sixthiterationlogs | 006 ⻰ DOJO MINGLE

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006 ⻰ DOJO MINGLE

WHO: DANNY RAND
WHERE: HOUSE 54
WHEN: JANUARY 19TH
OPEN TO: EVERYONE. MINGLE
WARNINGS: FIGHTING & POSSIBLE INJURY

House 54 looked like any other house except for the rough wooden sign hanging outside on the front porch. It read 'CRANE DOJO' carved in crude letters with Chinese characters carved beneath it reading in tinier font 'Order of the Crane Mother'. Next to that sign was another. This one read 'OPEN' in large carved lettering and if you were to turn it over, you'd find that the other side read 'CLOSED'. If the sun was hanging in the sky, cloudy or clear, the Dojo was open.

The house had been mostly cleared over the months that Danny had lived there. He had installed a door heading upstairs to the living quarters. The kitchen hadn't changed much but the Dining room had been turned into a small medical area while the rest of the house had been emptied. The medical area had the couch that was once in the family room as well as a table and a bookshelf that was filled with what few medical supplies Danny had procured from the inn or the hospital. There was a folding door that looked like it closed off the space but it was currently opened and crumbled against the wall like a fan.

The large areas were separated into two sections with the stairway keeping them divided. The space off to the right of the front door was covered by grass matts that had been stuffed with the material from his mattress. It was firm and Danny would instruct anyone using this space to take off their shoes before stepping on the matts. The second space had the original wooden floors and looked as if it was cleaned regularly. There were three wooden practiced dummies lined along the far wall and a punching bag that was poorly made, filled with dirt and will break if it was punched too hard.

Random equipment could be found on a row of shelves near the stairs or in the closest beneath the stairs. There were several bo staffs, crudely made swords, a pillow meant to be used as a target and a few other odds and ends. Danny was collecting equipment but he didn't have a lot just yet.

Outside was a new addition to the Dojo. The two targets that were used for archery had been moved out of the way and in their place was an obstacle course. It was simple and nothing fancy. If you weren't careful it might be dismantled but it wasn't that bad. Luckily, no one had super human strength to tear his posts out of the ground.

Around the left side of the house had an area that was clearly used to chop wood with a small collection to keep the Dojo warm through winter. The archery targets were also stored there, covered by a sheet similar to the way the wood pile was covered. They could be set up but the only safe place would be a decent distance away from the Dojo. Danny didn't want those training on the obstacle course to become targets to anyone not yet proficient in bows, crossbows or throwing weapons.

The class schedule was still being ironed out but the first two hours after sunrise had the large empty spaces reserved for meditation. Danny wouldn't instruct unless asked but it was assumed that these two hours were the only designated 'quite time' for the Dojo. After the daily lunches at the inn was sparring and by far the most hectic time at the Dojo. Danny laid out the weapons and expected people to use what they wanted and share the space appropriately. He was slowly forming a schedule for classes but this was really the first time that Danny had tried to organize something like this and he had no idea what he was doing. He mostly trusted people to work it out and let him know if he needed to put out formal announcements.

CLASS SCHEDULE

DANNY RAND – Meditation, Martial Arts (Kunlunquan, Shaolinquan, Fujian White Crane, Judo, Aikido, Wing Chun, Ninjutsu, Muay Thai, Karate, Boxing), Martial Arts Weapons (Katanas, Nunchucks, Kama, Throwing Knifes and Stars, Tonfa, Staffs) & General Acrobatics/Stamina Training

NIDA NOMURA – Bo, Polearms & Pole Weapons, Tanbo & General Acrobatics

NATASHA ROMANOFF – Dance Lessons (Hand-to-hand & Actual Ballroom or Ballet Dancing)

BRIGITTE LINDSTORM – Clubs, Hammers, Mace, Baton, Flails, Shields & Boxing

OOC NOTES

[How do you sign up to teach a class?! Please comment here. Times will be loose so that no one gets caught up in silly semantics and we can just have fun! I would prefer for anyone who would like to teach a class to talk to me if they haven't spoken to Danny in game yet. He will need to meet those teaching at the Dojo just because he's a spaz who takes this very seriously.

Anyone is welcome to assume that Danny is teaching them hand-to-hand combat, just give me a heads up so that I know for future reference.

I will be updating the Dojo information on Danny's Sixth Iteration Information page though I might be a little behind. Please send me a PM if there is something there that it looks like I am missing and then it will be free for everyone to use. This post has been organizing a lot of this and getting it together so don't worry about telling me if I missed something.

There is also a notification at the inn on the bulletin board pointing anyone interested in training towards the Dojo.]

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No, he can't blame her for trying. Amusement flickers in dark eyes and Maine hums in consideration. Chopping wood isn't the most entertaining thing, but it's something to do. Something to keep his body engaged and his mind relatively occupied. Better than sitting around spinning wool, as he's seen others take to doing.

However, there's one question that begs an answer:

"Which forge?"

It may well confirm Brigitte's suspicions that he's staying in the North Village. After all, 'the forge' needs no further explanation for people living in the South. Maine, on the other hand, passes by the building's mirror in the North regularly.

A confirmation of what she already thought, then, but Maine's answer still elicits the arch of an eyebrow, a flicker of surprise. Brigitte hasn't actually visited the north yet, hadn't known how much of the place was up-and-running. "Is there one operating in the other village too? I work at the one in the south with Tony Stark. Down here." She waves a hand at the front door of the dojo, "I live just down the road too, at the inn. Pretty close to the heart of things."

As much as Maine leans towards solitude and out-of-the-way privacy, she gravitates to the center of the village and having the comforting hubbub of a crowd around her. But this kind of morning is its own kind of enjoyment, too: the relatively quiet dojo in these crisp early hours, the empty floor, the slide of her feet across the mat, the sound of a grunt or exhale as she strains her muscles against his considerably-stronger ones.

Then, during a break and taking a breath, Brigitte tilts her head back and looks him over one more time. "Do you do fight sparring?" she asks, curious. Most people would probably shy away from the very prospect of actively pitting themselves against someone Maine's size, but now that she's wrangled him into his setting, it's just reminding her more and more of her old workouts with Reinhardt. The ebb-and-flow she's used to, and falls into like a well-worn rhythm.

Close to the heart, indeed. From what Maine can tell, the Inn is the hub of social activity in the South Village. That's the very reason he refused to sleep there, even on his first disoriented night. Too many people whose faces he didn't know and whose motivations he couldn't trust. But it makes sense to him that Brigitte would choose to stay there; after all, they did meet when she charged up to him with a bowl of food.

"Starting up," he answers her question about the forge. Maine doesn't know if the excitable, guileless man he'd met has things up and running yet, but he knows the intent is there. Likes the man enough to wish him well. As for the south forge? Well, as far as he's aware, Brigitte is the only worker there that he knows.

As Brigitte takes a breath, Maine stretches and shakes out his arms. Sweeps his gaze around the dojo, familiarizing himself with it further. Taking in its free space and mentally mapping out where to perform exercises. It's just as easy to do them outdoors, but it's fucking cold. This space would be a welcome change.

Brigitte's question snaps Maine's attention back, brown eyes a bit wide in surprise. Because people don't ask to spar with him. Not unless they know him very well and know exactly what he can do ... or they're a complete idiot. Brigitte's not stupid; Maine's sure of that. But he can't imagine why she'd ask him about sparring.

Maybe he misunderstood. Maybe she's just curious. He replays the question in his head. Decides that it must only be curiosity. Only then does he nod an affirmative.

Maine's visible surprise cuts through his expression, carefully-stoic as it often is. And she can guess why, well enough. Brigitte has the self-awareness to examine herself from the outside, too, and acknowledge that her reactions are out of the norm: she's been too accustomed to this, too comfortable with his sheer looming physical presence, too content getting right up in his space during the workout despite the fact that he could crush her with a hand.

Despite her usual forthrightness, so far she's avoided telling most people the particular details of her old teammates -- because this part stings, itemising what she's lost -- but chewing it over, she finally decides she owes him something of an explanation.

"My old workout partner," Brigitte says, and there's a delicacy in how she's phrasing this, not her standard bubbliness, "was your size." Her head tipping back again, doing some mental estimates. "Maybe even a couple inches taller, actually. He taught me everything I know about fighting, and we used to work out every morning. He's the one whose armour I maintained."

Another reason she's so accustomed to the prospect of Maine's armouring job, the idea of cutting and welding metal plates to these proportions. A self-conscious shrug of a shoulder. "I know you're not him, but it means I'm used to..." She pats one of the arms she'd just been doing her best to shove around; just the smallest tap, a wordless gesture to indicate: this, you.

Something in the way Brigitte begins her explanation pulls Maine's attention in. Prompts him to put his surprise aside and listen a little more closely. What he hears explains a hell of a lot. Her lack of fear; her willingness to approach him; the ease with which she does everything from meeting his eyes to straining against his arms.

She's used to someone his size. Used to someone like him.

A weird sort of warmth hits Maine. Like a hot shower after a hard workout, or putting on a hoodie that's fresh out of the dryer. He can't name the emotion. Finds that his lips have parted slightly with whatever-the-fuck it is; quickly, he schools his expression back to normal.

Focus on what she wants. What she's asking. Figure out the strange feeling later.

After a few seconds of silence to consider his words, Maine characteristically decides to be blunt.

"I'm brutal," he says flatly. Not a boast or even really a warning; just a statement of fact, delivered as a complete sentence to avoid any misunderstanding. "Not an instructor. Trained to kill."

He could hurt her, is what he's saying. Even if he didn't intend to do so, he could hurt her. Holding back during a fight isn't something he's well-versed in doing — and the last time he sparred with anyone (save for Wash), his error in judgment cost a teammate an eye.

Brigitte nods, thoughtfully. Doesn't argue with his assessment.

Because she's not afraid of him -- never has been -- but she knows that Maine knows his own capabilities better than she does, and she's painfully aware she's at risk of blurring the lines here. She knows war -- not as long-fought as the one he's come from, but she's familiar enough with the particular kind of numbness that sinks in, the hardwired fight-or-flight instincts which fall on fight more often than not. Don't wake up a soldier unexpectedly. Don't sneak up on them. She's not going to try twisting him into something that he's not, just because she's fucking homesick and searching for something that reminds her of where she came from.

"You've been pretty gentle with me so far," she points out, not arguing, just expressing an edge of gratitude in her voice for it. "But I understand."

A fleeting thought: not long before coming here, her father had sent her a letter about a Bastion unit programmed to kill, which he'd protected and taken in. Can something ever be more than its programming?

Because it is programming, of a sort. Lashing out not even because you want to attack, but because muscle memory is automatic and instinctive, and because your body's already reacted before your synapses have fired and before conscious thought has had time to process. She's similar, except instead of killing the threat, Brigitte been honing her reflexes to jump in front of bullets with her shield, shove her allies out of the way. It's like breathing, by this point.

"You said you'd been at war for... how many years was it again? Twenty-something?"

"Gentle" is a word that's applied to Maine so rarely that he initially just stares at Brigitte. Not in anger or in disbelief, but like he doesn't understand the word. She may as well have said he's been "pretty polka dots" with her, for all the sense it makes to him.

Gentle doesn't win wars. Gentle is something Maine's only been called as a joke, and only when tied to the word "Giant." Gentle is something reserved for times of peace — or, in the past, for rare moments stolen on shore leave.

Has he started growing soft or something? Could the lack of conflict here have done that to him already?

Mentally shaking aside his confusion, Maine focuses on Brigitte's question. But, still distracted, he gives her a more complete answer than he otherwise might.

"Twenty-two," he answers. Then, pointing to himself, "Ten."

That's how long he, personally, has been fighting.

"Long time," Brigitte says, with the kind of dry humour that she doesn't get to display often. The kind of bemused understatement that she and her teammates had always levelled at each other when they had to process something that was too big to process otherwise.

"So you must've joined when you were, what, eighteen?" She's been having trouble trying to pinpoint Maine's age. Older than her, she's pretty sure, but he looks younger when one of those rare smiles creeps onto his face.

She's not even actively prying now, but that curiosity surfaces anyway, this head-tilting interest in the man's world and life, similar to her own world by slight degrees. The Second Crisis had started up when she was eighteen, though it had taken her a couple more years before she picked up a wrench and went out into the field in a battered van rumbling across the European countryside, mopping up messes where they went, wherever they could.

The assessment earns a little snort of agreement, lips twitching up slightly as Maine shrugs a shoulder. He hasn't been fighting as long as some, but that's through no fault of his own. After all, he has no control over when he was born. It's been long enough to leave a permanent mark on him. Long enough that he can't imagine what he'd do if he didn't have an enemy to fight.

When it comes to answering Brigitte's question about his age, however, Maine visibly hesitates. Not because he's ashamed of it, or because he's bothered by Brigitte guessing several years over the mark. (Maine knows what he looks like, and it's not young.) He hesitates because it's the one thing he lied about for years, and he's still not accustomed to being able to tell the truth.

"... Fourteen," he answers, ignoring the weird surge of something like trepidation that crawls up his spine. His paperwork is fine, he reminds himself; he can say it. Then he adds, "Two years early."

That the minimum age of enlistment is sixteen certainly says something about the state of his universe. Then again, Maine did say that humanity is losing a war against genocidal aliens.

She nods, letting that detail roll over her. No widened eyes of shock, no hitched gasp. She'd gathered the gist of his world, after all, and Maine had already mentioned how poorly the war had been going. ('Shitty', had been the exact description.)

What little parallels Brigitte has to offer: "Sweden has gender-neutral conscription. It's random, though, so it does not apply to everyone. I was selected, but it's just one year." Overall, her country had been distressingly content to look away from the turmoil brewing in Russia, though it was like a tumour growing and growing and on the verge of swallowing Europe. To really make a difference, you had to volunteer elsewhere. To join something like Overwatch.

But it took a certain kind of person to do it at fourteen. To skirt the rules and jump in even earlier than you were allowed. It means she's sizing him up again with fresh eyes, constantly tweaking and readjusting her impression of the man. It's respect, mostly. And a little sorrow (a twist at the corner of her mouth) over what that world must have been like.

"Situation must've been really bad. To do it that early."

The idea of conscription not being gender-neutral is an odd one to Maine. He tilts his head slightly in curiosity, trying to figure out why it would be anything else. Trying to figure out why a country would turn away half of its potential soldiers based on something so irrelevant to war. He doesn't grill Brigitte about the politics of other countries, though. Instead, he nods, approving of Sweden's stance on the matter.

He wonders what her year of service was like. Did she enjoy it? Was she forced out, or did she choose to leave?

They're questions for another time. Brigitte's lips turn down as she remarks on the situation when he joined, and Maine knows it's time to move on.

(He likes Brigitte. Likes her far more than he expected. Feels more comfortable with her than he does anyone else in this place, save for Wash. But Maine's not willing to talk about his family.)

With a low affirmative grunt, Maine gives a brief nod. Then he jerks his chin towards an open area next to a wall, indicating that she should move over beside it.

Break's done. Back to work.

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006 ⻰ DOJO MINGLE

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as i check timelines to make sure the forge bit is right LMF ;;

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just in case: cw for child soldier

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