fandomhighdorms | Salle; Monday Afternoon

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Salle; Monday Afternoon

After recovering from eating doughnuts with Leo, Luke decided a workout was probably in order. He was probably gonna end up going down to the salle anyway out of sheer boredom but he liked having a reason to be down there. Gave him something to work to.

He spent some time doing some simple exercises before getting into practicing against the dummies. As per usual when he was working alone, Luke sort of went into autopilot when it came to training. He sliced through the dummies easily and with a lot of skill, but his head was off somewhere else, thinking about everything from the work he had to do back home to Katniss's problems to what the hell he was gonna eat for lunch later. Before he knew it he had worked up a pretty good sweat and the dummy he was wailing on was worse for the wear.

After a few minutes he took a break and wandered over to the practice swords, inspecting them to see if they were good enough to teach with or if he'd have to go back home and steal another one.

[The salle is open, of course]

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"Looking for a replacement sword?" Percy asked, wandering in, Riptide already out and changed into a sword. "Won't your other one get jealous?"

"It's not for me," Luke said distractedly. "I offered to help train a friend and I wanted to see if these were good enough for her or if I'd have to go home and steal some."

Considering Katniss had told him that she didn't know what would be thrown at her in the arena, Luke wanted to make sure that she learned to use as many different kinds of swords as possible.

"I thought Kate was more a knives sort of girl," Percy said, giving Riptide a few twirls before lazily striking one of the practice dummies. "Moving on up to the big time now?"

"Nah, I think Kate's content with knives. Probably better for her considering her situation." The average mortal with a sword didn't seem like a good idea to Luke for the most part. "This is for my friend Katniss. You know her, we had class with her last semester."

Percy snorted a bit and let the blade of his sword rest on the shoulder of the dummy. "Yeah, I don't think she likes me. We had one conversation and argued. She was wrong."

Of course he'd say that even if he couldn't remember what the argument was about.

Luke rolled his eyes and left the practice swords alone so he could turn and watch what Percy was doing. "I don't think one argument means that she hates you. You and I argue all the time."

"Yeah, but she doesn't get to sleep with me afterward," Percy said, pulling the sword back. "You're getting quite the little caravan of trainees, aren't you?"

"Three people is not a caravan," Luke said. "In case you forgot I'm used to teaching a whole camp full of people."

"In this place, three people's a caravan," Percy insisted, shrugging. "Maybe you should start advertising? Put fliers up in the dorms, declaring the awesome swordsmanship of Luke Castellan, demigod extraordinaire, and watch the offers roll in."

"If I did that I would spend all my time in here and wouldn't get to spend any time alone with you," Luke pointed out. "Which I'm sure would leave you devastated."

"I'd adjust," he said nonchalantly, shrugging. "Your memory would be enough to carry me through, Luke. I'd pine and watch you from afar, waiting until the day you came back."

"You have more willpower than I do then," Luke said with a smirk. "After a few days I'd probably be all sexually frustrated and pissy."

"You don't think you'd be able to solve that on your own?" Percy asked, glancing down at Luke's hands.

Katniss had started her morning off with a run around the island, which she was mildly ashamed had caught her out of breath sooner than she'd liked. She'd kept going, though, and by the time she felt the exhaustion start to settle into her muscles, she'd taken a moment to eat something and take a short break.

That break wasn't allowed to be too long, though, because she knew the second part of her training was going to be weight and weapons-based. She was headed to the gym to see if there were things she could lift when she peeked into the salle and saw who was using it. Katniss watched for a moment before offering, "I hope that dummy deserved it."

[omg I have to go to work in like an hour and a half but I couldn't not.]

"Oh he totally did," Luke said, smiling when he heard Katniss's voice. "He was a huge jerk."

"Well, as long as he was asking for it," she said with a nod. "Insulted your family or something?"

"Worse, he totally insulted my taste in clothes." Probably for good reason as Luke had no sense of style.

He wiped his brow on his shirt sleeve, leaving his sword in the dummy for the moment. "What are you doing down here? I don't usually see anybody but my cousins in the salle."

"I was going to head to the gym," she admitted, "but it seemed weird to be down here without using the shooting range. I've never really spent much time in the...sword place before, so I decided to peek in."

She was looking around with a bit of curiosity, too, and added,, "Glad I did. You and your cousins aren't the only swordsmen on the island, are you? Just the best at regularly practicing, I guess."

"Nah, I know a couple other people that use swords but, you're right, I don't think anybody else is as fanatic about training as we are," Luke said. "They're probably sane people with social lives."

"Social lives are highly overrated," Katniss replied with a faint smile. "Though I'm sure most of our classmates would disagree there."

"Yeah, well, they're the lucky ones that can afford to have social lives," Luke said, sounding upbeat even though it was a sad fact. "I'm glad you came down here; I was looking at the practice swords earlier to see which ones would suit you."

"Yeah?" she asked, perking up a little bit. "I barely knew there was a difference between swords, honestly. Aside from size, anyway -- I probably shouldn't be outfitted with anything weighing more than me."

"Yeah, that probably wouldn't be helpful at all. Luckily there are some lightweight ones here," Luke said, crooking a finger over towards where the practice swords were. "But you should probably work up to lifting as much as you can. Like you said--you don't know what's going to be in there, so the only weapon you get might be on the heavy side."

"Last time, there was a bow for me," she said thoughtfully as she wandered over to the swords, "but someone else grabbed it first. And I need to be prepared to get whatever I get, even if that means a sword as big as me. Strength training is something I'm planning on working on -- worst case scenario, I need to be able to carry a boy about your size, if Peeta gets hurt."

Luke lifted his eyebrows a bit, having doubts that someone Katniss's size could carry him. "Yeah, strength training is definitely a good idea in this case. It's not like you can run for long in this situation."

He looked carefully until he picked out the lightweight sword he had been looking at earlier and handed it over to Katniss, hilt-first. "This is one of the lighter ones. Good place to start. I'm used to using a bronze sword that can't hurt mortals but that's not exactly gonna help you since, well, you know."

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