First steps (Open)

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Tess stood a shield in one hand, and a sword in the other staring down a wooden dummy. Her stance was pedestrian, and her expression was a mix of concern and sickness. The blade felt foreign in her hands, and she imagined that she looked like a dork. Tess' blond hair was up in a sloppy bun, and she wore an orange camp t-shirt and jeans. Shaking her head she subscribed herself to idea of attacking the dummy. It'd be fun she even convinced herself. 

She charged forward as she'd imagine a video game character doing so and slashed at the neck of the dummy. The blade connected digging in an inch into the lifeless target. She paused. Where was the fun in this? She pulled the sword out and halfheartedly waked the thing again. Crack. Another hit to the head. How was this supposed to help anyone in anyway? Tess continued to poke the dummy, each hit less enthusiasm than the last. 

[Ashley Bates]

Ash set on the training field stringing another bow for target practice. It was a tedious process and to the simple observer he would have looked stoic and detached as he carried out an action that he had done enumerable times before. Internally however the son of Apollo was anything but calm and collected and even though none of his inner conflict showed on his face the situation was beginning to wear on him.

He had lost count of the number of bows he had worked with today. The problem wasn’t that the bows were poor quality. The problem wasn’t that he couldn’t use what the camp had in the armory. The real issue here and the one that had him in his current mood was that none of these bows were his bow and no matter how well made these other weapons were they didn't feel right to replace the one he had lost and that made him a little more irritable than usual.

He had decided that this would be the last bow he would try today. So far he had gotten nowhere and if being out here on the practice field was doing no good then he might as well find something more productive to do with his time like stopping by the infirmary to see his favorite nurse. That could wait just a little longer though at least until he took a few test shots.

Just as he finished stringing the bow however, Ash became aware that he wasn’t alone on the training field anymore. He glanced up and spotted a blonde girl attacking a dummy and the sight of her unenthusiastic attempts distracted him from his activates for just a moment. She was sloppy, uninspired and uncommitted to her attacks and that was enough to set his already tense nerves on edge. With an attitude like that the girl would be lucky to last a week outside camp and that was something Ash couldn’t let pass. “Attacking like you don’t mean it defeats the purpose of being out here. Surely you didn’t come here today just to waste your time.”

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The sound of the stranger's voice startled Tess to the extent of her blade clattering from her hand to the ground. In an instant her head whipped around to face the boy who had called out to her. "I just don't really think it's fair to go so hard on the poor guy, I mean I've been beating the crap out of this dummy for a few minutes now and the novelty of it has sorta worn off." With an over dramatic flair in her hand she reached to the ground and grasped the handle of her sword. 

"And besides, it's not even like this is an accurate representation of fighting a monster anyway. Hell I'll fight any monster that will sit in one spot and take every hit I throw at it."

[Ashley Bates]

His words took her off guard and she dropped the sword she had been holding. Ash watched her impassively as she whipped around to face him and listened to what she had to say but found himself unmoved by her excuses. That’s what they were too, excuses to become slack in her training because she didn’t understand the point, and with an attitude like that she could end up getting herself or someone who depended on her killed.

“That ‘poor guy’ is a dummy made of straw and if you can’t find it in yourself to hit it with at least some conviction how can you hope to hit something that thinks and moves and wants to kill you?” It was a fair question. The habits developed in training were the habits that carried over into real situations. If she wanted to survive and not just be lucky she needed to take this seriously. “The dummy is not there to teach you how to hit something. Any child with a tree branch can figure out how to swing it. What you are trying to accomplish is to train your body and your mind."

He left the bow leaning against the place he was sitting and got up to come over to her. As he walked he continued his explanation. "Muscles that become faster and stronger from striking something solid don’t give out when they face something that pushes back. Motions and stances that are drilled into the mind by repetition become second nature so you no longer have to think about them in battle. Body and mind are your real weapons, not the sword in your hand. Do you understand?”

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Tess' eyes remained fixed to his, and she paid careful attention to every word that exited his mouth. He spoke as if she'd just committed some sort of crime, and hell she half expected him to start talking about great power coming with great responsibility or some shit like that. "I... But..." She snapped her mouth shut, there was simply no point in trying to further excuse her actions. Not only would arguing further not help her at all, but the boy also made a good point. She sighed and slowly shook her head. "Yeah, yeah your right. I get it." her voice came out softer than her previous speech, laced with the tiniest bit of defeat. 

She hefted her shield back up, and took the best fighting stance she knew how to. After a few minutes she let out a serious of rapid strokes at the dummy, if only to appease the boy. She paused to shift her focus back to the boy. "I'm Tess by the way." 

[Ashley Bates]

Ash nodded at her response and watched as she renewed her training. The form was still sloppy and her technique needed work but that could be learned. A desire to train, to learn, to survive, those were things that could not be taught. In any case his words did have some effect if only to make her ashamed of the way she had been approaching her training. That wasn’t a very helpful emotion either but it was a step in the right direction.

“Ash, Apollo cabin.” He said simply as she turned to him. She was a new girl, daughter of Zeus if he remembered correctly. Ash could have confirmed as much had he bothered to ask but he hadn’t come over to confirm things that he already knew. Instead he directed the attention back to the reason they were here. “You need to tighten up your grip on the blade.” His voice was still cool and emotionless as he spoke but it had lost much of the impatient edge that it had held earlier.

“Here let me show you.” With that he reached out for her sword hand and closed his fingers around hers giving Tess a pattern to follow. The grip was loose enough to keep her fingers from locking up around the hilt but not so loose that she would get the blade knocked out of her hand at the first sign of contact. “Is that better? It should give you a little more control over your swings and diminish the recoil you feel on impact.”