Edgehaven Yard

[Eleri Mortymer]

Eleri shot Wright a smile that said she understood exactly what he meant. "Right you are, sir." She ignored Eliza's question - apart from anything else, she didn't fancy having her musical tastes picked apart by someone who probably changed her mind about her favourite band at least once a week.

"A bleep test," she explained, grabbing a small CD player and leading the girl to the large courtyard that would double as a training area, "is a simple way to gague your lung capacity, speed and generally how fit you are. This CD," she said, waving it at Eliza, "will play a series of loud bleeps which will get closer together as it goes on. In a moment, I'll set up two markers, one at each end of the courtyard. The idea is that you run from one marker to the other between the sounds until they're too close together for you to keep up."

The concept was so simple, a child could have understood it. However, Eleri wasn't about to underestimate Eliza's dimness and she braced herself for the almost inevitable questions.

[Hadrian Beaumont]

Hadrian sighed as he made his way into the station, "Morning Captain," he greeted as he peeled his jacket off and hang it up. It was amazing what a home cooked meal, a bath and sleeping in a freshly made bad could do for your mental well being, he wasn't looking forward to the reports or the paperwork and even less to the Forensic investigation of the Vampire Den but any information they could gather was important.

Flicking his computer on he went to go and make himself a mug of tea while it was booting up, "You want something to drink?" he asked his SO, taking note that the kettle had been recently boiled and decided that Eleri or Myra had beaten him into the Yard again. "Oh yeah, Mum said she'd drop by around lunch time, said something about you being too thin," he called through, trying not to laugh at the Captain's expense as he rummaged in the fridge for some milk.

[Eliza Flowers]

Elzia paused while she mentally went over what Eleri had said, and managed to slot it into her own understanding, for a bright change, rather succesfully.

"Oh, like, that's easy!" Eliza beamed. This was because Eleri had made one simple mistake. She hadn't mentioned that Eliza was supposed to, in any way at all, succeed. Eliza knew that she was unfit, because exercise got in the way of cartoons, and she couldn't see how getting sweaty and tired was in any way cute or girly anyway. If all Eleri wanted to do was measure how fit she was, that was simple! As long as she didn't want Eliza to, like, improve or anything, it should be easy! She didn't see why she had to change out of her uniform for that...

[Nicholas Wright]

Wright was just about to welcome Hadrian when he delivered the news about a visit from his mum. Wright's face went pale for a moment and his mouth hung open in horror, before he quickly grabbed the top sheet off the nearby paperwork he had been pretending to do earlier and managed to resume his usual look. An idea had come just in time.

"Oh. Oh no. Look at that. I have to be somewhere at lunch time. Very important. Policeman meeting. Uhh, captains only." He deadpanned, hoping that he'd made it clear he wouldn't like any further questions on this meeting from Hadrian, especially not along the lines of 'why do you only ever have one of those when my mother is visiting?'.

He held up his cup in answer to Hadrian's drink enquiry, and hoped that he didn't look too relieved that, in truth, Hadrian was holding up pretty well. He supposed that would happen. It felt like months since the atrocities of the previous day, and it was nice to be able to move on.

"Sergeant Mortymer has taken Lance Constable Flowers out for training." Wright added. "If you want a laug- Uhh, I mean, to help." He offered, thinking that a light and amusing day might help Hadrian relax. "You can sent Constable Kane out that way too if you see her before me. Although something tells me she won't need it, maybe some competitive spirit will make Flowers stop being so damn....flowery." It wasn't the perfect word, but with her surname, it seemed to fit.

[Hadrian Beaumont]

Hearing the very weak excuse the man gave, Hadrian snorted in amusement, perhaps he was just being mean but he could have sworn his mother said today at lunch time, or was it tomorrow? Ah well, he couldn't for the life of him remember.

He raised an eyebrow as he returned to his desk, tea in hand, "Training, huh? You never made any of us go through that," he noted as he sat down, taking a grateful sip of the drink and loading up various office programmes ready to get started. "I figured I would get the backlog of paperwork here and done with." He rubbed at the back of his neck with a grimace, turning his attention from the small sorted pile of papers Myra had left on his desk to the ridiculous little desk toy his sister got for him when she found out he finally got a job that involved a desk which would be used for things that didn't involve grease and wires and generally being her brother. It was a fluffy yellow Easter rabbit with stick on googly eyes, in a fit of Big-Brother-ism, he had created a little plastic knife and stuck it in, used a red marker to turn the yellow fuzz a blood colour around the point of entry and a black marker to draw 'X's over the googly eyes. She had pouted and slapped his arm when she saw it but admitted she had been expecting something a bit worse.

"What does the training involve? I thought it was pretty much policy not to let her get her hands on a firearm, ever again." How Hadrian had found out about that particular incident was a story best left for another time, but as he had teased Myra when she first arrived, the Security Cameras were some of the first electronics that he made certain to have installed. The whole incident was immortalised on the Surveillance hard drives.

[Eleri Mortymer]

Eleri watched Eliza warily. She didn't like the ease with which the girl brushed off the explanation.

"Right, well..." She put the CD into the player and carried it to one end of the yard. She placed it at her feet and motioned for Eliza to join her. "You'll start at this end. When you hear the first bleep, sprint to the other end of the yard. When you hear the next one, come back up. Back down on the next one, back up on the one after that. Keep going until you can't run anymore or you can't make it to the other end in time. Got it?"

She'd be interested to see how Eliza managed her first time around. Eleri knew that being thin didn't necessarily mean being fit - the question was, just how unfit was Eliza?

[Tori Kane]

Tori strode in to the office, fresh and ready to face the day. She had to admit, her first day had been one hell of a baptism by fire, but in a slightly twisted way, she'd enjoyed it. It was probably the adrenaline.

"Morning, sir!" She said, hanging her jacket behind the door. Unlike Eliza, Tori had dressed in a far more sensible version of the uniform - one involving trousers. She spotted Hadrian at his desk. "Morning Corporal Beaumont," she said with a shy smile. "Cool rabbit." She filled a glass with water from the sink and stood, leaning against the side, unsure of where she ought to be.

"What's on the agenda this morning, sir?" She asked, sipping.

[Nicholas Wright]

"None of you were Lance Constable Eliza Flowers." Wright answered Hadrian's comment regarding their lack of training with his own, in his opinion, very good point. He didn't mention that he'd also been so drunk at the time he'd thought he'd recruited three people rather than just one and was sure they'd handle themselves no matter what.

Realistically, Wright knew he'd have to re-introduce the old training regimes, and with somebody like Eliza in the Force, now was the perfect time. He was snapped out of this thought by Hadrian's mention of firearms.
"NONONONONONO!" He said in a mad panic, waving his arms. "Never, ever, ever give her a firearm! I don't care if it's a water pistol! There's no telling what she'll do! No!" He exclaimed, cold horror in his eyes. Eliza and guns didn't, and should never ever, mix. "This is just, y'know, basic stuff. Fitness. Self defence. There's seriously a proper manual on it all. Look!" He pulled out of the desk a very dusty, yellowing book marked 'Police Fitness and Training: 1973 edition'. He tossed it over to Hadrian. Updates be damned!

Tori came in shortly afterwards, and Wright had to admit, she was more practical than Eliza. That said, Wright would have considered Lady Gaga more practical than Eliza, had he a) had any idea who Lady Gaga was and b) not then have arrested her for being convinced she was some kind of demonic entity. That said, he felt that Tori deserved more honesty than perhaps Eliza did, since he knew Eliza would be in no fit state for anything after her training anyway.

"Basic training 'til the reports come in. Dawn's still out there and she's gotta be making a stir, but until that point, I need you and Lance Constable Flowers to be trained up." Wright gave a slight smile as he continued. "I know what you're thinking. Basic training will be easy. Probably right, for you. Just remember this."

His slight smile turned into a grin.

"You're training with Flowers." Secretely, he hoped Tori's presence would actually get the damned girly girl to actually achieve something, but part of him enjoyed the sadistic torture of his one skilled rookie, who was probably very proud of her own skills right now, realising she was going to be taken down a peg or two by having to suffer through the one thing no amount of physical preperation could help you deal with...

[Hadrian Beaumont]

He smirked slightly at Wright's reaction to his innocent question, true enough that would have been his reaction as well after seeing the rather dim young woman commit the three biggest no-nos in firearms. Picking up the book he flipped through the information with an arched eyebrow, wow, some of this stuff was more intensive than Army Training - then again, this was the Edgehaven Police Department Training Manual from back when the Task Force was actually earning a pay-cheque triple what they had now (but just because they earned it, didn't mean they actually received it. Which kind of sucked thinking about it). He quite wisely didn't point out that pretty much the only people in the Office who probably could fulfil the criteria were Myra, thanks to her former past as a professional gymnast, or Eleri, due to her Dhampire nature.

"We may have to adjust some of this," he muttered, giving Constable Kane a friendly nod of greeting, his attention a little too absorbed by the Manual to do much more. He did, however, snap his head up and affix the Captain with a Look rather reminiscent of his mother when he heard about Kane and Flowers training together - his mouth twitching in amusement probably ruined the image but he tried. That was just mean. "Well, when you've finished training, head down to my Lair, I'll get you outfitted with some nice goodies," he told the dusky skinned officer, she would probably need something to look forward to by the end of the day and who didn't love new shiny toys? No one, that's who.

[Eliza Flowers]

Eliza was indeed unfit. In fact, she was unfit in that way only skinny girls could be. The type of unfit that came from never actually having to do anything. At least fat people had to carry their own body weight when they moved. Eliza had to carry next to nothing, and never really did anything more intensive than shopping for shoes.

There may have been a world in which Eliza's fitness was merely bad, rather than terrible, but Eleri had jinxed away any hope of it being this one with her last line of thought.

Eliza set off in what only a man with no legs who had lived his entire life in a box could call a sprint, in an attempt to see how well she'd do. Her arms flailed at her sides with almost more effort than her legs, which also flailed in a pathetically girly manner as she ran. Even without the heels, she ran like she was in them, making the trainers pretty useless.

This all might have seemed like a mockery if it wasn't for the intense look of concentration on Eliza's face, the creased brow, the wide, falling eyes, the heavy sweat, all the features that suggested somebody pushing themselves way beyond their limit. All this, before the first bleep even went.

To her credit, even Eliza could make the first one. And the subsequent three. She missed the fourth, and it was the beeps that beaten her (she was too slow on her feet to make it past four beeps... in step one... of the first stage...), but perhaps to her credit it was her slowness, and not her lack of fitness, that defeated her.

Her very, very, very tiny credit, as Eliza was hunched over, hands on her legs, panting harder than a marathon runner...

((I apologise for the signature . I was experimenting but it wasn't quite supposed to turn out THAT pink. When it did though, I figured it was so extremely hidious it fitted Eliza perfectly ))

[Tori Kane]

Tori nodded. "Right you are, sir!" She said brightly, finishing her water. Basic training should be a snap – run around a bit, a few push-ups, that sort of thing. Her face fell as Wright’s last words sunk in. Training with Eliza. She was starting to think that Wright had some sort of vendetta against her.

She brightened again at Hadrian’s promise of shiny new toys. She grinned at him. “That sounds very James Bond,” she said with a laugh. “I’m looking forward to it already.”

She put her glass down and headed out to the yard, just in time to see Eliza all but collapse in a heap. And I get to train with her. Joy. She thought, slightly bitterly. “Morning, Sergeant Mortymer,” she called. “Captain Wright said I was to come and do basic training with you?”

[Eleri Mortymer]

Eleri had to admit, she hadn’t been expecting Eliza to start running with quite as much enthusiasm as she had, although she also hadn’t expected her to hit the proverbial wall quite as soon as she did.

“That’ll do for a moment, I think.” She told the girl, switching the CD off. “You did well, but you need to pace yourself. You’re trying to go too fast too soon. You’re meant to speed up as the bleeps get faster. Oh, and a little tip – you aren’t wearing heels. Stop trying to run as though you are, you’re putting more strain on your legs that way.”

She looked up as Tori came in to the yard. “Sit down for a moment, get your breath back.” She told Eliza before walking over to the other rookie.

“Well, let’s hope you’re a better runner than Flowers.” She said seriously. “Go and get changed – there’s tracksuits in the storeroom, you should find one to fit, and then we’ll get started. Eliza’s doing the Bleep test,” she glanced over at the panting girl, “but I think we’d better scale it back to warm-ups for a minute.”

Tori nodded dutifully and scurried off to get changed. While they were waiting for her, Eleri went back to speak to Eliza. “You think you’re ready to go again?” She asked. “We’ll try something a bit easier this time.”

[Nicholas Wright]

Wright watched them go, feeling a slight pang of guilt about the entire situation. Perhaps he shouldn't be making a spectacle of Eliza, and he probably shouldn't be using her to punish the others. But when all was said and done, he needed officers who could handle themselves, and right now Eliza couldn't. And he was mildly curious to see what Tori herself could do.

Plus now that just left him and Hadrian, and Eleri was out of the way, busy.
"Corporal Beaumont." Wright began, knowing the job he had lined up for him, and assuming it fell under the banner of the magic technology Hadrian knew so much about. (Not actual magic technology, just, ordinary technology the captain thought might as well be magic).

"What do you know about hypnosis?" He asked, almost as if it was an afterthought. "Because right now we have a psychopathic vampire that can control one of our officers, and I want to find a way to break it..." He was hoping if they could find a way to firstly hypnotise Eleri, and then teach her to resist that hypnosis, she could resist Dawn's control.

[Hadrian Beaumont]

Hadrian frowned thoughtfully, leaning back in his seat, ignoring the little orange notification window from his Office Outlook saying that he needed to buy more milk this week as it was his turn. He knew what Wright was asking but the hows were a little more difficult than he was used to and it descended into medical science a lot more than he was experienced with.

"Hypnosis is a very woolly subject. I don't know much about it, it tends to descend into the realms of medical science more than technology, using various stimulus to implant suggestions or turn off sections of the brain. Usually through a mixture of visual and verbal activities. What Dawn did was Vampiric, more like directly hijacking her brain. I'll do more research on it, Eleri's hardheaded, not to mention still more human than Vampire, she's already got immunity from control, but that does nothing to stop Dawn from turning her human consciousness off along with all reasoning abilities, leaving just a very pissed off feral in her wake."

He scrubbed a hand through his hair before rummaging in his desk for a notebook, he needed to write this down and take a trip up to Neurology at the Hospital, he recalled that they had a little Empath girl there a few times, a Lemartes employee before her ability drove her to suicide. They were observing her because based on her rate of growth, give her another decade and a half and she would be able to control other people's emotions and influence them. Hopefully, they would have enough information based on that and other strange goings on around Edgehaven to help him out on this front.

[Eliza Flowers]

Eliza had graciously crumpled into a heap when told she could sit down, and flopped forwards, panting hard, until she was obscured under tangles of red hair. She felt exhausted. Eliza couldn't remember the last time she'd put so much effort in to something, and some part of her brain told her that might be why she was feeling so exhausted. A larger part of her brain however, was telling her that looking this tired and worn out wasn't cute at all, and certainly wasn't a look she should be proud of. A quick glance up at Eleri's face told her however that now was not the time to ask for a hairbrush.

Eliza spotted Tori as she walked into the yard, and attempted one of her cheery waves, only her arm was still feeling heavy and she preferred to have them resting on her knees with her hands supporting her head, so it was more of a pathetic flop than an actual wave.

When Eleri asked if Eliza was ready to go again, all Eliza could think was 'please no'. She was still panting heavily, and making a very sorry impression for herself. She knew this probably wasn't what they wanted from police officers, but she was the typist right? She wasn't meant to do running! She was slightly regretting all those times faking sickness to get out of P.E. in school...
"I th...I th...I th...." Eliza finally worked out she needed to gulp down a bit more air before speaking, and did so. "I think...I need...a...minute..." She panted out, a true sign of exhaustion being that she couldn't squeeze a 'like' or two into the sentence. She was, however, proud that Eleri had said she'd been going too fast. Nobody had ever said that to her before! Maybe she could get the hang of this! Except for the part where the beeps had been faster than her, but she could work on that, right?