(open) i made a fist and not a plan

[hoody]

Date & Time: Starting Jan. 1st, but practically every morning (You can specify if timelines are important.)
Location: Near a forest on the city outskirts
Character(s): Annie Leonhardt, Eren Jaeger, and YOU?!
Summary: There's a short, slightly intimidating girl apparently training on the outskirts of town nearly every morning. Sometimes there's a kid with angry eyebrows training with her. Dare you approach? (Multiple prompts; one is closed, the rest are open!)
Warnings: Viol...ence? Will update if/when necessary.

A. (closed to eren)

She had been working off-and-on on the training space since they had returned back planetside. She had considered taking over a place indoors, but none of the buildings she found suited her, and she was far more used to working outside anyway. The cold was bothersome, of course, but there was nothing to be done about that. A few weeks later and it's mostly done—the snow of a loose circular area has been packed down to a floor, half of it bare with the other half hosting four make-shift 'punching bags.' In truth, they were each tall segments of a fallen pine tree that she had stripped the branches from and wrapped what looks like some kind of bedding. Hey, they're at the very least functional.

She'd left when the sun had started to rise, so now it's peeking over the treeline. The snow makes it brighter than normal; Annie narrows her eyes against the glare, though she's grateful for the warmth of the sunlight. It helps distract her from the temperature, buzzing on the surface of her skin. She shifts slightly, shoulders drawn up and hands stuffed in her pockets against the cold. She'd given the time and place to Eren, so all she has to do now is wait.

B. (open)

Off in the distance, in the aforementioned make-shift training area, you can see two figures fighting. They seem to be a messy-haired boy fighting a small blonde girl. Huh.

Well, from what you can see, either that boy is an utter trainwreck at fighting, or that girl is dynamite. Or both. He's just thrown a punch, which she dodged easily enough before throwing him bodily over her shoulder and onto the snow. Ouch, that had to hurt. Maybe you should approach and see what's going on?

C. (also open)

All the other mornings, there's just Annie training. When she doesn't have someone to beat up spar with, she's training on one of those make-shift punching bags. She's very quick on her feet, circling the target and striking with speed, strength, and efficiency. It's possible she doesn't notice your approach, especially if you do so from behind her; she tends to get a little absorbed in her training.

Comments

[hoody]

Armin. Yes, that made sense—he'd been here longer than any of them, of course. Annie certainly wouldn't have lost any sleep if he had happened to disappear as well, however, but she wasn't going to feel too bad about it either way. Just the three of them, though. That... would be an interesting dynamic. "I guess so."

She had run into the scouting commander very briefly during their arrival, but it seemed that he had been sent back home as well. Maybe they were needed more back home.

The direct question draws her from her well of thought. She's silent, formulating her answer. She prefers the anonymity of being able to live wherever she wanted, without people being fully aware of where she was, but if it was just the three of them... "Nearby. I found a vacant house." She glances over to Eren. "And you're with Armin?"

[counterattacked]

He answers with a quick and thoughtless nod. He's staying with Armin, of course he is. Eren is prone to running off on his own when the mood strikes him, (which is often, and often ill-advised,) but he also, in apparent contradiction, tries very hard to hold tight to what's important to him.

"Yeah. We've got a place to stay," Whatever else anyone thought of him, Levi did take his responsibilities as Captain seriously. He's also sort of scary when he wants to be, so he'd definitely been around long enough to make those arrangements. As long as they (read: Eren) don't do anything to get them kicked out in the meantime, it should do them for a while, as long as they can continue to earn the rent through odd jobs and the like. It's small, but it's warm, and it's dry. They've gotten by with far less. "It's not any worse than the barracks used to be, and we've got room for a few more people-"

Quieter and emptier than the barracks ever were. His mouth presses itself into a thin line. Even then, there are days when all this feels far more like being a refugee again than being a soldier. It's not a pleasant reminder or a pleasant set of memories. It's part of why he's so eager to get to work with her again. To remind himself he's not that person anymore.

"Anyway, you can keep sneaking off on your own if you want, but I can show you where it is."

Later. In case.

[hoody]

It was slightly better than how Annie had been faring, then. She had found a small house (house might be a bit of an overstatement—it was somewhere between a house and a shed, to be perfectly frank), abandoned, pretty far out on the outskirts of the city. It had no heat or power, so that might factor into why it was abandoned, but there was a well nearby and she'd managed to find blankets enough to keep warm at night (a higher body temperature helped as well). It wasn't comfortable, per se, but that was why she spent the majority of her time outside.

She starts to get slightly apprehensive when Eren goes on, mentioning that it would have enough room for more people. If there was one thing Annie did not want to get into, it was living with just Eren Jaeger and Armin Arlert. At least back in the barracks, she had had Bertholt and Reiner nearby, along with the buffer of all the other trainees of the 104th. With just the two of them, with Arlert examining every move she made...

At least, currently, it was just an offer to show her where it was, not a formal request to come and stay. If that happened, she would be in a... difficult spot. She could only play the lone wolf card for so long before things started to get a little bit suspicious.

"If you wanted," is what she settles on after a moment's thought. Later, of course. For now, she's looking at Eren in a way that is still Not Amused. "Do you want to train, or do you have any other pressing matters to speak about?"

[counterattacked]

It's not a formal request, but he watches her expectantly until she agrees. Come on, it makes more sense than her freezing her ass off all on her own. Besides, he's not entirely convinced that Annie is as disinclined to company as she likes people to think she is. (She hangs out with him, after all.)

It seems to satisfy him, though. And he actually takes a moment to think about his answer to her question, tilting his head and frowning seriously at Annie when she asks him if there's anything else on his mind. Because Eren's always got something on his mind. Worrying at whats and wheres and whys like a dog with a bone. In the end, he decides against taking the invitation, shrugging out of his green Scouting cloak, leaving it hanging on a stunted pine on the edge of the the treeline. Because of all the things that are weighing on him, at least this one he knows how to tackle. He could use the focus.

"Yeah," he answers, sharp and eager. "Let's do it," That's why he's here, isn't it? He'd asked her to help him out again for a reason. No sense in putting it off any longer.

[hoody]

Eren, she wasn't particularly worried about. If they were able to spar (which was, presently, yet to be seen) without the gears finally clicking in his head and him snarling at her about being the "Female Titan" (oh, how she loathed that particular moniker), she would be fine. Armin was much more difficult. His acuity had always surprised her, enough to where she had long ago made a note of it.

This would have to be something she dealt with later, however. She would love to put off moving in with the two of them as long as possible, even if it meant staying out in that glorified shed she'd been crashing in for the last week or two.

She had honestly meant the question about him having anything else to talk about as a joke—the two of them had never been all that much for deep conversations, unless they were Annie breaking his illusions about the structure of the world just as quickly as she could break his fighting stance. Once he takes his time to think it over, however, they finally arrive at the real reason why they were out here in the first place: him resuming his lessons in Annie's School of Hard Knocks.

"Alright." Short and sweet. She walks over to one side of the area that she had cleared for their make-shift ring, waiting for Eren to set up across from her before she lifts her fists to either side of her face. As much as she tries to ignore it, there's a tenseness in her shoulders as she waits for him to make his first move: mostly because she's still afraid that it still might finally click for him, and that every interaction she had in this strange new world would suddenly get a whole lot more difficult.

[counterattacked]

Annie's sense of humor is always hit or miss with him. Too deadpan and too weird for him to catch on to all the time. The thing about Eren is that he takes everything very seriously. It doesn't always make for the most fun person to be around. But then, Annie isn't all that much fun most of the time either.

He hadn't explicitly told her why he's so intent on resuming their training. But it's not unreasonable that she might suspect. 3DMG is specialized, made for quick clean cuts and precise movement over wide spaces. A control of the body while hurtling through the air. He can't rely on that when he's shifted. He needs a different kind of control. Hand to hand won't necessarily help him control his titan form, it won't stop him from falling into a rage. But the harder he hammers it into himself, the more it will become reflex.

He's not angry right now. Not to say that he's perfectly at peace—he never is, not really, not anymore—it's more like an equilibrium. A resting state. Made up of taut muscle and compressed energy and simmering frustration. A bright and contrasting thread of eagerness running through it. He bounces briefly on the balls of his feet as Annie falls into her stance. Whatever else had happened, between now and the invasion of Trost, he'd missed this part of their training together.

He can't replicate the circumstances in the woods. He doesn't even want to. He just needs to make sure that the next time it happens, he doesn't lose.

He knows Annie's waiting for him to make the first move. And he obliges, raising his fists into her stance, a mirror image for the scant seconds before he closes the distance and aims for her jaw.