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Post by Noa on May 11, 2021 16:07:15 GMT -6
They went on for a good half hour in that manner, and in that time Noa saw some significant improvements. At first, the length of her body sometimes encumbered poor Azalea, but as she got more practice with it, she began to be able to move with more intent. She still knocked over the occasional hurdle, especially as she tried to increase her speed, butit was much less than it could have been; and while her track record never became perfect, she did become much faster at it, which certainly had to count for something.
After that half hour, Noa asked her to slow down, take one more circuit of the track, then stop. That was enough of a session for them today. She had shown some improvement, and he didn’t want to tire her too much with this kind of intensive exercise. He got her some water, and worked with Rhys to put away the poles as she drank. Once everything was packed up, it was time for the three of them to head back out again.
They would be back at some point, once Azalea had had a chance to recover, and in the meantime there was plenty else for them to work on too.
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2021 12:28:36 GMT -6
What a strange little venture this was, Noa thought, as he made his way to the gym - 'little' being perhaps the operant word. He was accompanied by Rhys, which was normal. As his familiar, Rhys went almost everywhere he did, though as he amassed more power, this was sometimes less often the case. What was more unusual was his other companion, which was the little feathered creature he had gotten from that new fossil revival service in town. What a bizarre concept that was too - to revive creatures that had already gone extinct, and then give them to people to raise, if they wished. The feathered creature certainly wasn’t much to look at. Noa hadn’t even bothered to give it a name quite yet, because it didn’t… really seem like it merited one just yet. Despite having accompanied Noa on several mining trips, Noa didn’t feel like he knew enough about it yet to get a definitive sense for who it was. And also, more importantly, it wasn’t working in any useful capacity for him. Still... He had heard a few promising stories about how they might be quite powerful if raised correctly, which had kept his interest. 1
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2021 12:29:12 GMT -6
Considering how much work it was turning out to be so far, he really hoped it would be worth it when this creature did finally grow up into an adult. But given the fact that he was spending the time to raise it, he figured it was never too early to get a creature to the gym. And so here he was, one fine late spring morning, accompanied not by his usual contingent of large and fierce creatures, but by two creatures who could both easily be carried by him. At the same time, even. Considering his general lack of strength, this was saying a lot.
The woman at the counter did a double take when he walked past her into the part of the gym usually reserved for smaller creatures, which said a lot about this whole situation. He merely lifted the little feathered creature that he was carrying in his hand, then waved the free one at her as he continued walking. What was she going to do? Stop him? He had a membership here and everything, and she knew who he was, since he came here so often.
The room he emerged into was utterly unfamiliar to him.
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2021 12:29:49 GMT -6
Well. Okay, maybe that was a bit of a melodramatic way to put things. It was a gym room, and in a way it wasn’t unlike the area that he usually frequented with the larger creatures that were the bread and butter of his training regimens. The equipment, some of it, was the same, just on a smaller scale, though there were also things he hadn't seen before mixed in. Which should have been a good thing, because there was no way he could have trained such a small creature on the same equipment that he used to train, say, a Wiurn.
The problem now was that the little feathered creature was… too small for most of the equipment in the small creature area. It would have been funny, almost - it certainly was ironic, to say the least - if it wasn’t so troublesome.
Noa surveyed the equipment around him and sighed.
Okay, so he was on his own here. He was going to have to make up his own games to get the little creature to do something productive. No matter, he had been training creatures for years now. He was sure he could come up with something. But what…
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2021 12:30:02 GMT -6
It was when his eyes lit upon the weights, in the strength training area, that an idea did come to Noa. “Rhys,” he said, “help me move these.” Before the Faeron could even give a reply, Noa went and collected the smallest and lightest of them, and began arranging them on the open floor. He left gaps between them, not so tight that the creature would barely be able to fit through, but also not so large that it would be able to just walk in a straight line through it. Rhys observed him for a moment, then cottoned on to what he had intended, and began lifting some of the heavier small weights to do the same.
By the time they were finished, they actually had a fairly impressive layout. The little feathered creature looked uncomprehendingly at the spread from its vantage point in Noa’s pocket, still unaware of the fate that was about to befall it. “Not bad, to start,” Noa said. Maybe he would have been more critical if he was taking this a little more seriously, but there was a part of him that just couldn’t get too worked up over the idea of training a creature so small.
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2021 12:30:20 GMT -6
It might not work, of course. They still had to test it. But it seemed promising, at least. And so he scooped the little feathered creature out of the pocket that it was resting in, and set it on the ground, to see what it would do.
The first thing the little feathered creature did was stretch. It didn’t seem to feel uneasy, despite being so small, and finding itself in such a wide open space. Noa frowned, not quite comprehending just how things worked in its little head; it had squalled for what he surmised to be sillier reasons. But well, this was a good thing, that it wasn’t upset. Training was always more difficult when the creature in question was worked up.
Noa held out a dried mealworm, and the little feathered creature perked right up. In some ways, it really was remarkably like a baby bird - up to and including a voracious appetite.
“Ah ah. You work for your meal today,” Noa said. “Rhys?”
{At this point I almost feel more like I’m the trainer,} sighed the Faeron, but he took over holding the worm from Noa, and led the little feathered creature up to the start of the obstacle maze that they had created.
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2021 12:30:42 GMT -6
The little creature followed the food, of course... only to find its path forward blocked by a weight. It darted around one weight, only to find another, and another, and another.
Now it did let out an indignant squawk, as it bumped into yet another weight just as it turned a corner. Noa had to stifle his laughter - though on second thought, the feathered creature wasn’t smart enough to understand the concept of being laughed at, was it? Rhys dangled the worm in front of the creature again, and it recovered with remarkable speed. Hope sprang eternal, and it kept chasing the worm, even as it ran into more obstacles.
You really had to admire its perseverance. That much, Noa could concede.
{Don’t you feel bad for it at all?} Rhys said, observing the little feathered creature as it bumbled its way through this makeshift obstacle course.
“It’s learning,” Noa pointed out. After the first few times it bumped into the different obstacles, the creature had indeed wised up and begun going more slowly, managing to just stop itself before it bumped into something, rather than ramming into it at full tilt like it had done before.
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2021 12:30:55 GMT -6
And the creature had its small size to help soften the blows; given its lack of bulk, it couldn’t muster enough momentum for these sudden stops to do much damage. A larger creature running into an unexpected obstacle might have the misfortune of breaking its own neck, but this little thing was at much less risk of that.
It was probably just as well that the little creature was learning though, considering the bumping into things schtick got less funny pretty quickly. Eventually, after a lot of starts and stops, it did manage to reach the other side of the course, at which point Noa gave Rhys permission to let it have the worm. The little feathered creature gobbled it down with great gusto. “Tastes better when you’ve worked for it, doesn’t it?” Noa said, though he suspected that the little creature would much rather have had it for free. Unfortunately for it, it wasn’t the one calling the shots.
The creature’s slow progress through the maze, despite the fact that it was evidently trying to go as quickly as it could manage, promised a somewhat frustrating day of watching it improve by little increments.
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2021 12:31:06 GMT -6
But this first run did tell Noa two useful things: one, that this arrangement was working; and two, that the creature had decent mobility, despite having been carried around by Noa so often on his outings. He was glad to see that the thing’s muscles hadn’t atrophied, which would have been a more troublesome issue to address.
Still, it was a small creature, and Noa didn’t know how much of its stamina reserves had been spent on just this one run. So he allowed it a very generous rest before taking out another worm and starting the process anew.
The little creature had a better go of it the second time, if only because it spent almost no time recovering from running headfirst into something and then being indignant about it. To be fair, any improvement still was progress. It still had to stop often to change its direction, so it wasn’t going at a pace that Noa would have called fast, but it was learning. When it got to the end, it got the worm, and when it went in for a third attempt, Noa pulled out the stopwatch he used for these things and began to time the creature’s progress.
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2021 12:31:30 GMT -6
The rest of the session consisted mostly of the creature chasing the worm back and forth through the obstacle course, with rest breaks in between for it to catch its breath and also maybe digest the food a little. The rest breaks got longer and longer as the session went on, because Noa wanted to play it safe. After all, this was a first session, and he didn’t want the creature to have keeled over dead from exertion the next day or anything.
Noa also went to the pains of providing drinking water for the little feathered creature in a little shallow dish for it to drink from. Not enriched, of course, since he didn’t know the proportion of vitamins to put into the water for a creature of its size, but… maybe next time. This world of training diminutive creatures was pretty new to Noa, aside from Rhys - and Rhys could communicate his thoughts and issues perfectly well, so it was a whole different thing with him.
But as the session neared its end, Noa noted that he did see marked improvement, both in the little creature’s times on the stopwatch and the general impression of its progress through the maze.
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2021 12:32:15 GMT -6
It was doing much better at changing directions on the fly now, no longer having to skid to a stop nearly as often to redirect itself. Now that it seemed to expect to have to change its direction quickly, and had been forced to practice doing so, it was becoming proficient at not losing much speed when it inevitably had to do it. Noa wouldn’t have said it had gotten any faster in the general, straight sprint sense, but being able to turn on a dime was also a useful skill when it came to evading enemy blows… Though if the creature stayed this small, maybe that was a moot point.
The little creature was finally given a bigger helping of mealworms while Noa and Rhys cleaned up the weights they had put out, in preparation for their trip home. The creature ate as if it expected its food to be stolen, then promptly fell asleep afterwards.
“What a charmed life it lives,” Noa said, shaking his head and scooping up the creature. Would that his own day to day were so simple.
Well, it was time to go home, and maybe work with his other beasts a little more. Noa collected his things, then walked out the door.
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Post by Noa on Jun 18, 2021 16:34:50 GMT -6
Noa had been away from the gym for a longer stint this time, but eventually he made his way back with Azalea in tow. The goal this time was to work with Azalea - on her stamina, rather than her speed. He had put her through some paces on his own time, and done his research on Pliathor; it seemed that they were the speedy all-rounders of the higher power level pets. It was a shame that she couldn’t fly, now that he thought about it, but he already had fliers aplenty between his Wiurn and his Sarane, so at least there was that. But her natural speed and overwhelming strength came at the cost, it seemed, of her endurance; the older Wiurns and Thundergugs were more durable and had better staying power. And while that couldn’t be entirely rectified, they could improve a little on what Azalea could do with a little bit of dedication at the gym. It was always an interesting experience, leading Azalea into the city. People took notice; how could they not? It was a Pliathor - even one of a regular size was enough, Noa thought, to pretty thoroughly startle people if they saw it out of the water. 1
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Post by Noa on Jun 18, 2021 16:35:05 GMT -6
But she also had flowers on her back and seaweed waving around her like that. It was probably hard for them to know what to make of her with all that going on.
What they thought of Azalea didn’t really matter, of course. First and foremost, she was Noa’s creature, and so long as she served her purpose, there was nothing else that had any real bearing on him. But it was pretty funny to see people do double takes, or rubbing at their eyes as if they couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing in front of them. It was good for a laugh, at least, and it didn’t even cost him anything. Not to say that Noa was a penny pincher by any means, but considering the cost that magical ventures tended to have, some free entertainment wasn’t an unwelcome thing either.
Azalea did have to stay outside while he went in to check everything out with the woman at the front desk, but they had been here twice before, so they were good to go on that front. Noa led Azalea out to the back area after that, where he took stock of the available equipment and started thinking about what they ought to do, exactly.
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Post by Noa on Jun 18, 2021 16:35:15 GMT -6
It was hardly his only time doing endurance training, since he had done this with Aurelius and Avander before, but those two had had a pretty similar body map to one another, which Azalea did not possess. She had four legs, to be sure, but her legs were small and not really her main means of locomotion. Instead, she relied on slithering around, almost entirely snakelike, with the legs used for steering or some limited leverage or climbing over difficult terrain.
{Maybe she could pull weights,} Rhys suggested, surveying the available equipment right alongside Noa. He had come along too, as a matter of course, and was sitting perched sleepily on Noa’s shoulder. {There’s that big cart, isn’t there?}
“There is,” Noa agreed, “but the problem is that she’s so long, I don’t know how we would hitch one to her.” Indeed, the problem with having a snake-like body plan was that she didn’t really have a way to pull something behind her the way that Avander or Aurelius might pull a cart or the like.
{Is there something wrong with me?} Azalea asked, not an insulted challenge to Rhys’s words but genuine concern.
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Post by Noa on Jun 18, 2021 16:35:28 GMT -6
Noa sighed. “Don’t concern yourself with it. You’re fine.” He wasn’t usually the reassuring type, but with Azalea he had to make some concessions there; it was better to reassure her with a few words than to waste more time with whatever happened when she took a criticism to heart, and this sort of thing really wasn’t worth having her worrying herself over it. “We’ll figure something out. We can at least strap some weights to her, can’t we?”
They couldn’t use the cart, but after some trial and error, they did manage to fit Azalea with some weights strapped all along her length. There were a great deal of them, to make sure that the load was more or less evenly distributed and not too closely concentrated in one area, but they were surprisingly light for a creature of Azalea’s bulk. Noa didn’t want to start her with weights that were too heavy at the outset, since he needed to see what kind of effect they would have on her first. Maybe it would be nothing, and they would have to increase the load; or maybe it would be enough.
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