Pascha takes to working out in the gym where he runs into Farrah and forms a fitness bond.
Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2025 8:21 pm
Pascha had never given much thought to fitness in the past; his high metabolism and love of running had kept him fairly trim for his entire life. He had lean muscle without really going out of his way to try for it. In a way, he supposed he was very lucky. But when it came to building on that muscle and gaining upper body strength, he quickly realized that it wasn’t going to be so easy for him from that point on. He had to really work and sweat and he left the gym exhausted only to wake up sore the next day.
It was a good kind of sore, but he would have been lying if he’d said he hadn’t been tempted to skip a session or two. It was hard work when most things just were not actually difficult for him. And there was no instant gratification; there was no amount of working out that would make him bigger and stronger overnight. This was already his fifth session and he didn’t look or feel much different. Well, other than being tired and sore! But he was much less sore after his last session than after his first. Maybe it was making a difference after all?
Even if it wasn’t, Pascha was determined to keep at it. Sure, he wanted to be someone strong and dependable, especially in case he and the boss got into trouble they couldn’t just run away from, but that wasn’t the only reason he had begun this regimen. He needed something, anything, to take his mind off of his stupid hurt feelings.
Pascha had spent days after learning Hasan had left for home just being miserable and going through the motions. He didn’t talk much, he ate less, and he didn’t even work on his projects. He was a complete wreck and he was sick to death of himself and feeling sorry for himself. He needed a new hobby, something to distract him from how he was feeling and the self-destructive thoughts he was having. He could definitely say that working out had that effect; he wouldn’t have thought something so physical would do such a good job of quieting what was going on in his head.
It wasn’t perfect, though. Especially not on days like today when the gym was empty. There was no background chatter to drown out the stray thoughts that tried to creep up and wrap around his throat from time to time. Even worse than that, he couldn’t ask anyone to spot him if there was no one around. He was almost tempted to try some heavier weights anyway, he almost convinced himself it would be fine if he just did it for a little while. Pushing himself harder usually worked much better at keeping him distracted so he wanted the challenge. But in the end he decided against it; he knew better. He didn’t want to do anything stupid and hurt himself. What if he got pinned under a bar and no one happened by to help him? Better to be safe than sorry; there were other exercises he could do. And maybe, if his thoughts insisted on being loud, he could think of a way to bring music to the gym on quiet days. That would be great!
She finished her final lap on the indoor track of the gym. Today was a makeup day of sorts for skipping out on the one before. Her last weapons training with her personal guard proved to be more strenuous but it was nothing she couldn’t handle. Before the invasion, her regimen was mostly the same as the one she followed back in Mars. After the invasion, and with the spontaneous spar she had with Viktor also in mind, Farrah wanted to add more time and activity to it. So she did, steadily. There might also have been the little quip a different frosty-haired Hyoden might have made that bore only a miniscule amount of weight. “Frail body my butt.” Rah muttered to herself. She hadn’t caught her usual winter cold yet, but she did not believe herself to be that frail for it! The same went for her wrist. Between the doctor having to reset it and her own healing abilities, her wrist was well enough that she was clear to ease back into full use.
Even before she became next in line to rule, there was still the expectation from father and those involved in her care that she would train. She’d only really started training when that change came around, and with it came more intensity and higher stakes. A high metabolism always kept her on the leaner side and she had to work when it came to gaining weight and muscle. Without either, she surely would have perished during any one of the grueling trials she faced – and passed to secure her place in line – in her teens. Since then she’d done as any other Martian warrior did: continued. Improved. Persevered. Rah figured out early on that she’d be adequate at most when it came to fight and strength. Agility and dexterity helped to fill in some of the gaps, and her ability to influence metals was also very useful in most situations. She was okay with that. There was always room for improvement but like a lot of things, it was something she refused to be told what to do about. At least by most people. Like with the occasional spar and the skirmishes that seemed to be plaguing their peaceful academy, she felt more than physically capable for what the next, distant chapters in life had in store for her. They’d be addressed with the same kind of resolve.
Had it not been so bloody cold she would have taken her jog somewhere outside with the sun and the fresh air. The indoor gym was acceptable given the season and was going to have to be the place to be until it got warm enough. She stepped into a matted area and set her water bottle down before she started her stretching. First her arms, then her legs. It was while she was alternating between stretching her legs that she spotted the male with short blonde hair. Looking around as she switched legs and bent and held her left foot behind her, she noticed it was just as empty as it was when she first got there. Rah chalked it up to it just being a slow part of the day for the place; there were plenty of people that used it. She’d been in her own world for a lot of it, nothing too eventful outside of switching things up and trying a new and different jewelry design.
She stepped into an empty space next to the blonde area and flashed him a grin as she went to the stand of dumb bells. He’d caught her eye a time or two during their classes, but it felt like a more recent thing to see him in the gym. Not a bad thing in the least. Rah looked over to Pascha for a moment before making her little joke. “It’s quiet. Makes you wonder if everyone knows something we don’t.”
Pascha had warmed up with several more dynamic exercises before settling into his usual routine. Well, as ‘usual’ as it could be after only five sessions! But it helped to have some kind of routine to follow. Bicep curls, goblet squats, shoulder presses, rows, flys, lateral lifts, side lateral lifts, step-ups, lunges, crunches, pushups, and squats… A lot of things that would have sounded like gibberish to him before! But now they sounded like steady progression and burn and that good kind of sore that he was slowly getting used to.
It was in the middle of a set of goblin squats that someone else appeared and cracked a joke that made Pascha laugh, openly and expressively. It felt like it had been a while since he really, really laughed! But laughing and squatting at the same time wasn’t great and he straightened up to catch his breath, still grinning at the dark haired woman.
”Maybe they do! I just hope the wall doesn’t come down again; Mr. Marco was really mad!” Pascha liked Marco a lot, even if he was kind of grumpy, so he definitely didn’t like it when people made the maintenance man angry. Grumpy was okay; Mr. Marco was always grumpy. Kind of like Ellis, well, before Ellis had left. People always left. If it wasn’t for all the strange happenings at the school, Pascha might even take it more personally than he already was.
Not liking where that thought was going, Pascha dropped into the next squat before his mind could linger on it for too long. It really did help. And so did seeing someone else. Someone friendly, at least friendly enough to make a joke when she saw him. So Pascha was definitely eager to keep the conversation going a little, even if it meant he might huff and puff a little.
”Either way, I still have a lot of exercise to do today! No skipping! Anyway, my name’s Pascha, it’s nice to meet you!” And it really was, even though he didn’t know the red eyed woman’s name yet. Maybe he was a little too eager to make new friends. Not that he wasn’t really happy with knowing the Boss, Ivy, Stefano, and Gweniveire; they were all really great! But that didn’t make it hurt less that Izzie and Ellis had left him behind.
And Hasan. Pascha ignored how his heart still clenched when he thought about it. When he remembered making a fool of himself, singing his heart out to a man he couldn’t have. He tried to shake the thought and focus on his breathing instead. Breathe in on the rise, release slowly through the effort. Just like he’d read. There was no room for feeling sorry for himself; he had to concentrate. Everything would be fine that way.
She’d reached out to select a weight but her hand stopped just over it to the roar of laughter from the blondie nearby. He must have found what she said really funny. Was it? A little, but at most she anticipated a chuckle or some clever response, maybe about everyone going to the ‘other’ gym. Was there another gym? Rah didn’t know. It was only yesterday she learned this place had a whole amphitheater so yeah, maybe! But it could have just been something she said that reminded him of something. Sometimes that happened to her. Like how the mention of ice reminded her of the time Ivan sent Adelaide on a one-way trip down an ice slide with only her frilly dress to protect her little derriere from freezer burn! The memory earned a wheeze out of her.
This dude obviously knew how to live a little! It messed up his reps but he only stopped and didn’t seem bothered by that. Farrah looked back over to him and returned the grin. What he followed up with was so true and she gave a shake of her head. “I’d be mad too! But my bet is we’re safe from that happening again until at least March.” It was best that it didn’t happen at all, but if Sethos did it September, and Winduria did it just days ago, then hopefully they had more time before some Tyrannosaurus Rex headbutted their way through some second story floor during Lady Beckett’s lit class!
Thinking on it… she’d seen and personally experienced more architectural destruction at Utopia in three months than she had in her lifetime before arriving there. What an interesting if not disconcerting observation.
Quickly she elaborated before she gave the yellow-haired cutie-patootie the wrong idea. “Not that I know it’s gonna really happen! Just a wild guess!” There, disaster averted!
She took his dropping back into squats as her queue to grab the weight she was originally reaching for. With her cooldown stretches out of the way and her blood still pumping from her jog, it was time to get down to business. Farrah got into position and started doing squats of her own.
A couple reps in she heard him speak again and Rah turned her head to look over. He was introducing himself, and what a sunny sounding name to go with the sunny personality he had! Pascha seemed for sure the kind of person she’d prefer to chit chat with in the gym. “I’m Farrah but you can call me Rah if you like!” She crouched down, weight in hands and held in the center, then stood back up. “It’s nice to meet you too Pascha!”
It was just likely that they came into the gym on different days, but she still wanted to know. “Do you come here a lot? This is a makeup day for me.” She started, then took another breath before speaking again. “My weapons training left me more sore than I thought so I took a day.”
“But I’m better today! What do you like to do in here?”
”How come March?” Pascha asked innocently, trying to remember if he’d read or heard anything about upcoming renovations or something. He hadn’t even considered that his new friend could be a part of some nefarious plot that could put holes in the walls. No, he simply assumed that he had either forgotten something or not yet heard about some planned work on the building. At least if it was part of the plan, then Mr. Marco wouldn’t be mad, right? Just his usual grumpy and his usual grumpy was still okay.
”Oh!” Pascha smiled sheepishly, cheeks turning a little pink. He really should have realized it was just an offhand comment. The idea that it was too soon for another wall crumbling incident. Pascha didn’t think that exactly made sense, but it didn’t exactly have to, either. ”I definitely wouldn’t mind it staying quiet for a while, haha! I, um… I’ve never really been in danger before. I know I’m really lucky, so I shouldn’t complain, but it’s pretty scary.”
Would the red eyed woman understand or maybe just think he was a weakling? Well, it was okay, either way. He was a weakling and he had been able to live that way for a long time. He was really, really lucky.
”Oh, I like Rah! It sounds like cheering! Go, team, go! Rah rah rah!” Maybe it was a little weird to chant someone’s name to cheer himself on, but it kind of worked too. Well, he wouldn’t keep doing it aloud, at least. Go, team, go! Rah rah rah! Haha, it was like the weight got a little lighter! Stuff like that didn’t make any logical sense to him, but things didn’t always have to make sense to be true. Something he was trying to get used to!
”Oh, I haven’t been at it long. This is only my fifth time coming here.” Pascha stole a glance at Rah, hoping he wasn’t being too rude. She was really pretty, but he wasn’t trying to check her out or anything not that he wouldn’t want to because she was really pretty but that wasn’t really the point. It was just that when she mentioned weapon training, he couldn’t help being curious. What kind of weapons did she use? Would she maybe be willing to demonstrate sometime? He’d probably ask her to do more than demonstrate, but he didn’t think he could handle any more lessons. Between combat classes and his extra-curricular training with Willow and Fio, he was plenty sore enough. Miss Fio wasn’t even using weapons; she didn’t need them to wear him out!
”I’m glad you’re feeling better! Um… I don’t know if there’s anything specific I like yet. But I like being here. Especially when there’s other people, so I’m extra glad you feel better and came in. It’s too quiet by myself.” Pascha was finding it wasn’t too very difficult to keep up a conversation while he worked out. He did think he was talking a lot less than he usually did, though! That was probably for the best. Anyway, go team, go! Rah rah rah! Pascha silently cheered himself on as he switched out weights for shoulder presses.
"What do you like to do here? And can I ask what kind of weapon training you do? I learned a little about swords back home, but I never really tried very hard and I’m not very good. But! I think I like fighting with my hands or knives a lot better. I’m still learning though so I’m not very good at those either, haha!”
Farrah returned an open smile to the sheepish one Pascha was making. She knew she wasn’t always the most succinct person when she felt up to conversing and couldn’t say if she’d made progress with that skill. Tacking on her extra note seemed to help at least. Her speculation had only been half-serious and with all this peace it was hard to say when anything would really happen again. As he wished for things to stay quiet, she remembered how some people believed that mentioning the unwanted thing could tempt fate into bringing that thing into play. It sounded silly that offhanded comments could invoke things of that caliber, but at least for now, Rah figured, it would be best to not test how well that worked.
“You can complain if you want. It was scary.” She didn’t question it, never having ever experienced danger before. Rah had gone through her share of it, so him having not could be true at the same time. Her curiosities laid more with Pascha himself and what kept him safe for so long. Perhaps his way of living? Or maybe was it his Kingdom’s philosophies and defenses? Whatever the case may be, what happened in music class must have been weighing on his mind so much to bring it up. “I can listen. I won’t tell anyone and there’s no one else in here. Sometimes it feels good to just… say whatever’s up there, you know?” She’d lost count the number of times she griped about something or other, be it another person or an angry-looking piece of hot metal she needed to hammer out. Now it was her turn to laugh. Rah stopped at the bottom of her squat and put her weight down to giggle so hard her eyes squeezed shut. She’d heard a few iterations of her name over the years but it was the first time she heard it used as a chant. It was only after the initial intensity passed that she was able to make words again, “Hey, I like that! That’s pretty funny! If I’m Rah Rah Rah, then you can be Cha Cha Cha!” She repeated it again with a bounce of her shoulder to each syllable.
“Ah!” Rah let out a happy sigh. So either the gym was new for him, or he was new to gyms. Either way, he was there and if his temperament was any indication he was having a good fifth time! She picked up her weight and resumed her reps while she listened to Pascha, nodding in thanks to his warm sentiment. He’d been approachable since she stepped into the weight area and his friendliness was different from some of the other personalities she ran into from time to time. Thinking on her schedule, she didn’t see it being too difficult to switch it around if this was Pascha’s usual gym day. Her guard would grumble a little but wouldn’t object.
Would her new potential gym buddy be okay with it? One way to find out! “Would it be okay with you if I joined in on your gym days? That way it won’t be so quiet. Plus we can spot each other with the heavier stuff.” If he didn’t want to, or if it didn’t work out, that was A-ok too. Rah had a good feeling about this though. She switched out her one weight for two and as she readied herself for deadlifts, red eyes made a cursory glance at him. Pascha was one undeniably handsome dude and moved in and between workouts with a focus all the while chatting away with her. He had a routine down it seemed, and she wondered what kind of goals he had in mind. A question to ask for sure.
His own line of questioning came and a glint crossed her eyes. He mentioned small, sharp, stabby things and that he liked using them too. But she had to not get too excited and rattle on so much that his ears fell off. “I like to use the deadweights and stretch out, and I usually run outside but since it’s cold now I’ll be running in here too. Oh, and the battle ropes! Those are fun to make wave around. Have you ever used them?” Rah bent over to lower her dumbbells to her shins, straightened up, then repeated the process. “That’s what I like to use too! Knives and daggers. I can use a sword and other weapons too but I move around far better with knives than anything else. Do you wrestle then? Since you like using your hands and all. I bet you’re better than you think! Maybe we can spar sometime!” Rah offered.
“Do you have any goals you’re working for Pascha?”
Pascha smiled brightly and nodded when Rah agreed that it was scary. He felt a little better knowing he wasn’t the only one that felt that way. She mentioned listening and Pascha decided that maybe it wouldn’t hurt to tell her just a little bit. It felt nice to talk to someone about whatever he was thinking and Rah was a really nice person. And only his kingdom was supposed to be a secret anyway, not that it ever stayed secret for long. There were some state secrets he had to protect as well, but he was used to that.
”Well, the thing is I’m really good at building stuff. Have been since I was little, thanks to my powers. And I kind of get a little obsessed, so my parents decided it was better to just put me to work than to have me always distracted, pulling things apart and putting them together again. So by the time I was even old enough to go to war, I couldn’t, really. My kingdom needed me making stuff more than, um. Killing people. Not that I think I would have been any good at that, anyway. I had to kill somebody in Langalibelele Yezikhulumi’s lesson, you know. It wasn’t really real, but it still feels really real. It was… It is really hard. Knowing I did that.”
Pascha was quiet for a moment as he continued his reps, but then added. ”That was really scary, too. And I was hurt and my friend was hurt and I didn’t know what to do at all. I don’t know what I would have done if Miss Fio hadn’t found me. But there won’t always be someone around to save me.” That was why he had to be a lot stronger! And he would be, so no moping around!
”Haha, maybe that’s kind of too sad to talk about after all! We have to stay motivated, right? Go, team, go! Rah rah rah! And 1, 2, 3! Cha cha cha! Hahaha, like dancing! I like that one, too!”
Rah offered to join him regularly in the gym and it was an effort not to jump up and down in excitement. ”Yeah! Only I should join you on your usual days. Five sessions isn’t enough to really even be a routine yet, so it should be easier if I’m the one to switch.” And he would do so happily if it meant that there was always someone here to work out with! Especially someone nice and friendly like Rah; he already liked her a lot!
And it sounded like she had a lot of experience that he could benefit from. Wow, there were a lot of really strong people at this school! ”I haven’t! Maybe you’ll show me sometime?” So Rah liked to use knives, too? That was really cool! Maybe she’d get along with Willow too, if they hadn’t already met. ”I guess some of it is like wrestling… Miss Fio is teaching me how she fights. I really don’t think I’m very good, but it’s hard to tell because she is really, really good! But I’m going to get better. She’s a really good teacher and I really want to learn.”
”I want to be stronger. A lot stronger.” Stating his goal like that didn’t really get the whole idea across, though. Just being strong for the sake of strength wasn’t it at all. ”Remember how I said I was scared and sad and hurt and didn’t know what to do in Langalibelele Yezikhulumi’s lesson? What if that happened again, but for real? Or the Windurians attacked again, or anything? I don’t want to be like that next time. I don’t want to fight, I want there to be peace, but I think… I think if I want to have a say about peace, I have to be strong enough to protect it. And all my friends. Does that make any sense?”
Even as Pascha poured his heart out to his newest friend, his body continued through the motions of his exercises. One benefit of thinking so fast was that he really could be fully invested in a heart to heart conversation and not lose count of his reps. He just had to be careful to breathe properly when he could. ”What about you? Any goals that you’re working toward?”
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