Atlas Gym, Monday (8/19)

[notallbluemonks]

So. Beau had spent the last week on a really nice vacation trip with Karolina, and she was still relaxed and almost (you'd miss it if you blinked) in a good mood when she showed up at the gym. Their portal back had gotten in pretty late last night -- which was kind of Beau's fault, since she'd forgotten to take time zones into account, but in her defense watches weren't even a thing that existed in Exandria so she'd never had to consider that before -- and so she hadn't done much more on the way home from the causeway than give everything a cursory glance to make sure they weren't underwater or in some kind of hellscape or made out of pixels.

She hadn't even bothered to look at the email that had come in really early yesterday morning. Not until she got to work today, that was, and then she blinked at her phone, read the email again, and blurted out, "Wait, what the fuck?"

And then of course she had to go back and catch up on last week's radio broadcasts.

And then -- look, decorum was never going to be a defining characteristic of Beau's use of language on a good day, but the increasingly emphatic tone of her obscenities, in Halfling and dubiously-accented Dwarvish as well as Common, was impressive today.

Not that she was sorry she'd missed out on this one at all, but great, now she was that asshole who went on vacation while everybody else was having the worst time ever. Thanks for needing to find something to latch onto, self-loathing.

The gym was open at least, and she was on duty, so that was something.

[OOC: Gym/post open! Work-related SP probably inevitable, but I could really use the distraction today.]

Comments

[firstofitskind]

Know what else was something? Liam, coming in to the gym that morning. Which wasn't unusual in and of itself, as he usually did so a few times a week in a handwavey manner mostly. But the fact that he was there practically as soon as the doors had opened? That was kind of notable.

He raised an eyebrow as he listened to the rise and fall (but mostly rise) of Beau's voice as she went through a litany of words, only some of which he could actually recognize. The general gist was kind of apparent, though.

"... Morning," he greeted.

[notallbluemonks]

Beau had gotten about halfway into the Thursday morning broadcast by the time she had to open the gym doors, so . . . yeah, she hadn't yet figured out what had happened to Liam and the strike team.

So. Fun!

. . . not last week's kind of "fun" either though.

"The shit did I miss last week, dude?"

Yeah, good morning to you too, Liam.

[firstofitskind]

"The kind of shit I'm glad you weren't here for," Liam admitted.

[notallbluemonks]

Keyleth was going to be getting such a capslocky indignant text message when Beau got through the week's broadcasts too. And Amaya. And maybe even Steve.

"I'm starting to get, like, a vague general sense of that, yeah," Beau said, watching his face intently. "Not to mention, you know, you practically camping outside waiting for me to open the doors so you can fuck up more of our equipment kind of says something."

[firstofitskind]

"I wasn't camping," Liam protested. "I just got here before you opened!" Unusual, yes, but wasn't exactly the first time, either, given that he had a habit of waking up for the day around 4am. But this time around he'd definitely had a certain anxious energy about him as he'd waited.

[notallbluemonks]

"Close enough," Beau said, shrugging. She knew his habits, yes, but giving him a bit of a hard time was easier and less awkward than freaking out and being all obviously worried. "How many bags are you going to explode today? Rough estimate? So I can get them ready in advance and shit?"

A brief pause.

"You know. Just as a measurement of how bad it got."

[firstofitskind]

Liam shrugged, having the good grace to at least look sheepish. It wasn’t as if he meant to do that, after all.

“One or two. Probably.” He muttered.

Might be more than that.

[notallbluemonks]

Beau glanced very pointedly down at his gloves, then back up at his face, and raised her eyebrows.

"I'm gonna make you start helping me haul them out of storage, you know, if it's more than that."

[firstofitskind]

Liam had the grace to look slightly sheepish at that, at least. And took off the gloves to shove them in his pockets. Those, at least, he could avoid destroying easily enough.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “That’s fair enough, I guess.”

[notallbluemonks]

Beau sighed and leaned against the wall with one shoulder, crossing her arms.

"How bad did it get, for real?" she asked in a quieter and much less flippant tone, because she really was worried about him now. "Or should I just infer that from how much you fuck shit up in here today? Like, is that easier for you? I haven't finished going through last week's radio yet so I kinda don't really know everything."

[firstofitskind]

Liam debated just taking that out she offered, but... it was all on the radio broadcasts anyway. “A bunch of us tried to fix the machinery beneath the island, the stuff that makes it so it can move from place to place. We got caught. They were gonna feed us to something called the... Junkyard Biter,” he shrugged, pressing a thumb into one palm. “Snapped my hands off, first,” he recited, sounding oddly detached about the whole affair. “Guess they didn’t like that I was putting up a fight.”

[thatwaslucky]

Rey was about two weeks rusty on training by now, which she'd sworn she wouldn't let happen. (In her defense... last week.) Normally she did her training on her own, but it couldn't hurt to see what they actually had here, right? So with her staff on her back, she walked in and looked around.

[notallbluemonks]

Beau's own staff was leaning up against the wall in the corner at the moment, but did you think she didn't notice that kind of -- let's not call it an accessory, yikes. That kind of equipment when other people walked around with it too?

She was back in her monk's robes today; it felt like a weird kind of relief, after a week of going around in jeans and tank tops, and she kind of couldn't help noticing that this girl sort of had a similar kind of wardrobe situation going on.

"'sup," she said, nodding once over at Rey with a slightly quizzical expression that came from trying to figure out what monastic tradition she might be from.

Which was amusingly not actually off-base, huh?

[thatwaslucky]

"Hi," she said, wondering what that expression was. "Where would I go for weapons training? Are there dummies, or...?"

[notallbluemonks]

It was at least a neutrally curious expression and not one of her more suspicious glares, so that was something?

"Oh, yeah, yeah, we have dummies and shit, yeah," Beau said, gesturing toward that particular section of the gym. "There's space for sparring too, if you're into that."

[thatwaslucky]

"I don't do much sparring with people these days," Rey admitted.

...basically she had Kanan and that was it forever.

[notallbluemonks]

"I mean -- " Beau chucked a thumb in the direction of her staff over in the corner. "I'm like always down for more people to spar with, you know?"

Not that she had any special abilities or anything -- yet, because that was what happened when you ran away from the monastery and didn't get more formal training -- but she was kind of ridiculously fast for a normal human.

[thatwaslucky]

"Really?" She should probably get used to having people to do things with, honestly. "Amsure, we could do that."

[notallbluemonks]

It was fine, Beau was still getting used to having people to do things with too. Things that weren't mandatory or enforced, anyway.

"The dummies don't hit back, right?" she asked. Or, okay, maybe whined just a little bit, because clearly she thought not getting hit back made it a vastly inferior experience.

She paused for a second.

"I don't recognize you. Are you the new kid now?" Because how had she been here what was getting close to a year already?

[thatwaslucky]

"An old new kid, I guess," Rey considered. "I went to school here, but I've been back here for about a week."

You know, with some of the worst timing ever!

[notallbluemonks]

Beau looked vaguely amused for a second. "What is it about this place that people keep doing that? I don't know. Whatever, I'm into it. So wait, you got back here last week? Wow. That's, uh. Some impeccable timing there."

Sorry, Rey. She wasn't trying to sound like an ass about it. That was just how her voice worked sometimes.

[so_hawkward]

Clint was definitely the worst boss ever, but he figured he'd be an even worse boss if he didn't check in to see how his employee was doing, especially when he heard what was coming out of her mouth. Colorful swearing transcended language barriers, clearly.

"Uh, hi," he said, giving her a little wave. "It's Beau, right?"

[notallbluemonks]

Eh. Beau had a nice history of juvenile delinquency, so it might be a safe guess who the fuck knows can I get backstory PLEASE that Clint wasn't the worst boss she'd ever had! Maybe not even by a long shot.

"Yeah, that's me." She gave him a slightly quizzical look. "Do I know you?"

No, she remembered. She was just a dick sometimes.

[so_hawkward]

Ah, this was just preparing him for the inevitability of Lexi's teenage years. "Clint Barton, I hired you a while back and you didn't destroy the place so I figured you were good. Also, I have a small child and don't sleep enough to come in here as often as I should." It wasn't a great excuse but... "I wanted to make sure you were okay after the utter bullshit that was last week."

[notallbluemonks]

"Oh, hey." Beau did that dorky snapping-into-fingerguns thing and pointed at him. Yes, with both hands. "You're the boss, right."

She thought about pointing out that she hadn't destroyed the place yet which didn't necessarily rule out the possibility, but no, she liked getting paid.

Also having people check up on how she was doing unprompted, given the surprised look that crossed her face. "I'm good, yeah. I kinda missed out on all that? I took a little vacation . . . which I probably should have asked you about first. Whoops?"