The Serpent Queen

Counterbalance | Part One

Phoebe groaned as her iPhone alarm went off on a Saturday morning. Running her fingers through her hair to move it away from her face, she groggily reached over to her bedside table where her phone sat charging. She turned the alarm off. She took a few seconds to adjust to her consciousness by stretching. In the back of her mind, she couldn't believe that Halloween was over and Christmas was vastly approaching though November had started not too long ago.

The girl paused and pressed her ear to the wall, she could hear Miguel's muffled alarm go off in his bedroom. The head boards of their beds sat against the same wall, just opposite sides of it.

Now since she was officially allowed to train with Miguel and Johnny, she flung the covers away from her body and took her phone from the charger. Walking bare foot over to her vanity table, she found a set of headphones and she plugged them into her phone. She went into her music playlists and picked on, putting it on shuffle. Phoebe and Miguel had decided to team up and do their training in the morning at the exact same time and if the other didn't hear an alarm, they would start pounding on the wall to wake them up.

The girl put the headphones on her head and began to do push ups on her knuckles to the beat of Eye of the Tiger.

While in his bedroom on the opposite side of the wall, Miguel began his push ups to World of Fire by Slash.

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Two hours later, the students were still doing knuckle push-ups, except this time they were doing them on the mats in the dojo. The friends each had an ear bud in one ear from Miguel's earphones.

Johnny walked around them, nodding in approval. His students were getting stronger. "Phoebe. Get up. Put these on."

The female student jumped up and took the black forearm and shin guards and strapped them to her body. She walked over to her Sensei, only noticing a machine to pitch baseballs near Miguel. The two were that focused that they didn't even notice that their teacher had brought the machine into the dojo.

Johnny stood behind the girl, "Ready?"

"Yes, Sensei."

Sensei Lawrence clicked a button on a small remote in his hand. Just then, a solid white baseball was fired out from the machine. It flew straight at Phoebe's face.

The blonde quickly rose her padded forearm and blocked the baseball. Her face showed surprise that she managed to blocked it. She looked to Johnny, excitedly. Even Miguel smiled at Phoebe's little win as he turned his head to watch.

Johnny hit the button on the remote again. Phoebe quickly turned and saw the ball already coming at her. She tried to block it with her forearm again, however she was too slow and it hit her hand. "Ow!"

The Sensei shook his head. "That was a start, Phoebe. Back to push-ups. Right, Miguel. Your turn."

Phoebe went back over to the mat where she had also left her phone. She smiled at the screen as a certain someone had text her. The assumption that girl's smiled at their phone because of a boy, was correct this time.

*How's karate going?*

*It's exhausting. I'm free Wednesday night if you want to go on our not a date thing :)* She texted Eli back.

He replied seconds later, *Sure. I've thought of a good place. Hope you like it :)*

*I'm sure I will. 7?*

*7 it is*

"Phoebe. Stop staring at your phone with that dopey smile on your face and do some push-ups!" Johnny yelled.