Vigil VII: Strife Amidst the Clouds

[Rebonack]

[Training Grounds]

Footwork is hard when you have twice as many feet as you used to have.

But that isn't going to stop Pepper, no sir! She thought she was going to go crazy being locked in her room with all the Buttercup going on. But thankfully VIGIL caught wind of Intersection's Buttercup Name Integrator. Sure it wouldn't cure her (why would she want to stop being herself? Being her is the best!) but it DID make it so she wasn't a wandering seed any more! Which means she doesn't have to worry about Naming anyone (yay!) and she got to choose a nice place to root (also yay!) AND she got to drop the name Buttercup and got her own botanical signature (triple yay!)

She's certainly something of a sight. Honestly, all the gaiads are. A fantastically beautiful woman with reddish brown hair full of little white pepper flowers from the waste up, a reddish brown furred deer from the waste down with little greenish flowers dotting her fur. Big cervine ears. Hooves made of stone. And an almost infectious aura of bubbly cheer. Thankfully not LITERALLY infectious anymore. She saw to that! Most of that isn't visible at the moment, though. Mostly because she's wearing a two part gambeson that covers BOTH her human torso and her deer body. And on top of THAT she's wearing a suit of adamantine half-plate.

Rebonack's signature armor. Which makes sense. Pepper was Rebonack before she ran afoul of a friendly Buttercup.

The gaiad is currently wielding a ranseur, practicing her footwork (hoofwork?) as she circles a training dummy, occasionally making jabs at it with her polearm. Her form is quite good, but it is just as clear that she isn't wholly comfortable with her new body shape. The weight distribution is all different, and that means she needs more practice.

All this iron is just...

Blegh. Wearing the iron alloy armor, though. Feels gross. As does holding her weapon in spite of the heavy leather gloves.

But she doesn't want to give up her armor. No WAY would she do that. The suit of artifact armor has more than just sentimental value to her. It's one of the few links she has left to her old life before... everything else.

That and it's a pretty rockin' suit of armor.

Going through the spear drills is... relaxing. It helps clear her naturally bouncy, bubbly, fizzy mind. She needs her thoughts honed and focused if she's going to start going on missions for VIGIL again. Helping people is important to her. Righting wrongs. Dispensing righteous justice! Are people still going to respect her as an arbiter of goodness if she's distractable and air-headed? Definitely not! Practice those drills. Trot through those steps. Dance the dance of martial excellence rather than frivolous frolicking. She can do it. She knows she can. It'll just take persistence, discipline-

"-and STRENGTH!" Pepper shouts as she digs her hooves into the earth and slams her spear into the training dummy with all her might! The wooden stake it's mounted on snaps under the force of the blow, causing Pepper to stumble forward a few paces at the sudden shift in weight. The dummy thumps to the ground with the spear stuck in it up to the cross-guard. Ser Pepper giggles sheepishly. "Whoopsie dhoopsie! Maybe a little TOO much strength."