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Post by Noa on May 13, 2020 0:37:13 GMT -6
{On three. One, two, three.}
As soon as Aster gave the signal, she sped off. Aster could tell that she was trying to challenge herself now. She wasn’t going quite as fast as she had the first time, at least not when she was still going at her top speed and not doubling back to correct a mistake, but it was still a very respectable pace. Certainly, he couldn’t have accused her of not taking it seriously at this pace. But the most notable thing was how much her accuracy had improved, just from the act of taking her time to feel out where the individual hoops were. Aster watched with approval as she sped through each of them without making any mistakes.
When she finished, he had a respectable time on his hands, judging from the readout from the stopwatch. {Wow, hey, not bad,} Aster said. {Much better than your first run.}
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Post by Noa on May 13, 2020 0:37:53 GMT -6
{It was, wasn’t it? I felt faster too,} Azalea said. She seemed pleased, glowing at having been praised for what she had accomplished. Her undisguised joy brought a little smile to Aster’s face too, almost in spite of himself. Gym training work was usually a slog, but Azalea’s attitude did something to brighten it. {I didn’t have to stop this time at all.}
{Yeah, you see how it is,} Aster said. He didn’t say anything more, since explaining where he wanted her to be at might confuse her further, but eventually this kind of training would get her to the point where she could make those decisions on the fly, and change her trajectory quickly. For now, though, it was mostly getting her to see the point in paying attention to precision to begin with, along with laying the groundwork for how to do it that mattered.
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Post by Noa on May 13, 2020 0:38:10 GMT -6
{Are you good to run another round?} he asked. If she was tired, he would let her rest. After all, they were training her for agility right now, not endurance.
Not that endurance wouldn’t be useful, but that was a project for another time. For now, it was best to focus on one thing at a time, and for the moment, that would be Azalea’s agility.
Azalea didn’t seem very tired at all, and she readily agreed to another round. Maybe endurance wasn’t going to be a major issue for her after all, Aster thought. But then, the course was actually not terribly long, and the time it took her to swim through it wasn’t all that long either.
Regardless, so long as she was willing, then they would keep going. Aster gave her the go ahead to begin again, and she set off on another turn through the hoops.
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Post by Noa on May 13, 2020 0:38:22 GMT -6
The last run had gone relatively well, so she went even faster this time, using something that was beginning to approach her natural top speed. Aster watched her progress carefully, looking for signs of anything from poor technique to exhaustion that she might otherwise be trying to hide from him. He hadn’t done gym training with Azalea before, so he admittedly didn’t know what she would or wouldn’t pull. With some creatures such as Grunty, it was easy to guess: the Thundergug in question would try to play up being tired, since he wasn’t terribly motivated by nature. It was fortunate that Grunty wasn’t smarter than he was, or else he might have done a more convincing job at that pretending, and that would have been pretty inconvenient for Aster to have to deal with. Other creatures he’d worked with had been prouder, and less willing to admit their mistakes or what they didn’t know.
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Post by Noa on May 13, 2020 0:38:44 GMT -6
With Azalea, Aster was worried that she might try too hard for his sake, or try something that he had suggested without due consideration to how it actually felt for her as she did it. It was a strange concern to have, as far as he was concerned, but given her temperament… Still, so far, she seemed to be running the course just fine, without any particular sign of distress. To the contrary, she was doing quite well. Aster hadn’t been paying close attention to the time, since he had been more focused on watching her, but when she completed the course and he had an opportunity to check his stopwatch, the results were a pleasing improvement on her previous attempt.
{Hey, you did good out there,} Aster said. If Azalea did work for praise, then it would have been remiss for him not to give her any when it was due.
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Post by Noa on May 13, 2020 0:38:59 GMT -6
And sure enough, Azalea seemed pleased by his acknowledgement, swimming a quick circle around him.
{Did I? Was it better?} she said. {It is much easier now that I know where everything is.}
{If you feel confident, then let’s try going as fast as you can on your next attempt,} Aster prompted. If she felt comfortable, there was no need to hold back. Aster didn’t want to push her excessively, but if she was ready for it, then he wasn’t about to hold her back either.
Azalea seemed willing, almost eager to try, and commenced the next attempt without much delay. As soon as Aster gave her the go ahead, she shot off, blazing through all the hoops in rapid succession. This time, without her faltering or trying to figure out where to go as she went, her time was so monumentally better than her first try that it didn’t really bear comparing the two.
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Post by Noa on May 13, 2020 0:39:35 GMT -6
Her top speed, such as it was, didn’t disappoint. Aster noted that she did have some trouble going through the turns, but there would be room and time to work on that as they went. As it was, however, while he was pleased with how she was doing so far, this was still the learning portion of their regimen in the water.
{Good,} Aster said, when she swam up to him after she was done. {You seem like you’ve really got the hang of it.} Azalea preened a little, and Aster let her have her moment, both to bask in the praise and to get in some rest before he asked her to try it again. She didn’t seem very tired, but she must have exerted herself somewhat, especially with this last turn around the pool. And even if she didn’t complain, Aster was still worried about her.
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Post by Noa on May 13, 2020 0:40:10 GMT -6
They did have to go on, however, so after a while Aster said, {Let’s try something else. I’m going to rearrange the hoops, and then let’s have you try swimming through them again.}
Azalea agreed readily to what Aster had suggested, though she seemed a bit confused by this development. She didn’t question it, but Aster could sense that she didn’t quite understand the point. He considered explaining, but wondered if that might overcomplicate the process somewhat, and he didn’t want to give her too much to think about if it would be to her detriment.
In the end, he decided against explaining and simply went for it, rearranging the hoops until most of them were in at least a slightly different position than they had been in before. {There,} he said, having finished his handiwork, {take a turn through those and see how you feel.}
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Post by Noa on May 13, 2020 0:40:25 GMT -6
Azalea didn’t jump into this newly changed course of hoops right away, taking some time to study their positions before she began. When they had made a bit more progress on this exercise, Aster hoped that her assessment time would be faster, but for now he was just glad to see that she had taken the lesson to heart, and was taking the time to consider her course before she plunged into it. Thus, he said nothing, merely watching from the sidelines to see what she would do.
Eventually she was ready to begin, and sped off through the first hoop. She still had to slow down for a couple of tricky turns, but overall it was a vast improvement from the first time she had run the original course, thanks to a reorganizing of her priorities, if nothing else. It was even a decently good time in a general sense, though clearly not as fast as she could go if she had been more confident with it.
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Post by Noa on May 13, 2020 0:40:40 GMT -6
{How did it feel?} he asked. He felt that he had been asking that particular question a lot, but he wasn’t telepathic enough with her to know every nuance of her experiences, and to be honest he preferred to keep it that way. The more telepathic and empathic connections he did build up, the more determined he was to keep them all at a relatively surface level. There was some risk in entangling himself too thoroughly in the minds of other entities, even if they were his own creatures who for the most part meant him well. Not to mention all the questions of autonomy on their end, if he were to become too pervasive a presence in their heads.
Fortunately, Azalea didn’t seem to be sick of answering it just yet either. {It was different, so I had to go slower,} she reported, {but I don’t think it’s actually harder than the last one. I think if I went through it again, I could go pretty fast.}
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Post by Noa on May 13, 2020 0:41:01 GMT -6
{Do you? That’s good then,} Aster said. {Give it another go.}
With his encouragement, Azalea took another turn around the course, this time going at a speed closer to her final run of the original arrangement of the hoops. Aster watched her, and kept the time. She swung a bit wide in some places, but again, it was mostly a good, respectable run. And the more he watched her do it, the more he thought that their goal with this was probably not actually to fine tune any individual run, but to get her better at adapting herself when confronted with something new that she had to work her way through.
In service of that goal, Aster thought it best to change up the hoop arrangements as often as he felt he could comfortably get away with. And so, when that run turned out a decent time, he decided that it was time for them to change things up again.
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Post by Noa on May 13, 2020 0:41:15 GMT -6
Azalea didn’t protest, and this time she didn’t even seem to be baffled by it the way she had been the first time he changed them either. He didn’t think she had necessarily cottoned on to what he was intending for her with this, but rather that she had made a mental adjustment about the fact that it was happening, and was content to leave it at that.
Well, it made things simpler for Aster if she didn’t question it, though he would be lying if he said he wasn’t concerned about some of the implications of her lack of curiosity. Maybe it really was just that she trusted him a lot. Aster hoped she wasn’t quite this compliant with everyone she met in life.
Still, those were questions for another time. For now, with the hoops rearranged, he asked her to try going through them again. Azalea sized them up, then took a turn through them, and then a second, at Aster’s behest.
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Post by Noa on May 13, 2020 0:41:26 GMT -6
From these two runs, Aster got a feel for how she was approaching these at present. There wasn’t the dramatic improvement that there had been between the first arrangement and the second, though admittedly that dramatic improvement owed more to the fact that Azalea had taken completely the wrong approach the first time around. Now they were finally getting to the meat of the matter, and as it stood, it still took her two attempts before she was comfortable enough to go at her full and proper speed through a hoop course. It still also took her some time to study the layout before she made even her initial run, if she wanted to have an attempt that didn’t run into the same snags as her first one.
Her turns were a little sharper though. It was good to see that at least the physical aspect of it was something she was improving, whether that was a conscious effort she was making or not.
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Post by Noa on May 13, 2020 0:41:36 GMT -6
They continued the process over, with Aster rearranging the hoops and Azalea making her way through them, until Azalea began to show some real signs of exhaustion. It took some time, more than Aster had been anticipating, but eventually it did happen. At that point, he called her away, and prepared a drink of water for her, urging her back out of the pool so that she could rest.
{Did I do well?} said Azalea, dutifully taking her drink per Aster’s instructions.
“Mhm. You’re getting better,” Aster said. They weren’t just empty words either. Slowly but surely, Azalea did seem like she was making progress. It wasn’t dramatic, but he could see that she was gradually taking less time to assess the layout of a new set of rings. Aster had been subtly trying to vary them in more difficult arrangements too, so the fact that she was making progress despite that was heartening to see.
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Post by Noa on May 13, 2020 0:41:47 GMT -6
It was still taking her two tries to reach her top speed, but some of those first runs were getting faster too. He wasn’t pushing her for it, so he could only guess that she was feeling more comfortable doing this.
Of course, how much longer they would be at this was anyone’s guess, but for now he was satisfied with how she was progressing, in the water at least. Their efforts on land… Well, he’d see how things went, he supposed. Not all his ideas panned out in terms of training, and he wouldn’t be surprised if this one didn’t either, though it was also a little premature to decide it wouldn’t work after a single session.
When she was done with her drink, Aster could see Azalea looking at the pool again. “No, we’re not going back yet. Catch your breath first,” he said.
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