The Gym - Tuesday Morning

[my-names-max.livejournal.com]

Max had been going running, which was all well and good, but she decided it was time for her to become acquainted with the gym.

She found it early Tuesday morning and began running drills with the punching bag.


[open, as gyms tend to be]

Comments

[my-names-max.livejournal.com]

"Nope. Terrorist attack that occured in June 2009, wiping out all computer systems in the US," Max said.

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

"Didn't happen for me," Jen said decisively. She'd obsessively studied the history of any and all terrorist attacks of the 20th century onward in preparation for her Academy entrance exam; she'd have remembered hearing about this.

[my-names-max.livejournal.com]

"That's so weird," Max said.

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

"What, multiple timelines and possibilities? Yeah, it's headache-inducing. Even I had a hard time staying awake in elementary quantum physics," Jen admitted.

[my-names-max.livejournal.com]

"So you travel through time on purpose?" Max asked.

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

She had to consider that for a moment.

"I guess I do, yeah," Jen said finally. "It's not a general practice, but on rare occasions it has to be done."

[my-names-max.livejournal.com]

Max cocked her head, curious. "What kind of occasions?"

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

Chasing an evil criminal back in time before he rewrote history?

Well, yes, but that probably wasn't a story to tell in the middle of the gym.

"How about . . . getting away before I was forced to have my memory altered?"

[my-names-max.livejournal.com]

"Sounds like a good reason to me," Max agreed.

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

Jen grinned a little fiercely. "Glad I'm not the only one who thinks so."

[my-names-max.livejournal.com]

Max smiled. "You need to protect yourself."

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

"But my friends couldn't protect themselves." She lashed out at the bag with a vicious backhand.

[my-names-max.livejournal.com]

Max nodded. "I understand how that goes," she said, thinking about the brothers and sisters she had left behind at Manticore.

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

Jen sent another quick flurry of punches at the dummy not bag, hi, pretend that said dummy up there before turning to look at Max. "How'd you end up here, anyway? Getting away from something too?"

[my-names-max.livejournal.com]

"You could say that," Max said. "Though I didn't realize I was traveling back in time a few years."

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

"Me neither," Jen agreed. "Well, I didn't know when or where I was going to end up when I took off. I just wasn't going to break my promise to . . . to remember."

[my-names-max.livejournal.com]

Max frowned a little. "Sounds like it was a bad situation you left behind."

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

"It didn't used to be," Jen said cryptically. "Then the blinders came off."

[my-names-max.livejournal.com]

Funny. Max could actually relate to that. It was the whole not knowing what she was missing until she had it phenomenon.

"I understand that better than you'd think."

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

Jen scrutinized her for several moments, then nodded, choosing -- for now at least -- to believe her.

"The future kind of sucks."

[my-names-max.livejournal.com]

Max nodded. "I totally agree."

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

"I'm Jen, by the way." She wiped her hands off on the towel she'd scrounged from the laundry room, and held one out.

[my-names-max.livejournal.com]

"Max," she replied, shaking the offered hand.