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Post by Noa on May 19, 2019 14:01:10 GMT -6
"Very well. If you insist on using it, you may give it a try." With those words, she closed the distance between them, the rest of the weights in hand.
The creature backed up a step, his eyes wide again, as if he had been caught off guard by her reaction. That gave Rabbit pause too. Had this not been what he intended? But just as she was thinking that, the creature stepped forward and presented one foreleg. Perhaps it had not been what he had intended, but now he had apparently decided to follow through anyway.
She attached the weight in her hands to the offered foreleg. "And now the other one," she said.
He dropped it into her waiting hand, and before long, she had the second weight fastened onto his leg. d around that leg as well. The creature lifted each leg slowly, testing the pull of each, and measuring, perhaps, the difference of this against what he was used to.
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Post by Noa on May 19, 2019 14:01:26 GMT -6
But Rabbit wasn’t done yet. She went out a little ways, trying to locate something; fortunately it did not take long at all to find it. And it shouldn’t; it was a large item, especially hard to miss, even more so in the environment of the gym where there was little else but for training equipment.
It was a large cart, full of weight bags. She was only able to drag it over with great effort to where the creature was still standing and examining his weight bags. He looked up at her approach, and this time the shock he experienced was such that it showed in the language of his whole body. The leg that he had been examining dropped to the ground, and his ears went back as he crouched slightly, as if warding off a threat.
“This,” she said. “It can be attached… Your armor should do just as well as tack. If you drag this as you walk, your progress can be increased exponentially.” She laid a hand on the cart as the creature looked between her and the cart, trying to figure out her intent.
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Post by Noa on May 19, 2019 14:01:41 GMT -6
One moment passed, and then another. Eventually the creature gave her a helpless look. It could not really be called beseeching, but there was an element of tired disbelief to it, as if suggesting she couldn’t really mean to do this to him.
And so she couldn’t. Rabbit’s general operating principle was that he ought not to strain himself. But thus far the creature had been eager to test those boundaries, and Rabbit thought it may be just as well to go in the other direction and seem as though she was encouraging the behavior, to the point of excess.
This was what the organic humanoids called ‘sarcasm’, was it not?
If the creature wanted to have a joke at her expense, then she might have one at his as well, even if she could derive no real humor from it. “You do not wish to?” she said. Here, the robot’s unreadable, perfectly still face was a boon. A brief flash of panic crossed the creature’s face before finally she relented, and pushed the cart away. “Very well. Then please hand over the weights too.”
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Post by Noa on May 19, 2019 14:01:55 GMT -6
The creature looked down at his legs, and there was a small sigh, but he did as she asked in the end. As Rabbit collected them, she consoled him. “You may try them sometime soon, when there is need for them. For now, the simple act of walking and running should be enough, over sufficient stretches of time.”
The creature didn’t look terribly enthused about this, but he didn’t argue. Stepping back, Rabbit motioned toward the track. The creature began his walk, one lap after another, with Rabbit guiding him through the exercise. She watched his movements carefully, as she had done the last time. The warm up wasn’t merely a formality, and there were specific things she was watching for before she asked him to pick up the pace. A certain stiffness to his movements--- made more evident by the soreness from yesterday’s exertions even than the creature’s usual--- had to have yielded somewhat before he could move on to running.
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Post by Noa on May 19, 2019 14:02:14 GMT -6
It took longer than yesterday, again because yesterday’s exertions had begun to take their toll on the creature’s body, but eventually his movements grew more limber. “You may begin running,” she said.
The creature took a moment to pick up the pace. Perhaps it had stopped paying attention at some point, and now it took a moment to rouse himself after hearing her words. Perhaps it simply took some time for him to speed up, or to muster the energy to do so. But once he did, he moved reasonably well despite his sluggish start, and he maintained a steady pace similar to the one that he had kept up the day before.
It was not an eventful session. Once he had run a couple of laps, Rabbit had him slow to a walk again, then speed up once he had completed a lap of that. She kept to the same timing as she had the previous day. One day was not enough time for him to improve, and so there was no need to increase the difficulty either. But neither did she allow him to do less than he had done yesterday, even if he looked more tired by the end of it.
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Post by Noa on May 19, 2019 14:02:42 GMT -6
‘Very good,” she said. “You did well.”
Even when he was exhausted, he managed to give her a withering look. Rabbit was not fazed by this, but she did make a mental note that the creature did not take well to praise of this kind. Some creatures liked praise so much that they could work for just that, but clearly this wasn’t to be the case with this one. “I will prepare your water,” she said.
He didn’t have the patience to wait for fortified water today though, benefits be damned. The water bucket was already full of normal, unaugmented water from the gym’s drinking fountain, and the creature stuck his muzzle in that straight away. He didn’t even trifle over the matter of the bucket itself, as he had done before.
“Remember to drink slowly,” said Rabbit. The creature grumbled outright about this, but he did slow down the pace of his drinking.
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Post by Noa on May 19, 2019 14:03:03 GMT -6
There was sense in what Rabbit was saying, and the alternative would have been to ignore her and suffer stomach cramps for it later. Likely the creature knew this, and picked the least unpleasant course of action.
Thus, their second session came to an end.
By the third such session, the creature was already looking a little better than he had been before. As his body adjusted, the soreness would have lessened; even on the walk over to the gym facilities, his gait seemed less stiff than it had been the day before. It was a promising sign.
Perhaps it was because he could feel the difference too--- the creature looked as though he was contemplating the cart again. Rabbit's gambit may have backfired after all, putting the idea in his head. Yesterday he had been reluctant, but today it looked as though he was reconsidering that assessment.
"Do you wish to try it?" said Rabbit. She was the one who had originally offered, after all.
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Post by Noa on May 19, 2019 14:03:22 GMT -6
There was that adage about how the one who knew one's own body best was oneself, and normally she might be inclined to believe it, but in this case she had already seen the creature injure himself by attempting too much too soon. Still, under her supervision, it wouldn't necessarily be the end of the world if he made an attempt at it either.
In truth she didn't think he would be able to move it very far. She still thought there was a chance that he would refuse too, that it was only a passing curiosity that he hadn't actually intended to follow through on. But the creature walked up to the cart, then turned to look at her expectantly.
So they really were going to do this then. "Very well," said Rabbit. She began the process of hitching the creature up to the cart. It took some time, and wasn't as straightforward as either of them might have hoped the process would be.
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Post by Noa on May 19, 2019 14:03:47 GMT -6
The armor was not made with this purpose in mind, at least as far as Rabbit could tell, and as a result, there was a great deal of figuring out and improvisation on Rabbit's part. But at length she managed to make it work, and stepped back to allow the creature to test the hold, to see if he would be able to pull on the cart and have it move with him.
The creature took a step forward, so that the slack in the arrangement was pulled taut. She could see him leaning into it, testing the distribution of the weight. Once he seemed satisfied that he had an understanding of it, he threw more of his weight against it.
The cart didn't move.
Rabbit stepped forward at once to begin the process of unhitching the creature from the cart. But he warned her away with a swing of his tail, impatiently throwing his weight against the weight of the cart again.
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Post by Noa on May 19, 2019 14:04:05 GMT -6
This time his effort was more sustained, not letting up at the initial lack of results. His claws dug into the ground, and she could see his muscles rippling beneath his hide as he exerted his strength.
And then, slowly, the cart began to move after all. It really wasn't very much at first, barely a wobble, but it was as if a barrier had been broken once the cart made its first creaking inch forward. After that, the creature managed to drag it still further, until the wheels had made a half turn--- a full turn--- and the creature himself having stepped forward several paces.
It was apparent, however, that this could not be sustained. "Stop," said Rabbit. "You've proven your point."
The creature stopped, turning his head to gaze at her, and made what was probably a show of not breathing hard at all. He must have been tired by the effort; she had seen how much it had taken him to make it move. There was a hint of satisfaction in his eyes though. She had guessed rightly, then.
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Post by Noa on May 19, 2019 14:04:29 GMT -6
She did not sigh, because she was a robot, and there would have been no point in her even pretending to breathe. But it felt as if it might have been appropriate now. "If you really wish to use it, we could remove some of the weight bags from the cart. But wouldn't the weights be easier?" If he was really so eager for a challenge, then it was better for them to start small. The cart could certainly be lightened, but she had the feeling that it was more intended for creatures wanting a bigger challenge anyway.
The creature shrugged, or did something like it with his shoulders rolling back, and shook his wings so that the makeshift harness jingled with his movements. This time, when Rabbit moved to unhitch him, he let her do it.
She wondered if he was satisfied with the results. He shook himself free as soon as she unclipped him from the cart, which suggested that he did not in fact care for the actual sensation of being hitched up to it.
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Post by Noa on May 19, 2019 14:04:51 GMT -6
“If you insist on something more difficult than what we have been doing,” she said carefully, “we may use the weights.”
He was much more amenable to this course of action. He let her attach the weights to him without much fuss either. She thought privately that he probably enjoyed the excuse to be still for a while so he could catch his breath. She didn’t believe his bluff of pretending that he was not winded by his efforts, for all that he had managed to perform the act of pulling the fully loaded cart some ways.
When she was done, she stepped back, and the creature tested his legs a little, the way he had done the first time he had tried them on. She gave him a moment to acclimate to them. “They may not feel like much now, but the weight will tell once you have been running for some time,” she said.
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Post by Noa on May 19, 2019 14:05:21 GMT -6
If he had any thoughts on that assertion, he didn’t share them. Once he seemed ready to do so, she signalled for him to start, and resumed what had become her usual place in the center of the track to watch his progress and direct the pace.
At first there really wasn’t a very noticeable difference. He was a little slower to start than she might have expected, but that could be explained away by his efforts with the cart just a little earlier. His manner about the whole ordeal had gotten a little better. Perhaps it was only because he had gotten it all out of his system with his display, but he did not engage in any of the antics that he had previously done near the start of a session, and merely applied himself to what he saw as a dull task with seriousness, as far as Rabbit could tell.
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Post by Noa on May 19, 2019 14:05:38 GMT -6
But as the session wore on, the added weight really did begin to tell. It wasn’t necessarily that he stumbled or dragged his feet, but sometimes he began to look as though he wished he could. This was particularly evident when he was walking. The pace of a jog didn’t allow as much room for it, but when he was walking, he didn’t have to pick his feet so very far off the ground. The result was that he didn’t. It wasn’t quite a shuffle, but as they neared the end of the number of laps that he had always done in the past, it became… more similar, to be sure.
Rabbit responded by lengthening his walking breaks, and shortening the periods that he spent running. If he noticed it this time, he didn’t show any sign of it either. Weariness did not do a whole lot for his awareness--- or at least a whole lot of good, anyway.
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Post by Noa on May 19, 2019 14:05:55 GMT -6
Fortunately, he didn’t exactly have to be at his best and brightest here, of all places. The gym was hardly a place for danger, other than self-inflicted problems or something to do with the equipment, and he was only running on a track, well away from anything that might have posed a threat.
It was interesting for Rabbit to see the effects of the weights as well. She did not doubt that they would be effective, but it was interesting in that they were actually quite small relative to the size of the creature. He was fairly large--- of a size where he could have comfortably carried a rider, though the placement of some of his armor precluded that, and she had a suspicion that the Tat-lung portion of his lineage would preclude that possibility even without that limitation.
But what she said had been correct despite all that, that he would feel the tell of the weights the longer he ran.
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