Laws Of Motion

[Cicada]

((Irene Djezari continued from The Weekly Grind))

Sarah Ramsey had one good period of girl's PE, falling in the sweet spot after lunch where one didn't feel heavy, had good energy, and just enough focus because the end of the day was still too far away to distract. Not that Irene ever really needed any help in the way of distraction. Irene's body was more a rectangle than an ellipse primarily due to her distinct lack of focus. Said bod was clad in a maroon-red T-shirt with a howling coyote emblazoned over it in gold, along with shorts a size too poofy that she'd been too stubborn to exchange out and thus always wore with the drawstrings throttling her hips.

She was briefly out of commission, waylaid by an unfortunate case of acute floor-to-the-face brought on by tripping over an untied shoelace while Miss Ramsey had them running laps of the gym. Irene was afforded a cushy rest, thanks to being one of the girls in Cochise who naturally had Miss Ramsey's sympathies. They'd first met before Irene's freshman year, incidentally meeting and a local competition meet back when Irene had still been a gymnast. Even when she'd stopped perusing the sport she still watched a smattering of televised events, enough to talk shop with her new high school PE teacher, who always looked kindly on Irene for the conversation and her amusing antics in the gym. Irene was already full-up on PE credits, she had taken an extra year just because it was an easy and fun class for her with a teacher on her side. Ever the burning torch of youth, a bit of hustle from day to day fanned Irene's flames nicely.

Irene was reclining against a wall, flight of fancy having produced her phone from her pockets and the Principia Mathematica in pdf form. The convoluted language of the English translation actually aligned rather well with the rather obtuse nature of Irene's thought processes. It was almost like her brain translated onto paper, but with far less crude jokes.

Newton's discourse on the nature of parallax prompted Irene to lift her eyes from the text and hold up a thumb between herself and the girls still being shepherded around the court. The left eye closed and the right open, then they switched states, Irene did this at a rapid pace while trying to see how parallax was affected against the repetitive motion of her peers. It was just idle curiosity and soon her eyes returned to the text, her brief inklings of scientific discovery shattered by an inability to make inquiries from what others would perceive as some dork in a ponytail repeatedly winking at them for no discernible reason.

Back to the text she followed along for a brief amount of time, but her mind rapidly continued to degenerate along increasingly irrelevant paths. Before long Irene had long lost any sort of consistent pace with the text. She was still absorbed in thought, still reading, but she wasn't exactly there, instead distracted increasingly by thoughts that went above and beyond the foundations of Newtonian Physics. What was for lunch? Would Sandra be open for some shredding later? Maybe someday modern science could bring Newton back from the grave and she hang with him? Maybe he'd have been a toxic-as-fuck League player if he'd lived today?

Lost in her gratuitous daydreams Irene failed to notice that Ramsey wanted her back to work, the PE teacher barking out her name sharply a few times for the rest of the assembled class to hear.

[Espi]

((Alice Baker continued from Hypotnuse Murder Mystery Case))

Alice was...not a fan of gym class. To be fair, it seemed gym class did not like her much either. With low stamina, strength, coordination and general lack of enthusiasm, gym class for Alice was ostensibly exercise, but really just an exercise in futility. Plus, Miss. Ramsey was one of those teachers who had blatant favorites, a trait Alice couldn't stand. Sure it hardly mattered in this case because there wasn't much anyone could do for Alice when it came to getting in shape, but at least make an attempt!

Besides, she never showed sympathy for Alice despite their similar size. Shorter people had shorter legs and couldn't run as fast, or so it should seem. So why expect Alice to keep up?

Speaking of attempts, running laps was probably going to be on Alice's obituary as cause of death. Making her way around the gym, Alice wheezed in a breath and attempted to slow to a walk or standstill only to be warned off by the teacher's stern glare that may or may not have actually been directed at her.

Panting, Alice stumbled, and for a glorious moment she wondered if she might faint and be rid of her need to keep running. Damn her stubborn desire to put effort into this! Alice was terribly jealous of Irene; they didn't know each other very well (Irene was much more sociable than Alice),  but at least Irene was sitting down while Alice was not, and that seemed a marked improvement.

Then, of course, Miss Ramsay demonstrated her envy to be misplaced, and began calling Irene back to action. Alice winced at the teacher's piercing voice, but took advantage of Miss Ramsay's temporary distraction from the students to take a short rest, hands on knees, bent over in exhaustion, sweat beading on her face and gluing strands of blonde hair to her red face.

'Not a fan' was an understatement.

[Cicada]

Blah blah blah ascendency of the celestial bodies, as the world turned round deferentially on it's epicycles. As The World Turns, the latest episode. Our heroine Irene had all manner of contextually inappropriate and pretentious prose flourishing in her brain. It was only one last shrill broadside from Miss Ramsey that finally liberated Irene from her own scatterbrain self.

"Sorry!!" Irene went zero to sixty in the blink of an eye, nearly hurtled over herself in her eagerness to get her show back on the road. She hadn't even remembered to put her phone somewhere safe, she just ran with it held in a hand. In running she was obstinate, possibly ostentatious, definitely obtuse. Her form was hardly that of a runners, her speed was a matter of brute force as opposed to technique. Only her impressive energy levels prevented her from tiring out quickly with poor her control was, it was only a measly step above the ninja running of Naruto's heyday. Every single wobbly step put her in danger of tripping, her arms made her Don Quixote's windmills taking to flight across the battlefield.

She was catching up on a girl who so far had thankfully avoided Ramsey's strong glare. Irene thought knew all of her fellow girl's names by heart, so she called out:

"Alicia!" While Irene's memory was at least precise it had some want for accuracy. That went for those she actually spoke to regularly, never mind the girls like Alice who Irene only had the briefest of interactions with, usually in the form of the occasional awkward sideways glance while in the changing rooms. Irene couldn't help the wandering eye, that was her honest-to-goodness excuse. "Alicia, Miss Ramsey. Hurry up before she starts looking your way again!" It was a good Samaritan deed that Irene was instinctively trying to pull. Heaven knew poor Alicia- Alice?- would get chewed out by a merciless Miss Ramsey if she was seen not at least pretending to try.

[Espi]

Still gasping for air, Alice watched Irene suddenly return to the track. She kind of envied the other girl's comparative athleticism, though even Alice could tell that she was not running at peak performance.

Wait, did she just call her 'Alicia'?

Well...okay then. At least Irene's intentions were good, though Alice struggled to keep a straight face as the other girl approached and warned her. Alice nodded, still somewhat winded, and replied, "Thanks." The two didn't know each other well (Irene was not exactly in Alice's crowd, and vise-versa), but at least she knew of her. Sort of.

Then she started running, or rather, walked briskly. Alice had learned her lesson; attempting to keep up with the pack was a pipe dream. So instead, she tried to make as much haste as seemed reasonable for someone with next to no stamina. Irene stayed next to her, which was really sweet of her since otherwise Alice would've been dead last by a large margin. Alice hesitated for a moment, trying to weigh the risk of offending the other girl versus actually having people know her name.

"It's Alice, actually."

[Cicada]

That was supposed to be a pace? If Irene had actually known Alicia there would have been cause for complaint.

"Kinda slow here, aren't we?" Irene's mouth happily ran, far faster than the two girls were running at any rate. It ran ahead of such important things as prudence and tact. Irene didn't even seem to catch how horrifically rude she'd just been. She was already moving on to the next point. Also far faster than either of the girl's legs were currently moving.

"Alicia's cuter, I think." Weird ass way to recover, but... In context. At least Irene said it with no hesitation, no blush. To the outside world it looked like she actually believed her own bullshit. She legitimately did, no less. "I mean, I totally knew that your name was Alice the whole time. Don't get me wrong. I know every name ever and ever. Got them all in here from first day one." It had to be said, whether it was casual or shit-eating, Irene had quite the nice smile. She grinned over at Alice as they continued to meander around the gymnasium. She even helpfully lagged a bit more on purpose to make it seem like she was the last place girl. Ramsey would probably be far more at ease with one of her favorite girls being in last place.

"But yeah, if you insist! Alice it is." Irene shrugged nonchalantly. With any luck the name would actually be encoded somewhere into the RAM, emphasis on the 'Random', of her brain. "So how are ya? In before 'tired'."

[MK Kilmarnock]

((Jerry Fury continued from Hypotenuse Murder Mystery Case))

"RUN FASTER!" Jerry yelled at the top of his lungs, between huffs and puffs as he sprinted past the girls. Goddamn, those two underclassmen had been hogging his lane. If they were going to do something like that, they could at least have the decency to keep up a decent pace. Keep up a pace, and not a full-length conversation.

Crap. Now I gotta recover the air I just spent shouting. Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit

Still, Jerry loved running. Man, did he fucking love running. He loved running so much that he hardly cared that Ramsey was, in his opinion, the worst of the P.E. teachers at Cochise. Yessir, give him Mr. Parkinson any day of the damned week. That man actually coached all of his kids and loved to hear whatever Jerry had to say, not like this bitch who wouldn't so much as give him the time of day for being too tall, not doing chin-ups or whatever and for having a dick.

Jerry spared a moment to look behind him. The girls weren't that far back, but if he put in an honest effort he bet he could probably lap their asses. He shook his head and faced forward, letting the wind catch his hair and make it bounce as it was wont to do.

[Espi]

Trying to pick up the pace wasn't really an option for Alice, whose lungs felt like they were seizing. She was panting, gasping for breath, and her desire to stop was just barely outweighed by her desire to avoid getting an earful from Ramsay. So she kept going at a pace of light jog and let herself feel satisfied with that.

Irene wasn't helping though. Actually, she was...kinda being rude, which seemed silly to Alice. If you were going to run alongside someone, you probably shouldn't judge their pace. Then she had the nerve to start blabbering about Alice's name. Alice had her suspicions of Irene; sure you knew her name. Totally. Gotcha. And of course Alicia was just a cutesy nickname. That definitely made sense. Nicknames were always longer than regular names, right?

"Tired, yeah." Alice's response to Irene's question was curt. Irene was starting to get on Alice's nerves, which was kind of par for the course as far as she could tell. She certainly had a lot of energy, which Alice could only imagine got exhausting sometimes even if it was your thing. At least she meant well as far as Alice could judge, because if Irene was being an irritant on purpose-

The sudden shouting startled Alice, causing her to stumble, but she kept her footing. Trying not to scowl at the sudden outburst, Alice looked over at Irene. In a breathless voice, she asked, "Why did he do that?"

[Cicada]

As far as Irene was aware, she'd committed no great sin. She'd said something, Alicia- Alice- had responded. Simple matter of conversational discourse, right? Newton's Third. Irene was satisfied, that was to say, ignorance was satisfaction. Besides, it was reasonable to assume curt responses would be an issue of mechanics, of lame lung capacity being exceeded. Oblivious as Irene was in some- many- respects she did have functional eyes, and she could see the pain threaded through her every breath Alice pushed. Still didn't excuse the slow pace.

"Eh?" She almost didn't notice Jerry until his voice was suddenly exploding in her ear. Irene kept her footing, thankfully for all involved. Djezari wipe outs were the sort with the potential for collateral damage. Irene wasn't the sort to cleanly fall to the ground, she preferred making more of an ass of herself than that. "Whoa. He came out of nowhere, huh?" Winning observations today.

"Well we are slowish. Taking up space. I mean, neither of us are broad girls. Two of us could hit the broad side of a..." She wasn't really sure how she'd intended to make that cliche contextually relevant. "You know." A brilliant finisher. She glanced after Jerry, contemplative as he continued to outpace them. He glanced back, the sort of brief backwards 'appraise the losers I'm totally beating' look Irene knew well. One she'd worn often back in the day while the coach or teacher or irritated teammate would chaste her, 'stop doing that because you keep falling over onto your face'. "No foul." A sage nod Alice's way. "Don't have to worry." A moment of silence followed, then suddenly:

"Yo Fury!" Irene's voice was a bit of a sleeper, she was the sort of girl who normally sounded saint-like until she raised her voice and suddenly ears were bleeding. Perfect dead ringer for Miss Ramsey. Actually, that might have been another reason she was a favored student. "Betcha you can't out lap me!"

[MK Kilmarnock]

For a moment there, Jerry thought Ms. Ramsey was calling him. He looked without breaking his pace, but that couldn't have been right. Miss Ramsey wasn't in the direction the voice had come from. What was more, she wasn't even looking at him.

Well, figures. She never does.

It took the voice continuing for him to figure out it was one of the two girls he passed. Sure as hell wasn't the mousey girl from math class, so it was probably Irene, and boy did that voice hurt his ears. What burned more, though, was what she actually said.

Bet I can't lap you, huh? Not if you're not actually RUNNING! Jerry thought, bouncing in his stride before leaning into a full-on sprint. It was gonna blow him up doing this, but he was pretty sure he could keep it up for most of a whole lap. Should be enough to give him the results he wanted. Might also give him enough space away from those two.

Hell yes! You're the beeeeeest around! Ain't nobody ever gonna getcha down...

[Espi]

Increasingly flustered by Irene's breezy nature, Alice was glad the other girl was going to race the boy. It gave her a moment to think, collect her thoughts, not engage in conversation while running. It wasn't like she had anything against Irene, she just...they weren't really the kind of person Alice got, you know? She was too high energy.

Alice felt herself recede away from the other girl, slowing her pace. Her pace slowed further as the moved away from her. Still panting, Alice slowed her pace to a walk, and tried valiantly to keep going until the teacher said stop.

Oh, the boy was in her trig class, she realized. That's where she knew him from. Made sense. He seemed the cocky sort, the kind of guy who didn't take stuff seriously. He and Irene probably got along well.

Alice heard the shrill sound of the teacher calling her name, and looked over, confused. Then she looked down at her feet, and realized she'd stopped in place. Taking a deep breath, Alice kept going, trying to pick up a little speed despite the rasp of her breath constricting her lungs.

[Cicada]

Irene had expected at least a bit of return banter. Maybe witty, at least wittier than anything she herself could produce on the fly. But no, Jerry was just burning rubber. Wasn't this guy a martial artist or something? Irene vaguely knew that in a strict match-up she was probably outclassed in terms of technique, but alea iacta est. Competitive spirit set the adrenaline in her aflame, her muscles were suddenly burning as she tore after him, bounding from Alice's side in a flash.

As hard as Irene could have tried to actually catch up, it was futile, and after a few seconds of brute force she was already spent. Not from any actual loss of energy, she was still redeemable for at least a whole marathon. It was strictly a loss of verve, her fiery spirit quickly petering out as her interest in actually trying waned. 'Eh' was the statement of the hour here. What was the point of pushing herself? As her split-second hype subsided she realized she didn't actually have much stake in the matter. Yes, she had started it, but it had just been a passing fancy! It totally didn't count, never mind that Jerry didn't know that.

For a second Irene swore Miss Ramsey was yelling something at her. Nice and slow now she was able to safely appraise the situation.

Oh shit, she'd abandoned her (wo)men! Alice was under fire in the trenches. Her chances of making another lap- let alone surviving the rest of the period's worth of sustained lung damage- were dubious as far as Irene could tell. Good thing Irene hadn't gone completely off-the-wall running after Jerry like a ravening dog.

"Sarah, I'll run with Alicia! Alice! Fuck!" Irene was Ramsey-approved to the point where even unrestrained language and casual first-naming earned her no ire. She was greeted with a curt nod.

"Keep her on her toes, Djezari!"

"Will do!" Irene shook her head and mouthed an exaggerated 'hell no' Alice's way as she executed a beautiful one eighty and jogged back to her comrade's side. "We can just walk. Long as I'm here Miss Ramsey'll stay off your back."

[MK Kilmarnock]

Didn't take long, maybe a quarter of the way into his mission of lapping those two, that Jerry figured he had probably been duped. It was a heavy boast, one that he figured he shouldn't have tried to follow up on. However, he did manage to accomplish his primary goal, which was to get away from those two slowpokes... who were picking up the pace, it seemed. Figures.

Jerry heard Irene's swearing and rolled his eyes. It didn't have anything to do with the swearing itself. Jerry prided himself on swearing like a motherfucking sailor. It was more the fact that Irene was Ramsey's little lapdog who could commit murder in the first degree and probably get away with a detention just so long as she did it in Ramsey's gym class.

Huh. I wonder if there's cameras in the gymnasium. Never seen one before...

He found his chin tilting upward, but once the tell-tale footsteps of somebody approaching from behind sounded, his chin was tucked and his legs kicked back into full-gear.

It suddenly occurs to me that running in circles is fucking boring. Why won't she let us run on the school perimeter? At least there's more to look at than somebody else's butt. ... That's a dude's butt. Probably shouldn't be looking at that. It's gross and dumpy anyway.

[Espi]

Unfortunately, Miss Ramsay caught on to Alice pretty quickly and called her out on her slacking. Alice winced, and started up again, but she couldn't help feel annoyed. She was so out of shape it wasn't even funny, and her complete lack of stamina was all but crippling.

Also odd (and slightly bothersome) was Irene's apparent need to stick to Alice. Luckily it seemed to be out of genuine altruism in this case, because she promised to keep Miss Ramsay off Alice's back, which was much appreciated. Alice gave a smile and relaxed her pace to a reasonable walk.

"Thanks..." Alice said quietly. Irene was proving a puzzling person, but at least she seemed to have honestly good intentions.

[Cicada]

More sneakers screeched past. Irene hadn't really counted on her precious PE period being willed away in virtual stasis like this. She already felt pent up and restless despite the fact that she was moving; she was impatiently snapping the toes of her feet against the ground a few times with each step just to make the lazy motions count for a little something more. She was committed to Alice for the duration, however. It was only right, and it wasn't like Alice was bad company. She was cute. Maybe a bit quiet, but that was half of Irene's friends anyways. Either they were quiet and secretly annoying or openly annoying yet still somehow redeemable.

Best she could hope for was that Alice would eventually recover and they could go at a decent clip for at least a while. Fight the good fight. Worst case scenario she supposed she could try to set the record for fastest cross-campus transposition to burn off her spare energy before her next class. AP Econ, where she'd have to hunker down and ignore the teacher to study the musings of the yung Maynard Keynes himself.

Come to think of it. She wondered if she actually shared any sort of class with Alice and just didn't realize it. Irene typically wasn't too cognizant of things that weren't her own idle amusements while in the classroom.

"What sort of subjects- teachers- have you got this year, Alice? Alice. I said it right, hah!" She knew for a fact that she didn't share any classes with Jerry, at least as far as she was concerned given her somewhat lacking opinion of his academic capacity. She'd admit, at the very least, that he was faster than her. At this rate it was inevitable that he'd catch up to them again, whatever sort of confrontation that entailed.

[MK Kilmarnock]

Ha! Fatty! You can never have too much cardio!

Jerry mentally chided somebody as he ran past, taking pride in being able to outpace most of his fellow students... and, and this was the important part, he could keep that pace too. Could have been the running to school day and running back home too. Little exercise would get these guys and gals a long way, especially the ones who decided to sit around on their ass and play video games and watch animoo or whatever the fuck they were doing these days, Jerry thought to himself.

That translated to baseball, too. People could think what they wanted of Jerry, for all he cared... or at least part of him did, anyway. He knew he was one of the fastest runners, one of the bravest when it came to stealing bases, and he wasn't the varsity first baseman for nothing. Indeed, if there was anything he was sure of, it was that he was definitely a great athlete.

But that part of Jerry that didn't care what people thought was just as powerful as the other part of him... which cared. It cared a whole lot. Jerry was no stranger to the fact he talked a big game just about 24/7, so it should have made sense he'd do everything in his power to back it up. On the baseball diamond it translated pretty well, with Jerry focusing every effort on catching the ball, throwing the ball, hitting the ball... everything was about that fucking ball. He liked baseball because he was good at it, and lately he was starting to think that was the only reason.

His real passion was fighting. He loved MMA, but the trouble with it was that, for some reason, he just wasn't proving to be any good at it. As he constantly reassured himself, he was a crack athlete, a surefire bid to win in a race or simple contest, but something was holding him back in MMA. He loved to brag that he was a fighter, that he had several professional fights under his belt. He always neglected to mention his record.

One day that was going to change. One day he'd excel at what he loved, not only love what he excelled at. Yeah, then they'd see. First, he had to start winning. First, he had to get that ball rolling.

First, I have to catch up to these two AGAIN christ almighty, it's like they're not even running!

It honestly seemed that way, for in his thoughts Jerry noticed he was catching up significantly to Alice and Irene again. Not that he was right behind them, or even a hundred feet behind them... but he felt he was much closer than he should have been for not sprinting like he had intended to. Hell, those two were so attached at the hip in their conversation that if Jerry really kicked it in gear, he realized Irene probably wouldn't leave Alice behind... and he could DEFINITELY pass Alice, no questions asked.

Ha... looks like I can show her a thing or two after all, Jerry smirked, taking a couple of bounding steps that would lead up to the kickoff, the injection of turbo, the big takeoff-

"FURY!"

Jerry nearly fell onto his goddamn face when Ramsay called for him to come over. She never wanted anything to do with him (or anybody else that wasn't rearing and ready to become a gymnast, for that matter), so what she could have wanted now was beyond him. He gave a quick look off to the side, a pointing gesture self-targeted as if to say 'who, me?' in response. It wasn't quite the most unlikely thing the world, given that there were a couple of other kids with the same last name in Cochise (curiously, he was related to neither of them - his parents had no clue about the families). Unfortunately it was a hopeless notion because neither of them happened to be in this class. Yes, 'Queen Ramses' was talking to him.

Mooooooooootherfucker.

He slowed to a walk and plodded off in her direction, standing before her.

"Nurse wants you."

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTHERFUCKER.

Jerry grumbled and left the gymnasium without a further word, wondering if it was about those immunizations he was sure he could get away without. He coulda sworn he read somewhere that those things caused autism or some shit.

((Jerry Fury, ridin' a horse off into the sunset elsewhere))