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Post by Noa on Jun 18, 2021 16:35:48 GMT -6
What he didn’t want was for them to be too much; the time spent recovering from strain would put a greater dent in their training schedule than starting off too slowly. Once Azalea had confirmed that the weights were both reasonably comfortable and secured, he had her move around a bit to test her mobility with them. It took a little getting used to, but they didn’t impede her range of motion, or her ability to get traction on the ground. With that done, they were good to go, and Noa asked her to take a lap around the track at her usual speed, and let him know how that felt.
As she made her way around the track, Noa and Rhys watched her progress, keeping an eye out for any issues that might require an adjustment. So far though, everything seemed to be okay. It was just light exercise, enough to get her warmed up and not much more.
Once her first lap was done, and they didn’t encounter any issues there, Noa decided it was time to get this into full swing. “This time I want you to go around as fast as you can, two laps,” Noa instructed.
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Post by Noa on Jun 18, 2021 16:36:16 GMT -6
“Then you can take it slower for the third one. If you don’t remember, I’ll call it out.” He didn’t want her wasting time and effort with keeping track of these things in her head; Pliathor weren’t known for being particularly cerebral, and that was what Noa was around for anyway - to bark out orders.
Azalea gave a low rumble of assent before moving off, and Noa and Rhys watched again as she made another circuit around the track. It was always interesting to watch her on it, since she was so long; it didn’t look like as great a distance, because she covered more of it with her length at once. But it still took her effort to move, so Noa didn’t dwell on the matter. And with her going at her full speed, it was a considerable difference from the slower pace that she had gone with before. Noa timed her circuit around the track, and arched a brow, impressed at what she had achieved. Avander would be hard pressed to make this kind of time without going into the air. In fact, Noa didn’t think it was actually possible for Avander to match her time if he was simply running on the ground.
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Post by Noa on Jun 18, 2021 16:36:37 GMT -6
Credit where it was due, a well conditioned Pliathor’s speed was nothing to scoff at. It was probably just as well that most of them were confined to the water. Fortunately, Azalea was not.
After two laps around the track, Noa called out for Azalea to slow down. {Oh no, I can keep going,} Azalea said. She didn’t seem overly tired, though her breathing was deeper now, if not quite labored. She was feeling some level of exertion, that much was apparent.
Despite her assurance, however, Noa was firm. “The point isn’t to run you until you’re completely exhausted,” he said. “We’re trying to increase your endurance, and that means how well you can last over a long period of time.” They could rush things, but it was less effective long term, and wouldn’t really do much for their goals. It was better to do things in increments, like he was trying to instruct her to, rather than simply pushing her until she collapsed.
Azalea might not have understood all that Noa was trying to convey to her, but she understood enough to know that this was what he wanted, so she slowed her pace just as he had instructed.
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Post by Noa on Jun 18, 2021 16:37:11 GMT -6
Noa nodded, glad to see that she was willing to listen - though he also hadn’t expected any different, considering it was Azalea he was dealing with. Out of all the creatures that he worked closely with, Azalea was the one who was the most eager to please, and thus the most obedient. Nightshade listened too, but he was more motivated by a desire for attention, and if he didn’t get it by being good, sometimes he would act out instead. Not so often now, after Noa had invested some more time into training him, but it still happened from time to time, and Noa still had to be careful about how he did certain things. But with Azalea, all he needed to convey was what he wanted, and she would do her best to fulfill that.
Azalea wasn’t hotheaded enough to want to argue with him either; apparently Rabbit ran into that problem with her halfbreed charge from time to time, though Noa didn’t really know the details. She only troubled him with questions when it was an issue that might cause more property damage than she felt she could control, so he was aware of it tangentially.
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Post by Noa on Jun 18, 2021 16:38:12 GMT -6
But no, Azalea took her slow lap in stride, and took the time to catch her breath, before Noa asked her to speed it up again on the next lap that she took. She went another two laps like that, by the end of which she was definitely starting to feel the exertion. For all their speed and size, Pliathor weren’t long distance sprinters - or at the very least, not going at full tilt, anyway. And to add to all that, she had had weights added to her, which couldn’t have made it any easier, even if they didn’t necessarily make it very much harder.
With Noa’s steady commands, and some encouragement from Rhys, Azalea kept going. The slowed down laps soon became a necessity for her to keep up, and Noa certainly didn’t hear any insistence from Azalea again that she could push on without them. Eventually, Noa asked her to start slowing down every second lap instead of every third, and then to do two slow laps to one fast one, explaining to her that she hadn’t failed, but that the session was winding down, and he wanted her to cool off gradually.
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Post by Noa on Jun 18, 2021 16:40:25 GMT -6
By the time the session wound down, she was breathing hard, and clearly worn out from the efforts of circling the track so many times. But that was, to some extent, what they were looking for to begin with. “Good session,” Noa said, and it was true - for a first session, that had been a perfectly respectable showing. Room for improvement, of course, but they could address that on subsequent trips well enough.
They had already cooled her down enough by getting her to do those slow laps from before, so he gave her as much water as he was comfortable letting her have - too much might weigh her down or cause cramping. Then, as she laid still and got some rest, Noa and Rhys got the weights off her and put away. They would increase the load next time, and see if that made any difference. For now, they were done, and it was time to head home, just as soon as Azalea was recovered enough to make the journey. After all, it wasn’t as if Rhys or Noa could carry her, considering her size and what she weighed.
Azalea didn't keep them waiting too long, and together the trio took their leave.
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Post by Noa on Jun 23, 2021 17:50:50 GMT -6
It was some time after Noa’s first trip to the gym with Nightshade that he finally managed to come back, though on this occasion it certainly wasn’t for a lack of trying. The gym had rather taken off as of late, and the big creatures facility could only house one or at most two behemoths at a time, if said behemoths were small. And while Nightshade was certainly not the biggest Wiurn that Noa had ever laid eyes on, he wasn’t exactly small either. He was still a Wiurn, after all. And so there had been the necessity, now that business had picked up so radically, of actually calling ahead to book sessions. Noa did this, eventually, after much putting it off, because such a menial extra step annoyed him enough that he just kept putting it off, until eventually Rhys had to intervene and remind him that nothing was going to move on until he got it done, at which point he did it. He was glad he did, if only because Rhys was right and he did want to move his training goals forward, but he was already thinking of ways to outsource the extra step. 1
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Post by Noa on Jun 23, 2021 17:51:27 GMT -6
He mulled the matter over as he made his way to the building with Nightshade in tow and Rhys accompanying them both. Maybe he could get Rabbit to do it. His magical helpers tended not to have voices, but Rabbit did, and he’d sent her on errands enough in the city anyway. She had a good AI, not that he understood much about it; he was sure she could figure it out, one way or another.
He checked in on arrival, not bothering with any pleasantries, as was his usual style. The woman at the desk knew him, and anyway he had booked the session already, so he wasted no time in taking Nightshade out back, where they came to the same area that they had worked in previously. The poles weren’t set up yet, since Noa owned the set he used and he had brought them with him, but Nightshade recognized the place from the last time he had been here.
One of the biggest changes since the last time they had been to the gym was the fact that Nightshade had graduated to having his own ribbon of telepathy, and thus his own mental link with Noa.
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Post by Noa on Jun 23, 2021 17:52:05 GMT -6
It had been a long time coming, but they had managed surprisingly well in the interim without one, and so it hadn’t seemed terribly urgent to hasten the process. But eventually the necessity of training something more complicated had won out, and now Nightshade was also a voice in Noa’s mind -- sometimes, anyway.
This wasn’t necessarily a process that necessitated it, but Noa figured he might as well have it, to make instructing Nightshade a little easier. And anyway, he was here to train Nightshade, so it wasn’t as if he needed to focus on anything else.
And if Nightshade got chatty enough to be annoying, well… Noa was hoping to keep him busy enough that that wouldn’t be true for very long.
Noa brought out the poles, and together he and Rhys began to set them up at regular intervals, the way they usually did for this kind of footwork training. “How far apart did we leave them last time?” Noa said. He couldn’t quite remember.
{I think it was… this much?} Rhys placed the next pole at an approximate distance estimate. Noa looked at it, checked it against Nightshade’s length, then shrugged.
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Post by Noa on Jun 23, 2021 17:52:35 GMT -6
It wasn’t too difficult a space for the Wiurn to pass through, and if it turned out to be more than he could manage, they could always widen it later. The same was true if it turned out to be too easy. It would waste time, but Noa didn’t have these sorts of details committed to memory, and it would be faster to just find out through having Nightshade go through them than to dawdle about trying in vain to recall it.
At some point Nightshade did wander up, with a look in his eye like he maybe wanted to make a nuisance of himself. Fortunately, now that Noa had the ribbon, he could give more precise instructions. “Walk a lap or two around the track,” Noa said.
{What if I don’t want to?} Nightshade replied, nosing around the poles.
“Then we go home, I put you back in your stall, and you can be bored the whole day while I work with someone else,” Noa replied cheerfully. He wasn’t kidding either. Granted, this was a dig specifically for the attention loving Nightshade; Avander wouldn’t even have batted an eye at such a threat if Noa had tried it on him.
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Post by Noa on Jun 23, 2021 17:53:00 GMT -6
But Nightshade made a startled noise, then slunk off, looking particularly pitiful as he made his way over to the track. But that kind of thing didn’t work on Noa, and after some time, when he saw that his efforts were going unrewarded, he simply proceeded with the exercise that Noa had set him to.
Noa and Rhys finished setting up the poles in peace. It didn’t take that long, but then neither did the warm up lap that Nightshade was taking around the track.
When Nightshade came back, the poles were ready and waiting for him. “You remember these, don’t you?” Noa said. Though if Nightshade didn’t, that wouldn’t be terribly surprising either, considering it had been some time since they had last set foot here. The interval between sessions was certainly longer than Noa himself would have liked, but the decision hadn’t been entirely his -- or more accurately, his fault. Some of it had been, since he had put off making that appointment, but still.
Nightshade didn’t give him an immediate answer, but moved in closer to examine the poles in question. He walked his way around them, then slowly made his way through one… and then another.
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Post by Noa on Jun 23, 2021 17:53:28 GMT -6
Yes, he remembered. The fact that he thought to do that pretty much confirmed this to be the case. Noa smiled. They were off to a good start -- which was to say that they weren’t having to start from scratch, but even so, that was a good thing in his books.
“Let’s see how fast you are then. Try going through them without hitting yourself on any of them.” Noa readied his stopwatch to time Nightshade’s go through the set of poles. Nightshade faced them down, gave them a last once over, then began weaving through them.
Noa had half thought, with the incentive of Noa’s own encouragement -- or maybe it was better to call it a challenge? -- that Nightshade would rush through the poles to his own detriment. But Nightshade wasn’t so rash, and it seemed that, for whatever reason, he was taking the ‘without hitting yourself’ part pretty seriously. So he proceeded at a fairly measured pace, more consistent than Noa would have thought for a first attempt. It wasn’t fast, and when Noa looked at the final time, he knew that Nightshade had been faster near the end of their last session. But it also wasn’t that much slower.
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Post by Noa on Jun 23, 2021 17:54:18 GMT -6
“Not bad,” Noa said. Of course, then Nightshade ambled up to him and thumped his head plate against Noa’s chest with an air of expectation. Ah, that was right, Noa thought; he had given a reward at the end of each successful run last time, hadn’t he? “Yes, yes, very good.” Noa gave him some scratches under his chin, and Nightshade’s eyes closed as he savored the contact, or whatever it was this was doing for him. Noa had never been much of the touchy feely type himself, so he couldn’t really imagine it, but at least he understood, intellectually, that it was rewarding for some creatures -- and even some people. That was all he needed to know to utilize it.
But after a certain point, enough was enough. They were here to train, not merely to indulge certain Wiurn. “Okay, now go through again, and see if you can go a little faster.” Noa had his stopwatch ready, and fortunately Nightshade didn’t pick up a fuss. He went to the poles again and began weaving, just as Noa instructed.
Watching him move was pretty interesting, for reasons to do with Nightshade's peculiar anatomy, if nothing else.
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Post by Noa on Jun 23, 2021 17:54:47 GMT -6
Maybe he shouldn’t have used Avander as a norm, since most Wiurn didn’t have the extra pair of forelimbs that Avander had, but Noa was more familiar with Sarane than with Wiurn, and those shared that same body plan. The fact that, as a Wiurn, Nightshade walked with his front half braced on the knuckles of his wings was already interesting enough. Considering their span when they were unfurled, it was actually pretty impressive how neatly they folded back down when they weren’t in use.
But more than that, Nightshade had his strange claws too -- also on his forelimbs, or his wings, or however you wanted to call it. Because of their length, Nightshade had to tuck them in, not unlike the fingers of the wings on a normal Wiurn. But these didn’t fold up quite so neatly, and they were so colorful on Nightshade that it was hard not to see them.
It gave Noa something to be interested in, at least, as he watched Nightshade navigate the poles. It was just as well too, because otherwise he had been through this process several times already, and was long used to watching other creatures go through this exercise.
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Post by Noa on Jun 23, 2021 17:55:28 GMT -6
The process itself was fairly repetitive, even more so than training in general was. Nightshade went through the poles again and again, and sometimes he got faster. Sometimes he didn’t. Occasionally he overestimated his own prowess and hit himself upon the poles after all, though this happened less than Noa would have expected.
After he had gotten up to a decent pace, Noa decided to give him a break. During that break, he and Rhys replaced the poles so that the gap between them was smaller. Nightshade didn’t seem dismayed by this the way that Avander would have been, but it was hard to say as to whether this was because he had better work ethic, or if it was simply because he didn’t recognize it as an increase in difficulty.
When he first tried this new pole layout, he couldn’t go through it nearly as quickly as he had done before. But now he wasn’t learning a new skill wholesale, merely adjusting his technique around a more challenging setup. It took him much less time to be able to pick up speed, and after only a few rounds, he was already weaving through the poles with reasonable confidence.
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