Lauren Strucker (Indy Samuels) (feeltheair) wrote in saveatlantisic, @ 2018-02-25 15:32:00 |
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11 february | new friends
jacob enjolras ✦ lauren strucker
showing around + training low complete |
It was still a little weird, this whole thing, she still had managed to stay away from Lorna. Lauren wasn’t so sure that was such a great idea, but there was such a huge part of her that didn’t want to see her, she couldn’t help but feel like she’d let everyone down and it was scary for her to think about all of it, not to mention the whole, hey you are in the lost city of Atlantis now and oh yeah, you’re from a TV Show. All of it was overwhelming. She’d found some people nice, she’d found some a little abrasive, but when one offered to show her around the base more, she took him up on it. It wasn’t hard to find the base, and when she did, she took a little bit of time looking around outside before heading into the lobby where she found her way to the elevator and down to the right floor where she was going to meet Jake. The experience was amazing, listening to the elevator tell her what was on each floor, she almost wanted to get off on the magic floor just to see what it looked like but kept going down. “Training Floor 14,” the elevator said as the doors opened, it was impressive seeing the layout, it was clear people could train for almost anything, her eyes drifted to who she was pretty sure was Jake, the standard picture on the network was clear, but it was still easy to be unsure. “Jake?” She asked offering her hand praying she was right. The last thing she needed to do was embarrass herself right now. Jake spent most of his spare time at the base these days. It was such a luxury for him to be able to train out in the open and it would have seemed almost rune not to make full use of the base’s extensive resources and equipment. Besides, he took his appointment as leader of a field team very seriously, and he wanted to make sure he was absolutely ready for his first mission later that month. Aware that Lauren would be coming to find him at some point, Jake had confined himself to the facilities closest to the elevator that morning and, while he hadn’t allowed himself to slack off, he had kept an eye on who was coming and going, ready to jump up as soon as he recognised her. Eventually, he noticed a blonde girl stepping out of the elevator and, taking a closer look, felt pretty certain it was the same person he’d been speaking to on the network. Grabbing his towel, Jake wiped the sweat from his face and neck as he left behind the equipment he’d been using and made his way across the lobby towards her. He made sure his hands were dry before flipping the towel over his shoulder and taking the hand offered. “That’s right,” he confirmed. “And you must be Lauren. Thanks for coming down.” Lauren might not be a permanent member of his team but, as a floating combatant, it would be a good thing for all of them if she felt comfortable making use of the base to keep her skills sharp and Jake was more than happy to show her around. With Jo only just having been released from the hospital, and still on ordered sick leave, Jake had only had Will to worry about, and he seemed pretty capable already. He might as well use his time wisely to help someone else learn the ropes. After all, each team was only ever as strong as its weakest link and Jake wasn’t going to let that chain break on his watch. “How are you finding everything so far?” Lauren had a sense of relief that she got the right person, it would be really awkward if hadn't been the right person and Lauren really didn't want to embarrass herself when meeting one of the team leaders. "Thanks for offering to show me around," she meant it too. Lauren had seen some of Atlantis thanks to Jill Dragomir, someone at the school showed her around too, but this was the base, and she knew she'd be training here, she just wasn't sure how that'd all go. "Still getting used to it," she answered honestly. "It's a little overwhelming. There is so much here to learn." Lauren was up for the challenge. She just felt like her life had been insane enough lately that this added just that much more. "I guess that's probably a normal reaction huh?" “No problem,” Jake replied with a smile, turning and nodding for Lauren to walk with him, deeper into Training Floor 14. He’d been wondering how to start showing someone around the training facilities at the base - they were so extensive - but he’d come to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to try and learn what kind of background Lauren had and hoped that gave him some kind of lead. “Pretty normal,” he nodded, his lips twitching upwards in amusement but not unkindly so. Arriving in Atlantis’ past had been overwhelming for him, and he’d been born here: he knew what Atlantis could be like. “Don’t worry, they’re used to new people arriving all the time: some with experience, some without. I only got here a couple of months ago myself, so it’s been a learning experience for me too,” he told her, hoping that sharing a little insight about his own circumstances would help put her at ease a little. He could well imagine how overwhelming this all must be for a complete newbie. “There’s a lot to adjust to, but everyone is grateful that you’re here and wants you to succeed so you’ll get whatever support you need to make that learning process as smooth as possible.” “What’s your background?” Jake asked, making a point to look at her frequently, despite maintaining a slow but steady pace along the corridor. “Where do you come from?” Smiling, she was feeling a little bit better about the way things could go here. She listened carefully to the thought of people there to support her, which would be really nice, but she still had some really bad feelings about the fact that Lorna Dane was there and apparently going to be a trainer, she didn't want to bring that up yet. "Well, I'm a mutant, it still feels weird saying out loud." She said shaking her head. "I found out a few years ago when we, we being my family, was nearly hit by a truck, it was just a reaction, I created a field, and well, we were okay. Everyone thought it was a miracle, but I did it." She shrugged as a twinge hit her of missing her family. "I had to hide what I was, mutants aren't really welcome in the world, we're feared, and my father happened to be someone who put mutants in jail, so... Anyways, you don't need all that information, the basics are, my brother showed his powers at a school dance while being bullied and I had to use my powers to get him away from it all and this group called sentinel services was coming after us, parents found out, hey, your kids are freaks, and we went on the run where we found a group called the Mutant Underground, and we started to learn about that side of the world and trying to just survive..." She stopped. "And that was probably more information than you needed..." Jacob listened closely, using everything he knew about the worlds with Mutants to try and make sense of Lauren’s story. He nodded at intervals as she spoke, his brow knitted in a little frown of concentration. “No, no,” he reassured her. “That’s all good info. We can work with that.” To be honest, there probably had been more information than he strictly needed to be able to advise her on the best facilities for her, but it was useful to know a little bit about the lives and personalities of the people he was going to be working with. In the field, you had to be able to completely rely on your comrades so that trust and rapport was important. “What are your powers, exactly?” Lauren smiled nodding, she still felt like it'd been too much and she really want to mention how she wasn't okay with the other person from her world but decided that would just sound like some stupid kind whining. "I can create force fields, I bring molecules together, air is the one I'm best with, but I can with other things too. Basically, I use it to create shields, stop builts, cars, or hold trucks to go somewhere else, close portals, that kind of stuff. It's like I can feel it. So, when you put your hand outside like a car window, you can feel the air, well I can push air together." “That’s very cool,” Jake said with a grin, once she’d explained how her powers worked. “That’s going to be really useful on missions. You should check in with the magic lot,” he added. “I bet they’d be really interested in what you can do.” He wasn’t sure whether mutant powers classed as magic or not but it sounded similar and, at least, would make a pretty powerful combination beside some of the spells he knew their resident witches could work. “How’s your hand to hand combat?” Jake asked, veering the conversation back towards something he was more of an expert in. “We could find ourselves in situations where we can’t use powers, for whatever reason, so I always think it’s useful for everyone to have a good grounding in a range of skills. And that,” he added. “...Is where I can definitely be useful to you.” “I’ll have to make sure I talk to them,” Lauren felt better at his reaction to her powers. It was good to know they’d be useful, and well she had saved lives with it. Lauren decided not to bring up what she could do with her brother though, he wasn’t here and right now it was hard to think about him as it was. “Not that great to be honest.” Lauren shrugged. “We started training with the underground, but I’m still pretty new to it, so I probably need a lot of work,” Lauren admitted. Jacob nodded, an understanding smile spreading across his face. “That’s not a problem,” he told her, coming to a halt outside one of the training rooms. “There are always people here training, including myself, and most of them will be happy to give you pointers and advice and even spar with you, if you’re into it.” He motioned to the room he’d stopped outside of. “This is one of our sparring rooms,” he explained, motioning for her to go inside and have a look around, if she wanted. “I like this one,” he carried on, “because there are a range of training weapons stored in here which you can use. I find it useful to shake things up a bit, rather than just sticking with unarmed combat all the time.” In his experience, when a COS agent was trying to take you down, they didn’t give a shit whether you were armed or not; they’d try to kill you with whatever was to hand. “And, just at the end of this corridor…” He pointed in the direction that he was looking, drawing focus away from the hand-to-hand combat training room. “... are some of our shooting and archery ranges.” Lauren nodded as he showed her everything, pausing long enough to take a real look at everything, she tried to picture herself working out in one of them, training, fighting, using all the insane number of weapons around. "And to think, a few months ago my biggest worry was what college I was going to and if it was going to be far enough away from home, guess I got the far enough away from home part down." She said smiling. "Sorry, still getting used to all of this." Shrugging slightly, "I don't have a lot of experience with weapons other than trying to stop them from hitting me or the people I'm with, but I get the impression I'm going to need to learn a lot." Jacob returned her smile. He could only imagine what a change Atlantis must be like for someone from another world. Adjusting to being in the past, where life was in colour and creativity hadn’t been suppressed, had been a massive change for him but at least he’d been familiar with the idea of Atlantis’ history. “It’s fine,” he reassured her. “We’ve all had to adjust to some degree. You’ll find that mostly everyone is very understanding. We’re all here fighting for the same cause, after all.” Lifting his wrist, Jacob checked the digital display on his smart watch. He didn’t have any alerts or messages waiting and it was still reasonably early in the day. “If you’ve not got anything better to do this afternoon, I could start showing you the ropes now, if you like?” he suggested, nodding towards the combat room she’d just had a look around. “Really?” Lauren asked eagerly, she mentally told herself not to act like such an idiot and tried to hide the fact that she was actually looking forward to learning something. “That would be amazing if you have the time, I might as well get started now!” She said with a grin. Jacob was encouraged to hear the enthusiasm in Lauren’s voice. It was always easier to work with a willing pupil that one who would rather be elsewhere. “I’m all yours this afternoon,” he told her, with a grin, before stepping into the combat room and making his way across to the sparring arena, throwing down his towel onto a chair at the side of the room as he passed. “Why don’t you show me what they taught you with the underground and we can go from there?” He didn’t want to go in too hard on her and end up injuring her or putting her off the whole idea of fighting with them but, at the same time, he wasn’t known for going easy on people. In his experience, he found that people performed best under challenging circumstances and he was going to be the challenging circumstance for Lauren today. “We did some basic defensive moves, but we spent more time working on controlling our powers, which I already have a good control over, I did get a few basic defense positions and what to do if someone grabs you from behind, some of that was taught in a self-defense course for girls at school too,” she answered dropping her bag. Lauren showed him the basic moves she knew for defense with decent proficiency, a few punches she’d learned to position her hand in the right way so not to break any fingers, but she had a lot to learn on the rotation of her arms. Kicks had a good force behind them but she needed to learn better position and balance for them. They worked for a few hours, Lauren listening carefully and taking in everything Jacob told her to do, she picked up on some of it pretty quickly but it was clear she’d need a lot more practice until she was considered good. When the training session drew to its natural end, Jacob clapped a hand appreciatively onto Lauren’s shoulder. “You did good, kid,” he told her, backing up the statement with a nod of his head. She did have a lot to learn but she had worked hard, listened closely and had been improving the whole time. She had been better at defence than offence, which wasn’t surprising, considering what she’d told him about the self-defence classes she’d been to, but she showed a lot of potentials. If she kept working on it, she had the potential to be a formidable opponent, even without her powers. With them, she’d be one hell of a match for anyone, he was willing to bet. “Hey, listen, I’m heading out on a mission soon but, if you want to train with me again, I should be back in a couple of weeks. I mean, you can keep practising in the meantime and all but give me a shout when I’m back, and we’ll sort something out.” He’d enjoyed training with Lauren - it had reminded him how to coach and guide other people, which, he supposed, was exactly what would be expected of him as a Team Leader - and it would be good to see her again, if only to see how much she had improved in the time he was away. Lauren grinned as she felt like she accomplished something. “Yeah, I’d really like that!” She said. “But now I’m going to hit the showers, so I don’t scare away my roommate when I get back, but yes, thank you so much.” She said with another smile before heading to the women’s locker room. |