With a Partner

Part 4

 Waverly Earp was still dancing on the main gymnasium floor when Nicole was getting her things together to leave for the night. Her last class had left at 7:15 and the other teachers had left shortly thereafter. She had volunteered to stay and finish clean-up. The gymnasts had all gone home as well by the time she finished. As soon as they were gone, Nicole heard the bass emitting from the other side of the building.

Nicole was fond of sticking around to watch Waverly do her thing. She wasn't comfortable with leaving a young woman alone in the building like this either, no matter how many times Waverly said she had been doing this for the past couple of years with no problems. The gym wasn't in a good part of their town. While Nicole was also technically a young woman, she was also a martial artist and confident in her abilities to handle herself in combat. She was less sure of Waverly's. It made for a solid excuse to wait around and watch until she was sure Waverly was safe in her car.

Nicole changed into regular clothes, re-tied her hair up into a ponytail, and went to find a spot on a mat to hang out and watch. Waverly had told her more than once that she didn't mind the audience of one, but Nicole still waved shyly when she was noticed. Nicole watched as Waverly spun a full 360* and kicked straight up in time with the music's crashing drum beats, as though she were fighting an invisible opponent. She thought it was beautiful, though not a very accurate representation of a real fight. When she discarded that thought, Nicole enjoyed watching the dance a lot.

The music came to a close with a singular resounding note as Waverly rose up victorious. She ran over to hit pause before joining Nicole.

"What did you think?" she asked her observer, eyes hopeful. Nicole was always astonished that Waverly would care about what she thought. It wasn't as though she knew anything about the art beyond her capability to appreciate it.

"It was beautiful!" Nicole replied automatically. Waverly didn't usually ask for her input, so she tried to avoid letting her surprise show through. "There was great energy to it and I particularly enjoyed the fighting aspects once I made myself stop looking at it with my teacher-mode brain."

"Oh, but I don't want you to turn off that part! I want you to help me make it look more realistic." Waverly said. "I don't know a thing about fighting, so I thought I could take advantage of your experience since you insist on being here anyway."

"Really? You know I know next to nothing about dancing. Using actual techniques might take some of the 'pretty' out of it. We don't point our toes." Nicole warned her, though the idea did sound more fun the longer she thought about it.

"I'll modify what I need to, to make it fit into this context. I've been kicking this idea around for a while, and with your help, it actually just might work." Waverly's grin was growing more and more wicked with her excitement. Nicole smiled back.

"Alright, I guess I'm in." she replied, knowing she never could have said no anyway.

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"In Tae Kwon Do at least, after a punch or a kick, we return our fists, palms facing up to our sides. If in the dance, whatever technique you use is a counter, try to be sure that the viewer can at least guess what happened to provoke your movement. From what I can tell, you want us to have a mental image of your opponent, right?" Nicole said in a rare case of word vomit after watching the routine through once more. She found herself anxious as to how Waverly would take what she had to say. Nicole despised the idea of somehow making the other girl mad at her. She watched Waverly's face carefully.

"That's exactly what I meant to do!" Waverly perked up a bit and repeated the motion Nicole had demonstrated to her, contemplating where, how, and if it would fit into this dance.

"Can you go through it again, without music, and tell me what it is you were reacting to?" Nicole asked. Waverly turned thoughtful and beckoned to the taller girl to follow her out onto the floor.

Performing the routine with a partner who wasn't also dancing seemed more than a bit ridiculous. Nicole found herself having much more fun than she expected. She followed Waverly's lead and did her best to interject when she felt it was absolutely necessary. They ran through the piece twice more like that before Nicole watched it with Waverly alone and tried to 'see' her parts in the ghost images. It looked a lot cleaner if she were to say so herself.

Nicole videoed the final run-through for Waverly and only then realized that they had worked until 9:30 that night. She watched Waverly watch the video and laughed quietly to herself. Working together easily, they closed the building down before Nicole walked the other girl to her car and said goodbye. She fell into bed that night extremely pleased with the way the day had gone and dreamed of dance-fighting. Jumanji style.