Welcome to Gaia! ::

[~5.30 p.m]



Most of the regular students had already turned up by the time Jessie and his assistant arrived with the gear. Down on the beach, Ardelle was two-sword fencing with another man, still wearing her priestess robes. As Jessie glanced over, she forced him to retreat with a short spinning hurricane manoeuvre, then, before he had a chance to react, both her blades came up under his near to the hilt. He let go and leapt back to avoid losing both his hands - the swords flipped in the air as she quickly sheathed her own, and then caught his effortlessly as the grips came over to her side.

"She's so much quicker than when she first started," he remarked, more to himself than anyone, sounding very pleased.

Gloria looked round, her arms full of equipment. She hadn't seen anything. "Who?"

"Nevermind. Hang on - don't try and put those up by yourself," he said, running past her to the equipment rack they'd set up in the shade of a cluster of palms just past the side entrance to the garden. Setting his armful of wooden and metal staffs on the ground, he took the collection of blunt-edged practise swords from her two at a time and hung them up on the racks.

"I don't see why we need this much s**t anyway," said Gloria. Up on the equipment rack went a broad-bladed axe, a couple of spears on the vertical holders, the famous Order trident, and a few more exotic weapons, such as the whip. When everything had been displayed, Gloria shook out her arms and put her hands on her hips.

"It always pays to be prepared when you're not quite sure what to expect."

"I know what to expect from Evelyn, at least - she's about as dangerous as a ball of fluff, and probably just as experienced."

"Now now, be nice. Good things come in small packages," Jessie said, tapping her on the head to emphasise his point.

"Hey, we're not getting paid to be nice! ...We aren't getting paid at all," she laughed, holding up her hands. "Don't worry - I'll be on my bestest behaviour. What's the plan, anyway?"

"Well, I was thinking we'd do this logically," he said, pulling on a pair of leather duelling gloves and flexing his hands beneath the stiff material, "It's not every day we get new students. First we need to assess what they can already do, so I was thinking we'd start with just a chat, to see if they have any relevant experience. Then I thought I'd give them a talk on the quarterstaff, and maybe some of the other weapons, if they're interested... we could do some short demonstrations... and then, I suppose, get into it."

"Down and dirty. You think your little lady will survive once the lecture ends?"

Jessie couldn't help but scoff. "Oh, Gloria," he smiled, "So long as you can restrain yourself from killing off 'the competition,' I'm sure she'll be just fine."




(( This scene will run concurrently with the current ones - don't worry, there's no compulsion to move on =P

"Pff, 'competition?' He don't know what he's talkin' about..." ))

"Hello, Hat," said Gloria.

"Hello, Evelyn," said Jessie, with a pointed look towards Gloria. She looked again at Evelyn and startled, feigning shock.

"Oh my god, is that Evelyn under there?!" she said, craning down to take a good look. "Holy crap."

"I was only playin'!" Gloria laughed. "Not my fault you can't handle a-"

"Stop."

She stopped.

Jessie turned to Evelyn and her friend. "I'm very sorry," he said, his thunderous expression gradually softening, "I know you've had a difficult time... but I would hope that you can find the strength to begin your training today. The sooner you begin, the sooner progress can be made."

"There's nothing to be insecure about," he soothingly continued, "This is all going to be very informal, and we're going to go at your pace. Tonight, we're just going to be talking, mostly."

Gloria just let herself fade back into the shadows of the palms. Yeah, you take over, she thought. You're the teacher here. Not me.

Jessie saw the hug coming, and wrapped his arms around her as she drew near. He wanted her to feel safe. Reassured. And he also wanted her to realise that he believed in her. So when they parted, he kept a hand on her shoulder and, smiling, looked into her eyes. "I'm your teacher now, Evie, but I'm here for you. You mustn't be afraid to make mistakes, or ask questions. This is something completely new for you, and it might not come easily at first, but I know you're going to take what I give you and fly with it. I think you'll be able to see that fighting, as strange as it sounds... is just like dancing. I think you'll see it better than most."

He took his hand from her shoulder. "As for the two of you," he said, looking back over at her accompanying servants, "Please, do not interfere. Evelyn is perfectly safe. She must stand on her own two feet - I hope you can understand that."

Of course, it was their job to stop her from standing on her own two feet at all. He hoped this wouldn't cause any problems or conflict down the line, when the sparring became more intense. If they dared to interfere with his lessons, he wouldn't be afraid to report them to Lorika.

"Now," he said, with an air of 'and finally,' "I think we can press on. First of all, Evie, tell me this: what would you consider your strengths to be? Your personal strengths, or your skills, or your physical attributes - anything that jumps into your mind."

Jessie blinked at the astonishing transformation. It, erm, wasn't a good idea to try and take it all in, however... his clothes on her were a tad more revealing than she probably realised.

"That's wonderful," he encouraged, keeping his gaze tactfully facewards. In the background, on the other hand, Gloria was facepalming right along with the other men. "Cressa has told me what a talented and creative magician you are."

"Let me... rephrase my question. Do you have any experience in any martial arts at all? Are there... any weapons that catch your interest?"

If Gloria had been able to hear Evelyn's whisperings, she might have wondered: Is she flirting with him, or just completely clueless?

Instead, she heard nothing but Jessie's response. "A bō? You're interested in Japanese martial arts?"

To which she thought: I should've known. Too much anime.

She shook her head and leaned back against the tree. This isn't going to be as easy as in the cartoons, little lady.

"I have to say, then, you're going to be pleased with what I've been preparing for you today," he continued, "I usually start my students off on a stave anyway, and I didn't see any reason to do things differently with you..."

He moved back towards the weapons display and bent down, selecting his own staff from the wide selection of sizes and materials laid out on the ground. He picked up the largest of the lot, just to get it out of the way - it resembled a monstrously oversized walking cane, which was just a foot or so less than double his height - and he did it in an utterly natural way that belied years upon years of practise and familiarity. "You understand, I'm not a normal martial arts teacher," he said as he righted himself, "You aren't here to learn the ins and outs of a single human discipline, particularly not one developed mainly for sport or show. I'm here to teach you how to kill, frankly. I'm going to teach you how to defend your life, and the lives of everyone around you, and to engage in one-on-one, actual combat to the death, or at the very least, mortal injury. So... if I do things differently from every other teacher you've been used to, you'll know I have good reason to do so. My students need to ideally have a broad, but also in-depth knowledge of many different kinds of tactics and manoeuvres. It's the fact that I've trained such well-rounded warriors that has brought us this far. In a real battle, you never know what's going to happen to you until it does, so being resourceful and having a broad range of tightly honed skills at your disposal can and will save you."

"Now, continuing on from that, the reason I'm going to start you off on this is because the stave is actually a very versatile weapon," he said. He looked over his shoulder and signalled to Gloria, who crossed behind the weapon rack and picked up her own staff. She headed off and stood at a distance, but stayed just close enough to keep on track with what he was saying. "All of the basic principles for melee combat, you can practise using a short staff. With a longer one, you have the added benefit of range..."

He lifted his own staff, which must've been around ten feet long, at least the height of a standard room, and turned it gracefully in the air, switching hands. It had been hard to imagine the unwieldy-looking thing capable of being moved at all, let alone in such hypnotising way. He dropped into a solid stance, the staff locked in a strong horizontal between his left hand and elbow, and with a gentle thrust, gently prodded Gloria (who giggled) in her shoulder where she stood. "That means it can also behave like a spear or a lance, in addition to everything else."

"Now, the difficulty with a ranged weapon such as a lance or a spear," he said, bringing it back to rest at his left side - the opposite to before. "Is that in melee combat, you're left very vulnerable at a close range. The combatant who knows what they're doing will always be able to get past a ranged weapon, and they know how to close the gap safely. Ranged weapons are no more effective at short range than a short-ranged weapon at a distance. With the staff, however, you also have an effective close-range weapon, for parrying, countering, and even disarming."

"Gloria, please pick up a practise sword."

Obediently, she hurried back over and took a practise sword from the top of the pile left hanging on the brackets. Jessie had moved away from the weapons and onto the open sand, as she clasped the holster to her belt and jogged over to join him. His staff was braced again on his arm. The locking of the staff created precise distance control. This time, as he thrust again at her shoulder, she lifted her sword and effortlessly parried it, taking the end of the staff in a circular up, over and down, much as in fencing. She danced to the outer side of the pole, travelling closer in a spin, but by the time she brought her sword around to slash at him he'd brought the staff back into both of his hands, in a firm half-staff position. Her sword made impact perfectly with its middle. It was textbook.

"The exact same manoeuvres can be demonstrated with another staff," he said, and Gloria picked up her discarded stick and repeated the demonstration with him.

"Okay, so... the reason beginners find the staff a bit unwieldy is usually because they try and move it awkwardly," he continued, inspecting the middle of his staff for a few moments as he talked, "A stave of this length is not made for horizontal movement. It's very slow, there's a lot of air resistance, its own weight works against it... so it's very easy to dodge and not very powerful."

To demonstrate this, he suddenly brought the staff swishing around in a horizontal arc - Gloria reacted instantly, ducking under the swing. When he immediately brought it slicing back, she jumped, and it missed again. Any observer could see what he meant. Compared to the quick manoeuvre he'd pulled off from the thrust into the parry, it looked very slow and practically... well... wooden. "Excellent, Gloria. If you move it vertically," he said, repeating the thrust-parry movement from their earlier demonstration: the tip of the staff travelled up into the air as he flicked the other end forward into his free hand. Essentially, it was a kind of counter-clockwise snap... which he made look a lot easier than it would be when self-attempted. "Things become a lot more easy."

"Of course," he said, coming back towards the weapons on display, "There are many different types of staff, and the kind you use will have an effect on the way you wield it..."

"Bō staffs are shorter than a quarterstaff, but much thicker, and never hollow. They're very heavy, and the martial art isn't really designed with women in mind - in fact, quite the opposite, which is a big failing as far as I'm concerned. This one I'm holding is an outsized quarterstaff."

He lifted the long pole, then rested it back down on the ground. "Some specific arts, like the bō, have a prerequisite length for the staff, but usually with a quarterstaff you would choose a length relative to your height. You usually want something two or more feet in excess of your height, so for example, a six foot man might choose an eight foot staff, a lady might choose between seven and eight, someone taller like Cressa might go up to nine or ten. Quarterstaffs are slender, so they're deceptively light-looking; they're made of solid wood too, so of course, they're going to be quite heavy..."

At this point, he brought the staff down and proffered it to his listeners, if they wanted to see for themselves. It was strange - the thing itself was so long, it couldn't be anything but awkward and heavy, and yet he really did make it look much lighter than it was. "They can be hollow - this makes them much lighter, but they do splinter and break easily without reinforcement. All staffs can be broken, quite easily, compared to something like a battleaxe, unless you have them enchanted, of course," he said, tapping with his forefinger the two-handed axe, with its long grip held aloft on the rack. "If you feel like your staff is in a situation where it's going to break, try and manoeuvre it so that it breaks in the middle," he said, indicating this time the middle of his own staff - the part he'd been checking earlier after Gloria gave it a whack, "That way, you have two even-sized short staffs to defend yourself with. Yes, I will be teaching you to dual-wield, but don't worry about it for now."

After he took the staff back, instead of resting it at his side he took a moment to place it back down with the others. In its place, he brought up a prettily-decorated, shiny metal rod, which had two pommel-like attachments set in a leaf-like design on each end.

"Metal quarterstaffs are the lightest kind of staff, actually..." Jessie said - intriguingly, it did look heavier than the others, just by virtue of being made of metal. Obviously, looks could be deceiving. "...Because they're also hollow. They don't break as easily, but they are usually conductive to heat and electricity, which is why mages often opt for wooden staffs instead. Conductive metal is less... controllable, when you're playing with the elements. Of course, staffs are very good focuses, or amplifiers for magic; they're very easy to enchant, and can store spells to fire off when needed... swords," he continued, turning away to gesture at the real, non-blunt swords with their very own brackets. He'd passed the metal staff on to Evelyn for handling. "Are more difficult to enchant. They have a number of different qualities which the enchanter has to take into account, rather than being, well, basically a big stick with nothing special about it. The more simple something is, the easier it is to spell - obviously, you know that from your studies. So, that's why a good enchanted sword ends up much pricier than a wand or a staff - because it's more complicated."

"Now, don't be afraid if you can't remember all of this, because believe me, I'll be drilling everything you need to know into you very, very hard as long as you keep training."

Having slunk back to her tree again, Gloria couldn't help but stifle a laugh. Oh yes, he really did drill them all very hard - and no, for once that was not a euphemism, though the thought did just make it more amusing. "But while we're on the subject, I might as well talk a little bit about swords, and other kinds of weapons too - firstly, because it's useful, secondly, because it's interesting. Now..."

Jessie took a little deeper breath, and so did Gloria. She pulled herself up a little straighter to listen. He was getting onto his favourite topic. "To keep it simple, swords can be divided into two broad types - long swords, and small swords."

"Longswords - which is a bit of an ambiguous term, because of course, it refers to the dimensions of the blade... technically, anything can be a longsword if it's past a certain length," he said, "But when people say 'longsword,' they're usually referring to the large, two-handed swords, like the claymore, or the b*****d sword - which many people consider a two-handed sword, but actually, you can wield it both ways - hence its name, the b*****d sword. It can be one or two handed."

He took down the sword which was directly in the middle of the two other examples. To its right was one of the longswords Jessie had described, with a large, flat, tapering blade that fell all the way to the ground. To its left was a sword with a thin but razor-sharp blade, and a highly ornate hilt. He held out the sword with two fingers gently supporting the hilt, and his other hand supporting the blade.

"On a sword you have a hilt, which is made up of the cross-guard, the grip and the pommel, and then the blade, which has its own different parts, too. This is a typical small sword. When people think of one-handed swords, this is usually the style that comes to mind, aside from the fancier rapier; both very effective duelling weapons. Small swords are distinct from shortswords, such as the gladius or the katzbalger, which are basically too short to be called one-handed swords, but too long to be daggers."

He placed the sword back on its brackets, and then carefully took off the thinner, fancier blade. "The rapier - this is a weapon that's very familiar to me," he said, with a little smile, examining it. "It's very light and thin... it allows for fast reactions and intricate, delicate swordplay. We use this kind of thin sword a lot at home, but up here it's mainly a kind of dress sword, with the fancy, decorative cross-guard and all..."

He paused, looking at it a little longer before putting it back, and Gloria wouldn't be embarrassed to admit that she melted a little. He was wonderful to listen to, but when he got that deep, but little softness in his voice, that delicate caress - that was what she always waited for. And she couldn't help but wish that one day, he might speak like that while looking at her. (Stupid and silly and soft as that might sound.)

He took a step to his left, hand hovering across all the larger weapons. "Now, two-handed swords, two-handed axes, maces and the like, require a lot of strength behind them to be truly effective in combat," he advised, looking back at the group, "Yes, you can duel with a two-handed sword, yes, you can defend with a two-handed axe, but these are weapons made for powerful offensives, rather than defense. Basically, they're at their best, and most deadly, when you have a lot of muscle to put into them. Same with a flail."

"And the reason I'm telling you all this is because... too many people focus on trying to circumvent the weaknesses of a weapon, rather than augmenting, or at least working with, its strengths."

"Rather than trying to beat the weapon into submission, forcing it to do what you want it to do and to fit the mould you set for it even if that runs counter to its makeup, you need to start from the weapon, take what it can give you, and run with it."

"You need to get to know your weapon. You need to be used to the feel of it in your hand. You need to have the sense of its balance... "

Gloria loved to listen to him speak.

"...And that will only come with experience. Lots of it."