Chapter 4: Recruitment Day

The next morning, Kel stared, aghast, at the new poster for naginata club posted on the bulletin board just outside of her first class. On one hand, Neal wasn't kidding – he worked fast. It had been less than twenty four hours since their meeting, and he'd already come through on the posters. In hindsight, she wished he was a little less capable and a little less reliable because she knew, without having to look, that these posters were already dotting the scattered bulletin boards throughout the school. There was really nothing she could do about it now. It was not Neal's capability or reliability that attracted her regrets, not really, only his… well, his taste.

The posters were not a far cry from his initial thoughts of a faked scene in the hallways between classes. The page looked like it had come out of a comic book, or rather an old-school arcade fighting game; it had been sectioned into two sides and four panels. On one side, anime faces clearly identifiable as Dom, Midori and Raoul glared proudly, faced off against a determined-looking caricature Kel could only assume was herself. It helped, of course, that small captions clearly identified who was participating in the matches. The heading read Challenge Accepted! with a splashy caption below announcing Kendo vs. Naginata!

The small print at the bottom of the poster, which Kel devoutly wished was a sentence or two about naginata club itself, instead read First-year Keladry Mindelan issues a challenge on behalf of the newly-formed naginata club against the Kendo team captain, Raoul Dulacdor and rising stars Midori McCann and Dominic Masbolle. Who will prevail?! Recruitment Day, Centre-stage, Gymnasium at 3:30pm.

"He certainly chose some cheesy lines, didn't he?" Kel heard a mild-mannered voice behind her. Midori peeked over her shoulder to examine the poster more closely. "I can only assume that Hae had nothing to do with this. She hates anime, she thinks we get too many otaku already."

"I should have kept a closer eye on him," Kel admitted. "It's not my ideal of a poster either. I don't even know what this poster is advertising."

"No, it's clearly advertising the naginata club. See the last line? Newly-formed naginata club. They know where to go to sign up. At any rate, I wouldn't worry too much about it," Midori replied, shrugging. "It'll certainly draw some attention, which is what I think you need. Far be it, of course, to challenge what our taisho says, but Hae can be uptight. Whether or not someone's an otaku is no marker of whether they are a good martial artist. Looking forward to our match, Keladry." She nodded and disappeared down the hallway.

"Look great, don't they?" Neal slung an arm around her. "I work fast, and Brad's a great artist."

"A little… dramatic, isn't it?" Kel replied slowly. "I'm not sure if this is the image I wanted to give…"

"Nah, it'll be fine!" Neal waved his hand dismissively. "It's attention-grabbing, it's not as if you and the kendo team are faking a public fight – everybody knows it's just marketing – but you'll still have a lot of people watching your matches, and that's when you'll be able to sell them. Have a pitch prepared for the end of your matches sending people to your registration table, I'll get them signed up for you. Where's your first class?"

Kel sighed resignedly. Like it or not, they were already plastered over the school and between kendo practices (Raoul having deemed this "the week before we are inundated with beginners so let's practice every day" week), she was too busy to try to work out another solution. "English," she said. "In classroom 201."

Recruitment Day dawned bright, clear and cold. Kel was up at six in the morning – she was a morning person – and slipped into the kendo dojo with her naginata to practice. Even if many experts said that naginata, properly wielded, could almost always beat kendo, Kel was less confident on the "properly wielded" part. Naginata, she had been taught, was an art of striving for perfection. One did not reach the teaching ranks without many years of practice and effort, and unlike Western sports, "many years" meant "between your highest practitioner rank, godan, and the highest teaching rank, you have thirty-five years to practice." Given that getting godan was in itself a process taking than fifteen years or more, she was looking at a lifetime of learning how to properly wield a naginata.

Even if the three candidates put forward by the kendo club weren't what you would call experts in that craft, kendo being very similar in terms of mastery as naginata, she knew they also would not take a match without a fight. Over the past week, she had come to realize that if Crown Academy kendo had a credo, it was "Don't take things lying down." Even when it was self-destructive, Crown Academy kendoka took risks and threw everything they had into it. She knew they would not make it easy.

It didn't help she hadn't practiced in nearly two weeks, she mused as she began her patterns of happoburi, swings. Jogeburi, nanameburi, yokoburi, nanameburi shakara, furikaeshi, fifty swings in each direction, taking care to work her left and right sides equally. Unlike how it was portrayed in the books, there was nothing fancy about happoburi. It was simply swinging – up and down, side to side, angled cuts, repeated without variation. The motion let her focus on her form and precision, and making perfect cuts without the pressure of an opponent or a competition at hand.

Recruitment Day was to start, formally, at 10, which was not nearly late enough for Neal's liking. He would, he informed her loftily, take over at her table around 2, after he had slept until a proper hour and had lunch. She figured that was for the best – at least it was some measure of control. She didn't want to think about what he could say to her potential recruits.

She had prepared short information sheets about naginata for anyone interested and, feeling optimistic, copied a hundred – almost enough for the first year class. She would leave her bogu out as a display and planned on wearing her gi and hakama the whole day. Unlike the navy blue, quilted kendo uniforms, naginataka wore a white gi with a black hakama. One of the kendo boys, a tall red-head whose name she hadn't learned, had unearthed a naginata banner from the storage room while pulling out kendo's shinpan, judges', flags. Even if it had been dusty, it was nothing a washcloth in the washrooms didn't solve, so at least her booth would not look out of place compared to the others.

Raoul had convinced three of the senior kendoka, which he had described as "the ones who would die before doing anything dishonourable," to act as judges. Kel had expressed concerns about unfair judging, or at least uninformed judging, only to have all three stare at her with open looks of horror. Each had been made to swear an oath to judge fairly and she had gotten the open opportunity to show them whatever videos she deemed necessary to show them what proper naginata strikes looked like. She had, accordingly, taken that opportunity to force her captive senior audience through a number of matches on youtube, from levels as high as the 2015 World Championship in Canada, to the Japanese Empress Cup, to the matches from last year's European Championships. She was satisfied that whatever happened, she had done her best to ensure the matches would be fair.

xxx

At that moment, Alanna Trebond was rolling around in her bed, trying to find a comfortable position to doze in. It was her fourth Recruitment Day, her second as team captain, and she had no idea why she was even remotely nervous about it.

Other than the obvious, that is. For some reason, almost two and a half months later, she was still getting whispers in the hallway and her fencing club was still a mess. Fencing club had always been more, well, fractured than the other clubs. Archery was all about transparency and open scorekeeping, the best archers being the best archers, full stop. The hand-to-hand combat group was, at least from the outside, all about consensus. It was them against the world, and they stuck together. Kendo was all about hard work and giving it a hundred and ten – and when they said a hundred and ten, they meant it. Although they were the smallest club, they were the ones most often in the infirmary for injuries. One of their members had, it was known, broken a rib in a match and gotten up to continue fighting.

Fencing, though, was all about backstabbing and conflict and trying to one-up each other. The majority of the fencing team were descended from the decimated Tortallan aristocracy – the intellectually smarter part of it, anyway. An odd fact about Tortallan history, that. Unlike the bloody French Revolution, which led to the fast and brutal Terror, the Tortallan monarchy in the late 1700s had willingly relinquished power in a desperate effort to prevent civil war. The move brought them an all too temporary reprieve of only a generation before the only slightly less bloody Tortallan revolution, as they called it now. In reality, that temporary reprieve had allowed the smarter families, such as the Trebonds, to change their practices and become legitimate business owners, academics, and tradespeople, thereby both preserving their wealth and their lives. Alanna knew well that she was one of those families – the Trebond family tree dated back almost two millennia.

The only problem was that, with such complicated family trees, you could have some rather deep-seated feuds in your family line. And by deep, she meant centuries-deep. Combine that with the fencing tendency of one-upping your teammates, and sparks flew. Literally.

She considered herself lucky with the sabre group. There was herself, a Trebond. There was Sacherell Wellam, Wyldon Cavall and Padraig haMinch – all staunch conservative houses, much like Trebond. She herself wasn't conservative, but then again … she hadn't seen her way clear to announcing that either.

That was really what this was about, wasn't it? Her and her stupid inability to admit shit.

Fuck. How the hell was she supposed to get through Recruitment Day without Jon? She sat up, angrily tossing her blankets off, and ran her fingers roughly through her copper curls. She'd gotten a haircut that over the summer – wasn't there some culture that said that was supposed to help you get over someone? Anyway, it hadn't worked. Jon was still an ass, and she was still in love with him.

She was four years in on the fencing team – one as a first year, one as a junior fencer, just having made the team. Then, just before her third year, receiving the call that changed her life.

"Hey, is this Alanna?" he had asked – confidence, that was all him. She didn't have that, not as much then. He was always behind her.

"Yes," she had replied, surprised. "Who is this?"

"Jon, Jon De Conte. You know, from fencing? I know, we're in different sections – but I was appointed team captain at the end of last year?"

"Oh, right," Alanna had said, assuming that he was calling for a reason relating to practice. "Yeah, I suppose since Wyatt graduated with Robb, sabre doesn't have a captain either. And you're both the fencing captain and the foil section captain, am I right?"

"Yes, that's what I was calling about," Jon had said. "I know this is a lot to ask, but would you be interested in being the fencing captain next year?"

Alanna remembered that she had paused, her throat working for a moment. "You mean the sabre section captain?" she had asked finally. "I mean, third-year is pretty young – I understand Kyle isn't really captain material, but what about Wyldon? He would be good, I think sabre would follow him. He's strict though."

"No, no, you misunderstood me." Jon had hastened to correct her. She remembered the eagerness, that slight huff of air, the suggestion of a smile in his voice. "I didn't say sabre section captain, I said fencing captain. For all of fencing, not just sabre."

Alanna had been speechless for a moment, and then cleared her throat. Once, twice. "Jon," she had tried to say, but failed. She coughed again, and what ended up coming out was "You have got to be shitting me."

She still remembered his laugh of surprise, deep and musical.

"I mean," she had rushed in saying, "I'm going into third-year. I can hardly, I don't think there's ever been, it's not… a third-year captain, and you were already appointed the captaincy at the end of last year. It's just not done."

"Yes, but I don't want it," Jon had said. "I think I'll be a good section captain, but you know that foil is larger than the other teams, and it's a handful. But I don't want the captaincy, and I don't think I'd be as good at it as you. You're great, Alanna, and I really think that with you at the helm for three years, fencing will be great. Even as a second-year, you were starting to outplay pretty much everyone in sabre, and you're hands-down the most dedicated at practice. I checked the attendance records – you haven't missed a day in two years, and we've all seen you running drills or running in the mornings. You work the hardest, and you're the best captain for the team right now."

"I don't know…" Alanna had said, skeptical. Even if Jon was listing good reasons, reasons that made sense, there had never been a third-year captain. Not in the entire three-hundred-odd year history of the school. "I'm not you, Jon. People follow you."

There had been a silence on the other end. "Alanna," he had said finally. "I'm going to let you in on a secret. I'm not that good at most things. I'm really only fair to middling at best. Just look at my foil scores – last year I placed seventeenth in division, which isn't bad, but for someone who has fenced for six years, it's not outstanding either. What I am good at is knowing what other people will be good at, knowing where to put other people to make the best impact. And you'll be a good fencing captain. Trust me on this one."

Alanna had thought about it for a minute, two minutes. To his credit, Jon didn't hang up. She could still remember hearing him fidgeting on the other end, that crinkling sound that periodically invaded her thinking. He had later told her he had been flipping through the team roster, that complex behemoth listing all the team members, their strengths, their weaknesses.

"Well… all right," she had said, giving in. What could she say? This was Jon, and people followed Jon. And if Jon told them to follow her, what was she supposed to say to that?

Fuck this shit, Alanna thought, disgusted with herself. She grabbed an elastic from her bedside table and threw her hair up into a ponytail, standing up to look for semi-reasonable clothes she could leave her dorm in.

Jon was over, and her team was ready for recruitment day. Sacherell and Wyldon were handling the sabre match, Gary had told her that he and Geoff Meron were up for epee and Jon had assigned the foil match to Imrah Legann and Clara Goodwin. She had her brief comments prepared. A roster to man the tables had been set up. She had absolutely no cause for worry, and she was going to go for a run.

Recruitment Day would be fine, with or without him.

xxx

"Up! Get UP!" Daine groaned into her pillows as Miri's voice broke her doze, vaguely recognizing the pounding as someone's hand on her door. "It's Recruitment Day! Get up, you're team captain, Daine, and you have to get up! I've been here like five minutes now, I'm getting Sarge!"

The problem with open transparency dictating the structure and membership of the archery team was that, sometimes, the best archers weren't necessarily the best organizers. Daine knew her strengths, and organization, especially around Recruitment Day, was not one of them. "Don't get Sarge!" she called out, or tried to, because she wasn't entirely sure if she was talking out loud yet. She rolled over, feeling around on her bedside table for her phone. What time was it, anyway? Seven? Eight?

"Daine, get up! It's almost 9:30 and you've got the keys for the storage room! We need to get into it to get the bows we were going to put out on display!" That was Evin's voice now. "Miri and I are on first shift at the archery booth and we need the bows for our display!"

"TURN OUT!" The roar was Sarge's. How had he gotten so loud? Daine groaned again and rolled out of her bed with a thud. Saturday mornings were meant for sleeping in. "Yeah, yeah," she yelled back. She was lucky – the advantage of open transparency was that, at least, you knew where you stood. Best archers weren't always the best at everything else, so captain or not, things like Recruitment Day were planned by the people who were best at it. Daine only handled the demonstration half, and that wasn't until four. She staggered to her feet and opened the door.

"Keys?" Miri demanded, holding out a hand. "We have half an hour to set up and we're already five minutes behind."

Daine sighed and waved her hand at her desk, and was promptly pushed out of the way as Miri barged in. "Sorry, Miri. Morning, Sarge. Evin." She leaned against the doorway, yawning.

Sarge nodded at her, and if Daine didn't know him so well she would have thought him angry. After a year of working with him, though, she had come to see that he simply liked the gruff image. "Daine. Ready for the presentation?"

"Worry about yourself," Daine grinned. "You're the one I'm shooting apples and clown noses off."

xxx

By three that day, Kel was kneeling in the shadows at the edge of the stage pulling her bogu, her armour, on. She didn't especially need the full half-hour, but after her morning, it was calming.

The hall had already been bustling at 9:30 that morning. Although the doors were not formally open for the students until 10, the clubs were permitted to set up early but, as a boarding school, almost all the students were part of one club or another. Effectively, the only students who didn't have access to the hall by 9:30 were the new first-years.

Kel had been put on sports row, a prime location, albeit in a corner furthest from the stage. The fencers had the central location smack-dab between the two entrances to the gym, and three tables – as far as Kel could tell, one for each weapon. Kendo had been placed in the corner closest to the stage, and they had seemed to have had good traffic for the day. A couple teammates had slipped over to say hello over the course of the morning, for which Kel was grateful as she had, unfortunately, not had the best traffic. Rather, most people's eyes seemed to slide from her neighbours, the archers, directly to the competitive dance team on the other side of her.

The archers were good neighbours to her, although from the stage they were looking rather small and crowded. They were as large as the fencers, but they had rushed in fifteen minutes late that morning. The fencers hadn't taken their space, per se, just … encroached on it. They were, however, very nice to her – even though the morning pair, Miri and Evin, were kept hopping by the number of interested first years, they still got her a cup of tea during a break run.

Between kendo and the fencers sat an empty table. A small card proclaimed that it was meant for the mixed martial arts group, but no one appeared for the club that morning. According to Neal, that was typical – they didn't solicit. If you were interested, you would find them on your own. But Student Council had traditionally offered them a table anyway, just in case someone, sometime, decided to come.

The club presentations had begun at 10 in the morning, short fifteen-minute presentations. Kel had tuned out most of the talks, paying more attention on the people passing her table, but a few clubs stood out – Kel's sisters were dancers, but the competitive dance team was like nothing she had ever seen. They sold themselves as athletes, and Kel could believe it. The club after them had some song and dance number that was equally impressive, and from the cheers around her it must have been a popular song. There was also a choir, a band, a symphony, art club, theatre, comedy club, debate club… Kel wasn't able to keep track of it all. The whole school only had about six hundred students, how were there so many clubs?

By the time Kel had pulled on all of her bogu, she still had time to spare. On stage, the kendo team was already deep into a demonstration of kirikaeshi, an exercise she found very similar to uchikaeshi, except without the sune strikes. The plan after that, Kel knew, was to go into some open matches. Although Raoul had clearly wanted to participate, he had deemed it best if he announced the presentation - a thought that a few kendoka had exchanged uneasy looks over, but who had not wanted to volunteer.

He wasn't doing a bad job of it, though, Kel thought critically. He kept it plain and simple, introducing kirikaeshi as an exercise and for the matches, just providing commentary when needed without embellishment. She hoped she could introduce her club quite as well, considering she would be wearing her men while doing it. An oversight in planning, that, but it wouldn't be appropriate for someone from another team to introduce the club. It wasn't ideal, as Neal had pointed out, but there was nothing to be done.

Kel stood up, flexing her legs in her corner. An advantage her opponents would have was that they were already warmed up. An advantage she had was that she knew how to move in suneate, and she had time now to watch how her opponents moved and plot strategy. She had longer reach, which was a huge advantage - many experts believed that a naginata, properly wielded, was a complete defense against the sword. Kel, however, preferred Bennett's position on this one; if the kendoka was prepared for the differences, matches were relatively equal.

Strategy, she thought, eyeing the kendo matches with interest. Both Dom and Midori were in the open matches, but it was a shame she wouldn't be able to watch any of Raoul's matches. She wasn't above, say, researching him on YouTube, but she hadn't had time that week. Either way, she could get some sense of how her other two matches would go.

Dom, she could tell, was aggressive – he had a match with Cleon Kennan, the second-year red-head, where he attacked as soon as hajime, start, was called and forcibly pushed him out of the ring. Cleon wasn't small, either. In light of that, Kel supposed, she would need to be fast and get out of his way – she couldn't afford to have him in seriai, close-quarters combat. Or, she would need to score before he smashed into her and threw her out of the ring, which she suspected he might do.

Midori, on the other hand, had faced off against a senior, Vanget haMinch, with much success. She projected a calm, focused air in her kendo – more often than not, she responded to attacks rather than creating her own opportunities. She was fast, landing a beautiful do, stomach, strike while dodging a men, head, strike that had the judges flags flying up in her favour. On the other hand, Kel thought, Midori had patterns. They were very successful patterns, but patterns nonetheless. She loved the using do at the first sign that her opponent was going for a men, and she loved getting into seriai and using a hiki-men, a head strike while moving backwards rather than forwards. Kel could use that, especially because do strikes were almost never successful in naginata.

All too soon, the kendo team had finished and she found herself staring out at a crowded, noisy gymnasium of potential recruits. She had imagined having a powerful, stirring speech that had people lining up to join her club, and then she had remembered herself.

"Hello, everyone," she said instead, "My name is Keladry Mindelan, and I'm restarting the naginata club. I've been told that I need to talk for at least a few minutes to let the kendo club put on the rest of their equipment, so I hope you'll bear with me for a few minutes. Unlike other martial arts, naginata has been developed for the past few centuries to counter a different weapon, the sword. Throughout feudal Japan, the naginata was the women's weapon of choice, and it is still said that a naginata, properly wielded, is a total defeat for swordsmen. In this challenge, I'm going to prove it to you by winning against three stars from the kendo team, Dominic Masbolle, Midori McCann and of course their team captain, Raoul Dulacdor."

It wasn't her, she knew. She was nowhere near as cocky as her speech made her out to be. However, Neal had convinced her that her brand of confidence wasn't going to work to get recruits. Kel's brand of confidence worked on people who knew her, or people who knew people who knew her, not on a room of strangers who also happened to be teenagers. Teenagers, Neal had explained loftily while rewriting her speech, understood nothing but arrogance and entertainment. She had toned down what he had written (including taking out the mic drop), but it still wasn't quite her.

There wasn't a formal shiai-jo, court, as there simply hadn't been enough room on the stage. Naginata shiai-jo were four metres square, the stage slightly less than that. Against Dom, there was no guarantee she wouldn't go flying off the stage. She took a deep breath and she slid into the start position, chudan, across from his kamae, and felt a rush of tingling energy flood her veins.

God, she loved this. She barely noticed Toshuro Akaneru raising the flags to the start position between them, waiting only for the call of hajime! that would begin the match.

It came, and when Dom flew at her, his kiai almost louder than could be believed, she was ready. Her hands slipped smoothly from chudan to a hasso and then sune,as easily as if she were back in her dojo in Japan, or even in the dojo she practiced at in Corus. She saw the strike hit, at the same moment as her own kiai rang in her ears, and she retreated immediately into a defensive chudan position – unlike in kendo, in naginata there was no point unless you successfully retreated to a defensive position. It was referred to as zanshin, meaning a position of relaxed alertness.

"Sune-ari!" she heard the point called the moment Dom smashed into her. Kel pushed him off her, as he retreated back to the start position.

"Nihonme!" The second part of the match was, for Kel, the harder part because she had already scored a point, and she had scored it early. Matches only went three minutes, and she had scored in the first five seconds of it, so at bare minimum she would need to hold him off for the next two minutes and fifty-five seconds or so. Dom, on the other hand, needed to score a point to keep her from winning, and therefore, he could be desperate. On the other hand, he had almost the whole match to catch up, so perhaps he would strategize and take his time …

Nope, she realized when he flew again at her. He was big, and he was strong, but he didn't have any idea how to handle her weapon. He made no attempt to guard his sune, so Kel suspected he hadn't learned the stances to guard against them. Kendo, as usually practiced, used only one stance, which they called kamae. By comparison, naginata had four: chudan-ni-kamae, hasso-ni-kamae, gedan-ni-kamae and wakigamae.

Too late. While she was thinking, she had lost her opening. He was already too close for her to execute a defensive strike. She needed to get out of the way, get some space for herself, and find an opening. She side-stepped, whirled to face him and retreated to his corner of the shiai-jo, making space with her chudan. He was wary now, knowing he had lost the advantage given by her indecision, and stopped just outside the range of her weapon, and waited, still, in kamae.

Kel stared into his men. He didn't have time. For him, he had to attack or he would lose the match. She could outwait him. Seconds ticked by.

She saw the moment he realized he needed to attack, and reacted before he had a chance to attack with a short sune strike – different than the hasso sune strike she had executed earlier, smaller and faster. She saw the strike hit, and retreated. It hadn't been as clean as her first hit, she knew – her strike had slipped a bit on his suneate – but Dom fumbled with uncertainty in reaction to her attack and she knew she had him.

"Sune-ari!" she heard the judges call the point, and she and Dom exchanged spots to their initial starting points. The head judge, shushin, waved his flag to her side and called the match, shobu-ari, before allowing Dom to bow out of the shiai-jo. In a normal match, both Kel and her opponent would have bowed out simultaneously, but as Kel was in for two more rounds she would stay in the ring as Midori bowed into the makeshift court.

They bowed to each other and settled into kamae and chudan respectively. Midori, Kel knew, would be a harder fight than Dom, in part because Dom had flown in blind. The kendo team had now had a chance to see her techniques and fighting style and would be better prepared.

"Hajime!"

Midori immediately switched to a different stance – the kendo version of gedan-no-kamae, unless Kel was mistaken, which guarded her suneate. It was a clever move, but it left her men wide open, and Kel took the opportunity. Midori moved faster, though, and Kel felt her shinai smack against her shins just as her strike connected.

You never reacted or stopped moving until the judges called the point, though, so Kel followed her strike with a second hasso men strike, just as the point was called.

"Sune-ari!"

Kel sighed, taking in a long breath. It had been worth a shot, but one point against her was one point against her. She had to be more careful – she hadn't thought Midori would reconfigure her kendo strategies for sune strikes.

"Nihonme!"

Kel stared at Midori, thinking. Midori, unlike many kendoka, seemed content to take her time – which she could afford to do, having an advantage. Kel had to move – without a second point, she wouldn't be able to push Midori into encho, overtime, and would lose the match, which would only be to the worse for the naginata club. She had to do something to get Midori moving, and blind attacking was probably not the route to go. By even going into gedan, Midori has shown considerable expertise in kendo – certainly Midori started kendo before coming to Crown Academy, and probably had practiced for many years.

Time to change it up. Kel slipped her naginata into wakigamae, a stance where her blade faced away from her opponent and left her almost completely open. Kendo had very little use for wakigamae, it being particularly useful only if one's blade was of unusual length, but the stance was required in naginata for do strikes. Midori took the bait and charged, and Kel whipped the naginata around to strike her sune. She felt the solid connection and moved for zanshin.

"Sune-ari!"

Two points up, they were tied and Kel had no idea how much time was left. She was conscious she was breathing hard at this point, so she needed to finish this and finish it fast. She still had a match left with Raoul and she was feeling wiped. She used to think she could just train herself out of this, but time and effort had made her realize she would always work a little above her capacity, she would always push herself harder in a match and she would always be tired after a couple matches.

"Shobu!" she heard the start signal, and like Dom in her first match, she flew at Midori, executing a short men strike followed by a second sune strike moving backwards. Midori, caught slightly unawares, landed a men strike that was too deep on the shinai and a hiki-men strike that was too late.

"Sune-ari!" Kel breathed a soft sigh of satisfaction, and slid back to her start position. "Shobu-ari." Kel bowed politely to Midori, and she exited the ring. Raoul stood calmly at the side, ready to enter the ring as she left, and Kel did a double-take.

Oh, hell. They were holding out on me. For Raoul was carrying two swords, the long shinai and a short one. Nito-ryu. She didn't know very much about it and hadn't thought to look up any matches online to prepare because nito was generally used by very experienced and strong kendoka – she hadn't thought anyone at Crown Academy would be studying it yet. She was far more prepared for someone to bring out the jodan fighting style, where the shinai was held in jodan-no-kamae, over one's head, but nito-ryu hadn't even occurred to her.

Think, she demanded of herself as she bowed to Raoul and stepped into chudan. Nito. What do you know about it? First principles – two swords. One is longer than the other, obviously. Usually trained by older, experienced kendoka. Strength would be required to effectively wield the long sword one-handed. What about stance?

Raoul had adopted what Kel guessed was a modified jodan-no-kamae – his long sword was held in a threatening position over his head, while the short sword was held in front of him, blocking his body. Hajime was called, but Kel stayed in her defensive chudan even whilst Raoul let out a threatening kiai. Despite the menacing tone, he didn't make a move towards her, studying her just as intently as she was scrutinizing him.

He's hesitating, she realized, and told herself to focus. A wrench in the plans, that was fine. This was just another match, and he still didn't have her reach and still wasn't blocking his sune. And with that, Kel had him.

Unlike with Dom, Kel didn't transition for hasso sune, preferring this time for the smaller, faster short sune strike. Her naginata moved like a viper, a move she had practiced dozens of times in the dojo, and rapped on his open sune before her zanshin. Even though Raoul moved to block, he was too late and she knew then that even if Raoul might have trained nito somewhere, he had not done it for long and didn't do it as well as standard kendo. Which made sense, because nito was only done by very experienced kendoka, and by that she meant decades-of-training kendoka.

"Sune-ari!"

The judges called the point, and Kel could see Raoul's curses silently flying over his face. Like in naginata, bad sportsmanship in kendo was strictly not allowed. There had been a major kendo competition a few years back where the championship point in the final match had been revoked because the winner had fistpumped.

"Nihonme!" Kel heard the judges call, and, flush with her previous success, was promptly caught unprepared as Raoul charged, his kiai almost louder than possible, and swamped her. She reached for the sune point, knowing she would be caught too deep, only to find his short sword trapping her naginata low to the floor and his long sword thudded a strong men point on her head.

"Men-ari!" she heard the call, and she shook her head free of stars while returning to her start position. Don't get cocky, she chided herself. Maybe his nito-ryu isn't perfect, but it's more than adequate to let him win.

"Shobu!"

Raoul charged again, but this time Kel was ready. She sidestepped for another sune strike, but was too close and no point was called. Raoul pivoted, going after her again and Kel was quickly trapped into seri-ai, close-quarters combat, but at least this time her naginata was properly positioned and blocking her head, which certainly didn't stop him from trying for a men point. It didn't work – too close, she supposed, head spinning slightly from the impact as she pulled back at the same moment and went for a sune.

Still too close, or even if it wasn't, no point was called. She retreated back into chudan, but was there for barely a second before Raoul charged again. She spotted the movement his short sword this time just before he trapped her naginata, pulled into a hasso position and went for his men.

She was in luck – her naginata collided solidly and she did her zanshin, conveniently and unintentionally moving to a back corner of the limited stage, where she could see that a fair number of Crown Academy's students were avidly watching her beat up the kendo team. Even more luckily, although Raoul took advantage of her momentary distraction to land another crushing blow to her head, two of the three judges had decided her men point was, indeed, a point. The third, Aiden, was resolutely waving his flags in a crossing pattern below his waist, signalling no point.

"Men-ari!" Toshuro, the head judge, called. Kel shoved Raoul politely off of her, returning to her start position. "Shobu-ari!" They bowed to each other and Raoul grinned sheepishly, giving her a nod of reluctant admiration. Kel bowed to him in response – unrequired, but the least she could do. It had been a good match. Kel exited the shiai-jo from the other side and quickly pulled off her men as the judges bowed to each other, rolled up their flags and ceremoniously left the stage.

Kel was dripping with sweat, but at that moment, her adrenaline was too high for her to care as she turned and addressed the crowd. She mentally tossed the rest of Neal's planned speech, it being a little too pompous and long for her current condition, stating simply: "So. Join naginata. We'll train hard, but it'll be worth it."

By the end of the day, Kel had found herself four recruits: a determined second-year named Fianola Linnshart, her first-year sister Sorcha Linnshart, their friend Yvenne Arondel and a shy first-year named Prosper Tameran.

xxx

ED: Thanks for sticking by me, folks! I know this is much longer than the 2 weeks promised - all I can say is, life is busy with work and I was training for Worlds (which I really was doing all last year but when you have the World Championship looming over you, it starts actually hitting that you're going to Worlds!). Congratulations are extended to the Japanese team, who won every division, and to the French, Belgian, American and Canadian teams that made a valiant attempt at shaking them off their podium. Also, Worlds was awesome.

I don't know when the next chapter will be posted, but rest assured I am still having fun with this world I have created and want to explore both Alanna and Daine's stories next! And I have promised school dances. There must be wonderful and awkward teenage dances!

As always, I appreciate your comments and constructive criticism, and would love a beta to come on board, especially one with in depth knowledge of fencing and fencing culture so I don't have to try to look it up on the internet.