smash_logs | Talk Shit, Get Fit

Entry tags:

Talk Shit, Get Fit

Who: Wave and Knuckles
What: Knuckles teaches Wave fighting techniques
Where: The gym
When: August 17, early morning
Warnings: E for EXERCISE

Wave was exceptionally confident in her skills and abilities. That fact was undeniable. She knew she was an exceptional rider, an exceptional mechanic, and a genius to boot. She could take on anything on her Gear.

Off her Gear, though...

A fateful trip to the floating island taught Wave that her close quarters combat skills were lacking. Knuckles had offered to train her, although at the time her wounded pride prevented her from accepting. Time and reflection had a way of changing one's mind about things. It may have been against her ego, but she took him up on the offer.

The weight room was sparsely occupied at 6 in the morning. Either the meatheads hadn't arrived, or they were about to. Either way, she felt so out of place there, waiting for Knuckles to arrive.

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"You will." Knuckles replied, switching arms. "We can move on to the next step whenever you're ready."

Look at that smile. That CAN'T mean anything good, Wave.

It didn't take long after that for Wave to finally collapse on her exhausted arms, panting hard.

"You suck, you know that?" she grumbled.

"You're gonna think that for a while." he said, walking over and standing next to her. "Just so you know? You did about twice as many push ups as I thought you would."

He'd been pleasantly surprised.

"Now, get up on your feet and try to punch me in the face. You should be good and mad at me right now, so, use that. You tag me on the jaw or the side of my head, you get an apple. You tag me on the nose, you get a bottle of water because I KNOW you gotta be thirsty again by now.""

"I can be just as stubborn as you, Knucklehead," she said in response, slowly getting herself to her feet, feeling her arms limp and sore as she tried to use them to help.

She raised her eyebrow at his request. "You're kidding me," she said angrily. "I can barely move my arms, now you want me to punch you?! Believe me, if I could, I would sock you unconscious."

"You can be just as stubborn as me, huh? Then you're gonna try and knock my block off starting Now."

He stepped closer to her and tapped his chin with a mittened finger.

"C'mon. You're mad at me, right? Clock me one. Right here. If you can do it when your arms feel like this, imagine how much easier it would be to do if you were feeling just fine."

And try she did. Her arms felt like lead weights, and she could barely lift them, but she raised a fist and took a swing for Knuckles. If it even collided, it was like a gentle pat more than a punch. "Nngh! Damn it..."

Knuckles stood there and took it, smirking just a little as he felt how weak her hit was.

"You get that one for free. You win at least one apple. Now, throw twenty more and I'm gonna dodge."

He stuck his arms behind his back.

"You're gonna be usin' your legs to track me down. Only thing you need to worry about is smackin' me in the face. A couple weeks working with me, this is gonna seem like child's play. Now, go! Twenty of your best!"

"Just you wait," she said. "When I get my strength back, I'll knock those teeth out of your smug mouth," she boasted, raising her aching arms and trying to muster enough strength to make him eat his words.

His words would go safely uneaten today.

"The essence of strength..." Knuckles said, using only his feet to dodge her advances "...is resistance. You lift weights because the weight resists bein' lifted. You run fast because your body resists bein' shoved forward. You fly because gravity resists you being off the ground. Makes sense, right? What I'm telling you is that to get strong - really strong - you need to do things the hard way."

He almost let her hit his nose. Then moved incrementally to the side at the last possible millisecond.

Because he's a little bit of a dick.

"If I didn't teach ya how to do stuff the hard way, I wouldn't be teaching you anything worth anything. Punching at full strength is easy. Punching when you're worn out and have nothin' left and you feel like your hands weigh a ton? There's the challenge."

"If you ever need help with homework," she told him as she swung for his nose and missed, "then you can go screw yourself."

"That any way to talk to a guy who's givin' you top notch training?" he joked, dodging punch number seventeen.

"Three more. Make them the best ones yet - REALLY try to hit me. Gimme a black eye or somethin'! I know you got it in you!"

Wave took another swing. Miss.

"I would if you'd hold still," she grumbled, taking another swing. Another miss. One more left...

"Rrrgh..." She mustered up what strength she had, and swung one more time...

She swung and missed.

Or would have, if Knuckles hadn't ducked down to let her fist land squarely on his little black nose.

"There you go. You win a bottle of water and an apple. Let's break for five minutes."

...he would have given her the water anyway. But she deserved a little manufactured win, so far as he was concerned.

Well, she hit him. But she knew he let her do it. She hated being pitied, but at the same time she was exhausted and needed to sit down. So she accepted the bottle and the apple, despite the sour look on her face, and chowed down.

Knuckles just sat down and waited. He wasn't really thirsty or hungry, yet.

"Enjoy it. You earned it. You've done some pretty good work, so far."

"If you call you taking pity on me good work," she said, taking a deep breath after a long drink of water. Aah, that hit the spot.

"Nope." He replied, turning to face her. "I call doing twice as many push-ups as I figured you'd do good work. And I call being able to throw twenty one punches after doing it good work. They were sloppy punches - your form sucks. But for all your complaints, you did it. Yeah, I gave you the last one, but not because I pity you. I gave it to you because you earned it."

"Hmph." She simply scoffed, biting into the apple. Although under her breath, she muttered "Thanks." He may have missed it depending on how well he was paying attention.

Even Knuckles knew better than to call her out on her mumbling by telling her she was welcome.

He stood up after a little bit and cracked his knuckles. "Alright - you feel a little better, now? Ready to get back to work?"

Wave got up, feeling the burn of her muscles, and stretched. She glanced at Knuckles, then down at the bag she brought with her. "Hang on," she said, grabbing it and heading for the locker room. Better put on the workout clothes she brought, if this was any indication. She didn't want to wreck her outfit.

"You got it. I'm hangin'." he replied with a shrug, rolling his shoulders a little and cracking his knuckles.

She emerged a few moments later dressed in tight white short shorts, and a tight white tank top. Her head scarf and glasses were absent, and now she looked more ready to work out. "I didn't expect you to drive me so hard at the start, or I would've been better prepared."

Huh.

She was actually kind of...

No. Nevermind. For starters, Tails had his eye on her and even a wilderness raised Echidna knew about the bro-code. Secondly, she was a Babylon Rogue. She wasn't supposed to be cute.

"Next time, come prepared from the start! Hey, now that you've had some time to rest up, let's try that punching me thing again. Only this time, you can also kick, or use weapons. I'm going to dodge and block and I'm going to be teaching you how to improve your form while we go! Sound fun?"

Face it, Knuckles.

Smart athletic girls are hot.

"Really. You sure you wanna do it that way?" Wave asked, cracking her knuckles. "I've got my second wind now. You are toast."

"Oh, I hope so." Knuckles replied. "But remember, this is less about poundin' my face into jam, more about me telling you how to make your punches better."

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