trans_9 | Training, in various ways...

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Training, in various ways...

After a few days -- weeks -- however long he'd been here, Morgan had finally settled into what he considered to be an adequate training regimen, for those times when he wasn't needed in Medical.

As a general rule, he began his day in the Sensorium, shaping it in the image of the mountaintop dojo he favored. One lone building atop a peak in the midst of a mountain range, lacking walls so the cool, thin air could drift through as he ran through forms and katas. A path wound its way around the peaks, and the frigid springs that formed small lakes and streams that poured off the edges in grand waterfalls. Next to this path ran a series of poles on which he ran, or jumped, when his regimen called for that sort of exercise.

Training in a simulated environment like this was old hat.

After he finished there, it was off to the river, where he (with some effort) persuaded his plantsuit to retract till it resembled closer to a bathing suit than anything. For what felt, at least, like an hour or two, the Akashic stood motionless in the river, submerged up to his neck. Legs spread, arms out, and hair streaming behind him in the current, he meditated. Harmony and moving in tune with the universe were key to his philosophy, after all. The currents, the flow of water around his fingers and limbs, and the silence were magnificent for that sort of understanding.

Then, off to the W.I.T.C.H. bus! Since Kaya had so kindly allowed him use of its training facilities, he made good use of that offer. This section of his training he devoted to melee weapons -- primarily his sword, of course, but he allotted time for other swords, staffs, daggers and knives, and tonfa as well.

And last, perhaps the oddest of all training exercises if one didn't know that to the mind of an Akashic, all things are martial arts: Morgan returned to the sensorium, not to fight or exercise or run, but to play. Electric guitar in hand, voice lifted in defiance of his one-held belief that he simply sounded terrible, and whatever backing was necessary conjured by environment, he rocked out, mixing up from simple guitar covers to lead guitar and vocals in full songs.

That lasted until he was exhausted, satisfied, or -- admittedly -- hit hard enough by nostalgia that continuing became prohibitive. Then it was time to clean up, relax, and see what else he had to do.

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"Thought I'd be able to find you here somewhere," Hit Girl said, dropping in on his meditation session. She had actually seen him, but waited a good while before she would interrupt him. She knew it would be rude to just bother him like that, and once he looked to be waking from it, shew showed herself.

"What does that do for you?" She asked.

"Meditation in general," he said, cracking an eye open to look at her, "or meditating in the water?"

"Either," she said. "Like, what's the point of it? I know people do it, but never, like, up close and all."

"Peace, tranquility, harmony, and the dissolution of perceived boundaries between yourself and the universe," he said. He took a couple of steps closer to the shore, just so he wasn't up to his neck any more.

"Are you serious?" Hit girl stared, looking dumbfounded. "You get all of that just by sitting still in the water like that, looking like some Indian yogi or whatever? You gotta explain how that works."

She may not have been as antsy at Ruffnut, but she was still a little girl full of energy. Sitting still was not one of her strong points.

"Oh, no, you get all of that from meditating in general," he said cheerfully. "Meditating in water is a special case. As for how it works... if you're not thinking of anything, nothing is reminding you of your belief that you're separate and apart from everything else, right?"

"No, I guess not," Hit Girl said, still wracking her brain at how all this crazy stuff he said would relate to her. She wasn't stupid: she'd heard about that stuff in plenty of martial arts films, and Chuck Norris probably knew all of this to get bad ass, right? It was still a little bizarre to think about though.

"So what does meditating in water do?"

"The currents and eddies and all that make it harder to lose the sense of self," he said, flicking his fingers through the river's surface. "All the different sensations on your skin and whatnot. But once you do lose it, water has very large-writ patterns. It's easy to get in tune with the patterns."

"Are you for real?" Hit Girl said, but she looked less skeptical about it now. She ran her hand over the water, and looked at her costume. "I would probably not do this in the costume though. Would probably be better if I got out of this stuff."

She gave him a look. "You DO know how to keep a secret, right?"

"I've planned a surprise party or two in my time," he said. "If you're just starting meditating, though, I wouldn't recommend starting in flowing water."

Hit Girl snorted, then shrugged. "I didn't know that there was something I could not do when it came to meditating. So...what would you suggest?"

"I didn't say you couldn't do it," he said patiently. "I said if you're new to it, I wouldn't recommend it. But for all I know, you might find the water so smoothing it practically washes all your cares and thoughts away. That's true for some people."

"I'd like to give it a shot," Hit girl said. "but seriously, you have to not tell anyone what I look like after I do this, all right? I can't have to many people knowing what I look like under all of this."

"...What, are you like a grey alien in disguise?" he said. "I won't tell, I promise."

He's really building up an unreasonably high expectation in his head.

"Ah, shut up," she muttered, taking off the barrier jacket, the mask, the skirt, the kevlar and finally the wig. She felt way too vulnerable now, but he had suggested this, so she would at least give it a shot.

Now she was ordinary Mindy Macready, closing her eyes and settling herself under the waterfall.

"Man, I was really expecting tentacles or something after that buildup," he said, teasing. He swam closer, though not to close as to be a distaction.

"Let everything from your senses wash over you without paying it any attention," he said, softly. "Think of nothing, focus on nothing. Empty your mind, and let your being flow beyond the borders of your skin."

"Ah, shut up," she muttered again, closing her eyes. It was hard for her, to have someone ELSE know who she was, what she looked like under the mask. It wasn't like everyone else who wore a mask: they could demean her, take what she knew and understood the last few years and take that away, make her a child.

She took a long breath, and let her mind be quiet a moment. It was like a Samurai Jack moment for her: there was nothing but stillness, there was nothing but the running water, and there was nothing she could do but relax her body, no insults or back talk.

Without engaging in more mental probing than was entirely proper, he couldn't tell how she was really doing. Instead he watched her body and her motions. If she succeeded -- which wasn't impossible, or even grossly improbable -- then the moment when she stopped being separate from the water and started moving with it would be the clue.

At first, it was hard: in fact, it was one of the hardest things for Hit girl to do, to simply sit and be alone with her mind. There were enough glimpses to scare most psychiatrists: flying bodies, limbs, blood, her father going up in flames. They were things Hit Girl knew instinctively not to dwell on, to keep herself moving. But here, with nothing but her own thoughts, those images came and went, disrupting her concentration. To stare at her, the girl looked, even with her eyes closed, to be at war: she grimaced, flinched, took sharp intakes of breath.

And then she concentrated, long and hard, on what she needed: silence. The water washing over her, the flow of energy undisrupted, she felt a calm starting to envelop her, to ease her tension, and the war within was quieted. Her hands, first over head, then in her lap, now rested comfortable at her knee caps, her palms up. The rush of water falling, falling, seemed to be enough to stabilize her now, and she took a deep breath and then exhaled.

Well, that seems to be going well.

Morgan stood back up, crossing his arms patiently. Impressive that she didn't seem to have much problem focusing... maybe the distraction of the water helped more than it hurt. That could happen sometimes, especially when a mind was so full it needed something mindless to focus on before it could empty.

It was, more so than Mindy would have cared to admit. She would usually have never done something like this, thinking it would be a waste of time and hardly helpful for her. But there was something about the water, abut staying under here, visualizing how people before her kept themselves grounded this way. Without really thinking about it she found herself trancing out, her body dictated only by the inhales and exhales of her breath.

She wasn't sure what she was supposed to be doing, what was happening, but she was starting to feel in control, focused.

He intuited more than perceived when she began to cross the line into a proper meditative state. He watched for a moment more, then nodded to himself in satisfaction.

It was a weird feeling. She had never even tried to meditate before, at least not in the way most people would talk abut meditation. In actuality, she had been in grounded states for awhile: it was necessary whenever you entered a fight that your head be in the game, that you apply purpose, and right now she was realizing that could happen without the need of a fight. She could just be still, and she would feel the strength and calm she needed coming over her anyway.

She didn't know how much time passed: minutes, seconds? Only that she was transfixed in this state, and felt a kind of strength coming over her.

Curious, Morgan stepped off the bottom and swam around some distance. If he were the one meditating, he would have sensed such a motion from another person, even without using any particular manipulations of his own life force.

"Now you take the time out for a swim." She said this in a teasing voice, as if she had expected Morgan to see if all of her concentration would be lost. This was not the case: Mindy never believed in making herself completely vulnerable. Despite being completely concentrated, she could still FEEL around her, and the vibration in the water changed.

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