One extremely early morning a few weeks after the start of the term the apprentices are awakened with quite a racket and a disembodied voice shouts "Out of bed you lazy bums, you're wasting the best part of the day. Down to the common room and muster for calisthenics!"
When the apprentices assemble before him you see a bit of a dandy, with extremely tight leggings displaying his twig and berries. "A long time ago some people called me Twigberry. You may do the same. I'm here to teach you a bit of physical conditioning and perhaps a bit of personal self defense techniques. Fall in and we'll begin." Twigberry proceeds to take the apprentices through an extensive and exhaustive phyiscal fitness routine that leaves everyone huffing and puffing, even Ambrose who has demonstrated his endurance on multiple occasions.
All the apprentices can hear Ambrose utter, "Finally something worthy of my time."
Upon reaching the common room, Averell sighs rather heavily at having to go through physical fitness.
Another thing we are doing that I am not good at.
Since the time he knew he would be coming here, Averell was looking forward to doing magic and learning. And he knew he'd have to do some stuff that he wasn't good at. But he also knew that it would be worth it because he'd get to work in the laboratory, mixing potions and tinkering with mechanical devices and such. Yet so far, it's been all classrooms and instruction, with no time in the lab.
Just push through it, he could hear his mother saying. We can't always get what we want, but you will always get what you need.
"What I need is to get into the lab," he muttered under his breath as if he was really replying to his mother.
Julius makes it through the calisthenics without complaint. Even though he is larger than all of the other children, he is still in good shape. He looks at Ambrose when he makes the comment but just shakes his head as he tries to catch his breath.
Averell looked over at Imric, his mouth open as if to say something. But he closed his mouth and groaned slightly before forcing his body to drop down and start doing push-ups. And by the time he was finished with the 20 he was given to do, he was panting and breathing a bit hard; calisthenics were not his thing, especially not when they were this early in the morning.
Babette was laughing and giggling at the prospect of going outside of the classrom and actually doing something. The exercises didn't seem to bother her, though truly she was not the most adept at them, she tried hard and actually seemed to have fun during the calisthenics, unable to keep a straight face as the instructor bossed around the others.
Margerethe falls in and does her best on the exercises (she has decent endurance for someone her age, but her strength leaves a bit to be desired), actually enjoying them for a while.
But as she grows more tired, she becomes conscious of the students around her, all together in one small part of the room. Although the common room, she knows, is spacious enough, having them all crammed together makes it feel a lot smaller, and she starts thinking more and more of how close everyone is, how small the room feels, and she finds herself looking toward the window more and more.
Finally, after the last set of twenty push-ups, she raises her hand, her heart pounding in her throat. [color=purple]"Herr Twigberry, can we continue the exercises outside, please?"
"Excellent idea, let's go run a mile." And he gets everyone out of the indoor area and into the courtyard of the covenant. "Follow me. Ambrose, keep up the rear and call out any stragglers who fall too far behind you."
As the group goes out, "Running is important, because sometimes the monsters you face are too great to be handled and being able to run away is the difference in having lunch and being lunch."
Margerethe smiled as she raced outside. Although it was still early and the sun wasn't very high, there was a nice breeze on her skin. She took off at a good pace (for her, anyway), but it didn't take long for her small size to start getting the better of her and she found herself starting to fall behind the others.
Even finding herself next to Ambrose doesn't dampen her spirits. [color=purple]"Isn't this fun?" she pants as she tries to at least keep the group in sight.
Babette does cartwheels and jumps and skips as she runs along with the others. "Merci monsieur Twigberry! This is fun!" She called out as she ran and started singing. "Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques, dormez vous?"
Averell was beginning to fall behind. He wasn't the most athletic child alive, and these morning exercises were killing him. And tg either students were encouraging this?
He did his best to keep up, even though he knew that he couldn't.
A pair of snarling wolves appear suddenly behind Ambrose and Averell . Ambrose hears them and chances a quick look to his rear to spy the source of the snarling sound, "You're on your own, Avrell." Ambrose puts on a big boost of speed passing Averell.
Averell needs to beat an Athletics + Quickness roll of 10.
Ambrose takes off, thinking that he only needed to be faster than everyone else, passes Averell and several of the others. The wolves, however, do not pursue, in fact, they just stay at the same loping pace, or slow keeping a steady distance between Averell and themselves. When Ambrose reaches the front of the line next to Twigberry, Twigberry turns to him and says, "I told you to keep up the rear. When I tell you to do something, I damn well expect it will be done." As he finishes saying it, he produces a piece of wood from seemingly nowhere and tosses it into Ambrose's gait, causing him to trip and tumble to the ground. "Follow me, discipuli and discipulae. Nevermind the wolves." Ambrose spends some time spitting dirt and grass out of his mouth before getting back up. The wolves catch up to Ambrose and wait patiently for him to resume running, and Averell runs by Ambrose.
Imric enjoys the run, having had a relatively athletic upringing. He keeps going without any trouble[sup]1[/sup] throughout the run, but he does tend to stay toward the back of the pack[sup]2[/sup].
Averell, still huffing and puffing quite visibly, tries to keep up the pace that the others are setting. He looks over his shoulder several times to see if the wolves are still there, and he notes that they are not attempting to catch up but to make sure everyone keeps running. He nearly trips over the fallen Ambrose as he passes him, a smirk coming across his face as he does so.
Serves you right. You should learn to listen to the instruction given you...
Babette runs faster at the sight of the wolves and her song gets cut off in fear, but when she sees how they respond, they seem very...unwolflike. 'It must be a game!' she thinks and shrieks in mock fear as she runs along and takes Margarethe's hand. "Come they shall eat us! Maybe they'll take a long time on Ambrose!" she adds with a giggle.