The Tiger King (Chaelisa)

43| Mischief and Mayhem: Part 1

The morning of Lisa's final Purge match arrived and the sisters started to prepare for the match with their usual jog around five blocks to loosen up. Since summer was now well on its way, mornings were pleasant for runs, unlike winter with its biting cold. Early summer mornings were brighter and pleasantly cool, just right to not overheat during the course of the run.

Currently, Lisa and Jennie were returning to the Vault, keeping up their brutally brisk jog. Where Lisa usually pulled ahead to run according to her pace, today she took it in her head to hold back and run with Jennie, chattering nineteen to a dozen all the while.

"...and did you know the X-Men originally stood as an allegy—no, allgory—no—"

"Allegory?" Jennie supplied with a quick huff of breath.

"Yeah, that," Lisa said brightly, keeping in stride with Jennie. "The X-Men comics used to be an allegory for discrimination, Rosie said it was like subtly talking about racism when they talked about how the humans hated mutants. Like you know, Magneto is Jewish and he went through the Howcaust—

"Holocaust."

"Yeah, that. But now, they also talk about LGBT too, isn't that awesome?"

"Sure."

"They have the first ever gay wedding in superhero comics with the first openly gay Marvel character who was also a mutant, and queer representation is everywhere! They even have a mutant who's a drag queen!" Lisa prattled on, eager to fill in Jennie on the many X-Men stories Rosé had told her while discussing the comics. "You know Mystique, I told you about Mystique didn't I? The blue shapeshifter?"

"The one played...by Hunger Games Katniss...in the movie which....you still haven't seen...yet," Jennie panted.

"Yeah well, she had a blind girlfriend who can see in the future, her name is Destiny! And there's Psylocke, she's a cool psychic ninja chick and she's bi, like Deadpool! Or actually he's more pan, come to think of it. You know Deadpool, right? Merc with a Mouth?"

"Yeah, wasn't his actor...married to that actress...from Gossip Girl... or something?" Jennie said, gasping out words with every breath. 

"Oh wow, you're good," Lisa laughed, easily surging ahead of her with a care-free laugh. "Gotta thank Mimi for curating our pop culture knowledge. We would have ended up pretty much like uncultured swine otherwise."

"If you're...including Mean Girls," Jennie called after her sister's back, "I don't think...that really fits into...the cultural knowledge standard."

"Mean Girls is the standard, Jen! Regina George is the OG HBIC!" Lisa laughed as she ran towards their imaginary finish line. 

Perspiration dripped down Jennie's nose. She had let Lisa talk to distract her from her thoughts, even if the topics weren't anything particularly enlightening.

Morning jogs were Jennie's favourite time to puzzle over her problems and dilemmas to come up with solutions. Hwangssabu had taught her that she needn't use music to keep the tempo while running. All you needed was to breathe in through your nose, breathe out through your mouth, empty your mind and keep your senses alert to your surroundings.

And then you simply run, as people since the dawn of time used to run before Walkmans and earphones were invented.

Hwangssabu was a firm believer that running helped him gain more insight to solve his problems. He passed on his knowledge and techniques to Jennie mostly, because for Lisa, running didn't have the same therapeutic effect as punching a punching bag.

Jennie stood by Hwangssabu's teachings faithfully. For example, it was during a typical morning jog that Jennie had held an internal debate on how to handle Lisa's performance slump and whether to accept Irene's offer to sponsor pilates classes. Seeing as the result of those debates seemed to usually guide her towards a feasible solution, it was enough for Jennie to affirm that morning runs were her own unique brand of quality therapy time to reflect and evaluate, like Hwangssabu taught her.