Take a Look at My Body, A Look at My Hands [Open]

[celebrityskinned]

Who| Venus and Open
What| Venus in the training center
Where| Training Center
When| Immediately after her arrival
Warnings/Notes| None. Venus has just woken up in a human body. I'd really rather Venus not know about the resurrections yet.

Venus has been paid in cash. She's been paid in cruises, she's been paid in designer shoes and take-home samples straight from the music video, and at one point some schmuck who booked her tried to pay her in promises to hook her up with a 'guy' who had 'lots of connections' and 'knew Puff Daddy', as if she needed or even wanted that. But no one's ever paid her in her own body before.

The first thing she does is strip down in front of the mirror and examine herself. When she exploded, she was a child. She's grown since then, grew up, but the body is fitted just right for her. There's even a birthmark that she remembers from her childhood, a blotch on her ankle, a little scar on her knee from when she fell off her bike. Her body gets goosebumps in the chill of the room and joints pop and the blood rushes from her head when she gets up too fast, and it's still perfect. She's perfect.

She gets clothes on and flips through her map, deciding to explore the place she's living first. She runs down the stairs in bare feet and finds herself in the massive training room where she was scored in. A trampoline and a balance beam and a rope ladder all call to her. Before she goes and explores the city, she wants to try this human body out.

She does flips and somersaults and handstands. She traipses down the balance beam and easily scales the rope ladder. She boxes against the dummies and rolls around on the floor and grabs a sword and fences imaginary foes with it.

At one point her knuckles start to bleed from the boxing. She puts her hand to her mouth and tastes blood, blood and sweat, and it's marvelous because it means that she's well and truly alive. Not a bunch of unhappy molecules but a flesh and bone human being, with hair and skin and snot and spit and coppery, sticky blood.

She laughs, almost hysterically, and it's like a jar full of butterflies being opened from her mouth. The sound echoes throughout the training center, interspersed by her grunts and gasps of exertion as she tumbles and flips across the floor.

Comments

[bangbangkerpooow]

He doesn't know what it is. It's the enthusiasm, maybe, the simple fact that she laughs when she fights and that when she fights, she fights so damn hard. It could be because the meal he just had, steak fries and a burgar with blue cheese, was just about his favorite thing ever, and when he's in a good mood, he sooometimes goes a little easy on things he maybe shouldn't go so easy on. Either way, when Billy sees Venus, he doesn't drawl his usual condescending hello. Instead, he applauds, his legs dangling from his place atop one of the elevated platforms.

When a whole crowd of people applaud, it's like an avalanche. When one person applauds, it's like pebbles tumbling off the edge of a cliff.

Poetic, he thinks. But boring.

"Hey," he says. "Nice moves, killer."

[celebrityskinned]

To Venus, the sole clap is lonely, too. It's possibly even a taunt, when her ears are so much more used to roaring crowds and clamoring fans and paparazzi. A single clap is something you hear at a dance recital for little girls who still think they can grow up to be ballerinas.

But it's still better than no applause at all, so she turns to Billy with a big smile on her face. A little trickle of sweat works down her cheek. "Thanks! I wasn't really busting out the real stuff. I'm saving it for when my bacon is on the line, you know?"

She stands just so, the curve of her hip jutting in a way that straddles sassy and come-hither. It's a pose she's been told to take by all the people who advise her before she hits the cameras; at this point, it's habit.

[bangbangkerpooow]

"I'll bet," he says with raised eyebrows and raised lips, the back of his bright red shoes scratch-scratching the platform as he idly swings his feet. Billy isn't an expert -- at least not from any analytical standpoint -- but he knows stage presence when he sees it.

"Looks like somebody already trained you."

[celebrityskinned]

Venus notices the shoes. They're the same bright, artificial red she used to be, and she has to admit that it certainly helped her stand out. Now she just has to rely on her natural charisma, and she hasn't actually had to think about that for years.

"Well, you know. Combat training, interview prep, been getting camera-ready long enough. Think they'll like me, Mr...?"

Right, she's bad at asking for names, even from people who don't look like they know what they're talking about. What's Billy, she thinks, a producer, an agent? He doesn't really look like a star.

She's used to being introduced. It makes her pout slightly.