Chapter Text
“ Hiiiiii -yah!”
March swiftly summoned both of her swords to her hands and swung both of them forward in a scissor-like movement, slicing through the dummy in front of her as if it were made of tissue paper and causing the top half of it to go flying up into the air before falling back down to the ground with a thump. She twirled her swords expertly in hand and giggled enthusiastically, bouncing up and down on her feet.
“You’ve improved a lot over the relatively few days you’ve been training, March. It’s really impressive, actually.” Yanqing commented casually from where he was standing with his arms folded over his chest, a casual smile playing on his expression as he watched her twirl her swords in hand, before she rested them on both of her shoulders.
“Thanks, Yanqing! Couldn’t have done it without you… Or Yunli… Or my assistant teacher… speaking of, where is Stelle?” March asked, glancing around for the silver-haired girl, who wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
“Mm. I don’t know. She left without a word.” Yunli murmured in response as she glanced over her shoulder and looked behind herself, before turning back to March, whose expression became mildly grumpy as a result. She dispelled her swords and pulled out her phone, tapping a few buttons on it irritatedly.
-
March : assistant teacher, where’d you go? >:(
Stelle : i wanted to go do something
Stelle : i’ll be back in a few mins
-
“Go do something? What could that possibly mean?” March asked incredulously with a bewildered expression as she narrowed her eyes at Stelle’s messages, before letting out a sigh and putting her phone away, summoning her swords once more. Then she noticed Yanqing and Yunli glancing towards each other, chatting about something.
“I think March’s ready for tougher opponents.” Yunli muttered to him, to which he gave a mildly skeptical look, ever so briefly looking back towards March in the process, but before he could give his input, she piped up first enthusiastically.
“I concur! I feel like I can take on the world!” She exclaimed confidently as she raised both of her swords above her head with the points of the blades aimed upwards. Yunli and Yanqing both glanced towards her, the former giving an amused smile while the latter chuckled quietly with a hand resting on his hip. Yanqing stepped forward and closed a bit of the distance between himself and the girl that the General had instructed her to train, before coming to a stop a few feet from her, his hand traveling to the blade in his sheath.
“If you say so, March. But I’d like to say, you’ve been facing rather easy opponents or those who’ve been holding back. You’ve thrashed a few IPC mechs and you’ve beaten me in the three trials we’ve tasked you with,” Yanqing murmured as his hand tightened around the hilt of his sword, a faint smile spreading across his face as he did so. Eventually, he swiftly drew his sword as his floating swords appeared and swirled around him. “How about a real duel, March? No holding back.” He asked curiously, taking March aback for a few moments.
It didn’t take long before Yunli spoke and completely ruined Yanqing’s cool moment.
“That was incredibly overdramatic, Yanqing.”
“S-Shut up, Yunli!” He retorted embarrassedly as he lowered his sword and spun around to face the girl, pointing his sword towards her, to which she responded with playful giggles. March quickly recovered from being momentarily shocked and giggled as well, summoning her two swords back to her hands.
“Sure! I mean, I’m a little nervous that I may get my butt kicked, but I guess I can give it a try.” March responded as she idly twirled her two swords in hand. The blonde swordsman turned back towards her and nodded in response, his embarrassment quickly fading for a smirk on his face instead. She took a few steps back to increase the starting distance between Yanqing and herself.
March took a deep breath as she mentally (and physically… and emotionally… and… well, you get the idea) composed herself and readied herself for the friend-now-friendly-foe that stood across from her, her hands tightening around the hilts of her twin blades. Just as she suspected he would, Yanqing started out by rushing towards her while hopping onto one of his floating swords and swung the sword in his hands at her.
With practiced ease, March spun her swords in front of her and managed to block the retainer’s swing, before pushing forward and causing Yanqing to nearly tumble to the ground, but he managed to regain his footing and backed away from March, before sending his other floating swords towards March. She managed to just barely deflect each of them with repeated swings of her sword, making sure to keep track of where each one was at the moment.
Floating around her with the points aimed directly at her, the swords individually turned back towards her and soared towards her one-by-one, but she managed to just barely side-step each of them and then being just barely quick enough to raise her swords and block Yanqing’s next swing. She lurched backwards as a result of the momentum from the young retainer’s swing, her feet skidding against the ground in the process, before finally attempting a slash of her own, swinging her swords in an almost scissor-like pattern, but Yanqing managed to expertly avoid it by springing off of the ground and leaping backwards into a backflip to avoid it, landing on his feet and standing upright to prepare himself for further combat.
“ Makes sense that Yanqing would be able to avoid something like that. Seventy-five percent of his fighting style is based on dodging, after all. ” March thought to herself idly as she scanned through her surroundings swiftly, taking note of Yanqing’s extra swords floating up off of the ground and moving to resume circling around himself. Her hands gripped around the hilts of her blades tighter, her fingers curling in the process, as she held them up in front of herself, ready for anything that came her way. And exactly like she’d anticipated, the swords all pointed directly at her once more and then soared swiftly towards her with ruthless tenacity and precise aim. She swung one of her two swords and deflected one of Yanqing’s swords, sending it spiraling off course and spinning wildly into the air, before slashing again to deflect another of Yangqing’s swords with her other one.
Yanqing suddenly sprang off of the floating sword he had been standing and brought it to his hand, curling into a flip in mid-air before swinging both of the swords in his hands down towards March, but she stepped backwards and managed to evade it, leading to the ground where she used to be standing to be struck by the full force of Yanqing’s swords, cracking the stone tiles that made up the floor of the area they fought in. March spun one of her swords in hand and attempted an overhead swing at Yanqing, but two other of his floating swords intercepted it, crossing each other and stopping in mid-air to block the hit. With her other sword, March attempted to jab at Yanqing, but the young retainer had managed to stand back up and leap a few feet backwards.
But before March could do anything else, Yanqing suddenly sheathed his sword and let out a sigh of exhaustion, which let March only just now notice the multiple beads of sweat coming down his forehead. She stared at him for a few seconds before dispelling her swords, before Yanqing managed to catch his breath and flashed March a smile and a nod, reaching a hand up to wipe his forehead off of sweat.
“Nicely done, March! I gotta say, as much as it bruises my-”
“Ego?”
“St-Stop talking, Yunli! Ahem , anyways, as much as it bruises my pride as a Cloud Knight, I must say, you’ve gotten very skilled at swordplay in a very short amount of time,” Yanqing beamed at March, crossing his arms over his chest satisfactorily, giving her another nod of affirmation. “You might not have noticed in the heat of battle, but I had to take great care to not fall behind in our fight.” Yanqing added with a slight shrug of his shoulders, before stretching his arms over his shoulder, one after the other. March was too exhilarated to give a response. If she had to be honest, she felt like she could keep fighting, but Yunli spoke up before she could, walking up next to Yanqing with a playful smirk.
“Don’t be so quick to praise her, Yanqing. It’s my turn now.” Yunli spoke out eagerly, gesturing for Yanqing to stand where she had been previously standing on the sidelines of the makeshift arena as a spectator. Yinqing raised an eyebrow towards her in response, cautiously and curiously glancing between Yunli and March with a slight hint of concern entering his eyes in the process. “Uh, March, would you be up for another duel so soon after our battle–” But March cut the young retainer off before he could finish his sentence with a wave of her hand.
“Don’t sweat it; I’m good, Yanqing!” She assured him cheerfully before shifting her eyes towards the other girl with a determined expression. “Master Yunli, I accept your challenge!” She exclaimed confidently, her posture shifting forming to a battle-ready position, to which Yunli responded with a chuckle and a smug smirk. Yanqing glanced between the two girls one more time before letting out a quiet sigh under his breath and walking out of the way of where they would be battling, towards the sidelines where Yunli had been gesturing towards. The two girls summoned their respective swords, March with her twin blades and Yunli with her massive sword, and eyed each other with anticipation, waiting for the other to make a move first.
Yanqing stopped on the sidelines of the arena and turned to watch the two sword fighters, arms folded over his chest. But before the tension of the battle could finally snap like a rope pulled taut, the young retainer heard an additional two pairs of footsteps approaching, turning his head to see not only the return of the Trailblazer, Stelle, but also the Inhibitor Lunae, Dan Heng, following her with his usual mask of stoicism on his face. The two approached Yanqing before coming to a stop a few feet short.
“Oh, is this what you wanted to do, Stelle? Bring Dan Heng here?” Yanqing inquired with a curious tone of voice, raising an eyebrow as his eyes darted between the two Nameless. Stelle chuckled quietly in response, resting a hand on her hip and briefly glancing towards her fellow Trailblazer, while Dan Heng had his arms tightly folded over his chest with a deadpan expression that was punctuated by a small sigh of mild, but non-serious, annoyance.
“The word ‘bring’ implies I had any amount of consent over coming here. I’d say ‘dragged forcefully by the arm’ is a more appropriate term for what really happened.” Dan Heng muttered under his breath in a tone that matched the mild irritation in his sigh, before casually, but gracefully, leaning away from Stelle’s playful swing of her arm without even looking towards her. Yanqing chuckled amusedly at the antics between the two Trailblazers, before turning his head back towards the two to watch the tense stare-down between March and Yunli.
Despite the fact that he’d only technically agreed to watch March train and maybe help out if he felt like it, Dan Heng felt his eyes slowly droop down and gaze over the outfit that March, given by Yunli, had started to wear after she began her swordplay training, but he wasn’t exactly sure why. Whenever March had asked him what he thought of any particular outfit, he’d always answer with ‘it looks nice’ or some variation of the phrase. He wondered to himself why he was suddenly paying so much attention to this outfit in particular. Did it have to do with the fact that the outfit had the design customs of the Luofu? He had no earthly idea. Sadly, he wasn’t the only one to notice himself staring at March’s clothing, as Stelle suddenly leaned over into ideal whispering range, a smug smirk sprawled on her face.
“You’re staring directly at it, Dan Heng. You’re into it, huh?” Stelle whispered teasingly to him with that familiar smug grin persisting, nudging him in the arm playfully with her elbow a few times, to which he responded by shifting his hand swiftly to catch her elbow before pushing her forcefully away back to where she had been standing, the silver-haired girl giggling as she did so.
“...I’m not gonna dignify that comment with a response.” Dan Heng muttered under his breath in response with an eye roll of indignance, averting his eyes from March for several seconds and staring off to the side at something else that was vastly uninteresting in comparison, long enough for Stelle to drop the topic and focus back on the two sword fighters standing before them. Eventually, Dan Heng turned his head back to watch the fight as the tension between them grew higher and higher, struggling a lot more than he’d like to admit to keep his eyes up at a suitable level.
Eventually, the fight would begin between the two.