Lore: When a Trickster Meets His Match

Chapter Four: Jealousy

Cressida was panting hard. Even though she was forcing all of the strength into the muscles in her legs, as a warmth that glowed around her as clearly as an aura, her arms and legs were covered in goosebumps from the heavy air conditioning. She was running on the treadmill. There was an uncooperative muscle in her shoulder, which was still tingling from her time at the biceps curl machine, but she didn't stop running. Her personal trainer, a retired operative named Alicja, was yelling at her in Polish to kick up the speed on the running. Gritting her teeth, Cressida pressed up the buttons on the treadmill. Calves screaming, she started to grunt as she ran at a higher incline.

"Więcej!" Alicja barked.

"I can't go more than this," Cressida panted.

Alicja crossed her arms over her chest and scowled, "Uch. Imagine those agents are trying to shoot you," She smiled fakely, "Does that help?"

It certainly did, though the telepath could only do ten more minutes before she dropped the incline lower and five minutes more than that until she gave up on the treadmill altogether. When offered a choice between going for fifteen minutes on the magnetic rowing machine or twenty minutes on the spin bike, she opted instead to head over to the juice bar. The kind worker smiled at her and complimented her on her good job, though he really thought that she looked redder than the beetroot juice that he slid to her across the counter. Ever polite, the man even offered her a few tips as she sat down at the juice bar. Overpoweringly ginger-flavoured, she thought about the drink as she slurped it down. With some cranberry juice too. With her work out towel over her shoulders, she tried not to shiver at the glacial temperature that the air conditioners were set to.

Perhaps it was the pastel pink exercise gear that she was wearing that made her seem like a total amateur to exercising. Even though she had gone through training at her father's school, there had been more of an emphasis on her honing in her mutant abilities - to be able to control minds and read thoughts - than cardio. Though there was a lot of practice that she did, mostly with Vision, to practise her preternatural abilities, Fury also insisted that her physicals were up-to-scratch before she was actually allowed on a field mission. Normally, Alicja was more calm and focused on the small improvements. Now, with only a few weeks before she would be out in the field, the Polish woman was pushing her like there was a fire under her tail. Though there was certainly more definition to her muscles and her abdominal muscles were tautening and defining, visible through the gap in her sports bra and the high waist-band of her shorts, her personal trainer was clearly leaving nothing to chance. From across the room, Alicja tapped on her Apple watch impatiently.

"Help," Cressida smiled to the juice bar attendant, "I think my personal trainer's trying to kill me."

The attendant laughed, "That is what they get paid for. Good luck!"

The Avengers Training Room was just like many of the other rooms in the compound: sleek, minimalist in design, and fitted with large glass windows that let in a fair amount of light to fill up the enormous structure. There was the slight purr of the air conditioning units that were almost drowned out by the upbeat 80s music (insisted upon by Tony Stark, who had compiled the workout playlist) that were repeated continually on loop through the speakers. The exercise room was cut into two floors, through the narrow stairways led into more of a 'viewing area' than another training room. They liked to call this part of the training room 'the Colosseum'. Exercise equipment was stacked along the one side of the room, along with rows of weights and dumbbells of various sizes. On the other side of the room was a space made for one-on-one training sessions: lined with an impact-absorbing foam material like a dojo, two heroes could face off against each other.

Cressida was busy doing stomach crunches on the AB bench. There weren't many other people in the training room, as it was one of many within the facility and this was the less popular one because it was so far from the bathrooms. There were about five to eight other operatives around the room using the equipment: some were running on the treadmills and staring out at the sprawling lawns of the compound; others were using the power racks or the elliptical machines. The only other person in the immediate team was Clint Barton, standing on the raised platform and shooting his arrows at targets scattered throughout the room. He hit each one with clinical precision. Cressida couldn't help but smile as she noticed the pictures of his children in his mind. Of a woman with caramel hair and a heart-shaped face. Pregnant wife. Laura.