Throwing in the Towel (Nineteen)

[Alain]

Alain walked into the gym. He'd debated about what to bring and what to wear. It wasn't an official class so he didn't think he had to be in a morphing uniform. He certainly hoped not. Morphing was interesting and new and exciting but that's exactly what he didn't want right now. He wanted to do something familiar.

He had spent months relearning what it was like to have his body to himself but, in a lot of ways, he wasn't quite there yet. He kept feeling like a passenger in his own head and he just wanted to feel like himself again. Some good, normal exercise was what he'd prescribed himself and that had helped a lot. But he wanted a fight. Not a real one, but a test of wills at least.

So he'd come to the gym in some scrounged up basketball shorts and a t-shirt. They were too big for him which said a lot about the Academy's supply of clothing, but they'd do well enough, especially if he was going to get thrown around. In his Judo class he'd worn the traditional gi and he'd been taught how to grab onto that to throw someone and, of course, be thrown in return. But those were meant to stand up to being pulled on. If Nineteen was going to grab him he'd rather one of his decent shirts didn't get ripped. He didn't think morphing would fix a torn shirt.

He went over to the padded area of the gym and began stretching, waiting for Nineteen to arrive.

[Nineteen]

Apparently the tall guy had some Judo experience, and any martial arts experience was always a nice thing to hear. Nineteen wasn't really surprised that a lot of the recruits brought tended to have at least some fragments of experiences with martial arts. She doubted the karate lessons at five years old really taught anyone much, but the type of five year old that wanted to take karate more than softball tended to grow up to be the kind of kid that at least had a chance of avoiding capture.

Nineteen walked to the gym, wearing a pair of sweatpants with the drawstring draw tight and a tank top. He was already inside when she arrived, and after nodding to him, she began stretching too. Her mind was already categorizing him, considering his height and weight. The fun part about Judo was that height, and to a lesser extent weight, didn't matter nearly as much as some other fighting styles. Once you were on the ground it was about strength, yes, but also flexibility and knowledge of different holds and bodily anatomy.

Not that Nineteen could name all of the muscles she used every day or anything, but she had an intuitive knowledge of them, something earned over years of experience. Just play nicely, Nineteen warned herself, smiling quietly into her leg as she stretched. Or Seiya will get all huffy.

[Alain]

Alain tried to bend over his leg and found it just as resistant as it had been yesterday. He had really gotten out of shape in the past few months and his legs were tough. So you still look pretty but you can't do much he thought to himself.

Nineteen entered the gym and he waved at her before standing up and doing a few laps around the gym to get loosened up to stretch properly. He hoped she didn't mind him taking the time to warm up but he didn't think she would. Most people who did physical activity on a regular basis were much more patient about warm ups than those that had no idea how bodies worked.

When he was done he returned to the mats and resumed his stretching. His legs weren't that much better but there was a bit of an improvement. He stretched his arms, chest and back next, paying special attention to his back since he expected to land on it a few times.

Finally he turned towards Nineteen and sat quietly while he waited for her to finish her own warm up. He was in no rush and it felt good to just relax in the gym. "So what sort of training do you have?" he asked.

[Nineteen]

Nineteen's warm up routine wasn't as involved: rather than doing laps she preferred to do small exercises in place. After spending so much time in a cell, she'd become accustomed to using space very sparingly. When she saw him sitting down, she tilted her head back and forth, which sounded out a few pops of those joints.

Alain asked about her training, and Nineteen arched an eyebrow. She looked him up and down, his legs awkwardly long. Eh, he was a big boy. Why not. "I was held captive in an illegal fighting ring that was run by a couple of Controllers in Las Vegas. It was a long time. I wasn't ever a host myself, but, that's mostly because of the occupational hazards." She smirked. "Anyway, I was Gladiator #019. Hence the name. Because I was there so long and it was so fucked up that I don't remember my real name, or my birthday. You know, all those little data points that were required to have an identity in what used to pass as the real world."

Delivering her oh-so-deep-dark past with a flippant shrug, she looked down at him. "Anyway, I know loosely what goes into a lot of styles -- they'd bring specialists in for us to fight -- but mostly I just know how to win. Today, we'll stick to Judo, though." Nineteen smiled with too many teeth. "What about you?"

[Alain]

Alain nodded when he heard her story. His expression made it obvious it wasn't what he had expected to hear, pretending otherwise would have devalued her experience and its implied hardships, but he wasn't completely surprised. Oh, the details surprised him, but not the over arching truth that the yeerks were capable of such things. As far as he was concerned it was just further proof that they needed to be defeated.

"Nothing quite that," he searched for the right word, "dangerous. My uncle did Judo and he taught all of us, my older brothers and I. When we split after the open invasion started and went into hiding my uncle stayed close for the first couple of years. He kept up my training. Kept telling me no matter what happened in the world I would always need to know how to handle myself."

Alain shrugged, his eyes looking off into the distance as he thought about his uncle and his family. "I guess he was right uh."

[Nineteen]

Alain didn't freak. Then again, most people didn't freak. A sign of the times, more than anything. Not that Nineteen would have wanted it any other way; the worst of it was how Seiya had been. Always hovering, always around some corner or another. Ready to step in if she, like, lost her shit or something. One time she'd confronted him. What exactly do you think I'm going to do? She'd shouted. Start punching your precious FNG's to death, one by one? Seiya had blinked, reprimanded her lightly, but backed off. At least a little.

Sometimes, especially in the early days, it had felt like Nineteen had somehow progressed from being a sideshow in some third world circus, to living a pampered life in a zoo exhibit. Either way, she was still being watched, still trapped: the cage had just gotten bigger, was all.

"What happened to your uncle?" Nineteen asked. Not that this was supposed to be sharing and caring time, and not that she figured he was really the type. But talk was cheap, and whether he told her or just thought she was prying, who gave a damn?

[Alain]

"Not sure," Alain said honestly. "He took off when I was 16. Our little human refugee camp was going through a hard time. There wasn't really enough to go around so a few people started wandering away, looking for greener pastures elsewhere. My uncle was one of them. He said he was coming back but you know how it is. One path leads to another." Alain just shrugged.

He wasn't really broken up by the loss of his uncle. A lot of people didn't know what had happened to their family. Nineteen didn't even remember her's. At least there was a chance his uncle was still free somewhere, maybe even happy. Unlike his father. "Well, anyway, that was the last time I saw him."

[Nineteen]

Nineteen didn't know how it was. The idea of family struck her as both very weird, and also sentimental. She found herself angry with Alain's uncle -- perhaps more angry than he was, or at least more than he was letting show. Family wasn't supposed to do that sort of thing, were they? They were supposed to have your back. Thick and thin, right? Nineteen didn't exactly know from experience, but it seemed like things should be that way. If they weren't, what was the point in creating good little family units anyway?

She put away her anger. She didn't let herself get upset in here. At least, not when there were other people in the room. It didn't end well. She had nearly killed Kovu the last time that'd happened; he'd have said they nearly killed each other, but all Nineteen knew was that she'd walked away without morphing. He hadn't. Of course, she'd only been able to stumble into the hallway, blinded with gouged eyes, but still. From what she'd remembered, it'd only started as a friendly sparring match, too. Each of them had just refused to give up, and somewhere it had crossed a line.

Neither Kovu or Nineteen had ever said anything about it to anyone. Life had just gone on as usual. They just didn't spar any more. Then he left, and she got his job.

"All right," she finally said. "Let's start."

((Time jump?))

[Alain]

Alain cradled his arm and motioned that he'd like breather. They'd been working on getting each other off balance before progressing to actual throws and had been working on that for the past half hour or so. Alain had been glad for the refresher course and he'd felt himself remembering old skill. But Nineteen's background came through in her fighting. He was learning how to avoid "dirty" tricks as much as he was remembering the "proper" way to do a lot of this stuff. He didn't mind. He wanted to know how to fight in reality, not just in a tournament setting.

They'd moved from throws to ground work a couple of minutes ago and Nineteen had gotten a good arm bar on him. He had a feeling she wasn't used to tapping out because it had gone on pretty hard before he'd had a chance to call it. "I think my elbow is sprained," he said after a moment of moving it around.

[Nineteen]

Nineteen backed off. There was a small rack of clean, folded handtowels on the wall, and she took one of those, tossing one to Alain as well. She wiped her forehead and the back of her neck. The guy wasn't bad, and his size presented issues that Nineteen hadn't had to deal with in a long time. It was nice though; some of the folks they brought in were still in the cusp of puberty. That, and he didn't seem to mind taking a hit or ten.

She watched as he favored the arm, eventually tilting her head to the side. It looked like he was in pain, though he was hardly exaggerating it. "Do you want to stop?" She finally asked. A sprained elbow wasn't fun, but she'd fought through worse. By the time Alain was an fully fledged Animorph, he would be able to say the same too, if he couldn't already. She wasn't sure how interested he was pushing his pain limit, though. Alain never complained during class -- most of them didn't, except maybe Adrian -- but she wasn't going to assume he wanted to keep going. "We can pick up more whenever. Maybe tomorrow, after Seiya's course?"

[Alain]

"No, it's ok. I want to keep going. I haven't done this on my own for years." He shook out his elbow. It didn't help alleviate the deep ache that told him he'd hurt a tendon. All it did was send shooting pains up and down his arm that nested in his shoulder and his wrist. He grimaced and massaged the elbow. "Maybe I should morph though," he said after a moment. The idea of morphing injuries away was still new to him. At first it had almost felt like cheating.

His uncle had been a big believer in bruises as a teaching mechanism. If you hurt for a while you learned not to do that stupid mistake again. The first time he'd ever charged his uncle, head down, full on tackle stance his uncle had guillotined him. His arms had quickly come down and locked Alain's head into position so he couldn't move. And then his uncle had proceeded to choke him. When he woke up his uncle and his brother had been smiling at him and he'd gotten a few "sleepy head" jokes. After that he'd learned why you didn't charge people. It was a mistake he'd never repeated, which of course, had been the point.

So morphing away his bruises had seemed wrong and he'd lived with them for the first couple of days. But he'd realized that there was really no reason to stay in pain if he didn't have to. Not only did it ensure that he was sore and stiff for the next day of classes while Nineteen and the rest of his classmates were well rested, morph healing was also something they were supposed to know how to do.

"Give me a second." He closed his eyes and thought about a meerkat. He still felt very foolish whenever he morphed, almost as foolish as he would have felt wishing on a star. Each time he expected to open his eyes and see that nothing had changed. But each time he'd been wrong and this time was no different.

He felt his legs shrink before the rest of him and threw out his arms to catch his upper body as he fell over. His entire torso started stretching even as his body as a whole was shrinking. His arms shrank to the length of his legs and his nose began to stick out much more. His dark hair was sucked back into his head until it was the same length as the rest of the fur that had sprung up all over his body. His spine extended into a tail behind him and his ears migrated up the side of his head and grew pointer.

He felt the meerkat's curiosity and wariness come up under his own mind and he stood up on his hind legs, his small nose twitching as his eyes looked up at Nineteen. He scampered over to her feet and put a paw-hand on her calf. <<You are very tall from down here,>> he said, looking down at his paw and then up Nineteen's leg. He was always a bit surprised at how much the meerkat could feel with its little hands. He sat back on his haunches now and just clapped his paws together, exploring his sense of touch. <<Hmm,>> he said as his tail twitched behind him and his whiskers shook. <<Well, I guess I better get back,>> he said with a bit of regret. There was just something so alluring about becoming another creature and his meerkat morph had never ceased to interest him.

He moved a bit away from Nineteen so that he would not be right under her when he demorphed and concentrated on a picture of himself. A few minutes later he was sitting on the gym floor. He flexed his arm. "All better," he said, standing up.

[Nineteen]

"All right, take your time." Nineteen stretched a bit more, and picked up a nearby water bottle for a few swigs. She didn't watch Alain morph, but she didn't make a point of looking away either. She'd seen human bodies in many horrible, disfigured contortions, and morphing wasn't totally unlike that. What was more, morphing represented healing for Nineteen. She'd used it to get rid of injuries more than she'd ever needed to do something useful as an animal.

When the tiny animal that Alain now was raced up to her, Nineteen laughed. "You should know what it's like," Nineteen smirked at the tall comment. Before she could tell him that she didn't mind if he wanted to play with his morph, his body was already bulging and changing, the majority of that manifesting as a shocking rate of growth. When he was finished, she nodded. "Good to hear. We're still on?" Alain agreed, and they began again.

- - - - - -

"Fuck," Nineteen grumbled under her breath. They'd disentangled themselves, or rather: Alain had heard Nineteen's shoulder pop as it dislocated, and he'd drawn away. Nineteen hadn't said anything, had barely made any noise that registered the pain at all. "Didn't have to stop," she told him, and then, not without a hiss of pain, popped her joint back into place.

[Alain]

Alain had done a throw wrong. Or, actually, he'd done it right but he'd done the jujitsu version of the throw instead of the Judo version. Judo, a sport, watered down version of jujitsu that was designed to make sure your opponents got up and could keep playing, had called for him to simply throw Nineteen using his hip and her shoulder. But, instead of taking the grip to pull the shoulder, he'd taken the hit to pop it. He hadn't meant to his body had just done it. Which was a good sign as far as developing his instincts went but was a bad sign when it came to control.

"I'm sorry," he said backing away. It was the first real sign of distress he'd shown in all of their classes. It was the first time he'd ever really hurt anybody, at least with his own hands, and he wasn't quite prepared for the gut wrenching feeling it brought. As much as Nineteen kept warning them classes would get more intense in the future, they hadn't reached that point yet and most of practice had been just like this sparring session had been.

Nineteen stood up and popped her shoulder back in which stilled one of his fears. There were two ways to dislocate your elbow and in about 80% of cases it was not the one where you could pop it back in.

"What, are, do you want to morph?" He asked? He was only then remembering that they could heal themselves with morphing. It made him feel slightly better but not by much. Still, he calmed down from his initial reaction.

[Nineteen]

Alain looked sincerely guilty, and Nineteen huffed a little as she rotated her shoulder. It felt like it was on fire, but it was a familiar pain. "Don't sweat it," she told him. "I could have kept going," she said truthfully. And she would have. Seiya had complimented her on her ability to push her own limits, but he'd also taken the time to warn her that she took her own tenacity for granted. He was afraid that she wasn't pushing her limits to learn them, but trying to convince herself she didn't have any. Maybe that was true.

He suggested morphing, and Nineteen was prepared to brush it off. On second thought, however, it'd probably put him more at ease. That, and she had a feeling he might go easier on her if she didn't, whether consciously or not. "Sure. Hold on." Nineteen quickly decided which morph she'd use, and smiled to herself. Stepping out of her sweatpants, she had a pair of tight biking shorts on underneath. She kicked the sweatpants a bit to the side, and closed her eyes.

Her skin immediately darkened, and her hair raced down her back, forming a mane. As she doubled over her arms lengthened and lengthened, her fingers and toes forming into hooves. All the while she kept growing and growing. The Friesian horse wasn't the fastest of breeds, but it was heavy and strong. And it looked totally badass.

Fully morphed, Nineteen snorted, pawing a bit at the floor with her hooves. The horse wasn't too happy about not having grass under its feet, and the room was cramped for its liking. As for the human being in the room, the horse wasn't terribly worried about him. Nineteen trotted around the room a couple times before coming back to Alain. She held her big head to meet him eye to eye, something she doubted happened often for him. When she exhaled, his hair blew back.

<<All right, give me a minute.>> She backed up, carefully looking back to make sure that she didn't run into any equipment, and began to demorph. Almost immediately she missed the horse's power and speed, but it always felt a bit like a waste to morph it. For that matter, it made her resent Seiya a little more each time. What good was a damned horse morph if she couldn't ever run anywhere?

[Alain]

Alain put out a hand to touch Nineteen's horse morph but she moved away before it got to her. The desire had just been an impulse and he hadn't worried about any personal space implications it may have. As careful as everyone was of each other's personal space as humans, the invisible bubble seemed to disappear a little in morph. He wondered if it was an effect of no longer being the same species or what but he found it a bit interesting.

She kind of walked in place and he found himself wondering what she would look like if she fully let loose with that morph. It looked powerful and fast, at least, much faster than a human. It may not be a racehorse but it was still a horse and they were designed to run, it was written into every line of their form. Or maybe that was just too many Black Beauty and Flicka children movies playing tricks on his mind.

He stepped back to give her space to demorph. He didn't look away, mostly because he was trying to get used to seeing others morph. He could never really see himself when he did it since he still closed his eyes to morph but he didn't want to get caught staring at a team mate when he should have been concentrating on his own morph.

"Ready?" he asked when she was done.

---

Alain stepped away after throwing Nineteen instead of following up like he should have with a hold or a bar. Before he could even really think about saying, "break" her feet were headed towards his. She didn't get a clean hit, clean hits were rare in a real fight, but she managed to hit the back of his ankle and cause the foot he had most of his weight on to go out from under him. He windmilled to maintain his balance and managed not to fall but she had rolled away and was up and coming for him by then.

"Woah," he said, holding up his hands. "What do you say we call it an afternoon?"