content to wait for Aster to come up with it rather than venturing any guesses of her own in the meantime. She had a sweet temper, perhaps the most so of any creature Aster had worked closely with, and rather preferred to please than not.
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Post by Noa on Apr 14, 2020 19:01:47 GMT -6
But she was no strategist either, and was content so long as everyone around her was too. Placid, almost, except he had seen her take down opponents before; and her natural diet was that of a predator’s, like the Wiurn parent, rather than the Lotine.
Aster considered the equipment. There was a section for aquatic creatures, with a pool and its own challenges and obstacles. It might be best to start there, though he wasn’t terribly familiar with it.
Or maybe they could start with… say, the weaving poles. They really ought to give it a try, at least, before he decided whether or not it certainly wasn’t for her. Even if she wasn’t running, per se, she could at least weave between poles while moving around, right? And the general principle of it was the same, to get her to change directions more quickly and precisely…
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Post by Noa on Apr 14, 2020 19:02:06 GMT -6
“Well, first things first,” Aster said, remembering just before he really got ahead of himself. “Let’s have you warm up. Some stretches first…” No sooner did he say that than did Aster realize he didn’t really know what stretching looked like on a serpentine creature either.
This was going to be a long day.
In the end, he compromised by walking her through some yoga positions that involved the legs held together, and focused more on the arms. Some of them were simple to explain, but others required him to move her into position manually. Fortunately, she had long since been desensitized to handling, and bore with it with the same good grace that she generally went into a training session with.
“And now stretch yourself out as far as you’ll go,” Aster said, figuring that was a safe thing to ask her to do, at the very least.
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Post by Noa on Apr 14, 2020 19:02:23 GMT -6
“And relax… And now again, stretch out.” They repeated this movement five times, before Aster was satisfied that the stretching portion of the warm-up could come to an end. It did feel a bit like a farce, but sometimes the training process involved making it up as you go along. In fact, a rather large portion of it did, depending on the day and what he was teaching, and whether he had taught it before.
Now was the more straightforward task of getting her body warmed up with a little activity. “You see that track over there?” he said, pointing it out. “I’d like you to go around once.”
Azalea seemed a little daunted by the prospect, which didn’t bode well for the attempt. It had already been a bit of a walk to get here, and maybe doing so much movement over land had taken a number on her, even this early into the day.
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Post by Noa on Apr 14, 2020 19:02:39 GMT -6
She didn’t refuse, but she wasn’t exactly eager either, so Aster began to reconsider what he had asked of her.
“Hmm,” Aster said. “Maybe let’s… Say, do you think you could change the way you move?”
{The way I move?} said Azalea, head tilted to one side.
“Yeah. The way you do it right now, moving around out of water is kind of tiring, isn’t it?” Wordlessly, she affirmed his suspicions. “Have you ever tried moving without the jumping, with your tail going from side to side?”
{Side to side?} Azalea tipped her head the other way. Evidently the idea had never so much as occurred to her, and the fact that he was suggesting it now had her quite baffled. Probably she couldn’t imagine it. Azalea’s intelligence was nothing remarkable for a creature, despite the Lotine parentage; it seemed that the Wiurn genes won out in that department.
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Post by Noa on Apr 14, 2020 19:03:00 GMT -6
And she hadn’t had as much exposure to training and to people as, say, Avander, so the Wiurn tended to be rather savvier than she was in these matters.
But fortunately they had their connection through the ribbon, and if Azalea could not imagine or picture it, Aster could do it for her. “Like this,” Aster said, and thought to her a vision of her moving in a more serpentine manner, with her front legs still tucked beside her body. “Doesn’t it look kind of like swimming? And that way, you won’t be bouncing up and down and jostling yourself all the time either.” Of course, he didn’t know if doing this would make her any faster, and they might still be relegated to water exercises if it didn’t, but at least it was an idea. This first session would be all about trying different things, seeing what worked and what didn’t.
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Post by Noa on Apr 14, 2020 19:03:12 GMT -6
It wasn’t the most exciting of tasks, nor did it foster any great feelings of productivity, but it was still something they had to get out of the way before they could really get into the meat of agility training, so to speak.
Azalea didn’t respond immediately, but Aster could sense through their link that she was thinking hard about what he had proposed. {... I guess I could try it,} she said at last, and gave her tail an experimental wiggle.
“Give it a try,” Aster said, nodding at her encouragingly. “If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and then maybe we’ll toss you into the pool.”
{Can you lift me?} said Azalea, sounding a little concerned. {I think I’m too heavy for you to carry.}
“Well, you’re right, but… It’s just a figure of speech. Nevermind,” he said, when she gave him another uncomprehending look.
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Post by Noa on Apr 14, 2020 19:03:44 GMT -6
“It’s not important,” Aster said, shaking his head hurriedly. “Let’s just try having you move around first.”
Azalea lowered her head and tucked her legs in, and wiggled… to no effect, at least at first. Aster frowned, but he didn’t intervene just yet, wanting to watch and wait to see if she would find the trick of it with a little more experimenting. He obviously couldn’t have done it himself; his body and his spine weren’t made to do that. But from what he knew of watching Salaves and the like, there was a sort of rhythm to the way they moved their bodies. She would need to do something like that if she had any hope of learning to move over land in that manner, rather than her usual scooting hop.
And then, at last, something did seem to click, and she managed to inch forward a bit.
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Post by Noa on Apr 14, 2020 19:04:27 GMT -6
And then she inched forward again, a little more, and a little more after that… It wasn’t smooth, but the more she snaked around, the further she got when she did it. {Oh!} she said. {I’m doing it, aren’t I?}
“You sure are,” Aster confirmed. “Do you think you could keep it up? Go around the track once, like this?”
{I can try it,} said Azalea. Apparently a little success was all it took to hearten her, and she made her way slowly to the track to do just that.
Aster watched her go, and resisted the urge to sigh a little. It wasn’t that she was doing badly, but she was learning to move with a new method of locomotion, and was understandably a little slow with it because of that. After a few initial stumbles, she had remarkably managed to achieve a sustained and steady pace.
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Post by Noa on Apr 14, 2020 19:04:51 GMT -6
It was only that this pace was about the speed of a slow walk on him, and while it might prove useful for moving over long distances, as of yet it wasn’t any good for moving quickly, in combat.
But then, cities weren’t built in a day, and most gym goals weren’t achieved in just a single session either. There would be time enough for more practice, and with more practice, maybe she really would get faster.
Once she had taken a turn around the track, Aster set up the weaving poles for her. They were spaced a particular distance apart, not very close, since he couldn’t possibly ask that of her this soon into their first session, of all things; but also not very wide either. It was, based on his estimation, an eyeball of where she would need to turn to most efficiently slither across the ground.
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Post by Noa on Apr 14, 2020 19:05:18 GMT -6
A sort of practice, until her body committed this kind of rhythm to memory. Or that was the plan, anyway. How much it worked or helped her in a practical sense remained to be seen.
“These are weaving poles,” Aster said. “You go through them like this.” He sent her a mental image of her moving between them, rather than demonstrating himself. Aster was, in a length sense, almost completely flat, so he didn’t think using himself as a model would be terribly helpful to her.
She let him do this for a while, and Aster was beginning to wonder if something was the matter, but at length she moved herself to the start of the line, and slowly began nosing her way through the first two poles.
‘Slow’ would have been the word for her progress through this portion too, for all that today's training was meant to focus on agility.
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Post by Noa on Apr 14, 2020 19:05:46 GMT -6
Aster didn’t begrudge her that; it was what it was, and there was a learning period needed for her to figure out the proper physical motions before she could go through it at speed. Thus he simply stood back and watched, no timers, and no commentary either, unless she seemed really stuck. He wasn’t just staring and spacing out though; he had to monitor her for any signs of distress or confusion, so he could nip that in the bud before the experience became too unpleasant for her. It was a lot harder to salvage if she had already formed a negative impression or experience of what she was doing, and then he didn’t know if he would be able to convince her to try it again.
But there was nothing he saw that felt as though it called for his intervention in the time it took for her to get through the line of poles.
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