The Beacon Fitness and Workout Center for Well Being and General Health [Ongoing][Open]

Like much of the Acadamy, the gym was large and filled with at least one of every piece of equipment you could hope to find. Treadmills, weight stations, punching bags, assorted gymnastics equipment, and even a boxing ring filled the space, offering a little something for any student or staff member looking to stay in shape without resorting to the all-out brawls that often went down in the Arena. As if to emphasize the point, a sign of written rules was posted near the boxing ring which emphasized the need for sparring partners to utilize proper safety equipment, regulation gloves, and to have a referee present if at all possible.

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Abigail loved the gym at Beacon. Thanks to the nearby Arena it was almost always fairly empty, so there was almost never any kind of waiting for any of the equipment. If she wanted to mess around on the climbing ropes, or the suspended rings, or pommel horses she could almost always do so, but today was all about the treadmill. With the incline on the machine set to full and the speed maxed, Abby had been running for fifteen minutes on what was basically a constant uphill slope, but was starting to feel the strain in her wrapped knee. "Just.. five.. more.. minutes.." she gasped out to herself, determined to finish the full twenty minute run.

Dark grey PT shirt, navy blue PT shorts, dog tags, iLens, water, and two pairs of kneepads, shin guards, elbow pads, and steel shot gloves. The only things Hunter had in the gym. He stands in front of a red 150 pound punching bag, sweat making the back of his shirt turn a darker shade of grey as he relentlessly attacked it, venting over something.

Left fist. Left fist. Left fist. Right fist. Right fist. Right elbow. Left knee. Left roundhouse. Right clockwise heel kick. Left palm-heel strike. Right fist. Left elbow. Jump. Right knee. He stopped, panting a bit. The bag kept swinging back and forth, taunting him as if it were Ian from Flare Hall, saying, "Hey, Hunter. I hear your grampa Eren died. About time too, right?"

Hunter's breathing paused a bit, then his hands became a blurr again, chaining a series of punches at the bag as if it were Ian's face from three years ago. 14 seconds, the bag's hastily applied masking tape began to tear. 28 seconds, the duct tape underneath that ripped. 35, the leather wrapping the bag tore. Sand began pouring out of it. He didn't seem to notice. About 21 more seconds of his chaingun punch, followed by a right hook and a left roundhouse that sent the bag off its chains. By the time the bag stopped moving, the bag had lost seven pounds of sand.

Taking a few minutes to realize what he had done, Hunter grabs another bag, places it onto the chains, and goes back to his earlier, slower practice.

OOC: totally not based on Steve Roger's intro scene in the Avengers.

And then, of course, there were the sorts of students who either had to make a mess, or couldn't help themselves. Abby glanced at the countdown on the treadmill before hitting the 'stop' button, gradually slowing down with the machine before hopping off and beginning to stretch. "There's a broom and a dustpan in that closet over there," she said cheerfully, taking care to properly stretch out her knee before anything else.

"If you clean up the mess I promise not to rat you out, but that looked like a whole lot of unresolved issues to me. I know unresolved issues, y'know," she said, sliding down into the splits before stretching over to reach for her toes. "I bet the Academy has a therapist or something. Probably easier on your hands, too!"

Hunter pauses from his training as the Faunas girl walks up to him, berating him for making a mess. Walking over to the broom set and picking it up, he says "Trust me, kid. My issues have been resolved for three years. The memory is the thing I don't like." He goes to cleaning the sand up.

Abby snorted and switched up her stretching, reaching for the toes of her other foot. "Tell that to that punching bag over there," she said, nodding her head in the general direction of the mangled bag. "That bag has 'issues' written all over it. Well, figuratively. It's actually probably got a bunch of information and company logos written on it, but you know what I mean." After finishing up her leg stretching, Abby gracefully stood back up and began to pace around the angry boy curiously. "You can't be that much older than I am. Hardly enough time to get that worked up about anything! So what's bothering you?"

He paused, then thought a bit. To reveal what he did three years ago, or not to reveal what he did three years ago? Hunter kept sweeping the sand for about a minute, then, "I lost some people before I was sixteen. People I cared about a lot. They took them away, and I couldn't find them. They're the reason why I'm two years older than the rest of my team, and by extension, most of the this year's freshmen."

He walked to the trashcan and dumped the sand in. "I don't care about the fact that they're the reason why I'm behind by two years." He walked up to the bag and started kicking it again. "I just care that they don't get away with it again."

Abby blinked, letting out a low 'ooooooh' as she stretched her arms behind her back. "That's some heavy stuff," she said, walking over to the pommel horse and leaping up onto it. "Seems as good a reason as any to be here, though. Do some classes, get some skills, go hunting." Abby took a step back on the device, then did half a cartwheel forward and grabbed onto the pair of handles, easily balancing upside down before slowly beginning to do push-ups while keeping her legs pointed perfectly upright.

"Wait wait wait," she suddenly said, pausing her workout. "Are they here? Are you already hunting them down? Is there some kind of shadowy-evil-badguys here at the school plotting something that you're gonna stop?"

"No. At least, I hope not. Everyone involved was arrested already." Hunter kept chaining his attacks together, wondering if it was possible that some members of the House of Ambus still existed. All of them should have fallen with their House. If one of them still existed, or avoided-

He paused his thoughts, then shook his head and resumed focus on the bag. No. All of them are in prison. The Ambus Cult is dead, just like their leader. A double wheel kick to the bag, and he stopped. If one of them DID go on, though... He turned and looked at the Faunas girl on the pommel. I'm pretty damn sure they'll go and kill all the Faunas first, then atheists, like me.

"By the way, I didn't catch your name." Removing his steel shot gloves, he grabbed his water bottle and took a drink.

"You sure didn't," she agreed cheerfully, pushing herself slightly off to the side of the pommel horse and letting go of one handle, to balance upside down on one hand. Twitching her tail slightly to adjust her balance, she very, very slowly began doing a few one-armed push-ups, before repeating the whole routine with her other hand. "It's Abigail, but everyone calls me 'Abby'. Shorter and less, um, old sounding, I guess. I don't have a story nearly as interesting as yours, though, Mister...?"

"Call me Hunter."

"Uh, kaaay," she said, bending to place her feet back on the pommel horse before sliding herself down and back to the floor. "Hunter the Hunter. Nice to meet ya!" Abby looked around at the equipment, at a loss for where to go next. She briefly considered asking him to spar, but discarded the idea almost immediately. All that running had worn out her legs pretty badly.

Instead she grabbed some wraps for her hands and moved to a punching bag of her own, practicing some fairly standard punches and jabs while bouncing around on the balls of her feet. "So how come you're in here? Seems like you should have a real opponent to fight!"

"Yeah. Hunter the Hunter..." He wiped sweat off his forehead, wondering why he got that name. He preferred to be called a Huntsman, though. Saying the same word twice in a row was strange enough. He sat down on a wooden bench.

"So how come you're in here? Seems like you should have a real opponent to fight!"

"Real?" He asked. "What do you mean by that, Abby?" Surely she didn't just invite him to fight her.

"Well, there's an arena here, right? I bet you could find someone who could fight back if you really wanted," she said, pointing at the broken punching bag, before dashing in towards her own to deliver a half dozen rib shots to the bag. "I'd offer to go a round or two with you in the boxing ring, but we don't have a referee, and my legs are pretty tired anyway. And proper boxing has rules and stuff, which'd really hold me back. Even then you probably wouldn't stand a chance," she said, playfully boasting.

"Is that a challenge?" Hunter took a jump rope and started doing what people did with jump ropes. "As much as I'd like to punch something other than a bag, I'm sure things would get out of hand in a few minutes. Besides, no one has gotten past round one with me." The rope now passed under his feet three times with each jump. "Also, I have a few rules I follow in life. As old fashioned as they are, I still follow them. It helps me be nice to some people. Want to hear some of it?"

Abby, suddenly bored with the punching bag walked over to the boy and started circling him again, watching the jump rope. It was going pretty fast! "Sure? Unless one of those rules is 'never hit a girl', cause you might be in the wrong line of work then. Or at least at the wrong school," she said, coming to a stop in front of him. After a moment she started bouncing on the balls of her feet, mimicking his jumping while staring at him, trying to psych him out. "So let's hear 'em! Whaddya got for me?"

"'Never hit a girl,' huh? Well, I'm pretty sure it's implied in rule 4. Besides, Beacon is a Huntsman Battle School, not a Soldier Battle School, right?" Hunter kept up his jumps. Abby's own out of sync bouncing didn't slow him, but it did irritate him a bit. Having someone off step was annoying, but eventually, one of them was to sync up with the other.

"Okay. So, rules. More like guidelines, but anyways...

1. Be the best one in the room.
   
2. Don't swing first. Dodge first.
   
3. Swing second. Swing last.
   
4. Treat all the same, Human or Faunas.
   
5. Take responsibility.
   
6. Explore all possibilities.
   
7. Leave no one.
   
8. No guns.
   

That's it." Hunter kept jumping, not missing a single beat.

Abby stopped mimicking him, thinking through his rules. "Well some of those make sense," she said. "But that first one is too vague. Be the best one at what? Like, we're in here right now and I can guarantee you wouldn't be better than me at, like.. balancing on things. So does that mean you're breaking your rule?"

Hunter chuckled, not only because Abby just caught the mistake, but because he just beat five minutes. He stopped his own jumping. "Well, you got me, Abby. I didn't come up with those guidelines. I suppose the first one should be, 'Be your very best' or something. After all..." Hunter dropped to the floor and began to do one-armed pushups. "Not everyone is the same. Some smarter, some better, some faster, some stronger." 10 pushups done. He switched to his other arm. "So. Do you have your own set of guidelines, Abby?"

"Guidelines? Nah. Guidelines make things boring," she said, with a shrug. "My life used to be nothing but rules and stuff. Strict guidelines and training regimens and all that stuff because I was gonna be one of the best athletes ever. And then I had my accident and suddenly nobody cared about me being the best. They just wanted me to be able to walk again," she explained, grinning. "And now I can do whatever I want! And that's way better."

Abby walked over to a nearby weight bench and took a seat, kicking her feet up and using the weight bar to lounge. "I'm only in here now 'cause I like it, not 'cause I have to be. If I ever get bored of being a Huntress I'll just go do something else, right?"

"Well, for me, I had limited choices. My music skills aren't so good, so it was to be either a Huntsman," Hunter popped tall and grabbed his water again. 110 pushups with his left: done. 120 with his right: Done. "Or be a farmer."

Clad in black bicycle shorts, a gold sleeveless top, and grey sneakers, Victoria strides into the gym, with her bag slung over her right shoulder, and Drake's upper arm in her left arm. She was on a mission. Her objective? Put some muscle on Drake. With one halfhearted swing, she tossed Drake into the noisy room and followed in after him. "Pick a machine, Drakey, any machine. Or pick none, there are plenty of stations with no moving parts."

Drake's sigh was audible as he was pushed forward, his scowl ever present though noticeably so his black eyes were not black...no, since their odd relationship had started his eyes had slowly returned to their natural deep blue colouration. He shakes his head and glances to Victoria, tilting his head.

"Seriously? I have a nickname now? You do realise this is pointless...? I have plenty of muscle...I'm just built more like a gymnast than a weightlifter..." It was certainly true. His build, though tall and slender was not lacking in tone. Yet it seemed Victoria was stubbornly going to push him til his muscle mass decided to become inappropriate for his fighting style and chosen ways.

"Nothing wrong with being a farmer," she said, yawning and stretching and staring at the ceiling. "Driving all those big machines around and stuff is probably loads of fun!" Suddenly her ears perked up, and she sat up abruptly. "Ooooh, more people. I wonder if they're gonna break any of the equipment? Wanna puts some bets on it?"

Victoria chuckled before throwing her bag in a deserted corner of the room. "Lucky you, there's plenty for a... lightweight to do here too." Victoria pointed around the room, naming the various cardio equipment. "Treadmill, jump rope, punching bag, want me to continue?" Victoria picked up a coiled up jump rope and tossed it to Drake before hanging herself.... upside down on a set of horizontal bars. She began lifting herself up, then descending again. "I don't care about your build, you can always get better. By the way, screw the nickname.

"Good. I didn't approve of it anyhow." He smiles just a little at that, looking at the coiled jump rope and holding it at a respectable distance. Ok. He liked this girl. He really did. But he wasn't so sure he was a fan of her somewhat extreme dedication to a task such as this.

He sighs and simply starts to warm up, stretching carefully, watching Victoria as he does so. After a few moments and a few kicks he starts to idly use said jump rope, noting it is not that great a challenge. It's certainly not as though he wasn't in shape...but she was determined and he couldn't stop her.

When she'd shown up at his Dorm wearing that outift and asking if he wanted to have 'fun' his mind naturally went elsewhere...not to this enforced routine that she was so fond of.