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Penance; [Jonas/Tilly]
Topic Started: Oct 13 2015, 09:44 PM (268 Views)
Sabine and Tilly
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The Celadon Thorn | The Aquarian Paragon
Kalos Academy was lonely today.

Due to the events that transpired on Route 13 one week prior, Tilly had been barred from attending leisure excursions which unfortunately cost her a trip to the beach with the entire first year. Naturally, she was exceptionally upset with not being able to go, even trying to bargain Marianne into stowing herself away in the dragon's beach bag.

All the forth years had left campus a couple days ago for a field raid. The second years were in exams and the third years apparently had a big assignment that was due on Friday that counted to 40% of their grade in Faunus History.

No, Kalos Academy was a ghost town.

Thankfully the cafeteria was still open on the stark Wednesday, so Tilly played her favourite game with the food staff, Lottery Bread Wednesdays, and was fortunate enough to get a curry pan. She bought a 1L bottle of water and bag of trail mix from the vending machines and head over to the Courtyard, deciding to spend her free day practicing her pencil skills.

The paragon set up on the stone pedestal of Siebold's statue, flipping open her sketchbook on her lap. She dolefully chewed at her curry pan while waiting for some of the birds to get closer to draw, wondering what her team was doing at the beach that very moment. Marina was probably trying to dunk Drake into the water to get a rise out of him. Marianne probably had sunglasses on and looked super cool and imposing.

"I will frighten the water into low tide with a mere stare," Tilly impersonated her partner with a low growl before giggling to herself. The laughter didn't last long as she suddenly felt alienated again, shoulders falling despondently.

A sparrow hopped a few feet from her, pecking at the ground. Tilly started to sketch with one hand, shoving the curry pan into her mouth with the other.

Nearby footsteps caused the sparrow to suddenly fly away. "Hey!" the paragon exasperated, voice muffled behind all the bread, "Couldn't you go arou-- oh.."

She gently swallowed her mouthful, bewildered at who had disrupted her plein air.
Edited by Sabine and Tilly, Oct 13 2015, 09:53 PM.
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Banjo
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The Red Ranger/The Sea Serpent/The Bucking Broncos
There were few thing Jonas hated more than doing cardio.

Spinach was one of them. As were oysters. But as no oysters covered in spinach were raining from the sky, he could focus completely on his unmitigated hatred of cardio.

He expected it wouldn't have been as bad without the ankle weights, arm weights, and body weights and without the three layers of clothing he was wearing but far be it from him to to question his uncle's training methods. However...brutish they may have appeared to outside viewers (Jason especially always had a snide comment to make on the subject as if he knew any better) they had gotten him this far...and he hoped they would get him a little farther.

He didn't know why his uncle was more persistent than he usually was, insisting details about Jonas' daily life, training regime, diet, sexual encounters, and teammates. The Junior Heavyweight tourney wasn't until spring unless the current champion somehow was incapacitated before then; unlikely given the cross-training health nut who currently held the belt. Still, as ever, Jonas did what he was told, plugging away in unseasonably warm fall weather as he continued his laps around the campus. Glancing around for a brief moment and seeing no one, he slowed his gait to a stop, reaching his hand out to rest on the statue for a moment, sucking breath with his hands on his knees for a split second. Then a voice called out to him and he jumped back, startled that there was someone he hadn't seen.

"Wh-what?" He asked, looking up to see who was talking. "What the-"

Jonas broke off, coughing suddenly as he tried to talk and breathe at the same time...something that was apparently beyond the capabilities of his current condition.
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Sabine and Tilly
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The Celadon Thorn | The Aquarian Paragon
Jonas' coughing fit gave Tilly a fright and all the belongings on her lap went clattering onto to the small panel of manicured grass beside the pathway. The paragon inwardly gasped, holding her hands to her head, "CURRY-SAMA!" she cried, watching her favourite bread land innards first into the ground.

Uh, maybe help the poor soul beside you who can barely breathe?

Tilly scrambled off the statute, grabbing her giant water bottle and flipping the cap, forcefully offering it to Jonas. "Here, here," she insisted.

While she was surprised to see Jonas, when she really thought about it, it wasn't too unexpected that he would skip the beach excursion. He always trained so hard and never seemed to get leisure activities in the way. Even when he was at the school dance it seemed like he had been forced to attend rather than going of his own free will.

A fierce embarrassment rose on Tilly's cheeks as she remembered their conversation on the balcony. She'd been really.. childish. Months passed and she'd had almost no contact with Jonas, despite passing him often in the hallway or glancing to the back of his head in class. She still looked up to him as an inspiration but the hope to become his friend was one she'd buried and forced herself to forget weeks ago. It had all been too traumatic.

"Doesn't your training even allow for one day of leisure?" the paragon asked, bending down to gather her sketchbook and pencils. She gently itched around her bare ankle where the monitor was, the skin was already red and scabbing from incessant scratching.
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Banjo
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The Red Ranger/The Sea Serpent/The Bucking Broncos
Jonas took a deep breath, hands on his knees as the girl sitting on the statue offered him her bottle of water. He took a glance at it for a moment, before taking the water bottle, pouring it down his throat from about a foot above his open mouth. Unfortunately, he forgot again that he needed to breathe and within moments, he was spluttering and coughing up water on the grass.

Breathe, he chastised himself, covering his mouth as he coughed into his hand. Last thing he needed was to get choked up in front of someone he had basically never met before...he thought. The girl who passed him the water looked somewhat familiar but Jonas couldn't picture from where. Probably someone he had a class with or something whose name escaped him at the moment...

"Thanks," Jonas grunted, passing the water bottle backwards as he tugged at his sweatshirt, hoping to cool himself off a little bit. His eyes landed on the ankle bracelet around the girl's leg with a small frown as he wondered why this person was confined to campus like this...someone who apparently was aware of his training routine too.

"Not especially," Jonas said, wiping the sweat from his brow. "I have plenty of leisure days ahead of me when I'm old and can't fight anymore...now I just have to be strong enough not to die against some hideous monster until I can hop a jet out of this school."

"Which," Jonas said, stretching his hamstring. "Is difficult enough when half your team, including your partner and leader, are never there when you need them to be and the only one you can reasonably rely on has a cactus so far up his ass he's spitting needles..."

If anything, the raid had taught Jonas that he could reasonably rely on only himself. No one else was going to stick up for him here and in some ways that was easier to swallow.

"Anyway," Jonas said, holding a finger to his neck. "Not your concern, really. Sure you have better things to do like...sketch or something..."

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Sabine and Tilly
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The Celadon Thorn | The Aquarian Paragon
Tilly placed her belongings where she had been sitting before reaching out to take her bottle back. Glancing at the cap for a moment, she took a drink for herself to wet her mouth and stowed it next to her sketchbook. She wasn't sure if she should give Jonas the heimlich manoeuvre but he thankfully righted himself on his own.

"No troubles," she smiled, struggling to put her heart into it. He was looking at her blankly, as if she were just some random fan that tried to get his autograph after a big fight.

"I'd avoid Route 13 then," Tilly chuckled lightly, a little guilty she was making light of the incident, "Unless you want to get eaten by a forty-five foot Steelix Grimm." She absent-mindedly held her upper right arm, bruise hidden under a lightweight floral kimono jacket.

The paragon glanced to the ground, "Oh right," she mumbled, remembering her conversation with Jason and how Jonas' team had pretty much left him high and dry at the raid. "Well you give off the impression that you're a bit of a lone wolf.. no offence. Maybe they thought you'd be able to handle yourself?" She felt the blush redden on her cheeks, quickly averting her eyes, "If, um, if I'd seen you that day, I would have come to aid you. Make you.. hit harder, or faster, whatever you'd prefer, really."

Her shoulders fell in bitter disappointment, clenching her fist by her denim shorts, "But I don't think I'll be seeing another Grimm for a while..." Six months to be exact, "So you're on your own after all."

Tilly glanced up to him with a distant expression, "Yeah." She was bothering him, of course. She turned back to the stone podium and brushed grass off her sketch, staring at the near-finished sketch of the bird. The paragon had never considered herself much of an artist that drew from imagination but she was pretty good at copying images from a real life reference.

"Did you see where he went?" she asked, holding the sketch up to show Jonas.
Edited by Sabine and Tilly, Oct 14 2015, 11:36 PM.
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Banjo
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The Red Ranger/The Sea Serpent/The Bucking Broncos
"Uh-huh," Jonas said, successfully fighting the urge to roll his eyes. "Thought the whole point of rolling in teams was so someone had your back when said gigantic killing machines show up at your doorstep. Instead, I get foisted off on two random girls, one of which literally lost her shirt in the fight."

Whether Logan would have fared any better was hardly something Jonas felt like considering.

"Besides, I'm sure your own partner would get antsy if I started poaching her talent," Jonas said, cracking his neck. Part of him wondered if he should get back to his cardio but since this girl was neither spinach nor oysters, she was immediately more appealing by virtue of her existence.

Besides, he had precious little people who would tolerate his griping.

"Can't say I have," Jonas said, glancing at the drawing. It was...accurate to say the least. Jonas hadn't had an eye for anything artistic since he graduated from safety scissors but it certainly was a pretty accurate picture of a bird. "Commissioned you to do his portrait, did he?"

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Sabine and Tilly
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The Celadon Thorn | The Aquarian Paragon
Tilly stared over her drawing, feeling increasingly vulnerable as she was aware Jonas was looking at it, wondering what he thought of it. She looked up to him in a surprised pause before laughing, sweet little genuine laughs as she shyly hugged her sketchbook against her chest. "N-No!" she chirped, failing to suppress an endearing grin, "Birds can't talk! But if they could I would happily take commissions. For a fee of course, my father says you should never hand out your talents for free. Devalues the product." She turned the book over to look at her sketch, now curious as to how much the sparrow would pay for it.

"Do you know Marianne?" the paragon asked, body language opening, "Who am I kidding, everyone knows her. 'The Dragon and the Grimm Freak'." She posed slackly before sighing and dropping the sketchbook back on the podium. She'd been overhearing some especially cruel opinions about her in the last week, especially from the forth graders. "Kids can be so cruel," she echoed her fathers words.

"How do you deal with that?" Tilly asked urgently, looking up to Jonas expectantly, "People say horrible things about you all the time. How do you stay so... cool?"
Edited by Sabine and Tilly, Oct 15 2015, 12:33 AM.
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Banjo
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The Red Ranger/The Sea Serpent/The Bucking Broncos
Jonas blinked, wondering if he was suffering from heat stroke or if she was really talking a mile a minute about bird commissions. For a moment, he wondered if it would be worth it to explain to her that he was joking and that he was very aware that birds could not commission art work but part of him knew that it would be a massive waste of time for everyone involved.

Especially himself.

"The samurai chick who beats up people at The Icepack?" Jonas snorted. "Yeah, I'm guessing that's her...which must make you the "Grimm Freak" or something. First I've ever heard of it but no one tells me anything."

He had heard a rumor about four girls fighting sixteen Garchomp in the desert butt naked with only a fire-extinguisher but something told him that things might have been stretched out a bit in the retelling.

"Do people say horrible things about me?" Jonas snorted, shaking his head. He was well aware that every idiot with a wfca.com login password had an opinion on him and every other fighter who stepped in the ring. Part of him felt like he was pulling a pin on a grenade that he didn't want to pull but...at the same time, had anyone ever asked him anything like that? No, it had always been an endless parade of "who does your hair"; "what's your diet like"; "will you sign my ass/coffee cup/child?"

"Used to ask my dad the same question, especially after he took home the Intercontinental Belt. Had a lot of fans but got more than his fair share of hatemail too," Jonas said, glancing out over the courtyard. "Pissed a lot of people off just by being who he was and not being sorry about it. If he sweated it, he never showed it. Never kept the hatemail; never responded to jeering and taunting."

Jonas tugged at his sweatshirt again, frowning a little before pulling it off before whipping it aside. He could hardly breathe and he wasn't going to sweat his ass off while talking about birds or whatever.

"He said there were two ways to stay on top in life," Jonas said, scratching the back of his neck. "You can work hard and risk everything to rise as high as you can go or you can spend your time trying to drag anyone who ever rose higher than you down. Bitter fucking losers envious of their betters don't like being reminded that they're bitter fucking losers...that last bit was my footnote, by the way."

"Ask your partner," Jonas said with a shrug. "I'm sure she could give you some other advice other than fuck-the-haters-they're-morons."
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Sabine and Tilly
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The Celadon Thorn | The Aquarian Paragon
This was, like, the most Jonas had ever spoken to her. This was a real conversation. Tilly had to control her breathing as she had a sudden out-of-body experience, taking note that this was most likely a moment she would never forget. She tried to imprint everything on her mind, the humid smell of fall leaves, a slight coolness emanating off Siebold's in the hot day, Jonas' white locks sticking to the sweat on his neck.

Amazing. He wasn't even aware of the hurtful words that went on behind his back. Tilly admired his resilience. It wasn't like he was thick-skulled either (like she apparently was), he simply chose not to validate anyone's jealousy.

"I wish I was more like you," she whispered, meaning for the words to be internal only. She closed her eyes, praying he hadn't picked up on it.

Tilly smiled as she gazed into a memory, "I miss him, Hector Lee. I used to watch the World Championship when I was a kid. My parents are protective about a lot of things but not that, for some reason. I don't know, he wasn't a perfect person but I would always root for him. It's like, he was so genuine, you could feel his pain when he struggled like it was yours."

She chewed her lip before casting a glance down the row of statues, none of whom's importance seemed to stack up to Hector. "You watch someone like that for so long as you grow up, it's like they become a part of your family. When he... I couldn't watch fighting any more. Not until..."

Tilly looked back to Jonas wordlessly, before staring at the ground in a childish humiliation.

"Even people here don't get fighting. They think it's a waste of time compared to eradicating the Grimm threat or get turned off because it's too gory. But it's not. It's about vigor and justice and.. family."

The paragon wiped under her eyes. It was inevitable any time she thought about Hector. "And this is all probably nothing compared to what he was to you... I'll shut up now."
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Banjo
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The Red Ranger/The Sea Serpent/The Bucking Broncos
"He was perfect for us," Jonas said, leaning against the statue and looking out into the sky. "Me, Jason, every other kid who went to our school...we all thought he was perfect."

"I remember our whole fucking block coming over to watch the fight-The Fight-at our old house," Jonas said, lips wrinkling in a small smile. "All of us gathered around a little twenty inch TV, packed on couches, praying constantly while Dad fought. Jason was bouncing up and down and I think I broke the arms of every chair I sat in. It was tense...not just because it was the big fight but because of all the shit that led up to it. Kanto was getting on its high horse and starting in with their "Kanto for the humans" bullshit; Col. Suzuki talking all this good shit about the superiority of the human race."

"He beat the living shit out of my Dad for thirty-five minutes but just couldn't put him down," Jonas said, teeth clenched in a savage grin. "Because Dad knew there was more riding on this match than one person fighting another. Unova was going through hard times; hard times were everywhere, to be honest. And he took all that on to be more than just a meathead who hits other meatheads for sport. Because sometimes a fight is just a fight; sometimes it means a whole fucking lot more."

"That's why it meant something when Dad grabbed his arm. I watched him lock him in an armbar in the middle of the ring...and for the longest moment, no one said anything. It was like the TV fucking broke or something and there was just the still image of Dad sitting on Suzuki's back, arm locked tight against his chest and holding on for dear life, trying to break this man who swore he would never be broken."

"Then..his hand hit the mat once, twice, three times and that third time might as well have shot off a goddamn firework in the house. I couldn't believe it; no one could. Dad did the fucking impossible and when he won...it felt like we won," Jonas said, shaking his head. "It felt like...every poor kid who grew up wondering if he was ever going to make it could turn on the TV or open the newspaper to see a brawler from Castelia's East Side rise and beat Kanto's Submission Machine. That was proof; that was evidence. Thar was a slap in the fucking face to anyone who said that we couldn't do it and that's why it fucking killed bitter fucking people to see someone they thought wasn't worth shit go higher and further than they ever would."

Jonas felt himself shaking. He never talked about his father anymore; not with Jason and especially not with his uncle who never quite got to the level Hector did. No one had ever asked him about it for years either; it was like all his fans and all his followers forgot that the castle he was building for himself was built on a mountain that was built by the ones who came before him.

"Dad was...Dad," Jonas said, tugging on his collar a little sheepishly. "He never asked to be a superhero but he wore the costume well enough for us...and I won't stop until I'm half the fighter he was."

Jonas bent down, picking up his sweatshirt and tugging it back over his head.

"Even if that means no vacation days," Jonas snorted, shaking his head.
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