The Best Around (Or Some Close Approximation Thereof)
May 30, 2018 17:30:00 GMT -5
Blake Archer likes this
Post by Joe Stanton on May 30, 2018 17:30:00 GMT -5
>PLAY
It is like something out of a late 70’s, early 80’s action movie. The gym’s best days were behind it between the general state of decay the walls & floor are in, how most of the lights were burnt out. The aged posters promoting boxing events that had long since happened and are frayed & ripped all along the edges of them. But the ring, the equipment clearly had had some love put into them to keep them in workable condition and looking a little in contrast to their surroundings.
Joe didn’t mind though, most people didn’t come to this place and so it kept it nice & quiet for him whenever he decided to occupy it. On the folded out table set against the back wall he set down some things, among them his iHome portable speaker ready to blast tunes of a bygone era. This had all happened kind of suddenly, he didn’t have time to bring maybe everything he’d have had he scheduled this ahead of time. It’s fine though, he’s got everything he needs, everything she needs and he had given the staff of the gym a hefty tip to take a hike so he didn’t need to explain what he imagined was going to pop into here any second now.
And by “any second now”, we mean now. Juuuuust away from the ring and things, he could almost hear a very familiar sound that only seemed to get louder with the appearance of an also very familiar time machine. The TARDIS materialised almost like magic and it only really took an additional moment for the owner of this damned contraption to swing open the door. Anna Mathews swoops in, clearly ready for whatever sort of madness is destined to happen.
“Hi, Joe!” She waves before getting a good look around the gym. “Yep. This is exactly what I was expecting.”
Joe blinks in the event of the TARDIS appearing, not the first time now he’s experienced it but it’s still weird to come to terms with. He’s seen some strange things but there’s still some level of mind flip to a TARDIS. He blinks several more times when Anna comments on their location, glancing around to try to maybe decipher her interpretation of the gym.
”Hey” Stanton says with a wave, he walks halfway over to the Time Lord and stops next to the ring. ”How’s it going?” he asks offhandedly even though he knows with people in their profession in can be a loaded question to ask. Still, genuinely good people were rare in this industry & he knew Anna was one of them. He cared how his friend was doing.
“Better now that I’m here.” She seems satisfied by the whole scene. Yeah, it’s a gritty little place but that was what she needed. With all the stress built up, a good bit of punching is necessary. “As always, my life is a thousand shades of fucked but I’ll survive.” There a smile on her face as she strolls over to Joe and playfully punches his arm. “Enough of that shit though. How’s my coach?”
And yes, that phrase coming out of her mouth was just as strange sounding to her as it would be to everyone else. But it seemed like the thing to say whenever you’re about to learn how to hit people really, really hard with all the fists. Besides, Anna likes hanging out with the Scarlet Speedster. No matter how messed up everything gets, one can never stay angry or troubled with damn good friends around.
The sympathetic grimace he’s had on his face for Anna’s thousand shades of fucked life fades when she asks him how he’s been. There's something about the question that gives him pause. He takes a moment to think about it. All things considered, his life was going pretty okay at the moment. Could it be better? Sure. But that’s a given. “Not too bad, not too bad. Tournament season’s keeping me busy” Joe says as a half joke. “Not that you know anything about that” he adds now completely joking.
“Shall we?” he asks, gesturing for them to get inside the ring. They both slide in and he slips on a pair of training mitts, clapping them together with a grin. “Alright, throw your best punch” Stanton says in a playfully goading tone. Anna obliges with a shrug and throws a punch, Joe and the mitt taking it.
“Solid” he says with a nod and an appreciative expression. “Some wrestlers can’t even throw a punch that good” Joe quips as he slides the left mitt off and wiggles his digits, relaxing his hand. “But throwing a punch in boxing is a little different. There’s more to it than just swinging. There’s technique” Stanton adds in a still friendly though more serious manner. He moves around Anna so that he’s in the general center of the ring and in front of her.
“I know this is going to start sounding like a kung-fu movie but it’s about tapping into and using practically every muscle in your body. Moving that power, that energy throughout you in one fluid motion till it expands outward from your fist” Stanton explains with a smile. He takes stance, putting himself in almost a two point stance. Purposely he moves slowly, bringing his left leg forward and in the process using the momentum to push his entire left side into the punch he swings. He glances at Anna, as if silently gauging if she’s picking up what he’s saying.
Returning to the stance he had been moments ago, he conveys his point by swinging his arm into a punch like she had. Then doing what he had done already but much faster, bringing his entire body into the punch. Popping back up to his feet and now with his heart pumping a little, Joe bouncing in place with a pendulum step. “Make any sense?” he asks with a grin, looking like he’s about to start shadow boxing in place.
In all the four hundred and some odd years of her life, Anna never imagined she would go through boxing training of all the ridiculous things. Then again, she never expected to become a wrestler. Or a champion. Or a Time Lord. Or a mother. Or a wi--fiancée. It’s always the things you don’t expect that are the most shocking to you. So here she is, training ahead of time (no pun intended) to punch out an android and other people off of a boat. What’s also interesting is that this is, quite honestly, the first bit of training she’s ever had. Unless you count her major in TARDIS Maintenance. Even her wrestling skills were done very much on the fly. The fact that she’s made it this far…
There’s something about this punching thing that remains interesting to her. To Anna, a punch was a punch. A meger batting in between damaging kicks. But now seeing Joe move as he does, she could understand to a certain extent that it could be something more. The “kung fu movie” explanation caused her to smirk.
Now I get why Jacky loves this shit.
“Show me again.” And to his credit, Joe does with every bit of strength as he did last time. But she shakes her head and takes the mitt he took off, putting it on her own hand. “One more time. Gimmie what you got.” He laughs and proceeds, making every bit of energy come out of his fist. It is is a flowing motion. Perfect. He’s still grinning. What he doesn’t seem to expect is that same grin reflected on her face. She throws the mitt back at him and thinks out loud, shaking her hand in the process.
“So if I’m grasping your lingo, I’m pretty much converting the energy I normally give my legs for kicking to my fists for punching. A simple concept in theory. But in practice…”
She motions to her friend, silently requesting to lift them mitts up. When he does, she instantly launches into a punch of her own while trying to shift as much energy as she can as she throws it. The impact is better than how she normally did it, but is weaker than she expected. A grumble. “This might take a minute.”
A big stupid grin is on Joe’s face in spite of her grumbling, he looks like he might laugh even. There’s something about seeing this mixture of excitement and determination in somebody else that tickles him. So few people genuinely understand the power of a punch, and even less enjoy working on it & seeing the fruits of your labor the way he does. "A minute? For some it takes years." Joe muses at her.
Stanton tilts his head and he squints his eyes at her, as if examining her. "Maybe only a few months for you." he quips with a sly grin at his playful dig meant to get a rile out of her.
Anna gives him a smirk and playfully punches him in the arm. But something must’ve stuck. That almost sounded like a challenge to her. “Oh, really?” She ruffles his hair, passing him and heading to the little radio on an otherwise bare table. She presses play. “We’ll see about that!”
What happens next is nothing short of an 80’s music montage set to Paul Stanley’s “Live to Win”. Now in reality, there’s a metric ton of songs that could be played that would later be synonymous in Anna’s head with this crazy ass training. It will inevitably blend into a tangle of inspirations from decades past and the sweet science of boxing. Or at least punching somebody's face off.
Some of the training they go through is easy for her. The stamina bits like running behind Joe’s motorcycle (“Of course I’m catching up to you. I’m a Time Lord. All we do is run! Put some gas into it!”) and climbing a massive amount of stairs (“There were longer staircases on Gallifrey.”) bring out her confidence. Occasionally, she gets frustrated (“Why can’t you just elbow them in the face?”) and confused (“Okay, the freezer I understand. But why am I hitting slabs of meat?”). The strength training of Joe sitting on her back and eating a Snickers bar while she does push-ups and is forced to look at a photograph of Sammy she just goes with. Time passes as she figures out the assortment of punches--jab, hook, cross, uppercut--how to use them, when to use them, and the occasional weird moment of Anna turning into a cat to get the agility thing down.
There’s also a spot where Anna & Joe are sitting on the floor around Buck petting him, Joe very clearly baby talking the dog even if it isn’t audible.
By the time the music fades, she’s a sweaty mess. Hands covered by gloves that try and fail to get the hair out of her eyes. She looks at the calendar. May 29th. “Huh. That went by quick.” She notes with a bit of a laugh before looking at Joe. “What d’ya think, coach? Am I ready or not?”
A dramatic cut to Joe with his arms folded over his chest, a stern look on his face, sunglasses reflecting Anna’s face and a piece of straw in his mouth. He bares his teeth and slowly, deliberately turns his head to spit out the piece of straw. Again very slowly, very purposefully he turns back around to look at Anna.
”You’re ready as you’ll ever be.” Joe says in a much more gravelly tone than usual, like he’s channeling his inner Sgt. Slaughter. He grimaces and the two stand there a second before a crack in the facade shows, Stanton smiling. She gets a more genuine nod and thumbs up from him in a proper response.
As if on cue the two jump up in unison for a high five the scene freeze frames on.
STOP
It is like something out of a late 70’s, early 80’s action movie. The gym’s best days were behind it between the general state of decay the walls & floor are in, how most of the lights were burnt out. The aged posters promoting boxing events that had long since happened and are frayed & ripped all along the edges of them. But the ring, the equipment clearly had had some love put into them to keep them in workable condition and looking a little in contrast to their surroundings.
Joe didn’t mind though, most people didn’t come to this place and so it kept it nice & quiet for him whenever he decided to occupy it. On the folded out table set against the back wall he set down some things, among them his iHome portable speaker ready to blast tunes of a bygone era. This had all happened kind of suddenly, he didn’t have time to bring maybe everything he’d have had he scheduled this ahead of time. It’s fine though, he’s got everything he needs, everything she needs and he had given the staff of the gym a hefty tip to take a hike so he didn’t need to explain what he imagined was going to pop into here any second now.
And by “any second now”, we mean now. Juuuuust away from the ring and things, he could almost hear a very familiar sound that only seemed to get louder with the appearance of an also very familiar time machine. The TARDIS materialised almost like magic and it only really took an additional moment for the owner of this damned contraption to swing open the door. Anna Mathews swoops in, clearly ready for whatever sort of madness is destined to happen.
“Hi, Joe!” She waves before getting a good look around the gym. “Yep. This is exactly what I was expecting.”
Joe blinks in the event of the TARDIS appearing, not the first time now he’s experienced it but it’s still weird to come to terms with. He’s seen some strange things but there’s still some level of mind flip to a TARDIS. He blinks several more times when Anna comments on their location, glancing around to try to maybe decipher her interpretation of the gym.
”Hey” Stanton says with a wave, he walks halfway over to the Time Lord and stops next to the ring. ”How’s it going?” he asks offhandedly even though he knows with people in their profession in can be a loaded question to ask. Still, genuinely good people were rare in this industry & he knew Anna was one of them. He cared how his friend was doing.
“Better now that I’m here.” She seems satisfied by the whole scene. Yeah, it’s a gritty little place but that was what she needed. With all the stress built up, a good bit of punching is necessary. “As always, my life is a thousand shades of fucked but I’ll survive.” There a smile on her face as she strolls over to Joe and playfully punches his arm. “Enough of that shit though. How’s my coach?”
And yes, that phrase coming out of her mouth was just as strange sounding to her as it would be to everyone else. But it seemed like the thing to say whenever you’re about to learn how to hit people really, really hard with all the fists. Besides, Anna likes hanging out with the Scarlet Speedster. No matter how messed up everything gets, one can never stay angry or troubled with damn good friends around.
The sympathetic grimace he’s had on his face for Anna’s thousand shades of fucked life fades when she asks him how he’s been. There's something about the question that gives him pause. He takes a moment to think about it. All things considered, his life was going pretty okay at the moment. Could it be better? Sure. But that’s a given. “Not too bad, not too bad. Tournament season’s keeping me busy” Joe says as a half joke. “Not that you know anything about that” he adds now completely joking.
“Shall we?” he asks, gesturing for them to get inside the ring. They both slide in and he slips on a pair of training mitts, clapping them together with a grin. “Alright, throw your best punch” Stanton says in a playfully goading tone. Anna obliges with a shrug and throws a punch, Joe and the mitt taking it.
“Solid” he says with a nod and an appreciative expression. “Some wrestlers can’t even throw a punch that good” Joe quips as he slides the left mitt off and wiggles his digits, relaxing his hand. “But throwing a punch in boxing is a little different. There’s more to it than just swinging. There’s technique” Stanton adds in a still friendly though more serious manner. He moves around Anna so that he’s in the general center of the ring and in front of her.
“I know this is going to start sounding like a kung-fu movie but it’s about tapping into and using practically every muscle in your body. Moving that power, that energy throughout you in one fluid motion till it expands outward from your fist” Stanton explains with a smile. He takes stance, putting himself in almost a two point stance. Purposely he moves slowly, bringing his left leg forward and in the process using the momentum to push his entire left side into the punch he swings. He glances at Anna, as if silently gauging if she’s picking up what he’s saying.
Returning to the stance he had been moments ago, he conveys his point by swinging his arm into a punch like she had. Then doing what he had done already but much faster, bringing his entire body into the punch. Popping back up to his feet and now with his heart pumping a little, Joe bouncing in place with a pendulum step. “Make any sense?” he asks with a grin, looking like he’s about to start shadow boxing in place.
In all the four hundred and some odd years of her life, Anna never imagined she would go through boxing training of all the ridiculous things. Then again, she never expected to become a wrestler. Or a champion. Or a Time Lord. Or a mother. Or a wi--fiancée. It’s always the things you don’t expect that are the most shocking to you. So here she is, training ahead of time (no pun intended) to punch out an android and other people off of a boat. What’s also interesting is that this is, quite honestly, the first bit of training she’s ever had. Unless you count her major in TARDIS Maintenance. Even her wrestling skills were done very much on the fly. The fact that she’s made it this far…
There’s something about this punching thing that remains interesting to her. To Anna, a punch was a punch. A meger batting in between damaging kicks. But now seeing Joe move as he does, she could understand to a certain extent that it could be something more. The “kung fu movie” explanation caused her to smirk.
Now I get why Jacky loves this shit.
“Show me again.” And to his credit, Joe does with every bit of strength as he did last time. But she shakes her head and takes the mitt he took off, putting it on her own hand. “One more time. Gimmie what you got.” He laughs and proceeds, making every bit of energy come out of his fist. It is is a flowing motion. Perfect. He’s still grinning. What he doesn’t seem to expect is that same grin reflected on her face. She throws the mitt back at him and thinks out loud, shaking her hand in the process.
“So if I’m grasping your lingo, I’m pretty much converting the energy I normally give my legs for kicking to my fists for punching. A simple concept in theory. But in practice…”
She motions to her friend, silently requesting to lift them mitts up. When he does, she instantly launches into a punch of her own while trying to shift as much energy as she can as she throws it. The impact is better than how she normally did it, but is weaker than she expected. A grumble. “This might take a minute.”
A big stupid grin is on Joe’s face in spite of her grumbling, he looks like he might laugh even. There’s something about seeing this mixture of excitement and determination in somebody else that tickles him. So few people genuinely understand the power of a punch, and even less enjoy working on it & seeing the fruits of your labor the way he does. "A minute? For some it takes years." Joe muses at her.
Stanton tilts his head and he squints his eyes at her, as if examining her. "Maybe only a few months for you." he quips with a sly grin at his playful dig meant to get a rile out of her.
Anna gives him a smirk and playfully punches him in the arm. But something must’ve stuck. That almost sounded like a challenge to her. “Oh, really?” She ruffles his hair, passing him and heading to the little radio on an otherwise bare table. She presses play. “We’ll see about that!”
What happens next is nothing short of an 80’s music montage set to Paul Stanley’s “Live to Win”. Now in reality, there’s a metric ton of songs that could be played that would later be synonymous in Anna’s head with this crazy ass training. It will inevitably blend into a tangle of inspirations from decades past and the sweet science of boxing. Or at least punching somebody's face off.
Some of the training they go through is easy for her. The stamina bits like running behind Joe’s motorcycle (“Of course I’m catching up to you. I’m a Time Lord. All we do is run! Put some gas into it!”) and climbing a massive amount of stairs (“There were longer staircases on Gallifrey.”) bring out her confidence. Occasionally, she gets frustrated (“Why can’t you just elbow them in the face?”) and confused (“Okay, the freezer I understand. But why am I hitting slabs of meat?”). The strength training of Joe sitting on her back and eating a Snickers bar while she does push-ups and is forced to look at a photograph of Sammy she just goes with. Time passes as she figures out the assortment of punches--jab, hook, cross, uppercut--how to use them, when to use them, and the occasional weird moment of Anna turning into a cat to get the agility thing down.
There’s also a spot where Anna & Joe are sitting on the floor around Buck petting him, Joe very clearly baby talking the dog even if it isn’t audible.
By the time the music fades, she’s a sweaty mess. Hands covered by gloves that try and fail to get the hair out of her eyes. She looks at the calendar. May 29th. “Huh. That went by quick.” She notes with a bit of a laugh before looking at Joe. “What d’ya think, coach? Am I ready or not?”
A dramatic cut to Joe with his arms folded over his chest, a stern look on his face, sunglasses reflecting Anna’s face and a piece of straw in his mouth. He bares his teeth and slowly, deliberately turns his head to spit out the piece of straw. Again very slowly, very purposefully he turns back around to look at Anna.
”You’re ready as you’ll ever be.” Joe says in a much more gravelly tone than usual, like he’s channeling his inner Sgt. Slaughter. He grimaces and the two stand there a second before a crack in the facade shows, Stanton smiling. She gets a more genuine nod and thumbs up from him in a proper response.
As if on cue the two jump up in unison for a high five the scene freeze frames on.
STOP
