A third plate of food was placed before Gwyn as she had been still hungry after the second, she blushed even deeper at her friends’ raised eyebrows “I’m really hungry."

The atmosphere turned pleasant and relaxed as they ate; only the occasional blushing glance between Gwyn and Tatiana disturbed the mood, much to the other’s displeasure. They ended up just idly gossiping to pass the time until the table was significantly cleared.

Gwyn decided to talk about last night once they had finished eating “did you hear anything back about the attack?”

Her friends turned towards her at the question before everyone swiveled to Tatiana for answers “not currently, my father is still inquiring as to their identities and motives but I haven’t heard much back from him yet.” Tatiana chewed on a piece of toast as she thought.

“I think they were after me.” Gwyn added her suspicion into the conversation.

“Oh, why is that?” Marion asked curiously as she sipped on her black coffee.

“A few reasons,” Gwyn took a breath to steady herself, “firstly they were still looking after they had rounded up the other guests so it couldn’t have been anyone in the main hall.”

“Sure but that could mean it was anyone of us.” Cécilia added as a maid silently took away their empty plates.

“They weren’t looking for Tatiana as they would have just gone after Mr Rygiel.” Tatiana nodded slowly at that remark from Gwyn.

“So that leaves the three of us?” Marion asked.

“You and Cécilia were Tatiana’s known plus ones or twos in this case, so the same applies as before, they just go after Mr Rygiel. Whereas I only joined your group last minute and my parents weren’t here so they didn’t know how to draw me out."

“Hmm, why you? That thing you found?” Tatiana contemplated “how’d they know it was you that found it?”

“That I don’t know, maybe it was theirs and they had a tracker on it? Or maybe a camera?” that part confused her, it would have been easy for the men to find out the rest. Her ticket would have been brought in advance through her parents, so they knew she might be at the Gala. It was only bad luck that she even decided to go in the end.

But why kidnap her?

All the system seemed to have done so far was to make her a little more attractive and make her slightly better at kissing, good things for sure but not kidnap her worthy. She was probably using it wrong, she hazily remembered a long list of classes that would have been much more useful that what she had ended up with.

She’d just have to make what she had work.

“What’s our plan then?” Gwyn asked the quiet group.

“Plan for the thugs hunting you or for the day?” Tatiana asked as she finished her coffee.

“Both?”

“Well, there’s not much we can do until we know more about who is after you and for the day we are staying in the estate. They might have had a back up plan, they are unlikely to give up if they are willing to hit the Gala. This place is the safest place for you besides the school.” Tatiana stated as she extricated herself from the table.

“Where are we going?” Gwyn asked as she stood with the rest.

“If you are a target then it's time you learnt how to properly fight back.” There was a smile in her voice that Gwyn wasn’t sure she liked.

Tatiana led the way out of the dining room and further into the wing to a place she had never taken Gwyn before. The room they ended up in was a classic styled dojo, the smell of veneered wood and paper screens dominated the room. The wooden back wall was decorated with numerous wooden weapons from staves to swords, knives and even nunchucks.

Before she could step on the spongy floor Tatiana instructed her to remove her footwear and change into a white Gi, Marion initially gave her a set that was a size too small in jest but Cécilia rescued her with a properly sized one.

Marion just laughed at Gwyn’s unamused glare.

After they all had changed quickly in a side room the three girls lined up before Tatiana.

“While you’re in my dojo you’ll call me Sensei or Sensei Tatiana, am I clear?” Tatiana stood imperiously in front with her black belt tied tight.

“Yes Sensei!” the three chimed enthusiastically in unison.

Now that she looked closer the other two had black belts as well, only Gwyn had anything else with her sad beginner’s white belt. The only conclusion she could make was that she was getting her butt kicked today, not the first thing she wanted to do this morning.

Tatiana marched before them like a general “first thing is to stretch, so get to it.” Gwyn kind of liked that tone, it made her feel funny again.

Gwyn was guided along into the more intense stretches by Tatiana’s firm and excited hands; she suspected the sly princess had just wanted to touch or be near her.

For the next several hours Sensei Tatiana put the group through their paces, she taught Gwyn how to properly punch and kick, how to guard herself properly and how to keep her eyes on the enemies’ tells. Gwyn was surprised by Tatiana’s martial ability, she had always thought that she wasn’t that coordinated just like herself but it turned out she just had a different skill set and sadly it was only Gwyn that was unskilled in fitness.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

However when it came to throws she mainly spent her time in the air or on the ground, the others taking some or maybe a lot of glee in tossing her about and due to the skill gap she had no way to stop it from happening.

After a rather brutal throw by Cécilia, Gwyn lay on the mat wheezing. She had been casually tossed over the redhead’s shoulder and smacked hard onto the soft floor. She waved to her friend for a time-out as she was having a hard time breathing.

“Are you ok?” Cécilia leaned over the wheezing girl with concern, loose strands of hair dangling.

With her throat as dry as a desert all she could muster was a thumbs up in reply before her sore limb fell to the floor like a lead weight as soon as she stopped supporting it. A bottle of hydrating sports fluid was handed to her by Tatiana, the dojo’s sensei had sat before the sprawled out girl in a seiza. Despite Gwyn’s protests she was pulled into one as well.

“While we are resting, how about we go over your ‘class’?” Tatiana requested while smirking slightly, her face was pink from either exertion or excitement.

“Are we kissing again?” Marion inquired hopefully as she too sat down next to the pair.

“No, you moron,” Tatiana huffed as her own cheeks pinkened further at the memory, “she was able to use her Alluring Sight in combat, she must have other skills hidden away that could do the same.”

While it was true that she had been rather creative with her Alluring Sight, she doubted she’d get much use of the other in combat. Although maybe blowing a kiss might work.

“Oh I got an idea. What about commands? She has sight and touch, so what about sound?” Marion spoke excitedly into the contemplative silence.

Tatiana tapped her lips in thought “it’s worth a shot. Try to command Marion to do something.” she gestured imperiously towards the blonde haired athlete.

Gwyn blinked owlishly from behind her glasses at them.

“Uhh stand up?” She shyly told the grinning blonde.

The system remained silent and Marion too remained seated.

“You’re a ‘Seductress’ right? Try to be more seductive then” Cécilia spoke reassuringly after her immediate failure.

“Umm, Could you stand up for me?”

Gwyn tried her best to infuse her voice with sultry seduction but it was such an unknown element to her that it came out far too high pitched. The group turned away to hide their laughter which only made her cheeks burn brighter.

“Just be yourself, ask her to do something like you normally would and focus on really wanting it.” Tatiana seemed more confident in this plan, which once again made her feel she was missing a joke at her expense.

Turning back towards the happily grinning blonde she changed tack, this time rather than be seductive she just followed Tatiana’s advice and asked as she normally would.

“Can you help me up?” She extended her arms towards her friend.

Seductress class activated Charming Request added

“Sure thing.” Without even thinking about it Marion bounced to her feet and hauled Gwym up.

As they now stood face to face she began rapidly blinking in confusion before speaking “woah, freaky."

“What was it like?” Tatiana spoke up eagerly as the others leaned forwards in anticipation.

Marion screwed up her face in thought “like nothing really, I just really wanted to help her like normal. I forgot all about what we were doing until I did what she said.”

That ability seemed really powerful. There must be a limitation somewhere or else what? She can mind control people?

“Well? What are you waiting for? Keep going!”

At Tatiana’s insistence Gwyn continued to test her new skill and they found out a few things in the process.

Namely that there were limitations to her new skill.

First her target had to already want to do what she was asking, she couldn’t make someone hurt themselves or their friends unwillingly. It was good for distractions and finding out new things about her friends, for example when they tried to test out if they could get someone to do something they wouldn’t normally want to do.

“Oh, I know, how about? ‘Tatiana could you kiss Marion please?’”

Gwyn had expected the skill to fail but was shocked when Tatiana had planted a smooch upon her rival. To say that things were embarrassing after that was an understatement, Tatiana’s face seemed to be stuck blushing.

She did end up regretting it when she had recovered enough to continue training, Tatiana had taken extreme pleasure in aggressively sparring with her.

While she didn’t have much luck with shifting her with her newer skills, Alluring Sight had better luck. She was easily able to attract her attention to Gwyn’s more appealing assets during the fight, it felt a little underhanded but she still wasn’t able to win as her Sensei was far too experienced to be too caught off guard.

She vowed to work on it some more, specifically to cast it on her fists or feet in order to distract and launch an attack with the opposite limb. Essentially a magician’s trick of misdirection, the ‘look over here’ trick.

As noon rolled around the group stopped beating up Gwyn and took a break for lunch, Gwyn herself was once again starving from her constant use of her abilities. She needed to up her caloric intake now she was burning it far faster than ever.

After they took a quick shower in the dojo’s locker room they headed back to Tatiana’s private dining room however upon entering they were surprised to see Tatiana’s father waiting there while eating his own lunch.

“Daddy!” Tatiana exclaimed as she launched herself at her chuckling father.

“How have you been my princess?” Mr Rygiel asked the girl in his large arms.

As they sat down, multiple plates of thick sandwiches were placed before them, Gwyn had triple the amount of the others to her quiet embarrassment.

“We’ve been good, just been training this morning,” Tatiana delicately took up her sandwich before asking, “did you find out who sent those men?"

“Unfortunately no,” Mr Rygiel rumbled with a voice like a landslide, “whoever sent them covered their tracks well but we’ll find out who sent them and they’ll regret it."

Tatiana shared a look with her but Gwyn didn’t really know what she was trying to communicate.

“Daddy, we think that whoever did this might have ties with something aeronautical or astronautical. My lovely Gwyn said she overheard something along those lines at the Gala, the men were either looking for something they lost or someone."

Tatiana kept things as vague as she could while still providing enough information for her father to go off of.

Mr Rygiel gave Gwyn a brief appraising look.

“That's helpful, thank you girls. I’ll have someone look into it.”

There wasn’t much to say after that, the girls simply spent the rest of their time chatting about whatever caught in their minds.