PHD #155: Both Fail
Both Fail
Summary: Cora and Tisiphone attempt to spar. They pretty much fail.
Date: 31 July 2041 AE
Related Logs: Only everything
Players:
Cora Tisiphone 
Athletics Area
A large pair of mats dominates the center of this room, their centers taped-out for a small area to practice boxing or other martial arts. Around the outside are treadmills, bikes, weights, and an impressive variety of gym equipment to help tone and shape the bodies of the crew. To one side of the room is the locker room while at the rear is a hatch that leads back to the oversized swimming pool. Off to the side is a rack that holds boxing gloves, pugil sticks, and the associated pads for the sticks.
Post-Holocaust Day: #155

It's late evening, the clock not yet wound around to oh-dark-thirty, and the gym is nearly abandoned. Only the few, the proud, and the unlucky care to get their PT in at an hour like this.

Ensign Apostolos is one of these. In a pair of cut-off sweats and a tank-top, she's situated in front of one of the man-sized canvas punching bags, pink-faced and dripping sweat, laying into it as if it had suggested her mother was a skinjob.

Cora is another, though she appears to have begun her PT elsewhere, jogging into the room like she's finishing a run, apparently not content with treadmills this evening. She's dressed similarly, but in actual shorts, and is also pink, and sweaty until she ducks her head and tugs the neck of her tank up to wipe at her face, leaving only a faintly darkening around her hairline. She heads for water, first, and then turns, taking a couple steps towards the heavy bags before noting their current user. She eyes Tisiphone sideways as she heads towards the rack of gloves and wraps, considering.

There's not much of the black and rather feral glare Tisiphone started beating on the punching bag with, however long ago; it's been worn down and sweated out, traded away to the rough canvas in return for reddened knuckles. (A sweaty roll of fist-wraps lay not far from her feet, apparently having been discarded for a more, ahem, hands-on approach.) Her peripheral vision alerts her to movement — bogey, nine o'clock — and she bounces back from the punching bag before looking over fully, hands sagging down to her sides.

Cora's knuckles are already reddened, more than a couple scabbed over from some injury done probably a few days ago from the looks of it. She eyes and then eliminates the gloves, picking up wraps and winding them around her hands. She doesn't appear to be in any particular hurry, fussing with the wrapping before looking up as Tisiphone stops her work-out and looks over. "Evening," she says simply.

"You're- up late," Tisiphone pants, leaning forward to prop hands against knees for a few surging breaths. Her eyes squeeze shut against a drop of sweat curling along the faint scar around her eyesocket then reopen, blinking rapidly.

"So are you," Cora points out in return, watching the ensign wheeze. She smiles, a quick twist of her lips tugged up by a scar that doesn't exist as she goes on, "Not up for a sparring round, I take it?"

"Long day," says Tisiphone, wiping her brow against her forearm. "Galley's frakking- disgusting, you- know that?" She rolls her shoulders, then shakes her arms out once, then again. "No. No," she says. "I mean- yeah. You need someone to- beat on, I'm your girl. Lemme- get some gloves." Another shake of her arms before she pushes off toward the shelves.

"They're all long," replies Cora, before a brow lifts at the comment about the galley. "Ah. Kitchen duty?" She nods, "I don't envy you that." The offer to get beat on seems to surprise the lieutenant, and she pauses, watching Tisiphone for a moment, and then shrugs and nods, "Alright, let's," as she abandons the wraps and heads over to acquire some gloves of her own as well.

"Better than an- airlock," theorizes the pilot as she picks out a pair of gloves. Tisiphone tosses the gloves once in her hands before starting to pull them on, wincing faintly at raw knuckles against the inner lining. "Something been- dogging you lately?"

"I suppose," Cora nods. She flexes and shakes out her fingers before drawing the gloves on, testing the feel before strapping her hands in. The question earns Tisiphone a sideways glance and a silent moment before the lieutenant returns, "Why do you ask?"

"Just a- hunch." Tisiphone's making some pointless adjustment to her gloves as she says it. "Raw knuckles. Running yourself- ragged at this hour of night. Things got- reasons behind them, you know?" She curls her fingers in her gloves, then paces off a few steps before turning around to square off.

Cora doesn't reply verbally, just making a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat that acknowledges the words and perhaps even the logic if nothing else. She adjusts her gloves as well, and then faces her opponent and sets, still for a moment before she moves in, left glove kept up in guard as she tests out a jab.

<FS3> Opposed Roll — Cora:Melee vs Tisiphone:Melee
Cora: Failure Tisiphone: Success
Net Result: Tisiphone wins.
<FS3> Opposed Roll — Cora:Melee vs Tisiphone:Melee
Cora: Success Tisiphone: Success
Net Result: DRAW
<FS3> Opposed Roll — Cora:Melee vs Tisiphone:Melee
Cora: Bad Failure Tisiphone: Failure
Net Result: Both Fail.

Light on her feet, guard up and easy, a quick counter-jab popped back — or so it might go, if Tisiphone hadn't spent all day slopping giant vats of 'food' around and then gods-only-know how long tearing into that punching bag before Cora arrived. It's more a weary pantomime of Trying To Keep Up Appearances that really happens. PAFF, goes the blocked jab, the pilots gloves lowering a second before she bullies right into Cora's personal space, trying to crowd her back with jabs at her midsection. (They're less work than punches at the face, anyway.)

Cora isn't much better… or at all better, actually. She seems more weary than a long day and a midnight run can quite explain, and though that jab is quick enough, she doesn't react as speedily as she ought to the block, taking a couple blows to the abdomen before she succeeds in backing away quickly enough to break it up. Guard re-raised she comes in close again, closer, aiming for the body herself, this time, before trying to sneak one up to the chin.

A proper bar-brawl or two would break Tisiphone of her well-mannered habit of bouncing /away/ from her opponent whenever a solid hit — or combination of hits — lands. Unfortunately, shore leave has been indefinitely postphoned. As Cora closes back in, she keeps her guard low, attention fixed on the body jabs. Paff. PaffPAFF. Target lock's a bitch, though — her attention's too fixed, and her guard comes up too late to protect the shot to her jaw. Whap. A skitter-stumbling bounce back and a sharp shake of her head, pale eyes squinting against stinging sweat. "A touch, a frakking touch," she mutters. Her fingers twitch inside her gloves before she advances again, snapping punches at Cora's face.

A proper bar brawl or two might cure a lot of ills, but alas, there is no bar. When her sneaky almost-upper-cut lands, Cora shifts her weight back a bit, guard rising, but the pilot's mutter draws a faint smirk. It only lasts a second before she's deflecting those blows to the face with raised gloves. She's successful at first, and it seems plausible that she could continue to be for some time, but she opts out relatively quickly, dropping one side of her guard to aim some quick strikes at Tisiphone's face in turn. She takes two for her trouble, the second blow taking a second to sink in before she steps back, head shaking briefly to clear it.

Whap. WHAPwhap. It's a bit like two cats slapping at eachother's faces… if the cats were stuck in padded red gloves, instead of fur and claws. A flurry of blows with an outcome neither's quite sure of until they have a moment to catch their breaths. Whether it was her own blocking glove that hit her in the face, or one of Cora's strikes, Tisiphone isn't sure — but she throws the metaphorical towel in first, holding her gloves up. "Too frakking- tired for this," she pants. "Eyes don't- even want to follow you anymore. I give."

Cora has been hit again as well, but couldn't explain how it happened precisely, as easily her own fault as her opponent's. When the ensign holds up her gloves in surrender, she doesn't even bother pretending to look triumphant, just nodding and dropping her guard, tank top lifted to wipe her face. "Yeah," she agrees, "That… was just sad." She shakes her head in something that doesn't quite make it to the level of true disgust, and then again, tugging gloves open and off and tossing them aside before dropping to take a seat on the mat. There's nobody else around to use it, anyhow.

"Let's- try it again sometime when we're- not dead on our frakking feet," agrees Tisiphone, trudging toward the wall to drop the gloves on their rack. She wipes her eyebrows with the edge of her thumb, flicking the sweat away. One downside to the shorn scalp; no hair to soak up the sweat. "Frak the head, I'm going to rack out while I still feel like sleeping." A round of laundry is worth the sacrifice, at this point. Trudging back, she scoops up her red squeezebottle, raising it half-heartedly to Cora in farewell.

"Deal," Cora replies, "Whenever that might be." She does not sound hopeful. She sits for a moment, forehead resting on her knees, before Tisiphone's plan is relayed and she picks her head up, blinking, and nods, "That's… a very good idea." She nods once, almost to herself, and hauls herself to her feet, lifting a glove-holding hand in an answering wave.

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