Once the group of six made it back to their supposed home, things started to calm down. It seems they would be allowed to stay, but they did have a lot of things to work on to simply be able to help out with the Rebellion at all.
Before the Marauders would be willing to let them attack more bandits, they would have to learn how to take better care of themselves. Having already lost once, they needed to improve, so that there wouldn't be a repeat. They had been spending the better part of a week with a training routine to help themselves improve. It involved a lot of weapon training, report reading, and generally felt like they were in some kind of home-schooling program. Considering the four of them were in this together, that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. On the other hand, school was still school.
"Lwyn, stop calling this a school for F~~k sakes. It's just makes everything even MORE shitty." Thanrie could still remember days of earth school. Rather than reflect on earth school, she was more intent on her favourite Celesi type of training, weapon's training. She quite enjoyed practicing with her new weapon in particular. Her Celesi self had enjoyed opportunities for weapon training for years as one of her favourite hobbies, though such devotion to practice without the excitement of application would have been very boring for her Terran self. Her plan had been to focus on her Celesi-styled interests.
"Well, this is a lot like school, really. Right now we're doing gym, later I'm going to do some language studies with Mhyl, we might need to do some Geography and Geo-politics, and if we get lucky we might have time for science class!" Lwyn thought she was clever in matching all of this up, but it just reminded Thanrie of Earth. Thanrie was trying very hard at this point not to think of Earth. As a demonstration, she stopped talking in English. "By the divine, could you please stop? I really don't want to think of myself as some axzyhqn trainee." Thanrie did, however, put to good use some of her newly learned words. It felt like a good time.
Thanrie however still wasn't clear exactly what 'axzyhqn' meant, so to Lwyn, it looked like Thanrie was taking this pretty hard. "Thanrie, sorry." She went back to her own weapon training, very unsure what she should be saying. She just didn't want to hurt Thanrie. Thanrie meanwhile paused in concern of what had just happened there. She watched Lwyn aim a shot at one of the small metal sheets that were setup across the room. A line was drawn through the middle at a slight angle. Lwyn aimed carefully, and the sheet split in half right along the drawn line.
Thanrie opened up conversation with a new topic, inadvertently destroying her own goals in an attempt to appeal to her friendship by reverting to English. "Lwyn, it would have been great having your crazy skills on my team back at earth. Like first place before the second storm circle or something. You're really good at this, do you think you practiced back at earth?" Thanrie was talking about more first person shooter games, though there was the chance she was also implying a real firearm, considering Lwyn's personal talent. "Me, no? I enjoyed turn-based stuff because I wasn't very good at anything asking for fast reflexes. RPGs that asked for me to aim... if it didn't have any kind of aim assist, I would suck. Also, I've actually never seen a real gun myself, just pictures and games. In Canada, guns can actually be super rare, unlike down south."
Thanrie pondered that Lwyn's abilities were very possibly all Celesi then. Her elven eyes probably helped a bit, but the rest probably is her own physical talent while growing up. It would include training from her Inn, possibly not the best thoughts for her to have of training. It was there that Thanrie figured out why Lwyn was enjoying comparing everything to learning from Earth over learning from her Celesi past. Some of it might even be her own craving for learning more about herself from Earth instead of just her surroundings. Everyone had their own hardships.
Lwyn sliced another sheet in half, from a much harder shot, and realized her pile of targets was empty. "Oh, I'm out again." Thanrie was actually low on her own targets. "Lets see if we can get more." She went to hunt down Zyuixqs, who ran to hide when he saw her. She pulled him out anyway. "Please stop wasting effort like that. We need more things to train with, your stuff breaks so easily. Actually, maybe you should fine us better targets to train with." "What? We went from wood to metal, what more could you expect?" "'Titanium', hopefully. Or at least, maybe some kind of extra durable 'steel', if the Fortress has any to offer." Thanrie making irrational requests of Zyuixqs only got easier once the Terran Secret became known.
Mhyl wandered into the conversation, expecting it was time for more Izhaethyx training. "Lwyn, are you still busy?" "Oh, uh, I guess not." Mhyl was talking in Elaethyx, to get into the swing of pronunciation. Lwyn responded in kind, but then switched to Izhaethyx so Mhyl could get some practice. "We should begin." This startled the other two, before they noticed what was going on. Mhyl and Lwyn went off to another room regardless, where Qheria was inside reading over some reports. The two elf-kinds worked on their lesson for a bit before Qheria started feeling like her reading environment was getting too loud. "I'll just go back to do more weapon training. Good luck you two." She put the reports away and dismissed herself with her own excuses.
At Qheria's comment, an idea occurred to Mhyl, which she asked in English. "Actually, about the weapons we're training with. I'm still wondering why such advanced weapons were provided for us before the Marauders learned anything." Being curious by nature, Lwyn had actually wondered about this a while ago. "I was wondering that too, so I looked into it. Remember how Zyuixqs wasn't allowed one? There is an almost devoted hatred for Fortress tech. Instead of 'suffering any taint to their honor'.. really no one is willing to fall to that level. Being brand new to everything, we were really just a guinea pig. Still, its not like our smith is to blame for anything, everything is a really good quality, it actually sucks that no one was willing to accept his hard work. I say lets just work hard and show everyone else just how good technology can actually be!" Lwyn put a touch of emphasis on the remark about honor, it was more unjustified paranoia.
People will always fear what they don't fully understand. Being a half-elf, Lwyn was not ignorant as to how difficult it can be to convince people to accept something different. However, being told to learn and adapt, so that they could improve to the way things work, it held a subtle irony that those faced with the impacts that were demanding such changes were themselves unwilling to fully adopt the same change. Being well versed with Terran cultures, Mhyl understood that there was considerable value in adopting a sense of open mindedness. "It's just like something I read about in a Terran book once. 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.' Clarke's Third Law." Mhyl was almost random in coming up with this quote.
Lwyn felt weird at the sudden reference, having believed she was the one doing the teaching at the moment. Magic was something made of dreams and wishes, this was the real world. The rebellion would be better off just accepting things too, moving forwards, and making the most of their sudden discovery. It could technically put them centuries ahead from the progress they had so far, and everyone would be better off for it. Technology had a war side too it, yes, but it had a lot of really useful comforts as well. Air conditioning to beat the heat, cars so that people don't have to walk everywhere, the internet so that looking up useful information wasn't so difficult.
"I think even an electric fan would be nice right now." Lwyn shifted her thoughts into a statement unexpectedly. "Oh, well, maybe we should go take a break then, get something to drink. I'll be right back." Before Lwyn could explain, Mhyl rushed off to get them something to drink. With things as dry as they were, staying hydrated was important, so some water would be good for them. No one wanted to see the elves collapse again. Lwyn was still appreciative that Yuxzn had established with everyone that she was an elf, even knowing the truth. Still, the result had been that she had suddenly stopped being treated as possibly one of the humans, and instead being one of the elves.
Zyuixqs of all people showed up at that point. He was one of the people who had been unsure of how to treat her since then, having treated her as 'someone like Qheria' to now 'someone like Mhyl'. It meant being uncertain in how to properly approach a situation, although Zyuixqs was still Zyuixqs. "Hello mi'lady. I have taken the opportunity to make sure that you're targets are all in order, again. I see that you are finding yourself alone away from your friends, if you are in need of company I could... uh.. hmm.." Zyuixqs was trying to do his usual courting of ladies, but her being an elf added complexity. There were cultural factors to always keep in mind, which affected tastes and preferences. There was also the whole 'humans and elves don't pair up very well', due to the obvious fear of half-elves. It was some added complexity, stuff that Lwyn wasn't very fond of.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
"Oh, hey Zyuixqs.. oh, and Thanrie is right behind you." Lwyn pointed behind Zyuixqs, so he dove into the nearest cover he could find, under the table. Lwyn poked her head under the table and waved at him. ".. Just kidding, no she isn't. You can relax now." Lwyn felt a sense of justice against him by bringing up Thanrie, she really did leave quite an impact on him, especially if she was in a bad mood. Zyuixqs sighed his relief and got up from out of the table. "Please don't scare me like that. There is no telling what that woman would do to me for simply being a gentleman." "Hmm, she would punch you in the face? Also, it might help if you took some time to treat her as a human.. as a person.. instead of just some expectations on what you think she should be like." Lwyn corrected herself, pointedly remarking upon her own personal grief. Maybe Thanrie was right, maybe there was at least a couple of similarities between her having a mismatch of genders between memories and Lwyn having a half-elf crisis. Being a half-elf was still worse, though.
"Her own expectations are rather steep. Asking for strange Terran stuff, it's impossible." Oh yeah, Zyuixqs was talking about all that Titanium nonsense from before. Thanrie was most likely joking, but maybe Zyuixqs was too scared of her to tell. Lwyn tried to help. "Don't worry, after all of this Terran stuff finally got into the open, she's probably just happy we can talk about Earth without causing problems. We had to work really hard to be quiet about all of this stuff before. I bet you she's really happy that she can bring up such Terran wonders like that." "About that, if your memories are from a place called 'Yhiuze', why do you call their stuff 'Terran'? Wouldn't it be 'Yhiuzi'?" Zyuixqs was finding it very difficult to pronounce 'Earth', and had made a rough effort.
"Because that's not how it works there. The sound they would usually put at the end would make it 'Earthen', but that ends up meaning ground. So we started calling it 'Terran' instead. Earth stuff is pretty complex like that." Lwyn was left reflecting that the fault wasn't exactly from Earth, but was technically a fault of the language English. Sometimes it felt like English was the really complicated language. She was certain this idea had never dawned upon her back at Earth, but there she had only known the one language, anything different was hard. Here, she knew two other languages, so she had something to compare it too. Her observations taught her that Mhyl must be insane, having learned so many languages, because the differences between different languages was stupidly complicated. To Lwyn, her head felt like it hurt just thinking about it.
"Oh, Lwyn, are you okay? I got us some water, please have a drink." Mhyl finally returned with the water, getting the wrong idea for Lwyn's dizzy spell. "Thanks, uh.. maybe we should call it a day for now with the language lessons. We made some good progress, we can pick things up again next time." Lwyn was reminded that she herself was teaching that same multi-lingual expert one of those stupidly complicated languages. Mhyl nodded and turned to Zyuixqs. "Please have nice day." Hearing Mhyl make another Izhaethyx attempt, Lwyn wondered how Mhyl could stay so strong despite the same 'stupid complexity'. She didn't understand that Mhyl only wanted to be able to communicate with everyone around her, to not be left out, to stop missing out on what was going on.
Zyuixqs decided it was about time to fill out one of his many reports, and left. Lwyn looked at the report Qheria had left behind, the one sent by the Marauders for them to study. That copy was for Qheria and Thanrie to share, Lwyn and Mhyl were given one in Elaethyx to share recently, again being treated as one of the elves. She still had to somehow get a message back to Yuxzn to explain that she actually couldn't read Elaethyx, only Izhaethyx. "Oh, I have an idea, lets go over our report together. I'll read it out loud for you in Elaethyx, and help you figure it out." It seems language lessons weren't over, Mhyl was just going to take over the teaching role and Lwyn would become the student. It was another class she had forgotten she was due for.
Having been doing mostly weapon training the whole time, Thanrie stopped for a break. She went to Qheria, who had been quietly practicing her stances since she arrived. "Hey Qheria, duel me." "I really don't think it would be a smart idea. Your blade has way more reach then mine, we have no idea what will happen to either weapon if one blocks the other, and if either of us can't block.. it'll hurt a lot." "Hmm, good point. But there is a lot of wood left around here. Want to make some practice swords and duel with them?" Thanrie was just eager to duel someone, having done that with her brother frequently in the past. Back then though, it was usually him that asked her.
Qheria considered it for a moment, then contemplated her own training. There might be one style that would prove useful for them both. "Fine, we can duel, but bare handed. I know you can do it, we all saw you lay into Zyuixqs. Being able to trust our own hands would be far more useful right now than figuring out some wooden sword." It was not an idea that had occurred to Thanrie before. Most of her practice with her brother was with mock swords, she had generally avoided training with her fists. Mostly due to any concerns relating as to how she wasn't to injure her hands. However, that was only in this world. Her memories of earth remembered a few of the brawls she had gotten herself into back then. Finally, something from earth that she actually had positive memories with, even if they were nothing but street brawls. The fights were utterly stupid, for no real purpose, and was probably iconic to the worst of her Terran-self's personal qualities. But, this wouldn't be some street-side brawling, it moved from that into something of value.
Thanrie was finally being offered a 'class' lesson that resounded with her, that spoke of her other past and of how to overcome it. To take unrefined movements with unarmed combat and turn it into a weapon of purpose. This was something she needed. She set aside her weapon and moved into the middle of the room. "Deal. When you're ready." This room had no hard floor, everything here was dirt, designed specifically to soften blows and noise. Lwyn had found it extra challenging as she couldn't rebound shots off the walls this time. For a duel, the soft floor was perfect.
A few seconds into the duel, Thanrie got up off the floor. She had lead with some good moves as far as she could tell, but Qheria had just blocked them. Then her own momentum was used against her, she found herself flying, and was down on her back. She had forgotten, she was actually reasonably light, probably especially compared to the 'self' she remembered of earth. She wasn't compensating for that at all. She was strong yes, she was even fast, but she was very light and not very good at defending herself. Someone who could block her and just go for an opening, she would have no chance. She had found one of her own weaknesses, a priceless lesson.
"So, want to try again, or are you done already?" "Of course not, only getting started. But, if we're going to be smart about it, there's no point rushing ahead. I'm pretty sure that if I don't come up with something new, I'll just be on my back again." Thanrie was being careful, which was very uncharacteristic of her. It was another moment where Celesi Thanrie was overwhelmingly imposing over Terran Thanrie. However, she was also avoiding being naive about it. The visible quality of effect on Thanrie was something Qheria had to respect. Maybe the two of them would have to do this sort of thing much more often. Thanrie though was also making use of her knowledge of fighter games to the application of her current situation, for whatever that could gain her.
Another minute later, Thanrie got up from the floor again. She had made another attempt and it had failed. Knowing a few moves from a bunch of made-up video games didn't actually yield her much of an advantage. She had however avoided Qheria's first counter by actually managing her own movements. However, it was the follow-up that got her, as she wasted too much movement in a dodge. While working on figuring out some other way, a thought dawned upon her about her opponent. Qheria was actually really really good at this sort of thing, it was surprising just how good she actually was. Qheria was also pretty quick, and really strong, making you think she just fought like a bear. More than that though, she was tough, precise, and.. actually kinda graceful in her movements. What stood out the most was how she fought with her hands like she herself embodied the shield she frequently carried. Her style was very defensive, none of her actions were very aggressive, and all of her dangerous moves were counters.
This also meant that Qheria was very effective against someone who was very aggressive, like Thanrie. It would be several more hours before Thanrie finally called for a break, never having landed a single attack.