| DC/Marvel: Age of Infinite Heroes | ||||||||||
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Tying her hair back in a ponytail, Leah looks kind of different today. She's wearing a grey tank top and shorts, which is fine, but the unnecessarily anxious expression on her face really isn't.
"Glad you could make it," she says as she leans against Kara, standing by a punching bag. An instructor is walking toward the two of them already, but they've got a second or two before he gets there. The gym area is very much boxing-themed, which is probably why Leah invited Kara. "I'm told that this stuff is really good for lean muscle, and I could use you in my corner. Getting punched in the face makes me nervous."
Kara Zor-El smiles as she walked into the gym in civvies. "Oh... yeah sure. You know the best way to deal with getting punched in the face?" She pauses. "Other than being invulnerable?" She leans over and whispers in Leah's ear. "Don't get punched in the face."
"Seriously?" Leah asks dryly, with her grin reappearing as Kara had probably hoped. "This is the advice you've got for me? I'll see what I can do." She seems more comfortable, true, but still pretty tense as the instructor steps up.
Holding himself a bit away, the slightly oldish gentleman in the boxing togs puts his hands on his hips and says, "I was told there would be one student. Who's your friend then, Leah? More importantly, are you ready to get going? We've got a full room today so I do need to get you set up fairly quickly."
Leah looks up from Kara and nods, then says, "Gerald, this is Kara. She may or may not be here to punch someone, I'm never quite sure." Glancing at Kara, she introduces the instructor, who offers her a hand to shake.
Kara Zor-El smiles at Leah. "I could always teach you Klukor. But a lot of that also involves making sure you don't get punched in the face as well." When the instructor comes over, she smiles at him as Leah introduces them. Refraining from mentioning the part about Kara being the alien superheroine who may very well be one of the strongest beings in the galaxy.
It was always weird to Kara that so few people actually noticed who she was even when she wasnt wearing so much as glasses or her hair different. Even her NAME was the same. Maybe people didnt remember that Supergirl's name was Kara? Did they think her name was just Supergirl? Heck, it was even semi-common knowledge now that Leah was friends with Supergirl. Yet so few people even bothered to make the guess.
Kara shakes his hand. "Hey. Nice to meet you, Gerald."
Leah generally doesn't introduce Kara as 'Kara, alien superhero' and instead tends to lean toward 'Kara, my friend'. She focuses on the important stuff. Also it tends to help that people underestimate Kara, and keeps a lot of trouble from happening.
Gerald shakes Kara's hand, and then says, "I'm not familiar with Klukor, but boxing can be practiced and taught by a lot of local people, so having a good familiarity with a really very common style isn't a bad thing in a lot of ways, miss. Not to disrespect your style of fighting, I've found that most martial arts tend to be very similar anyway once you get down to their basics."
Then to Leah, he says, "I'm going to get you up into the practice ring, so if you can get your gloves on, I'll get you a training partner who can go through some basic moves with you. Fair enough?" Matching action to word, he whistles and a tall, lanky guy comes trotting over. He looks Leah and Kara over and smirks almost instantly.
Kara Zor-El nods a little. "Yeah well... I'm sure Klukor's similar to a lot of ..." Kara pauses, as she almost said 'human martial art forms.' "... other martial art forms, yeah. I've actually also learned some grappling and boxing as well." Thanks to Artemis and Batman respectively, though it was really basic on the Batman training in hand-to-hand. Which for anyone else teaching would mean advanced.
Kara looks over at Leah. "He seems nice, Leah..." then the other guy comes over and smirks at Leah and her. Kara looks over at Leah inquisitively, then back at the guy. "Hello?" she offers in a friendly way.
The younger guy says, "Hey," and boffs Gerald in the shoulder with his boxing glove, bouncing on his toes a bit. He seems pretty energetic.
"This is James, he's fairly experienced and can show you the basic moves. Move around a bit if you feel like it, I know you're here for exercise. I'll check in on you in a few minutes. James, make sure she's properly equipped, alright?"
"Got it boss."
Leah's leaning over to Kara and mumbling something about gloves, ignoring the kid's energy for a moment and hasn't seen the smirk, so when she turns to Kara with her boxing gloves on her hands and says, "Can you help me lace these things?" she's a little bit distracted.
James says, "Two blondes? Pinch me, I am dreaming."
Kara Zor-El raises an eyebrow at James' comment. "Yeah. Two blondes. What are the odds? Probably about 45 percent in this country." she says, still friendly, before helping Leah to lace up her gloves. "Sure thing. I always thought it was weird how gloves were designed like this. I told Ba-er.....rry.. er... Barry.. my friend who showed me how to box that once."
Leah grins, saying, "Yeah, BARRY would be thrilled to see you in a boxing ring again, wouldn't he?" She gives Kara a wink as her gloves are laced, then hugs the Kryptonian tight. "Mouth guard," she adds, putting it in her mouth and then turning to James, who's moving to enter the ring before them.
Bouncing on his toes, James says, "I won't need one. C'mon, let's get you going. You signed the waiver, right?" He jabs in the air three times, fast, and then does a right cross that passes through the air with a hiss.
Leah pauses before entering the ring, frowning. She glances at Kara with a firm look, then nods. She's recognized a showoff and making sure that Kara's seen it too.
Kara Zor-El is a little concerned about the idea of her friend being trained to box by a showboater. Somehow she would have felt more comfortable with Gerald training her. Especially since her friend is a novice at boxing, although an expert level at being irish. Which is better, but involves more biting and punching at the groin, which she was pretty sure was not allowed in boxing.
With Leah getting into the ring, James stands and shows the basic jab. Slow enough for her to get the general idea, once, then he speeds up the demonstration til Leah can't even see his arm move. "Keep your other hand up high for now, cover your lips with it. You'll choose how to guard later, but for now you want to do a beginner's guard and just keep it there so nobody can plant you one and bust your lip. Very important."
Leah sighs, then starts jabbing at the air to get the idea while James is already moving on to the other punches and isn't really watching what she or Kara is doing.
Leah looks at Kara, then says, "Y'know what, James, let's just do some light sparring so I can get my exercise in. I'm not really here for a lesson." Which translates to 'I don't respect your training so I'm not going to waste my time on it til a real instructor shows up'.
Kara Zor-El watches while Leah's doing the sparring with a guy who seems more interested in showing the girl up than actually teaching her HOW TO BOX. When Batman taught her boxing, he actually first had Ted Grant show her some moves. Ted Grant was a bit of a showboat too, but at least he was a gentleman about it. Then again he was apparently like 90, even though he looked 40. And punched like he was 25.
James grins, then says, "Fine by me," and immediately pops Leah in the side of the head with a jab, staggering her right off.
Leah shakes her head, then lifts her hands in front of her face as well as she can, which makes James laugh. He actually lifts his eyes to the ceiling and rolls them, then pops two more jabs into Leah's face. Right in the eyes, which will probably bruise, and her face is really important to her cosplay.
Leah blinks a few times, trying to focus but her eyes seem to be a little hard to keep in synch with each other.
Kara Zor-El frowns. "Hey.... you're supposed to be TEACHING! Not trying to give her a black eye. She's just learning! Don't be such a jerk!" she says protectively, going over to Leah's corner of the ring.
James says, "She signed the waiver," as he takes another shot, which Leah actually manages to duck. She has pretty good instincts, but when she tries to swing back at the guy her shot goes hugely wide as he dances back, light on his feet.
Looking at Kara, he says, "You want to play? You're MORE than welcome to take me down a notch if you've got the guts to try, blondie." Looking down Kara's body as he evades another of Leah's wild swings without even looking, he grins lewdly then pushes Leah across the ring into a corner.
Leah stumbles into the corner, then grabs the ropes. Growling, she seriously considers tackling the guy to the ground, then visibly reins her temper in. And goes for the meaner, more evil option, and turns to Kara and says, "Yeah, why don't you do that Kara? I clearly heard him invite you to try."
Kara Zor-El doesnt really like misusing her powers. But she doesnt like when people are bullies even more. Plus if she didn't do this, Leah might just go postal on him with the biting and groin-kicking. "Sure..." She looks at James. "Fine... you can show ME a thing or two then. You know... since I actually do know how to box. I took a couple of lessons."
Again... lessons from Batman and from Wildcat. Not counting the hand-to-hand training from Diana and Artemis.
Oh yeah, and being a few million times stronger, faster, and tougher than this guy. There's that too.
Kara gets into the ring. "Mind if I borrow your gloves, Leah?" she asks as she unlaces them, then puts them on her own hands so Leah can lace them up again.
Leah puts her mouth guard over the side of the ring while Kara's getting her out of her gloves, then helps Kara get laced up while James dances and ducks. He's not dumb enough to hit her while she's looking away, though some of his shadowboxing comes close enough to make her hair move. Leah's eyes meet Kara's, and she says, "Normally I don't go so much for the object lesson thing, but in this case..." She lets it trail off, then motions with her head toward the other boxer and gets out of Kara's way.
James is waiting, all casual and bouncy. He says, "Ooh, couple of lessons. I love me a challenge, I do. If I win, do I get a prize?" He winks and blows a kiss at Kara, waiting for her to be ready, constantly moving. He's a bundle of energy, this one.
And as soon as Kara takes a step into the ring, he throws a series of jabs. Left-right, left-right, meant to make her retreat or get nailed in the mouth! He's not very sportsmanlike about it, stepping right into them so they'll actually sting if they land.
Kara Zor-El groans as James makes the 'if I win do I get a prize' question. She got it. He was a jerk. He didn't have to try to prove it further by being skeevy. That being said, she didn't plan on letting the guy break his fist. She keeps waiting until a split second before his fist is about to connect, then she moves out of the way of the punch. One... two... three. No matter how many times James punches, all he keeps hitting is air. Kara's not even using the type of superspeed that she's known to be capable of using. But she's still moving a lot faster than James can, and her reaction time is absurdly good. Cassandra Cain would probably be proud.
While she lets a punch whiz by her head as she just moves it to the left, she says, "Now.. you are eventually planning on actually connecting a punch, right? This is getting boring." she says, chiding him.
James actually stumbles a bit as the punches completely fail. Regaining his balance, he frowns and takes stock enough to figure out where his target is, then says, "Not bad, I suppose." He sounds grudging about it, even though he's not sure how he missed those punches. "Try a few of these."
Feinting left, James hooks with his right fist and takes a swing at Kara's temple, aiming with a good fast right hook that would probably get him kicked out of the place if his coach caught him using it on someone who hasn't signed the waiver. ;)
Leah shouts, "I've seen better arms on lawn chairs, you poser!" as she tries to figure out how to convince Kara to lead him into grabbing range. Since she's slipped out of the ring at this point, being not a complete idiot.
Kara Zor-El keeps dodging with ridiculous ease. Then decides to mix it up a bit, putting her gloved hand up to block shots. His glove hits her glove and the girl's arm is like hitting a steel girder. "Hope you're not getting tired James, I'm trying to make this interesting. You're leaving yourself a little open you know..."
She again dodges another punch. Honestly, she didn't have to dodge anything. The guy could hit her as hard as he wanted and would wind up just hurting his fists. Hell, Mike Tyson could punch her as hard as he wanted and the results would be the same.
There was a reason Kara tended to accidentally really hurt superstrong villains when fighting. Understanding a superhumanly strong, 'so-called' invulnerable bad guy (or girl) made it hard to judge their limits. And because of her training with Artemis, when fighting superstrong opponents, Kara always tended to punch little harder than necessary. But with humans, she had a really good idea of their upper limits, and exactly how much she needed to pull punches to knock out, or even just to knock around.
Kara ducks a punch, then gives a jab to James' side. It winds up making him fall across half of the ring, stumbling around. "Note to self... punching too hard." she says to herself. Far as James was concerned though, this blonde teenager had an arm like a cannon! Fortunately, that was just a figure of speech. She wasnt hitting as hard as a cannonball could. Since she so totally could if she wanted to.
Staggered, James finds coming back from that punch to be harder than he'd expected. Largely because he's pretty sure she's got a brick in her glove, which is probably illegal. But they're the same gloves that the other blonde was wearing, so that's out. Of course, the fact that Leah never hit him isn't registering on his brain.
Nor is it important, since the gloves weren't the issue here. It's the blonde wearing them.
Getting his wind again, James puffs himself up and says, "Gonna take your head off, bitch," then comes at Kara with everything he's got. Most of it illegal, he tries to throw a rabbit punch at the back of her head, feinting and ducking and throwing haymakers that should by all rights knock Kara out if she were human!
At about this point, Gerald finally looks back at the ring and sees what appears to be the blonde he's supposed to be training being attacked by his star pupil. And avoiding every blow! He thinks that Kara is Leah for a moment, and just stares. This was an amateur?
Kara Zor-El still isnt allowing James to connect a punch, although she considers it when he calls her that name, frowning. Even when she's trying to punch her in the back of the head, she keeps managing to move just slightly out of the way. Then she brings her arm up to stop a haymaker, which she does, effortlessly. Felt like hitting a metal pole again when he hit her arm. "Seriously? You're going to call me that name?" she says as she gives him another punch in the midsection. She tries to do only maybe half of the light punch she did before which had sent him stumbling across the ring. This much, much, much lighter punch just causes the man to fold around her gloved fist, doubling over around it as his feet go off the ground a bit before she pulls her fist back. "Why on EARTH are you a trainer? Seems more like you're just trying to be a bully." she says sternly.
Leah actually winces as Kara folds the guy over her punch. She's pretty good when she's the one doing the damage, but watching it is harder. Still... "Nice one, Kara! See how it feels, douchenozzle?"
Nobody ever accused her of diplomacy.
Gasping, James finds himself on his knees. He's pretty sure he blacked out for a second after that punch. To his stomach. Holy crap, what the hell is going on? And his fist is numb from landing a punch on her block, already. He drags himself up to his feet again, trying not to throw up, and refuses to back down to a cute little blonde.
"I am...NOT...weak!" he says, more to himself than to Kara, and he tries once more to give her back what she just gave him. A strong gut-punch, with his bicep straining and a shout coming from his lungs. Because his stomach hurts too much. Ow.
Gerald is coming over, quickly, though. Running actually, and waving his hands to try and stop the fight.
Kara Zor-El looks at Leah, then back at James as he's on his knees holding his gut. She doesnt bother to dodge that last punch to her gut. His fist slams against the blonde teenager's abs of literally-harder-than-steel and there's absolutely no effect. Kara just stands there, nonplussed, with an unimpressed look on her face. Damn - even with the glove on, that hurt his fist. "Yeah, sure. You're not weak. Good for you. You're still a bully though. So... are you taken down a peg yet?" she asks, before Gerald runs over to try to stop the fight.
The error here being that this is a 'fight.' In a 'fight' one side actually has even a chance. This was more like a 'lesson.'
Seeing the situation, Gerald steps into the ring and checks on James. Who is holding his fist and crying, nodding at Kara as he blubbers like a two year old. Gerald sighs, then says, "I was gone for five minutes," as he looks Kara and the girl that he now recognizes as Leah over quickly, realizes that they're both fine, and notices the bruising around Leah's eyes. He looks down at James, and nods slowly. "And now, you stand up and apologize to the ladies, son. That's what being a man is."
Leah leans over, capturing Kara's hand in her own, and starts to unlace her gloves. She's not exactly grinning, but it could be considered a predatory look on her face. "Don't make him, Gerald. Where were you anyway?"
James gets slowly up to his feet again, still crying, and looks at Kara's face. Then he says, to HER, "Sorry." Sulkily.
Kara Zor-El does look a bit of a mixture of irritated and feeling bad that she reduced the guy to tears. She probably shouldnt have let him connect a punch. If Abomination hurts his fist when punching her, this guy would also, obviously. Lucky for him he's not able to hit as hard as Abomination, and he had that padded glove. She nudges Leah a little to not push the whole thing with James or Gerald about him not being there. She looks back at James. "Apology accepted. Just... you really just need to not be such a bully. Totally not an attractive quality."
Rao, he was still crying. She felt guilty about that. She wasnt used to making guys actually CRY.
Kara Zor-El pauses. "Plus honestly, the person you need to mainly apologize to is Leah." She trudges over to the corner of the ring to wait.
Gerald nudges James, nodding, and says, "Lady's right, son. Unless she got those black eyes walking into the corner posts."
James actually looks at Leah, wiping his face, and then blinks a few times. He looks back at Kara, as if to compare faces, then says to Leah, "Sorry Miss. Won't happen again." Then he turns and leaves the ring quietly, leaving Gerald to apologize to both the ladies. Again.
"He's not a bad sort, but I didn't expect THAT. I suppose I owe you both for showing me what he's like when he's angry. Did you still want a lesson today? I seem to have a free schedule for a while."
Kara Zor-El crosses her arms and looks at her feet a bit. "Leah, you probably should do the lesson with Gerald. I'll hang out a little, or something, okay?"
Leah smiles, nodding, and says, "Just...no hitting in the face, okay?" She sounds remarkably timid when she asks, which is so obviously out of place it actually makes the old man laugh.
And from there on in the day, nothing happened of note. Except exercise, and an attack from Abomination. But that's another story.