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 Posted: Sun Nov 04, 2012 7:04 pm
Zia had been texting Pascal all day, waiting for him to get out of class and totally not overcompensating for flipping out on him and breaking his phone.
She was ready to go over to his place when he was done, but she was surprised when she got a response telling her not to come over. She figured he must've been ticked off after all, until she got the second line, telling her to come to the gym instead.
She was half expecting that to be a joke considering one of the punches pulled in their fight involving her weight. She even wrote back asking, and was just told to come in work out gear.
Zia was exponentially confused and actually sat there for a while thinking about it before she threw on her yoga clothes, grabbed a bag, and headed out.
She hadn't ever actually been to this gm before, and once she stepped in she knew exactly why. It specialized in boxing. And Zia had zero interest in boxing. At least the not exactly accurate version she had in her head of shirtless guys punching with pillows on their fists. She wandered through looking half lost, and looking for Pascal. He was easy to find. Zia was on the tall side of a woman's height and usually in heels or tall boots, but in flats, his messy hair was half a foot over hers.
"...You box?" She finally asked, deciding that was probably the nicest way to phrase half the s**t in her head. Though she did eventually realize it was stupid to be baffled at his hobbies when the only thing she knew about him was they apparently hated similar types of people. And that wasn't exactly a stellar foundation for friendship.
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Posted: Sun Nov 04, 2012 8:37 pm
Pascal had originally taken up kickboxing as a manner of self-defense but he continued to do so for general health and fitness. The particular gym he invited Zia to focused majorly on the American ruleset of kickboxing and following those rules Pascal was sparring with a man who loomed three inches over him when Zia walked in. He had been in the middle of a roundhouse kick when she caught his attention, giving his opponent an opening. He avoided but only barely by covering himself from a blow.
He groaned, holding his opponent's gloves in his own while he signaled to him that he needed a break.
"Thanks Doug," he said with a wave, moving over from the ring to Zia. In the distance, Doug murmured something along the lines of 'Way to go Lalande, what a babe.' Pascal knew later he was going to have a billion questions because no one had ever seen him with a girl before. Yo hit that, Lalande? Awe yeah. The guys here were animals and the thought horrified him. It caused him to begin second guessing why he'd invited her here in the first place.
"You could say that, although to be precise it is kickboxing. They do pure boxing here as well though, and a few other contact sports."
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Posted: Sun Nov 04, 2012 9:22 pm
Zia had stopped being confused long enough to glance around, fairly excited by the idea for various reasons. This also explained why her tall, lanky nerd of a not-boyfriend had nice enough abs to get photoshopped into a Twilight poster or something. So that was illuminating.
What she was curious about was why he didn't say 'go away, I'm hanging out with my friends' and she was way too dumb to consider the possibility that this might be a good and not at all weird thing. She waved at the man who left when she caught him glancing at her, and did her own glancing at the other people around, only to suddenly blush in embarrassment when she saw a pair of women eying her cutesy little yoga shorts where they were dressed more appropriately for contact sports. And also had some downright enviable triceps. Zia suddenly felt stupidly dressed and incredibly wimpy.
"Cool!" She said when Pascal more or less introduced her to the place formally. "Can I try?"
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Posted: Sun Nov 04, 2012 9:56 pm
Now why would Pascal invite Zia to the gym and then ignore her? Zia, you silly woman! He definitely wasn't ignoring her, in fact, it wasn't just the two women eying Zia's cutesy yoga shorts. Pascal found his eyes falling down her chest and then lingering on her a**. It was glorious and he was almost upset that all the guys got to see it in those little yoga shorts.
He moved his eyes off of her, straightening his body up a bit as he moved his arms behind his head and stretched. It held his arms up like that for a moment, exposing his abs, pectorals and triceps to the gym until he heard a solid cracking noise. Satisfied by the stretch, Pascal leap out of the ring and landed beside Zia.
"You want to try? Okay, give me your best punch." He grinned, slipping off his glove and holding his palm out for her. "Aim for the palm." Okay, after being attacked by her twice, he just wanted to make sure she knew not to kick him in the shin or punch him in the nose again.
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Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 6:19 am
Had Zia been more observant, she might've made a comment about not being allowed to stare after he'd gone and called her fat. But even if she was, she'd be hesitant to bring up the fact they'd fought like the two maladjusted human beings they were even or slight revenge against probably one of the worst insults you could throw at vain little Zia Connolly.
He stretched in a way that she might've suspected was showing off if she wasn't so blatantly caught up in outright staring, gnawing on her lower lip and wondering just how much of a fictional trope that weak in the knees problem was. "Unh..."
She tried to shake it off when he jumped out of the ring and was suddenly right next to her. "Ha! Yeah," She said in a breathy laugh and stared at his palm for a second before making her attempt.
Zia put a lot of power behind her punches, but she balled her fists in such a way it easily hurt her just as much, if not more, when she landed one. And she had split open her hand before doing do. Plus her upper body strength was really more used to being used for things like pulling her up off ledges, not swinging at things.
She hit his palm, but the tried to shake the sting out of her abused hand with a cringe.
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Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 12:15 pm
Pascal mostly just observed her while she prepared to swing a punch up to and after actually doing so. There was a good amount of power behind it and that worried Pascal simply because his eyes fell on how she was punching. Her fists weren't formed right at all and if she kept punching things like that she was going to break her hand. He didn't know she'd split open her hand before and if he had he might very well have threw his arms up in exasperation.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" He said abruptly, watching her as he tried to shake what he could only assume was the backlash on herself.
"You're going to break your hand throwing punches like that!" He said it a little louder than he intended, drawing the attention of Doug again. He was confused at first, and then he simply laughed and went back to what he was doing. Pascal on the other hand went on his marry way, hesitantly grabbing Zia's hand. He remembered what had happened before, and this time he held a bit of caution to the motion. He examined it first, and then he left it go.
"Do it like this," he simply said as he formed a fist, finding it probably better to show her visually before even trying to explain it.
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Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 7:07 pm
Zia twitched like she was about to jerk backwards when he reached out to grab her, but luckily he backed off, just in time to make her feel embarrassed about the motion entirely.
She frowned at his reaction, though. "Jeez, man, it's not my fault! Learning to punch 'right' isn't exactly in the curriculum when you're a girl," She didn't even know there WAS a way to punch right, though this was excellent information since she used her fist way more than the average 20-something should be doing. The attention and laughter from the other man made her flush red with embarrassment again. Were they being funny? Was she being that stupid?
Her brow was still knit as she confusedly watched his demonstration and then to her own hand, which needed to be flexed a bit before she managed to close it into a fist. It was a bit kinked up and scarred from her various, epic punching fails.
"Um... this way?"
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Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 8:12 pm
"Don't mind them. They just think they're hilaaaaaarious." He said, furrowing his brows toward their vicinity.
"Forming your fist correctly is just as important as making a hit, at least if you want to keep your hand intact," he explained, inspecting her fist. He gently moved her thumb so it wasn't protruding so much, and then pressed his fingers against the spaces of her fingers. "If that feels uncomfortable you can keep your thumb just over t
"You're holding your fist too tight. If you squeeze too much your hand could buckle when you hit something."
A lot of this wasn't really important for boxing since participants wore gloves but many successful boxers who got into street bawls or fights ended up breaking their fingers, wrists or hands all together because of improper fist. Not just that but it could even make the power of their strike weaker than it would be normally.
"Depending on the style of punch, you can use a variety of knuckles but I would suggest aiming to use your first two knuckles to deliver a punch as they typically have better alignment with your wrist and there will be less change of damage to yourself." His rant didn't end there. He actually continued on to explain that there were proper ways to throw a punch as well, and that you could even damage your elbow by doing that improperly as well.
"Okay," he said, grabbing a small flat punching mat into his arms and positioning it in front of her. "Try again."
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Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 8:41 pm
Zia had no idea what was going on, though she chalked that up to being an outsider to their little clique and just kind of looked back and forth between Pascal and the others trying to crack the code.
The look on Zia's face was entirely blank as she moved her fingers and had all this maneuvering explained to her when ten minutes ago she didn't even know there was a wrong way to hit things.
She stared down at her fist and then up to the mat he picked up. After making a slow motion in front of her own face like she was studying it, she took a much more successful swing, even if she faltered a bit. She had a nice manicure, okay, she didn't want those French tips chipping off in her palm or anything.
"Okay, that felt better," She admitted, taking a few more practice punches on the mat with both hands now.
"You been doing this for a while?" She asked, going back to inappropriately staring at him and chewing on her lip as she thought things over. She never claimed she wasn't superficial.
She did imitate a stance she saw someone else do a few minutes ago and held her fists up before laughing at the absurdity.
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Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 8:54 pm
"Much better," he applauded her after she hit the mat, placing it back down after she had finished throwing in a couple more punches. He wasn't quite used to people ogling him, mostly because he remained clothed any time he was in public, her staring finally hitting him consciously. It drew his attention to her lips as she chewed on it gently, and then down over her breasts, hips and legs. Mmmf.
"Oh... I would say about five years now," he finally replied. It had been so long now, even he could barely believe how far he'd come from the weak little science nerd he once was.
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Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 9:12 pm
Just like touching, Zia would ogle shamelessly and become embarrassed and twitchy if it was turned around on her. For a girl who was always dressing for attention, she seemed awfully flustered when she got it. When she even noticed she was getting it.
"Really?" She swallowed, trying to seem not completely unbalanced. "I mean, it's a cool sport, don't get me wrong. I guess I'm just shocked when people don't pick whitebread things like baseball." She double checked she was still forming her fists right and playing with shifting different ways to aim her knuckles in funny little motions in front of her. If he wasn't going to pick up the mat she wasn't going to take a swing at him again.
"I don't think I've ever been into a sport in my life so..." And then she had a blast from the past that made her frown. "God, when I was a kid I actually considered bowling a sport."
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Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 9:54 pm
"It was more for self defense than it was a choice of sport," he admitted, going from looking at Zia's breasts to her eyes. It was a strange shift, a meaningful display of his mood shift. He didn't linger there long though, immediately changing his shift to the mat he'd placed back on the ground. He picked it up, held it out and smiled.
"Practice makes perfect. Did you practice a lot with bowling?"
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Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2012 5:59 am
"Self defense?" Zia was trying to stop being stupid, she really was. She could stop being a hormonal, sex crazed young person and stop looking at him like a piece of meat, she absolutely could. She had to keep telling herself. And in the process of getting a grip think back to all the monster bullshit in Destiny City, because that was the only self defense she could think of off the top of her head.
She decided it was best not to assume, in the end. "Self defense from what? Who would pick on you?" She asked as if the thought of someone taking on a guy that tall, kickboxer's body or not, was amusing.
"Mm, not really, it was just a hobby. Now I do yoga, but I'm just trying to get back in shape, not because I have much of a give-a-damn." Zia had no muscle tone. She did at one point, hell, back when she was more actively involved in Destiny City's bullshit she was downright athletic. But sitting at home feeling sorry for yourself with a sleeve of Oreos was a hobby that had a tendency to wreck all that.
"Okay! Teach me something else," She quipped when she found herself thinking about that other icky stuff going on in the world too much. "Like how to swing without feeling like my shoulder's going to fall off."
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Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2012 6:40 pm
"You know, boys will be boys," he joked, brushing off the topic. He was quite ready to talk about the past, especially one that Pascal Lalande technically didn't even exist in. There was no need to tell her that he used to be a scrawny kid who kept his nose in a book and never played a sport in his life. He grew, he learned and he moved on from who he used to be. What good would it be dragging up memories anyways? No good is what, and Pascal was sure of it... at least currently.
He simply nodded to her when she spoke to him about the bowling and then mentioned the yoga. It was certainly nothing he had ever done or planned to ever do in his life but he certainly would be up for being a spectator to the sport if Zia was the active participant.
"All right. Well first, you don't want to swing wildly. Your punches should be quick, and compact and to minimize damage to yourself you should follow through with the punch. You don't want to punch and then stop, the physics will just be more likely to damage you. For example, an object in motion tends to stay in motion. You want to use your whole body, moving your," there was a definite, brief pause as Pascal's eyes fell over his hips as he spoke, "hips while you punch. This will not only strengthen your punch but help prevent injury."
A lot of it probably wasn't going to be retained because subliminal body movements were something that took awhile to program in. She'd have to practice it, and consciously think about it until her body did it for her. It took Pascal a long time to, but it would be a start. At least she would be able to refrain from breaking her hand with his nose next time.
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Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2012 7:03 pm
Zia stared him down for a moment, recognizing a brush off when she saw one. And then realized she was making a conscious effort not to care and just shrugged it off, accepting his answer. "Uh, yeah, I'm familiar, three brothers, remember?" She laughed, trying to edge away from whatever sore spot she'd hit. Not that she wanted to talk about family. Ick.
"Anyway," She cleared her throat and shifted her stance a little, rolling her shoulders in an attempt to loosen them and played with a slow motion follow through once she was satisfied she could. She didn't quite pull it off, but Zia was pretty light on her feet and whole body movement wasn't a problem, just coordination. Everything was easier when you slowed down to think about it, and her fake punch lightly tapped his chest, where her knuckles lingered while she smiled at him and clicked her tongue as she lightly knocked his chin.
It was totally not just an excuse to touch him.
"This how you always get a work out? Pretend fights?" She teased, baiting some talking on other topics.
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