Elle "hates thestrals" Abercrombie (abandonedheart) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2008-06-04 13:35:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! [1979-06] june, elle abercrombie |
RP Log - Elle & Kate
Who: Elle Abercrombie & Kate Proudfoot
When: 04, June 1979; shortly after noon.
Where: DMLE; Training Room
What: Sparring and discussions about current events
Rating: PG-13
Status: Done!
A little before noon, Elle extracted herself from behind her desk and headed toward the locker rooms. She was exceedingly glad that Kate had agreed to spar with her. Duelling was one thing, sure, but actually being able to make contact with another human being made her feel like she actually was doing something. It was the only time she truly felt like she had a say in what happened during a fight; shield charms and dodging were so frequent in a duel it felt like more energy was expended by missed spells than actual contact. But hand-to-hand, that was a different story. Elle changed into proper attire and went into the training room. It was noon, so the trainees were out at lunch. Lucky for them. She walked across the room to the far wall and pushed against it into a lunge. The stretch burned and she pushed through it. She needed this. She needed to feel alive. Maybe it would remind her that she did have something to fight for. Kate had been so frustrated over the past forty-eight hours. Ever since the explosions at the Quidditch game she'd been thinking non-stop. When she wasn't looking at statement from witnesses seeing if they'd missed something that should have been obvious, she was looking over everything she could get her hands on to make some effort to figure out exactly who it was they were fighting. It seemed to Kate that if they didn't know who they were fighting it made it twice as hard. You couldn't tell anything about possible quirks, past histories, and likely behaviour for the future. When Elle had suggested the sparring, she'd jumped at the opportunity to do something, even if it did mean that she'd be doing sparring rather than lunching. Kate hurried down to the training room, and when she arrived found that Elle was already waiting for her. She opened the door, dressed fairly simply, and gave her colleague a smile. "Elle, I am so sorry, lunch sort of snuck up on me before I realised it was here." Elle smirked at Kate and shook her head, "You should know by now that I'm early. For everything. Always." She stood up from where she had settled on the floor to stretch herself out some more. Leaning her head from side to side with a little wince at just how tight her neck was from all the stress and not sleeping, she faced her friend and colleague. "Besides, it doesn't surprise me when any of us are the least bit late. The lack of seeing the outside world unless it's to clean up catastrophes doesn't lend itself to punctuality." That and the lack of sleep, proper food, and proper... well, life. "Thanks for coming though, I needed this, you know?" She stretched out her arms and let Kate stretch a bit if she wanted before Elle settled into a fighting stance to have it out with her. Kate laughed, and followed Elle's lead with a set of stretching. "Oh, merlin I needed it too, so I'm so pleased you mentioned it. I'm just so arrgh, right now," the sound was indicative of her entire mood, and she was hoping that a sparring session would help that. Despite her willingness to do anything that was required of her - and right now that seemed to be looking through paperwork - Kate actually preferred doing something, even if that something was not likely to lead to the capture and questioning of any Death Eater. She raised her arms over her head, stretching her entire upper body and bent her knees to stretch her calf muscles, before she sort of shook herself out and stepped forward onto the floor so that she was facing Elle. "Right then," she said, with a quirky smile. "Was there something specific you had in mind you wanted to practise, or just a general sparring session?" It would make a difference, Kate knew that she just needed to improve how quickly she could think about things and respond to them. Spells were not difficult, and she knew an acceptable number of them, but she had been scolded so many times throughout her training for being too predictable. Sadly, she didn't know how to change that. She tended to think about things linearly, which always had an detrimental effect on her ability to think outside the box in sparring sessions. And Kate wasn't convinced that more practise would really help that - although she hoped it would. More practise with people who did think outside the box would force her to, if she wanted to keep up. That was her current plan at any rate. "Just general sparring. It keeps me on top of my game. Can't be complacent out on the field you know?" Elle rounded on her friend. Sparring was always good because it kept her agile and ready. "Or should I say, can't be incompetent as popular opinion would coin us?" She raised her hands in a protective stance and bounced back between the ball of one foot to the ball of the other. She aimed a left jab at Kate, followed by a right hook, and turned with it to give herself a little more distance between them. Even with the relatively small movement her heart began to pound. Yes! This was what she needed. Kate shook her head but she smiled. Staying on top of their game was important and it was somewhat frustrating the current reputation they were gaining as being incompetent. Personally Kate would like to see any of the people throwing the accusations of incompetency around do half of what the department had been able to accomplish. Of course, part of the problem was that she felt they were doing really very little. However, her thoughts were cut short as Elle turned around and Kate found herself hurrying to catch up. She raised her own hands and moved forward into Elle's space so that her coworkers' motion to give more distance between them was undone. With that, she gave a punch towards Elle. "Perhaps we should have some sparring with public opinion," she suggested. Elle blocked the punch with her right hand against Kate's wrist, and then crossed over with her left to return the punch. She bounced back and pulled her hands up in a defensive position and rounded again on Kate, "Perhaps. It certainly couldn't hurt at this point. It definitely couldn't get worse." She bounced back and forth on the balls of her feet. "I have a meeting with Jeremiah Smith on Friday. The Prophet reporter. That's going to be interesting. It's going to take everything in me not to break all his fingers." It wasn't necessarily just Jeremiah, definitely not, but the fact that he supported the Prophet and was counted among those who thought the Ministry and the DMLE were incompetent. She knew they had made their fair share of mistakes - but incompetent was hardly the right term. Kate's eyebrows practically raised out of her forehead. "Merlin, you're braver than I am," she said, blocking Elle's move with her right arm and jabbing at her with her left, immediately following that to pull her hands back up. "I don't think I could stay two minutes in a room with Smith at the moment without possibly punching him or probably hexing him. He and his paper are completely unhelpful right now. It's bad enough we're trying to do what we can without any information that's useful without him undermining what we do have by claiming we're incompetent to the public. That tends to just make them jump there even when they are honest mistakes!" "Nice shot," Elle said as she barely moved out of the way from Kate's fist. She bounced around and looked for an opportunity to get past Kate's defensive stance, "Actually, I'm meeting with him for that specific purpose. In exchange for privileged information about our department, he'll do some of the investigative work we can't do because of red tape and policies." She feinted a jab with her right hand and shifted her weight to her right leg so she could extend her left and hook her ankle around Kate's knee and pull it to take her down. "It's not going to be easy, and I have no idea if he'll take the bait, but I think if he takes after his father's side of the family at all, he will. I hope he will, anyway." For some reason Kate hadn't been expecting Elle to be using her legs, and she was startled by Elle's ankle around her knee. She stumbled forward, catching herself as she ended up kneeling on the floor and she shook her head. "Darn it Elle!" She laughed. "I should know better than that." She was on her feet again, trying to take the entire thing a bit more seriously, and besides that, to actually consider an inventive way to get Elle back. Feet, although it might have worked for her friend, were probably not going to work here. "So we'll get some information from him and he'll get information for us?" Her hands were raised, trying to make certain she didn't get anything past her. "That actually could be downright brilliant, I'd think," Kate took another jab at Elle with her right hand, and then throwing her left hand in for a hook that she hoped would put Elle on edge. Elle smirked, "You didn't exactly expect me to play fair, did you?" She allowed Kate to get up and get back into position - they weren't out to hurt each other after all. Yes, they would, they were sparring, but nothing more than a few bruises. And there were salves for that. "That was the thought, honestly. He can get information that we couldn't - either due to popular opinion, or because of all the bureaucratic red tape that we can't get through. It would be a really risky arrangement, for both sides, but I'm hoping he'll take the bait. I'm sure he could get us information that we need that we just aren't able to get." Elle blocked the jab, but in doing so, set herself up for the hook. She turned with the hit to minimize damage and to wind up for her next attack, a rounded kick to Kate's stomach. "Nice hit. Damn." "I should have known better," Kate shook her head at Elle's play fair comment, but was pleased to have gotten Elle the second time around. "There's a lot of things I imagine we can get to because people would ask questions and it would get the entire department in trouble, wouldn't it then?" She jumped out of the way of Elle's kick, and immediately took her defensive stance again. "It makes things extremely frustrating," she said, her arms still up, and she wondered about trying a kick herself, but that had never quite been her style. "They can play by any rules that they like and we're stuck playing by rules cause if we don't, well, Smith and his lot have a field day, not to mention..." she sighed. "Public opinion, which is practically worse than Smith and his lot. Or at least shaped by." There was frustration in the jab she threw at Elle next, which made it not a particularly well thrown one. In reality, physical sparring had not been particularly her strength. "The whole arrangement would be rather secretive, which isn't exactly how I like to handle things, but given the current climate," she shrugged with her arms up in her defensive stance. She nodded in agreement - it was unbelievably frustrating. All of it. Public opinion, the reporters, the entire war was just a big ball of frustration. Kate jabbed and Elle turned into it and grabbed her wrist. Her back turned against Kate's chest, and she attempted to flip her colleague over her back. Kate decided now might be the time to use her feet, although she did so rather impractically. The end result was that she stuck an ankle between Elle's leg, and she ended up on the floor despite her attempt. She stared up at the ceiling and shook her head. "Merlin, I think you might be more frustrated than me. Either that or I haven't had enough coffee today." She picked herself up off the floor and decided to not really take a lot of time allowing Elle to reposition herself. It might not be exactly playing fair, but then again, she had been on the floor twice and Elle had yet to end up there. "Secretive doesn't seem particularly bad." She popped in closer to Elle, with a jab, a hook, and an ankle around her colleagues knee. One of the three should have some results. She laughed brightly. Merlin, it felt good to do so. "Probably. I'm not sure why - all of this is frustrating and gets to all of us. I'm just unable to apparently let any of it go," she said a bit flatly. The whole reason they were in here was to work off some steam, and to Kate's credit, it was working at least a little. Elle blocked the jab, dodged the hook, but the ankle got her. She went down on one knee quickly and winced. That one was going to hurt. Rather than get up though, she pushed her weight forward to tackle her friend back down to the ground. "No, but it could get risky. I just hope Smith doesn't back away from it. I don't think he's the type though." The noise of semi surprise Kate made at Elle's tackle was distinctly too female for her liking. On the other hand, it wasn't a noise of frustration, or a noise of fear, or a noise of anger, and all of those things made it somewhat more tolerable, although the tackle was not. She wrapped her arm around Elle trying to balance off of the other woman, rather than compete against her. It was a few moments of struggle between the two, because although surprised, Kate was not backing down! At least not yet. "I don't think Smith is the type to back away from it," she said, although at the moment she was discussing herself just as much as she was Smith. The arm wrapped around Elle pulled at the other woman hoping she'd pull her off balance, just enough. "No? I don't think so either," Elle made a sort of grunting noise as Kate pulled her over, her words also more of a comment on her own mentality rather than Smith's. She threw a hook, her shoulder coming off the ground to follow through, and then she attempted to wrap her leg around the other woman's to flip her over so Elle could have the advantage. It was rare that fights ever got this involved in the field; they rarely dealt with wizard's who were willing to drop their wands. However, it was a good skill to have, and one that would probably save their lives eventually. Or kill them. She personally hoped for the former. Kate hmphed slightly, but was too involved in actually trying to get the advantage over Elle to continue the conversation at that point in time. She was frankly glad that she usually had her wand, because she was better there than if she had to try to get the advantage over someone physically, but still, she could try and try she did, but in the end, it was Elle's leg sneaking between hers, that rather undid it. Kate was flipped, and landed on her back staring up at Elle. "Bah!" Her statement was one of general frustration with herself. "Hah!" Elle responded triumphantly, "Grounding. That's always what used to trip me up. Grounding." She grinned down at her friend and pushed back onto her feet. She offered her hand to help Kate up; she would stay and spar longer but she agreed to meet the bossman for drinks. "Nice work, seriously. It's nice to spar with someone who isn't so easy to take down like the Hitwizard Trainees." She gave her friend a teasing wink and grabbed a towel and dabbed at her face. "Thanks for that, too. I needed it." Kate shook her head, exasperated at herself. She took the offered hand and sprang back to her feet. "Clearly I needed it as well, on multiple levels." She grinned at Elle. "We should do it again, and I'll be less likely to end up on the floor that time." There was a challenge in her eyes, but it was mostly a challenge to herself. "And I do feel better. There's nothing like some physical movement to make you feel like you're actually doing something is there?" Walking across the room she grabbed a towel and thought maybe she'd take a few minutes to wash up before she returned to the office. After all, the sparring might have made her feel quite a bit better, but it probably didn't make her smell any better and she still had most of an afternoon to work. And ironically, considering that the work was probably useful and the sparring wasn't really that useful, she had a feeling that she would feel much less like she'd was doing something useful for the rest of the afternoon than she had for the brief time she and Elle had been sparring. "Nothing else like it," Elle said with a smile. She was going to hop in the showers quickly before meeting Rufus for a drink. She'd warned him she'd be sweaty, but somehow she didn't think it was a good idea to really show up that way. "And we'll definitely do it again. And don't be so sure. Maybe you'll end up on the floor more." She met her friends challenging tone, but there was a playful glint in her eyes. It felt good to do something... even it wasn't helping with the situation outside these walls. |