juli doesn't like having to be the responsible one (monkeydo) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2012-08-13 12:10:00 |
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The Olympics were over, but Julieta's thoughts were still in London. A year ago she thought she'd be there - the Spanish gymnastics team had a strong shot at qualifying, and even if they'd faltered, unless she'd gotten injured there was almost no doubt she'd have qualified as an individual. But instead she was here, in the middle of Australia. It might be better that way, though, considering the bombing. A million times the thoughts had run through her mind of where she might have been at that day and moment if she'd been in London. She was a beach volleyball fan - maybe she would have been there. Or watching diving. She could have been injured - she could have been killed. But instead she was here, in the middle of Australia. Since the Olympics had started she'd been spending as much of her powers practice as possible on the floor or the vault that IVI had provided her with. She'd have loved some uneven bars - her favorite element - but apparently they wanted her to diverisfy her practice and not just do gymnastics. The idea had briefly crossed her mind that if she started a gymnastics club they'd probably get her not only bars but a beam - if they were building an ice rink in the middle of the dessert gymnastics equipment shouldn't have been a problem. But a club would take too much effort, so she hadn't. Instead she'd just focused on those two, but since the bombing she hadn't been doing exactly what she'd been asked to. The point of powers practice was, of course, to practice her powers. To watch people do something well, and do it herself, testing both how long she could retain things, and working on developing her improvisation abilities - putting on a new routine by putting together aspects of different routines. Instead, she'd just been practicing gymnastics, wanting to see how much she could do without watching videos and imitating. Wondering how right the HPS had been - not about the bombing, of course, but about having Vols compete. She highly doubted that there were Vols competing - they'd have been caught, discovered, stopped by their sport's governing bodies. But if one had slipped through or had been allowed to compete anyway, was there a way to make it fair? Even before the bombing she'd thought about it, though. It was really McKayla Maroney's vault that had given her the nugget of the idea. Julieta had recognized the look on McKayla's face when she landed it perfectly - she used to have that look. But she didn't anymore - doing something perfect because of her powers didn't have nearly the sense of accomplishment that doing something perfect after practicing it a million times and getting it wrong over and over again did. Landing on your feet because you were genetically predestined to wasn't nearly as exhilarating as landing on your feet because you'd worked hard to. She knew that being out of practice for almost a year made doing any of the really difficult, Olympic-level vaults near impossible, so she wanted to try with a simpler one. One that was in her repertoire while she was still a junior, one that she could do in her sleep a year ago. She hadn't watched any vaulting videos for the past few days, not wanting to accidentally pick something up and make the effort anything other than completely genuine. She was going to try this on pure skill. She landed on her butt. It had been simple, but she hadn't been able to do it. The frustration boiled up in her, angry that she'd lost so much of her skill. She knew this was something she could do - she'd been able to do it before her powers had ever manifested. But lack of practice - genuine gymnastics practice, at least, not powers practice - had left her sloppy. That she could land McKayla's perfectly without effort meant nothing if she couldn't land this one putting forth as much effort as possible. Julieta picked herself up and walked back, preparing herself for another run. She refused to leave this afternoon until she landed it on her feet, but failed her second time. Third time. Fifth time. Tenth time. It took until the fifteenth that she did, by then her backside sore from the falling and her arms starting to feel the effects as well. After only fifteen times! The thrill of landing wasn't even all that strong, with the knowledge that it had taken her so long to do it. Something that used to come so easily - that should come so easily. She'd lost it all. Sitting down at the laptop she'd brought that had all the videos she was supposed to be learning from, she aimlessly flipped through them. It made sense that she'd been banned from competitive competition, without her powers she was a nothing gymnast. Once she was discovered it wouldn't have been fair for her to compete, and even back then once she eventually accepted the fact that she was a Vol Julieta knew that fighting it didn't make any sense. Vols competing against normal humans didn't make sense- it wasn't worth killing people over, but it didn't make sense. Her competing in the Olympics wouldn't have been fair. Even if they tried making her go first on everything, without watching people before she went, having to do things purely on skill, there would still have been the question of whether or not she truly did it on her own. She didn't really deserve to be there. Not like the real competitors - the ones who had made it on their own terms. The one who had ended up giving her life for it. Partially because of Julieta, really, one of the Vols that had, at least indirectly, caused the bombing. A former Olympic hopeful, now at least marginally responsible for the bombing of the same. It was more obvious than ever that she was no longer Olympic material. If she'd ever even been to begin with. |