Legend: Underscores indicate italics

Lessons of the Body
A Vandread Fanfic by Ender

Disclaimer: Vandread owned by Gonzo, and responsible for a substantial amount of income. This story owned by me and responsible for no income whatsoever. This story takes place after the Eighth episode of the First Stage, so SPOILER WARNING up till that point of the series. 

===[VANDREAD]===

     You are too late...
     You know that before your mind has even fully assesed the situation. A crowd has gathered near the entrance to the hangar, and you push your way through - even the smallest of them seem to weigh twice your own weight and you find yourself almost out of breath before you make enough headway to get a clear view of what is happening. Finally you are past the crowd, and you stare at the scene as if for the first time, although you already know what you are about to see.
Dita is standing near the Vanguard, screaming at the tall intruder. The alien pays her no mind, his attention focused on the young boy whose head he is ramming repeatedly into the steel floor.
     You are too late...
     There is no time for emotion, even for thought. Your intensive training has prepared you for every situation, and instinctively you find yourself running towards higher ground, seeking a better tactical position from which to turn the tide. But your body seems sluggish, unresponsive to your commands... Your steps, heavy, as if your imminent failure had reached into the past to weigh you down.
     You are too late...
     You've barely reached one of the Dread lock-down platforms when you hear the intruder screaming: "I'll kill you! I'll kill you!" An unfamiliar feeling of panic begins to build up in the back of your mind - something is wrong. This wasn't how things were supposed to happen - when the man had begun to rant, you had already reached the top of the platform, mere seconds away from getting a clear shot. Yet now you have only just reached it, and your hands can find no purchase, and you find yourself slipping, sliding... All the while listening to the intruder screaming his threats louder and louder...
     You are too late...
     And the moment you reach the top, you hear a loud crack, and Dita lets our an inarticulate cry. You rush forward, your ring pushing forward blindly, and stare over the edge. What you see is strangely familiar, the intruder staring at the increasingly hostile crowd, Dita cradling the body of the young boy... All is as it should be.
     And yet...
     Why is Dita wailing so loudly, tears streaming freely down her cheeks? Why is that man smiling, fearless in the face of his captors? Why is ...
     Why is Hibiki's head at such an odd angle, his eyes rolled back as if... as if...
     You are...
     ...too...
     ...late...
     "No!"
You jerk up then, and almost fall when your body realizes that it had been lying down not standing up, that you are not in the hangar but within the spartan walls of your own quarters. With a significant amount of effort you regain control over your ragged breathing, your groggy eyes finding the digital display of the time piece.
     0300 hours...
     You let out a frustrated breath and lie back on your bunk, your mind returning to the events of your dream. And you find yourself muttering...
     "Why you?"

===[VANDREAD]===

     Despite all the changes that had occurred on the Pirate's mothership when it had undergone its transformation into the Nirvana, there were a few places which had been left virtually untouched. To the relief of one Meia Gisborn, the ship's gymnasium had been one of these places. Not that the Squadron Leader would have ever shown that relief - the girl had always held emotions to be unnecessary distractions, and displays of emotion even more so. Still, for a girl who had spent most of her adolescence without a real home, the pirate ship had been a welcome refuge, and she would have been ill at ease to have all traces of it swept away. This was especially true of the gym - it was the place that Meia had always gone to when she wished to relax, unlike most of the other women who preferred the jagujii parlors. 
     And right now, the blue haired young woman decided that she needed to let off some steam.
     It had to have been Robert - there was something about the events that had occurred when they had let that swindler unto the ship that continued to bother Meia. Although almost a week had passed since he had escaped them, the girl still found herself feeling anxious - and for the life of her, she couldn't figure out why. Certainly a part of it stemmed from the fact that she was certain they would meet up with Robert again - that man was dangerous, of this she had no doubt. But there was something more that was bothering her and she just couldn't place it. It was extremely frustrating - the only thing worse than useless sentiment was sentiment which emerged without any tangible cause. For a week she had been puzzling over the situation, to no avail, and in the meantime the feeling was growing worse. The dream that morning had been the final straw...
     It was time to work all that emotion out of her system.
     Having been awakened so early, she had decided to get an early start on her daily workout. Meia normally spent an hour on the machines after a few minutes of warm-ups, but she tended to avoid the more high impact workouts. The nature of their current enemy necessitated more time being spent practicing with the Dreads than without them, and that had entailed a shift in her priorities. Today however she had both the time and the motivation to work up a good sweat - a few rounds with a tangible, yet imaginary foe would go a long way in aleiviating her frustration with her real, yet invisible one. 
     Meia moved lithely towards the row of punching bags towards the farside of the gym, ignoring the more sophisticated physical training simulators which she passed along the way. During her early days on the ship, the hand-to-hand combat simulators had proven to be an interesting diversion, but she had soon come to realize the limits of the artificial intelligence units which the machines made use of. For someone who had been in as many fights as she, they posed little challenge. Even at the highest difficulty level, Meia found her computer opponents movements to be easily predictable after a dozen or so battles, and once she found a pattern that led to a sure-fire victory, all pretense of both utility and amusement were removed from the exercise. Far better the honest sweat gained from a simple workout than a battle with something than merely pretended to be intelligent...
     She chose a bag at random and immediately fell into a ready position. She began with a few straight jabs at the bag, alternating her fists, then lashed out with a few kicks that sent the bag swinging, but not dangerously so. After a few more trial runs, she judged the bag to be stable enough to withstand her routine (there had been an embarrassing incident once with Barnette and a dislodged punching bag and Meia was anxious not to have a repeat performance). It was then that the work out begun in earnest. What followed were a flurry of punches and kicks, elbows and knees which might have appeared spontaneous and random to a casual observer, but which in reality were expressions of several tried and tested methods to bring an opponent to their knees. A chop to the neck, a knee to the groin, a two punch combination followed by a quick kick to the midsection... Slowly as the girl worked herself into a rhythm, her breaths came in short ragged gasps and the gym, the outside world faded from view. All that Meia had room for in her mind were her self and her silent opponent - for the bag was no longer an inanimate 'thing' but a human foe, one with arms and legs, neck and torso and a leering, hateful face...
     It was her realization of just whose face she had projected unto her opponent that she blinked, and fell out of her trance-like state to find herself, alone and panting with exhaustion, facing a rather dilapidated looking punching bag which looked much the worse for her attentions. 
     It was actually a common occurrence for the girl - often, when she achieved a particular level of intensity in her mock duels, she would find herself reliving one of the all too real battles she had been forced to fight as a child, out on her own with no family or resources to shield her from the innate cruelty of woman. Usually she'd find herself facing a particularly hated foe, one whom she had barely defeated or one who had caused her an intense amount of pain - but always these were people she had faced herself, faced and defeated, and that had always been a comfort to Meia on some level... Which was why the face she had seen on her imaginary opponent had disturbed her enough to bring her back to the present, for _he_ was definitely not someone she had faced off against before.
     The face she had seen had been Robert's.
     Meia mulled over that fact as she entered the locker room to grab a glass of water before she continued her exertions. It was strange that she should feel anything towards the man except a mild distaste - she had not been personally wronged by any of his actions. Since she had no interest in his wares, Meia had not been in the swindler's presence for much of his brief period at the Nirvana - aside from their brief confrontations aboard the Mission and again at the Hangar, she had had little to no interaction with him whatsoever. And yet... she had felt a genuine feeling off rage during her mock battle - almost akin to the cold hatred she had believed long gone from her system. It had been him she had been fighting in her head since she began her exercise - she knew that now, and the intensity of her dislike towards the man surprised and unsettled her. Yes, he had hurt Hibiki badly, assaulted Dita and made a fool out of them all when he had escaped their wrath afterwards... But there was something more to this and no matter how hard she tried she just couldn't figure it out.
   Suppressing a sigh of consternation, Meia was about to return to the gym when she heard the sharp cracks of flesh meeting cloth again and again and again...
     Meia checked her watch - it was barely past 0400 hours... It seemed as if someone else was having trouble sleeping today...
     The young woman didn't know whether it was because Robert was still in her thoughts, but she found herself moving silently, not wishing to reveal her presence. She crouched behind the cover of the machines, careful to keep some sort of obstruction between her and the estimated location of the other. Not that this proved particularly difficult - from the grunts, curses and shouted battlecries, the other seemed much too engrossed in the 'battle' to take any notice of the surroundings. The various cries emanating from the center of the gym also gave Meia a clear picture of just who it was she was sharing the gym with at this early part of the day. When she was certain that she was positioned towards his back, Meia drew herself up to her full height and turned, curious to see what Hibiki Tokai was doing up at such an ungodly hour.
     A week after his beating at the hands of Robert, Hibiki still had not completely recovered from his wounds - or at least that was Duego's diagnosis. Hibiki himself had proclaimed himself fit and ready for action the day after the incident, and when an enemy formation had attacked the previous day, had insisted that he be allowed to sortie out along with the rest of them. Gascogne finally had to resort to telling Parfait to cripple his 'partner' if he so much as made a move towards it, and that was only then that he surrendered - or at least he appeared to. The fact that he was awake at this hour, apparently pushing himself beyond even his 'healthy' limits, was a testament to his stubborness - one thing at least, which she had learned to see that they had in common.
     It was this similarity perhaps, which transformed the scene before he from the comical to the serious. Indeed, one might be tempted to say Hibiki looked ridiculous, a boy covered with bruises and trailing bandages, launching a haphazard assault on an inanimate object. Comical perhaps, if Meia had not known how desperately sincere he was in his attempts. She knew that he was seeing the same face which she had seen, on her imaginary opponent. She remembered how he had been, immediately after his defeat, the cocky man-child who had seemed to her to be so full of reckless confidence a few moments before... and suddenly she found herself reliving the past, standing atop the balcony, her back turned to the dejected boy a few floors below... 

     _"When I stand on my own stage," he was saying, his voice free of the bluster she was so used to hearing from him, "whose dialogue will I be reciting? I can't wait for that moment, but somehow... I feel scared. I feel cold. However I think about it, it always seems to end up a comedy."
     Meia had replied quickly, the words coming easy to her, easier than when she tried to reach out to her own squad mates. There was something familiar in his words... And something within her had instinctively known how to respond.
     "However lousy that dialogue is... if its a cry from the heart with no hint of falsity... nobody will laugh at it. At least, I won't."_

      Meia shook herself, rather surprised to have become so completely lost in her thoughts. It was entirely unlike her to lose herself in the past - it was a habit she had had to causterize from her system during those first, terrible days on the street... days when the thought of all that she had been - and all that she had lost - had threatened to overwhelm her. She had fought hard to gain control, the control necessary to keep herself from looking back, to concentrate on the always-bleak present, to concentrate on survival. She needed that control, and to feel it lapse, even for just a moment, was unnerving. Especially when she thought of who it was who seemed to be causing such lapses...
     She found herself watching Hibiki and his exertions with an increasing annoyance. Who was this _man_ anyway, that he should have any effect on her whatsoever? The men, particularly the doctor, had an unwelcome tendency to get under her skin, and this was even more true of the Vanguard Pilot before her. Being forced into reacting to another was a sign of weakness in Meia's book... And weakness was not to be tolerated. 
     It was with this frame of mind that she began to see the painfully obvious flaws in the boy's form, in the way he threw a punch, or a kick, in the way he always over-extended after a blow. In that instant, she lost sight of the effort, and saw only the mistakes...
     "You'll never beat him that way," she said curtly as Hibiki hurled a blind haymaker that missed the swaying bag. He spun around, his eyes widening in surprise when he saw her, then narrowing in anger as he considered her words. The boy had never been one to let a criticism slide...
     "Who asked _you_, woman? What are you doing here anyway?" he asked, seemingly forgetting that while he had been aboard the ship a scant few months, she had lived and trained there for years.
     "If you're going to try to improve your skills," she responded tartly, her annoyance seeping into her voice despite her efforts to contain it. "You should be willing to accept advice from those better than you. Otherwise, why bother?"
     Reacting to her tone as much as her choice of words, the boy turned his back on her. "Leave me alone," he said, then almost as an aside. "What would a stuck-up woman like _you_ know about fighting? You've probably never been in a real fist fight in your life."
     Perhaps it was lack of sleep; Perhaps it was his use of the phrase 'stuck-up' - a common insult hurled at her in her youth that still carried its sting; Perhaps she blamed him for her unease during the past week, or even for her dream that morning... Whatever the reason, Meia found herself seething with anger at this _man_ who thought he knew what her life had been like and pass judgement upon it. Without thinking she grabbed him by the back of his shirt, whirled him around and pushed him so hard against the punching bag that the impact sent it flying backward a good three feet.
     As soon as he recovered his breath Hibiki glared at her, his eyes fiery beneath the slowly healing cuts and bruises. "What the hell was that for you idiot?!? I'm not in the mood to play games!"
     In response Meia merely pulled her hands up into a fighting position. "Didn't you come here to fight? Why don't you let me show you how much a woman knows about fighting..."
     His only reply was a wordless shout as he threw himself at her, and then the fight begun. 
     As far as Meia's experience went, it wasn't much of a contest - or at least it shouldn't have been. Hibiki was physically smaller than Meia, with neither the experience nor training to even be in the same league as the blue haired girl. Meia had been in more fights than she could count - and most of those had been a matter of life or death, and she knew almost every trick in the book, clean and dirty both. The first few minutes of the fight merely involved Meia using his own strength against him, drawing on his momentum to pull him into a well placed knee or elbow or throw which would send the boy sprawling unto the floor. But what Hibiki lacked in skill he made up for intensity, and a stubborn refusal to submit to pain. After every collapse he bounced back, attacking harder than ever, never flinching or hesitating no matter how much pain he was dealt by Meia's blows.
     Finally Meia ended a series of lightning quick blows with a quick knee to the boy's stomach, expecting the boy to go limp as the wind was knocked out of his lungs. Instead, the boy managed to arch his back and snap his head backwards, his skull crashing into Meia's jaw and sending her reeling. Hibiki was quick to capitalize on the opportunity, managing to get a few hard hits in before Meia could recover. In rage the blue haired girl lashed back, spinning away from his punches to snap a kick which caught the boy full in his face. She followed this up with a punch to the flank and then a vicious backhand which sent the Vanguard pilot crashing against a nearby wall. For a moment the boy stood, bracing himself against the wall for support, then he slowly slid to the ground, leaving a smear of blood behind him, to lie like a crumpled piece of paper on the cold floor of the gym.
     Meia felt her face spilt into a familiar, predatory grin. Victory was close now... All she had to do was lash out with one, expertly aimed kick and she could snap his neck and it would all be over... All be...
And suddenly she was back in her dream, staring at Hibiki's prone form, his neck twisted groutesquely, his eyes blank and dead...
     _What was she doing?_
     Meia found herself retreating from the boy, one step, then another, until her back was against one of the weight machines. She leaned against its frame for support, her breath coming in quick, ragged gasps. This couldn't be happening... She had thought that part of her was long dead and buried, left behind in the slums and dives of the capital city, amongst the bodies of those who had tried to hurt her. And yet just now she had been ready to kill Hibiki - eager in fact. As she gazed at his inert, unmoving form, she could only hope that she had been able to stop herself before she succeeded...
     _What... What have I done?_
     But then Hibiki moved, and Meia was no longer staring at her greatest sin. Instead she was staring at a boy, injured almost beyond enduring, tired and totally out of his league, as he struggled to get to his feet, struggled to give the battle one more try. She wondered how he did it - wondered why he did it. And then she wasn't just looking at Hibiki, but a young girl, younger even than him, with blue hair and her mother's precious ornament wrapped around her temple like an ugly bruise. Meia watched with a peculiar kind of double vision as both of them tried to stand, failed, then tried again, each time getting closer until they were standing, one amidst the weight machines of a gymnasium, the other amongst the trash and rubble which she had needed to fight for to make her own...
     Meia couldn't help it, she turned her back on the scene, on the two youths who were not young, who were different and yet oddly the same. She did so partly because she could not bear to see it, and partly to hide the stinging moisture which was building up within her eyes.
     Apologize... She would make amends some other time. But right now she knew she had to leave. But before she had taken three steps she heard his voice behind her, harsh from the pain he must be feeling.
    "Wait."
     She stopped. She could hardly go against any request after what she had just done - but she would not continue the battle.
     "I'm going to call the Doctor," she said, softly, trying not to think about how she would explain what happened. Not that there was any doubt - she would tell the truth and take responsibility for her actions - but that didn't mean she wished to dwell on it. "Surely you can't expect to continue this...You can't beat me." As the words left her mouth she cursed silently - she should know better than to hurt his pride. She hoped he didn't take it as a challenge.
     To her surprise, Hibiki let out what sounded like a snort of amusement. "No... Not yet at least," he replied. He seemed to register the surprise on her face for he continued, "I'm not blind - it's obvious you fight as well as you fly." The indirect compliment only served to heighten her surprise.
     "What I mean is..." Hibiki continued, sounding awkward and unsure. "It's like... I mean, you fight really well and I was wondering... I can learn from you, from the way you fight. Not like you have to teach me or anything," the boy was quick to qualify. "You're not all _that_ good, but what I mean is, if we could fight now and then, and you could sort of throw me a hint - well what I'm saying is that I'd get better and that would be a good thing. For both of us," he added quickly, as if to say that there was something in it for her as well. 
     Meia just blinked in surprise. It took her a few seconds to recover her wits enough to respond. "After what you just went through... you want me to be your _trainer_?"
     "Don't get any ideas," Hibiki warned, "That doesn't mean you can start making a habit out of telling me what to do, but you could give me tips here and there - little things you know."
     "Hibiki, I almost- " she began, and then she stopped. He didn't know. He wasn't angry at her, or scared of her... It was like nothing had changed. He didn't know how close she'd come to really hurting him, maybe even killing him. The relief that revelation brought her was so great that it surprised her. She stared at his face, his eyes shifting nervously around as if worried that someone would see him asking help from a woman. A 'totally open idiot', that was what the Boss had called Hibiki once. She had then gone on to say that he and Meia were more alike than they seemed. It looked as if the Boss had been right on both counts, as she usually was.
     "Hibiki..." she began, then stopped. She wanted to apologize, to make it up to him, but she just couldn't find the words. Maybe some other time... Certainly some other time. But not today. She'd have to settle for doing something else for him. "I'm not going to go easy on you," she warned.
     "Do I look like I _want_ you to go easy on me?" he asked, looking insulted. "I can take anything that you've got!"
     "For how long?" she asked, and his answer was exactly what she expected.
     "Until I can beat him."
     "And when will that be?" she asked him.
     At her words he smiled, and for a second their gazes met, and Meia felt that she understood him then - and understood herself as well. "When I can fight you without you having to hold back."
     Maybe she was wrong. Maybe he knew after all how close she had come... But it didn't seem to matter to him. She knew she had his respect, and he knew that he had hers. Men learned many things through the body... But so did she. So did she.
     "Come on," she said, moving close to him but not offering her hand. "I think we have to bring you to the Doctor..."
     "As long as he keeps his hands to himself," Hibiki muttered.
And with that they moved towards the exit, not noticing the little head which popped out from behind a nearby locker - a head, a frog and a camera...
     "Pai check!"