open ( ☄ ) across the sea of space, the stars are other suns.

[realists]

WHO: Jyn Erso & YOU
WHERE: Around the ship
WHEN: The first few days after her arrival (Dec 28-31)
WHAT: Getting her bearings, exploring, etc, etc.
WARNINGS: SPOILERS IN COMMENTS PROBABLY; mark in the subject line if you don't want them and I will steer clear. I will match format as well, so come at me.

--

[ 001 - HANGER BAY ]

Jyn knows something familiar from home is in that hanger bay and it drives her insane that she can't reach it. Which is probably what draws her back to the door morning after morning, checking to see if the doors will open.

They do not. She kicks them. They still do not open.

Something something put your freakin' dog tags on and get over it, Erso later and she gets inside to peer at the other ships, but mainly it's to throw herself on Cassian's U-Wing and just sit there. It's a study of pointlessness since she can't go anywhere on it, but it's from home and that's all that really matters.

[ 002 - TRAINING FACILITIES ]

Her trips to the training facilities garner better results, at least if you consider siphoning off excess energy through a violent explosion of fists and feet to be something better. The training dummies fare better than, say, a person would, but it's honestly hard to tell if Jyn would pull her punches with a person. She works herself until her limbs are shaking and her muscles are strained to breaking point and then simply moves on to the next apparatus.

The circuit she makes quickly becomes her standard, even when she ventures into the gym late into the night. Boxing, running, climbing, running again.

She's hooked into the climbing wall when her fingers slip and she goes flying down before the auto belay catches her and jerks her to a stop with a hastily aborted shriek of surprise. She kicks the wall. It does nothing.

"Damn it!" She jerks on the belay to lower herself down but finds herself... stuck. Which is just great. She jerks at it again. Jerks at it gently like maybe if she is nice it will give in to her. Guess what? It doesn't. Stuck and only half unwilling to wrangle herself out of the harness to climb down freely, Jyn glances around for someone else to press the button from the bottom. She tips all the way back until she's basically upside down and calls out, "Hey! Could you give me a hand?"

[ 003 - SHOPPING CENTRE ]

Maybe, maybe, if her assigned job wasn't as an exterminator, Jyn would actually work. She has no particular distaste for bugs and parasites, but she also doesn't have any real need to work with them on a daily basis. Not being incredibly social doesn't mean she wants her companions to be bugs.

Still, she works at least one single, solitary shift for the extra credits only so she can paw around the shopping center without dragging Cassian away from his own job. His own much less generally offensive job. Meandering around a market is not something she ever had time for, usually striking with precision and retreating. Now she wanders, unsure of how to find what she's looking for.

The confusion doesn't look comfortable on her expression, eyebrows knitting together in annoyance.

Comments

002. Spoilers are ok!

[indigo5a]

Gyms were never her kind of thing back home. The crowds, the stink of other people's sweat, the sight of spandex. The city streets at night provided just as good a stomping ground for her lengthy runs, and her loft was spacious enough for any combat practice or warm-up exercises she needed to stay in form.

Being stuck on a spaceship changes things a little bit. While it's definitely an improvement to the cramped aircraft carriers she served on years ago, there's still limited physical space for more private workouts. Shaw therefore has parked herself in the training facility a lot since her arrival. She's mostly seen at the boxing mats, laying waste to whatever practice dummy they have hanging around. She avoids the yoga section and the anti-grav room for obvious reasons.

She's walking past the climbing wall to get to the weight room when she hears someone calling from above. This girl looks familiar, probably because she prefers the same workouts as Shaw. That might be the only reason she stops.

"Sure, yeah."

She takes a look at the harness and follows its line down to the floor. She walks over and hits the auto-belay button.

[realists]

The line jerks taut for a moment as Jyn tips back up, before it slackens enough for her to repel herself back down to the mats. Next time she is just going to forgo the harness all together and just suffer if she slips again. It's not as if Saw ever gave her safety equipment during her training.

The second her boots hit the mat, she's crawling out of the harness with distaste, notably not having bothered with the assigned silver-purple onesie uniforms and sticking to her own utilitarian clothes, vest and weapons left in the bunk for the purposes of exercise.

"Thanks." Her chin lifts in a nod of acknowledgement, but she's not particularly loquacious.

[indigo5a]

"Hn," comes the equally verbose response. Shaw is perfectly fine with people who don't yap away with meaningless B.S.

She glances up at the climbing wall. It's not particularly her kind of thing, but she figures it must be some sort of adrenalin rush. She wonders if it's at all similar to how she feels when she fires a gun. (Shaw doesn't have many hobbies).

"I've seen you around the boxing mats," she says. And maybe she was mildly impressed by what she saw.

[realists]

"I used to practice on Storm Troopers." There's something in the way her sentence ends that makes it feel like a snide 'but apparently that's rude' would have been sure to follow if she'd continued.

"The practice dummies put up more of a fight."

[indigo5a]

It's quite okay to be rude, honestly. Shaw appreciates candor. She arches her brow at 'storm trooper,' which is an unfamiliar term to her. But then again, a lot of things in space are unfamiliar.

"It's not much fun to hit a stationary target," she says. If you care to try to hit her, she'd welcome the challenge.

[realists]

"It's not." Jyn can't tell if it's an invitation but decides in the end that it is. And if it isn't? Well, whatever, she doesn't really care.

"Are you up for it?"

Two tiny, angry brunettes beating each other up seems like a great idea.

[indigo5a]

It sounds like an excellent idea. Shaw nods toward the boxing mats.

"Ready when you are."

She's seen a few of this girl's moves, after all. Shaw is confident that it won't be a complete beat down. Where's the fun in that? But she should be prepared for a little bit of pain.

[realists]

"Alright."

She sets off for the mats, peeling her long-sleeved shirt off to reveal a thin tank top underneath. Her shoulder should still be messed up from all but dislocating it on the radio tower, but when she's woken up on the ship she'd been perfectly fine. Which was... disconcerting.

She stretches her shoulder out anyway, no use seeing how far she can push it when it's just friendly practice.

"I'm Jyn. If anyone asks who gave you the black eye." Old habits, you know.

[indigo5a]

"Shaw," she says, arching her eyebrow with some amusement. "Don't worry, I won't take it personally."

That is, if you do manage to get a punch in. She means it, too. She can throw down with the best of them. She's been hit, a lot. Shot, too, but that's a pain of a different kind. If Jyn is this cocky, she must not mind a little trash-talking with a beat-down.

She walks onto to the boxing mats, flexing her fingers and stretching her arms and legs. She takes a stance.

"Ready?"

[realists]

"Ready."

That's all the warning she offers before she throws herself into sparring.

Jyn doesn't fight like she's had any proper training, she fights like she needs to, either for the release or for the simple fact that fighting was the same as surviving where she came from, a frightening surety that carries her from one blow to the next with the force of her whole body. It also leaves her open to be hit, as if she's morally opposed to blocking or else doesn't know how.

She's used to fighting people with blasters so a fist to the stomach pushes the breath out of her lungs, but she's not dead so she keeps going, even if she seems almost uncertain how to not fight to save her own life. Cassian had offered to spar and she'd brushed it off because she'd rather drink curdled Bantha milk than see him hurt but maybe it would have been a good idea, teach her how to pull her punches with someone who won't kick her ass.

It's not until Shaw gets a hit into her ribs that Jyn crumples to her knees like a dead leaf, black spots dancing in front of her eyes as she fights back the urge to throw up, shaking hands pressed against the mat to keep herself some semblance of upright.

[indigo5a]

The girl is good, she will give her that. Her fighting style is rough around the edges, opportunistic and off-the-cuff. This makes her unpredictable, which is to Jyn's advantage. Shaw gets struck a couple times when she didn't see a particular swing coming. Shaw's own style is adaptable and minimal, which is crucial for someone of her smallish size. She has to take advantage of every opening she can get.

She is used to gun fights, or sniper perches, but she likes the feeling of a good hard punch -- even if it's landing on her face. Pain, after all, is something she's accustomed to. (It's not too weird after all, that Finch and Reese might suspect she would taser herself just for the kicks).

Shaw is sore all over and bleeding from the lip by the time she lands one in the ribs and Jyn goes down. She pauses to bend over, resting her hands on her knees.

"You all right?" she says with a smirk.

[realists]

Jyn doesn't answer at first, spitting blood on to the mat. She must have bit her cheek or her cheek go in the way of the other woman's fist and her own teeth.

"You hit like a wampa," Jyn eventually chokes out, clearly a compliment and clearly impressed by Shaw's skills. It makes her ache for Baze because he would appreciate Shaw, but she ignores that sting of loss to focus on pushing her breaths out steadier and steadier until she can finally sit back on her knees and look up. Her ribs are aching and she's exhausted, but a smile flickers across her expression.

"How'd you learn how to fight?"

[indigo5a]

A wampa. Shaw doesn't ask what that is, but she assumes it's something that hits pretty hard, by the sound of it. She doesn't ask her if her ribs are okay either. She knows that if there is a crack, there's not much to be done about it. At least, not with the medicine Shaw knows. Just pain meds, and she knows better than to suggest it. If only because she wouldn't want to be handled like that, if their situations were reversed.

"The Marines," she says instead. And then she clarifies: "It's like the military. You're not so bad yourself. I'd guess you were more of a field-trained operative."

[realists]

"They didn't accept six year olds in the military," she says by way of an affirmation that yes, she was indeed field-trained. The fact that she was six doesn't seem to be odd or out of place for Jyn, but it was her life.

Clutching one hand to her torso, she gingerly pushes herself to her feet, fighting back a wave of vertigo that makes the gym swim. It's going to feel great when Cassian's taping her up later, but she can't find it in herself to regret sparring with Shaw in the first place. It did exactly what she needed.

"Were you in for long?"

[indigo5a]

"Hmph," is the reply she gives to that. Child soldiers, they exist on Earth and probably do elsewhere in the universe too. Though Shaw would agree that six is way too young, even for the truly desperate. (She did, however, once know a ten-year old spy, but anyway).

"A couple years. Got to see all the vacation spots of the world," she says dryly. Though as it turns out, the streets of New York were just as deadly as Fallujah.

"I'm guessing you're not from Earth."

[realists]

"No."

She doesn't attempt to explain where she's from because then she would have to figure it out. Is she from Vallt? She was born there. Is from Coruscant? Lah'mu? Onderon? Jyn genuinely doesn't know where she is from so she doesn't bother to think about it too hard.

"Different galaxy entirely."