closed ( ☄ ) gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off

[realists]

WHO: Jyn Erso, Victor Nikiforov, & Bodhi Rook
WHERE: Training gym
WHEN: Sometime after their research trips to Oros
WHAT: Jyn recruits Bodhi to help her train Victor in zero-g
WARNINGS: Presumably Rogue One spoilers and Jyn being mean about figure skating not being a real sport.

--

[ ANTI-GRAV ROOM ]

It's strange that the tied for most unsocial of the Rogue One rebels is the one that keeps getting roped into helping people. First Yuuri and his Aurebesh tutoring and now Victor and his zero-g training. They're just so friendly, she has no idea what to do with herself. She'd much rather be beat up by Shaw as a form of highly violent stress relief, but here she is.

Which is what finds her pulling Bodhi with her to the training room. Well, half that, half her abandonment issues running wild with Cassian and Kay on the planet beneath them. The planet full of sand and oppressive heat. It's fine. She's fine.

At least zero-gravity is something she's used to, something from her life that has translated just as well across galaxy. It's not exactly like the Palace of Light but that was huge and intricate and full of games with unsuspecting people just waiting to be hustled by a little girl in team wars or mini speeder go-cart steeplechase. Look, she didn't have a job, she had to get credits somehow and if it meant she had to play the equivalent of laser tag with stun guns, well, that was perfectly acceptable to the angry adolescent version of Jyn.

(It's also perfectly acceptable to the angry adult version of Jyn.)

She's busy tucking all of her hair into her low bun when she spots Victor and elbows Bodhi to point the lanky giant out, chin lifting in some semblance of a dude nod as he approaches the pair of them.

"Hello Victor."

Comments

[genice]

Victor holds a hand up in greeting, ready smile on his lips, when he spots Jyn. He's made an effort to make sure he remembers and recognises the people he meets here, which isn't so hard when he's applying himself. It's just a balance between determining if people were new enough to want to work together without being an integrated part of the ship's culture, or if they were people to know specifically because they'd integrated a while back.

The other man he doesn't personally recognise. May have seen him scrolling through entries over the last few weeks, but Victor hasn't spent as much time viewing those as he has juggling other things.

"Jyn! Glad you could make it." He turns his attention on Bodhi, holing out his hand for shaking. "Victor Nikiforov. You're a friend of Jyn's?" By extension, possibly a friend of Cassian's too, for all Victor still referred to him as Captain Andor. Maybe one day he'll switch to Cassian. Right now it's a bit of a self-amused waiting game. "Here to help laugh at a poor figure skater figuring out how to move without gravity?"

He winks at his own jest, fairly laid back and nonplussed about what they're going to be getting up to today. His own hair is down, though he'd contemplated using a hair tie to keep his bangs back. In the end he opted against the measure.

[ex_brainstorm70]

Bodhi's life is basically "following Jyn around" of late, but it always makes for an interesting time so it's not as though he begrudges her making him her duckling once again. Not that he has a childish affect, standing casually and ready at her shoulder. If he were bigger it would come off as protective, bodyguarding, but Bodhi is a slight man — definitely more Yuuri's height than Victor's — he wears the purple-black assigned jumpsuit and his long hair is tied back at the sides and temples to keep the rest off his face (but it doesn't entirely work; loose wisps and curls escape the hairdo and the band of the goggles regardless.)

Victor is physically his opposite in many ways, but Bodhi is undeterred, shakes his hand with a firm grip and and enthusiastic energy, nodding at the same time. "Yes, yes, I know Jyn from... back home, as it were, before all this. Um, Bodhi. Bodhi Rook. It's very nice to meet you."

Jyn might have completely failed to explain "figure skating" or ... or anything at all, really, but even if this is the first Bodhi's heard of their task here today he keeps nodding even after he's let go of Victor's hand. He'd done all right learning zero g at the Academy. This will be fine.

[realists]

IN JYN'S DEFENSE

Figure skating is clearly a pretend sport and Victor was just taking the piss, that's all there is to it. There is no way people actually strap blades to their boots and gambol across ice for fun and sport. That's complete garbage. Mostly because Jyn doesn't believe any enjoyment can come from ice.

Bodhi's greeting seems to fascinate her in its simplicity of packing their (however brief) history into 'back home before all this'.

"Bodhi is Cassian's blue flower crown," she offers, unintentionally echoing Victor's thoughts and harking back to their first conversation in which she was identified by her green flower crown. Their captain is somewhat of a sentimentalist. She smooths her hair back and then immediately frowning when her too long but not long enough bangs slip free again. "I thought it might be easier to teach if I had someone to help demonstrate."

[genice]

Jyn, he believed in your Death Star, how is figure skating more incomprehensible? Golly gosh!

He keeps his handshake similarly short and firm, smile easy. The name pings as familiar — it's Jyn's mention of the blue flower crown that has his eyes light up. "That's right," he says, chuckling and shaking his head. "I remember that, now."

Remembers the name for the final crown, too, but that's neither here nor there.

He lets both hands rest on his hips as he glances from Jyn to their surroundings; it makes sense, considering part of his asking was because he needed to learn how to move with, for, and around other bodies in zero g as much as he needed to perfect moving himself through the same environment. "In that case, both nice to meet you, Bodhi, and happy to have you here. I'm from a pre-space travel world myself. Our space program's fairly limited, so there's not much practical experience I have with living like this."

He gestures off to the side, rolling his wrist to make a circular, all encompassing motion. Jyn's bangs refusing to stay bound amuses him, has him thinking about how Yuuri's hair tends toward that inevitable fall forward over his eyes, even when slicked back. It's cute. Though Jyn is nowhere near as soft as Yuuri has been allowed to be, in everything but for his figure skating.

"So I'll leave myself in two sets of capable hands, hm? I've gotten used to the sensation of no gravity, and some of the movement, but practically any kind of maneuvering..." He lifts both palms up, shrugging. He can guess, but he doesn't know.

[ex_brainstorm70]

Bodhi doesn't know anything about the flower crown thing, really, so all this discussion just gets a puzzled smile — he shoots a look at Jyn that probably says clearly that he's going to be asking for the context later.

But not right now! Because right now it's time for them to teach Victor about gravity. Or, not gravity exactly, obviously... "I think some of it is just practice," he admits as he goes over to the controls. "And some of it is — physics. Angles. Working out how to get yourself velocity, judging how much force you need to use to get to the next place you want to push off. Angling your body..."

He stops what he's doing and glances consideringly at Victor. "You look strong enough," he muses. Stronger than Bodhi, probably. The guy isn't heavily muscled but he also looks like he's not going to struggle to catch the force of his moving mass, which is pretty important.

[realists]

All she offers Bodhi is a shrug for now. Cassian's sentimentality is a story for another time, bless him.

More to the topic at hand, Victor may be strong, but! And by the Force she is going to love saying this: "Your height is going to work against you." Ha! Short people for the win. "It only means you have more to maneuver and your own center of gravity has to be at your core, otherwise you'll just be a broken ship. Listing."

So there.

[genice]

Victor regards them both levelly, tipping his head to the side at Bodhi's statement, nodding to acknowledge Jyn's.

"It's fairly consistent," he says, "Smaller means more compact, better control. Less energy when it comes to resisting gravity, but I suppose it makes as much sense that more mass without gravity has its own complications."

Not to mention, being male meant a different center of gravity altogether, but that was part of what would make this interesting. Between both his instructors, he'd have a broader grasp of differences in movement.

"Though speaking of, feel like starting out having me work through what not to do, and how to recover from it?"

[realists]

Jyn has Bodhi take over the controls -- he's the pilot, he'll be better at it than she is -- before leading Victor closer to the chamber.

"Don't make sharp movements, it'll twist y'round the bend. Slow, measured movements." Which, honestly, makes it something of a surprise that Jyn is so adept at this particular sport because slow, measured movements are not her forte. "If you lean forward too fast you'll just keep spinning like a gyroscope and won't be able to stop yourself."

[genice]

He follows after her, nodding his head once as he listens. Slow and measured is simply part of what he's used to, but what he also hears is moderate the strength used for those movements. "Meaning I'm waiting on anyone or anything else to check my movement?" He presses his lips together in thought. "Sounds painful."

Glancing at the chamber door, he breathes in, then out, in a measured sort of way. One two three, in. Three two one, out. "Slow and measured. That explains why swinging too hard around inside was a bad idea the first time. Here I thought that was just me failing to adjust for the change in pressures when gravity was taken offline."

[realists]

"There's no gravity to slow you down." This would be a good time for a baseball analogy -- a baseball hit in space won't stop unless it collides with something, according the the Michael Bay science of Armageddon -- but Jyn is from a universe in which baseball doesn't exist.

Her arms reach over her head, stretching back a little. Her entire back cracks like popping bubble wrap. She might... need to relax sometimes.

"Are you ready?"

[genice]

Listening to her snap, crackle, and pop, he finds his eyebrows quirking up a hair. Sounds like him after a long night following a long, hard day training. Eesh.

"As I can be."

The activation of the zero gravity chamber feels odd, partly because it's not much of a feeling; it's a decentering, losing the artificial gravitational focus the ship provides. Inside, he holds on to one of the rungs near the door, allowing himself to simply float in an approximation of peace, waiting for the light indicator to switch to "steady on." Or off, in this case; the gravity level being set to zero still meant it was set.

[realists]

She's a constant ball of stress.

Contrarily, she floats freely, hair suddenly out of her face as it halos out around her head. Jyn is not a graceful creature in general, she's not soft, all hard edges and purposeful movements, but without gravity she does has a sort of grace. A fluidity.

"How did you get into ice skating?"

[genice]

He relaxes himself, allowing himself to simply float. He makes himself turn his head toward her in a slow, controlled fashion, watching Jyn as she floats freely without the gravity that worlds generate holding her down. He's studying her body language for cues, if he's honest; Victor is usually honest with himself.

"Back when I was seven or so, it was something I tried. Then realised I liked. The twenty years that followed were simply chasing the dream of showing the world what I loved about the athletics of figure skating. The speed, the grace, the stories, the jumps... hah, even the exhaustion."

Carefully, he lets go of the rung, letting himself float without pushing off anything in that particular moment. "There wasn't anything else I thought of doing, not when it called to me like it did."

[realists]

This is absolutely foreign to Jyn -- nothing calls to her. Admittedly, she hadn't had the luxury of play since she was a little girl, before violence and survival dominated her life. Victor was getting into ice skating, his life's passion, at the same time Jyn and Cassian were learning to survive war. Maybe nothing with Victor will ever be a fair comparison.

A strange twist of her body, a roll of her hips like she's hula hooping or like a cat turning over in midair, and she twists, reaching out to touch her fingertips against the side of the chamber to still herself.

"I can't imagine," she offers with fleeting honesty.

[genice]

He watches her intently, curious as to the way she moves. He knows he can mimic that; gently, he sees about rolling himself over so he can look at the arbitrary direction dictated as "up."

"I was lucky," he admits in turn. "I was good enough they were willing to sponsor me. Back in my country, it isn't easy to do well. You could say figure skating ended up being my way out." Of all kinds of things he doesn't mention, because he loves his country; loves and critiques his country, like he supposes any person does.

"Rolling your hips that way helps you control which direction you turn?"

[realists]

"Yes, it's like rolling over in bed." Except with nothing to push off of or to give you momentum but if he can do his ice skating thing (she is still uncertain it's a real thing), then he can probably manage to roll over like a cat.

"What is... your country?" What is a country to begin with, really, but she assumes it is like anything in the galaxy -- a planet with a singular environmental system because that's not absurd at all. Country is just a strange word for it, context makes it clear he means his home and what else would home be but a planet.

[genice]

"My country?" He moves his arms just enough to help stabilize him, pulling out of the gentle roll so he's facing one way without continuing to circle. "Russia? It's my... I'm not sure what you're asking, actually. Russia is the name of my home country back on Earth. The Russian Federation. We're a very old, very long historied people."

One who did and did not always find themselves winning on a world stage, though he's been proving otherwise in figure skating for the last five plus years.