Chevaleresse

"I've heard of Earth - it'd be a little difficult not to - but never any city called Seattle." She blinked, trying to take in the rest of Alexandria's words. "Saving the multiverse?" Heidrun shook her head slightly. That sounds almost like. . . "Are you sure I'm the right sort of choice for this? I'm not much of a fighter." She would gladly help out in some sort of multiverse-defending operation, and she wasn't really in a position to question the validity of the idea, given the people telling it to her. She was just concerned about. . . certain conditions making things more difficult. Especially if she was going to be out doing high-stress things like fighting monsters.

"My name is Heidrun. Heidrun Losnedahl, like I said, I'm a healer. I used to live in Midgar, before. . . you know, everything." She hurried after the group, seemingly torn between following behind and trying to get into the center for safety. "And, um, yes, I don't really know where I am. I was headed into Edge because there was a boy there that needed healing, but this doesn't look like any part of Edge. Maybe the fancier parts of old Midgar. And, um, what do you mean by 'part of this?'"

Rhian slowed down at Verden's question, coming to a halt just at the entrance of the training grounds. "Uh. . . I don't really know." She shrugged. "Wasn't really paying attention when I headed over here. Kerr was supposed to be coming back, though, could just wait for him." She supposed they could always just check back at their lodgings, too, but she didn't really want to backtrack that much. "Or just look for the dragons. They're not exactly subtle."

Rhian looked back at Verden, then grunted noncommittally. "I guess." She doubted he would actually get lost if she left him behind, but she didn't have a valid reason to tell him no, either. Other than "you'll probably try to stop me from hitting somebody." Which, if she was being totally honest to herself, was probably a good thing. . . but she still really wanted to hit somebody. Rhian slowed her pace as she walked toward the exit of the training grounds and in the direction of where she'd last seen Johanna, waiting for Verden to catch up before increasing her speed again. "Wouldn't want to leave you to the sword fondlers, lest they try to stuff you in a dress or something." Well, he was already in a robe, but they were different. Sort of. She didn't wear either.

Rhian, for her part, was maybe a bit more worn than the practice fight warranted, and a healer's watchful eye could tell that she was still sore from yesterday with the way she was moving. As for emotions, his aura of calm. . . didn't seem to have much of an effect. Over her usual core of sullen irritability was another layer of active irritability and frustration, with sources that were likely fairly obvious. On the very surface was a thin coating of what appeared to be genuine concern for Verden's condition with traces of even more frustration. Of course the only one around to fight me is a damned healer. "You should take it easy. I've been training since. . . Well, a really long damned time. It doesn't come overnight." She waved a hand at him in a vague gesture - was it dismissive? - and turned toward the exit of the yard. "I'm gonna go find Johanna or something and make her let me hit her instead. Or pick a fight with one of these pricks, I dunno."

"You sure?" She knew you didn't even have to hit that hard to do damage, though Verden was spared slightly by her gauntlets not being of a particularly heavy variety (unlike the rest of her armor.) "I said it once already, you're not gonna impress me by sitting here and letting me beat your ass. You should probably sit down for a second or three." She squinted at him, trying to assess the damage she'd done. "The captain will kill both of us if you get hurt any more, you know?"

The shield bash nearly caught Rhian; as it were, she did a pretty decent job of throwing herself off balance trying to avoid it, jerking herself sideways and losing most of the advantage she'd just gained. Stumbling and a bit surprised, she did the first thing that came to mind: using the momentum she already had, she basically stumbled right into throwing a hook directly into Verden's jaw, weapon still held loosely in her left hand. As soon as the punch was thrown, she realized her mistake, and she tried to pull back before she did too much damage. . . but Rhian wasn't the type to commit halfway to a punch. She felt her gauntleted fist smash into him in a manner that wasn't likely to be too pleasant. "Aw, shit! Are you okay? I kinda just, responded, sorry."

Well, he seemed to be learning something, at least. Truth be told, she'd never been great at making convincing feints; if she swung, she meant it. The training axe crashed into Verden's shield with enough force to raise splinters. Rhian changed the position of her hands on the axe to shove Verden away from herself in an effort to throw his counterattack off, pressing inward again to get inside his effective range; his swing still connected in the technical sense, but it was a bit further down the length of the weapon than he'd want. She pushed off of him, using the action to move herself backward, and swung at him again, this time almost right at his weapon hand. She was aiming to make him overcompensate, try to defend and end up moving out of the way, or at least tie his weapon up in a situation that was advantageous to her.

J4 dance Kane Kane to G6, knife Pegasus

"Ran-sama told me that Lady Yukari said to take you to Muenzuka 'cause it was close. She said some stuff about, umm, something being thin? I didn't really get it." Seeing that everyone seemed to be some degree of ready to move on, she started walking, ears still laid slightly back in her nervousness. "The Forest of Magic is just close to here, and that black and white girl is there a lot, right? Oh, and she likes to shoot a bunch of stars and lasers in her danmaku, if that was what you were wondering." For a brief moment, Rory could have sworn there was a pair of eyes looking at him (her?), but turning around to check revealed no unusually large rodents for the moment. She looked rather unhappy with the way Empi spoke to her. "Hey! Ran-sama said those words aren't allowed! Of course you're dodging bullets, stupid fairy. At least you don't have to get beat up by that red and white miko." Chen huffed and picked up her pace, not that it meant much for her rather short legs in comparison with the rest of the party. "Oh, and I dunno if your healing is danmaku. You could probably make it into danmaku though? People make umbrellas and stuff into danmaku." It didn't take long before the cherry trees faded to rather more mundane greenery, with Chen relaxing accordingly. Indeed, the Forest felt at least slightly more welcoming than Muenzuka, even if it wasn't quite as pretty. The underbrush was denser, and it didn't take a trained eye to notice the huge variety of mushrooms that seemed to be growing virtually everywhere - especially given some of them grew to unnaturally large sizes, and it almost seemed like some of them reacted to being approached. Or perhaps that was simply a side effect of the spores they were giving off. . . Still, they weren't given much chance to worry about the health effects of breathing a miasma of probably hallucinogenic and possibly toxic mushroom spores, as a spray of glowing projectiles impacted the ground in front of Chen. The shikigami leapt into the air a solid ten feet. . . and stayed there, floating and looking startled for a moment before her expression turned into one a bit more excited. "The fairies are attacking us with danmaku! That means we have to be close to something! Oh, and don't worry about them, they don't die when they're killed. Ran-sama said you might not know that." She floated up into the air in the general direction of where the bullets had come from, looking expectantly at the party. "Are you guys coming or what? I don't wanna beat up all these fairies by myself."

Rhian stepped backward to avoid the thrust; she hadn't expected him to immediately go on the offensive, and it thumped against the arm she brought up to defend lightly. He was hanging back a bit, probably a good move; reach was one of the few advantages he had on her. She circled him for a moment, pondering her next move. Suddenly, she made a quick step with her left foot, then changed directions and went for a hard swing from her right, using both hands to give her extra leverage on the swing.

"Well, when you break something, don't cry at me about it." She wasn't gonna hurt the kid, but she wasn't going to slow herself down for his benefit, either. Especially not after he told her not to take it easy. Still. . . She srhugged, and took a step or two back before taking on a fighting stance. "I'll give you first crack at me this time." She stood, waiting expectantly, wondering why all the men around seemed to have a thing for getting their asses beat.

Rhian leaned over slightly and offered a hand to Verden, pulling him up a bit roughly if he took it. She looked at the priest with a bemused expression. "I mean, I guess. You're not gonna impress me by letting me beat you until we need to get a second healer, though, and to be honest I don't think either one of us is getting a whole lot out of this." Men were strange. She usually didn't think about it much - and honestly she preferred it that way, it made her uncomfortable - but she couldn't help but wonder after the events of the last hour if this had something to do with her being a girl. She groaned internally. Weren't there enough girls in the Guard to lust after? Kerr was bad enough, Argos. . . She wasn't sure if the boy actually had the hots for her or a severe case of foot-in-mouth (or both,) but if he did, and so did Verden, that'd make three. "You'd be better off doing form drills for a while."

Rhian saw him drop to go for the leg sweep. It wasn't a bad idea, but doing anything with your legs required fairly obvious and relatively slow weight shifts. She just kicked off the ground partway into her charge, throwing her entire weight into his chest at once. She belatedly realized that a pauldron to the jaw was a fair bit meaner than she'd intended, but by that point she was already mid-collision. The knight had also committed hard enough that when Verden went down, she went down on top of him, which hadn't entirely been her intention. Rhian rolled off to the side as quickly as she could manage, hugging her axe close to her body, and tried to regain her feet as soon as she could before going for her faux-execution once again.

Verden was getting a bit too adventurous. Probably not shocking; nobody had taught him any basics, so it looked like he'd just watched more experienced fighters go at it or something along those lines. Not a terrible way to learn, but eventually you had to learn why people did things - and why they didn't. She let herself be pushed backward by his shield; his glance at it had made it obvious he meant to do something with it, and the result let her handily evade the uppercut. Let's see if you paid any attention. Once the swing was safely past her, she charged in again, much like she'd done to Flynn, aiming to push him off balance with her shoulder and then follow up quickly with a "kill" chop (that she would stop dead well before it did any damage.)

Rhian growled. She didn't come here to get lectured on her form by an untrained priest. . . even if she was holding back a bit. It looked like he'd at least seen someone swing a weapon before, but she could tell the practice was lacking. Looked fine at first, but the footwork was off, and she would be willing to guess his follow-through wasn't there, among other things. Not that her own was perfect, given how damned rusty she was. The knight stepped backwards and in the direction of the swing, then used the momentum to swing a rather wild blow in Verden's direction. It was rather lacking in technique and didn't seem to be aimed anywhere in particular, but it made up for these deficiencies with speed and power.

"Sure. Just try to block." Rhian herself had taken the time to hunt down an axe blunted for training. It'd still probably hurt if she hit someone with it, but they were usually light enough that it would be hard to break anything on someone by accident, and this one didn't seem to be an exception. She started off with a slow, predictable swing towards Verden's shoulder. She made a face as the head of the weapon moved through the air; the arc was off, a bit crooked and not where she was aiming. Not that she expected the healer to be able to tell, but she could,

Rhian just sort of stared at him for a moment. She muttered under her breath again - something about masochists? - before replying to Verden's offer. "I mean, if you want. I don't see you learning anything much and you're gonna want a practice shield and your own training weapon. Speaking of, they've gotta have those things around here, right?" She appreciated the offer, but couldn't keep the annoyance out of her voice at the thought of what was almost certainly going to end up trying to train the poor sod on how to defend himself just so she could have more challenge than a straw dummy in her sparring. "Might wanna start off doing something other than getting hit over the head a bunch of times by an angry soldier."

"Well, I still want to beat the shit out of somebody, particularly whoever taught that kid that his cock automatically makes him better than half the people around, and there's nobody in sight to maintain my sparring routine with, so I'm doing just peachy." She huffed irritably. "And the seemingly only person around to fix that is talking to a face I didn't get to punch nearly enough times." The knight glanced around the range. "If you really wanted to help my mood, you'd drag someone in here to spar with me so I could polish up my axe skills. They're damn rusty."

"Why heal the kid? Bruises are lessons, and he's not gonna learn his this way." She rolled her eyes at Michi's statement. "If that's the kind of thanks these people have to offer, I think I'd rather they were my enemies. Little bastard can't even admit how much of an ass he's being. 'Honor.' Well, he sure shit on mine when he tried to say I wasn't fit to fight." Rhian still felt her blood running hot at the implication. She took a deep breath in an attempt to calm down. It didn't really work, but she tried. "Anyone else wanna try me? What's next; 'bows are a coward's weapon?' Heard that one before too, 'fore I made sure the guy couldn't say the word 'bow' right for a few weeks."

"I'm sorry, did you say: 'Miss Jernigan, please hit me in the face again?' Because that's what it sounded like." She cocked her fist backward, but Kerr's intervention was enough to rescue Flynn's face from further redecorating. "Pah. Fine." She pushed herself up off of him roughly, shaking her hands a bit. She really needed to watch those hits to the face, they were hard on your knuckles. Rhian turned her back to walk towards her discarded gauntlets. "That metallic taste in your mouth is... honor, right? Yeah, all the honor of getting your ass folded in half by a woman. Ungrateful prick." The knight muttered something under her breath that was best left untranscribed before continuing at a more normal volume. "If it wasn't for us, this'd be a village of ghosts."

Rhian grinned, a look equal parts predatory and smug on her face. She was almost disappointed he wasn't putting up more of a fight - though it seemed he was at least going to try now. "What? I couldn't hear you over your wheezing. Did a woman hitting you hurt that bad?" She neglected to continue her assault for a moment, giving the "warrior" a chance to catch his breath. "You gonna cry already? Come at me already." She gestured towards herself with the fingers of her left hand, in the classic come-get-some taunt. "Still waiting for you to teach me about how unfair this is. It's alright, I'll wait for the big strong man to catch his breath so he can put this outsider broad in her place already." True to her word, she did actually wait for him to ready himself, and start a swing. Once she did, she planned on ducking it, then driving her shoulder forwards and up into his chest to knock him over. If that worked, she'd immediately jump on him and give him a left hook for the jaw for good measure.

"I'm an archer, you dolt, you think I came here with a sword?" She darted inward, feinting towards the side she'd struck him on once, then swinging her right fist hard toward his gut. "I ain't gonna stop because I don't have a weapon, boy. At least have the balls to fight back." Truth be told, she did want him to fight back; beating some sexist ass down was satisfying in its own right, but it'd taste sweeter if he had to honestly admit to himself that he got beaten by a woman without a weapon at all. "Unless you like the taste of my fists that much."

"Ayup. You wanna see it again? 'Cause I liked that a lot, I'd be glad to." She backed up slightly, taking up a proper fighting stance with arms raised. She hadn't expected him to keep the sword. "What, the honorable warrior can't fight this outsider broad without his sword? You gotta make up for your other sword, or are you just less sporting then you're tryin' to say you are?" Rhian took a breath. Angry as she was, she was aware that she was at a pretty clear disadvantage, with her fists against the reach of a sword. She was waiting, waiting for the inevitable wild swing. "Well, come on then, I've got better things to do than paddle your bottom for you." When he swung, she would sidestep, trying to press the sword out of her way with her right bracer and go in for a quick jab with her left hand.

"Honor? Not right? I'm not a man or a woman, I'm a damned soldier. Or are you saying it's dishonorable to fight soldiers?" She pulled off both of her gauntlets. "You think that my being a woman's gonna save you from me beating your ass?" She recognized what he was doing, and all it did was incense her further. Rising up to full height and looking down his nose at her. All it meant was that he had a higher center of gravity and was thus easier to knock over. "'Cause that's what's about to happen. Unless you're not man enough to set a weak little girl like me, huh?" She was very near the point where she'd just swing on the boy, fair fight be damned.