A/N: A bit more of Xiùlán's time in school revealed. Scary fast hand-to-hand combat specialist, and even at this point in her life she does not suffer fools gladly.

If you can't go back to your mother's womb, you'd better learn to be a good fighter — Anchee Min, Red Azalea

Inamorata – A woman with whom one is in love; a female lover (Italian)
Nángùn – literally, a 'southern staff', polished, two-meter long white wax wooden staff

• 22 FEBRUARY 2179 •

A week went by with Xiùlán and Samantha spending as much free time as possible tutoring each other in the subjects each knew best; Traynor instructed Xiùlán in simple programming skills, electronic devices and how and when to modify them, and comm systems; additionally, there was specialized instruction in using her new omnitool. Along with her daily instruction in Jing Quan Dao, Sam was being instructed in anatomy … human, batarian, turian, krogan, asari and salarian, all with the intent of learning how to disable, maim, and/or kill each race in the most efficient manner. Xiùlán was even teaching Sam all the different ways she could apply her newly acquired hand-to-hand skills alongside her new omnitool's melee weapons. Sam had accused Xiùlán of being a harsh taskmaster when it came to her unarmed fighting skills. While it was true that Sam had been unaccustomed to the physical pounding Xiùlán was inflicting on Sam's body—she had more than one bloody nose to show for her exercises, had to deal with arm and leg muscles that fairly screamed from the abuse they were being put through, and she was virtually asleep before her head hit the pillow at lights out—Xiùlán continued to apply the pressure, telling her she should have started these exercises at the age of five, just as she herself had done in her mother's dojo in Shanghai.

Xiùlán awakened this morning to the knowledge she was going to spend most of this week concentrating on physical training, the majority of which would involve hand-to-hand combat. Her first class today would be a demonstration of her abilities against an opponent selected at random from a pool of instructors working for the Alliance.

She straightened up her bunk, shed her sleepshirt and got dressed before eating a breakfast bar and drinking half a liter of high-protein juice. She didn't want much in her stomach for this class, preferring to consume more calories at lunch.

She had told Samantha, hoping she would be able to watch; Sam had unsuccessfully attempted to get her own morning class shifted to another day, so told Xiùlán to take vids. Xiùlán grabbed her nángùn and shoulder pack and left for the training room.

The young Chinese woman entered the training room silently, quietly padding to the center of the bamboo mat covering the wooden floor. She was dressed in traditional sparring clothes - loose fitting ankle-length pants tied at the waist with a length of silk and a deep blue, high-collared jacket with long sleeves, fastened down the front with matching cloth ties. Her long, raven black hair was combed back from her face and cinched at the nape of her neck with an ebony ring, carved in the form of a dragon eating its own tail; her pony tail was inside her jacket for protection against being grabbed and yanked. She wore neither socks nor shoes, preferring to have her bare feet in contact with the floor.

She gripped her polished, two-meter long white wax wooden staff, a 'nángùn'—literally, a 'southern staff'—with both hands, holding it crossways in front of her as she sank to her knees. She rested her butt on the heels of her feet, her toes bent upwards so the tips remained on the floor.

Closing her eyes, she meditated on her soon to be opponent, a turian hand-to-hand combat specialist named F'lar'Jid. Xiùlán had studied this turian, had watched vids of her in action against various other opponents, mostly others of her species, but some humans as well. The humans, particularly the males, always appeared to misjudge her cunning … her deviousness. Perhaps they simply felt intimidated by having to fight a female, of any species. Xiùlán had memorized how F'lar'Jid moved, how she reacted to various counter moves.

There was a pattern to the turian's reactions suggesting weakness, something she was hiding. Analyzing the vids frame-by-frame, Xiùlán believed F'lar'Jid was favoring her left shoulder, an old injury that had not healed well. She was compensating, protecting her shoulder at the expense of her right side and torso. Xiùlán believed this would work in her favor.

Xiùlán opened her eyes at the sound of the door opening on the far side of the training room … her opponent entered and walked towards her as a turian trainer and a human referee entered from the right. Xiùlán stood in one fluid motion and bowed from the waist as F'lar'Jid stopped in front of her. The turian's face was not as sharply defined as a male's; the mandibles not as prominent, there was no horn crest and her features appeared to be softer overall, with facial tattoos in shades of orange. F'lar'Jid was wearing a mixture of exercise clothing combined with a few light armor pieces, something that would make Xiùlán's task a bit more difficult. She did not appear to have any weapons, but Xiùlán felt certain the turian had a dagger secreted within her clothing.

The referee held his hand out to Xiùlán, indicating the nángùn. "No weapons for this round, Serviceman." She handed the staff to him and watched silently as he carefully placed it behind her to the right, on a pair of hooks in the wall a meter past the edge of the bamboo mat. As it was outside the active exercise surface, she wouldn't be able to retrieve it during the match without forfeiting. She set her jaw as she turned back to look at F'lar'Jid. Xiùlán's 186 cm. height gave her an advantage over most of the women in the program; she employed her stature to full benefit here, looking straight at the turian.

F'lar'Jid stared steadily back, having pointedly ignored Xiùlán's bow of greeting. "Are you as soft, as weak, as every human female I've encountered in the past?"

There was something 'off' in her sub-harmonics. If she were human, Xiùlán would have thought she had taken too many shots to the throat, but turians did not have a larynx; although impact damage to the soft tissue underlying her throat, and perhaps even to her nose plates, could account for her vocal patterns. "Ni hěn kuài jiù huì fāxiàn wo you duōme xūruò, jī lian!" [你很快就會發現我有多麼虛弱，雞臉！– You will soon discover how weak I am, chicken face!]

"What language is that, human? My translator cannot decipher those words, but the tone sounds quite disrespectful."

"Méiyou gèng duō de bù zūnzhòng bi ni de jiashè." [沒有更多的不尊重比你的假設。- No more disrespect(ful) than your assumptions.]

The referee stepped between the pair and looked at each of them in turn as he said, "F'lar'Jid, this is a training exercise only … no lethal force, understand? Serviceman, I realize this is probably your first encounter with a turian. You would do well to remember you can be inadvertently slashed by her talons. If I signal at any time during the next five minutes, both of you are expected to move to the opposite corners. Now, please move to your respective edges and wait for my signal.

Xiùlán backed away, her eyes never leaving the turian's face. F'lar'Jid mirrored her action, carefully backing away from the center of the mat until standing at the far edge.

The referee signaled the start of the match; F'lar'Jid crouched slightly and moved towards Xiùlán, circling towards the right. Xiùlán raised her hands, right arm held tight to her side, elbow bent, fingers curled into a fist; left arm extended straight out from her shoulder, palm of her hand facing her opponent, fingers together, slightly curved back as she moved around the turian. F'lar'Jid rushed in and viciously swung her right arm down, intending to hit and fracture Xiùlán's left collar bone. Xiùlán leaned back to dodge the blow, putting the turian out of balance as she missed.

Xiùlán threw her right, rotating her hand palm up as she struck F'lar'Jid in the throat with folded knuckles and fingertips, catching the turian by surprise; she swiftly followed up, using the heel of her left hand to strike the turian's nose plates. Having staggered F'lar'Jid, Xiùlán pressed her advantage by pirouetting around on the toes of her left foot and using her free leg to kick the turian in the right side under her arm … the result of this blow on the nerve stem for that arm could be likened to a human hitting their so-called 'funny bone' on a solid object; F'lar'Jid's arm went numb all the way to her talons. As her hand dropped below her chest, Xiùlán struck again by folding down at the waist and side-kicking the turian's head at the mandible joint; this fractured the mandible, allowing the forward end to droop in a sickening fashion. Bleeding from her nose, F'lar'Jid dropped to one knee as the referee signaled a pause in the exercise. Xiùlán backed to the corner edge of the mat as the turian trainer and human referee checked F'lar'Jid' injuries.

After conferring together, the referee stood and moved to stand in front of Xiùlán. "Your opponent is too injured to continue, Serviceman." Glancing back at F'lar'Jid, he continued, "It would seem you already have a great deal of knowledge regarding unarmed combat."

"Her over-confidence and lack of respect for human females defeated her before we even began," Xiùlán replied quietly. "My skills were hardly a factor."

"Be that as it may, F'lar'Jid is unable to continue, Serviceman. We will have to find another sparring partner for you … someone that will present, ummm, more of a challenge. You are dismissed."

• 13 APRIL 2179 •

It had been eight weeks since Xiùlán had stopped a turian trainer cold in her tracks in an unarmed sparring exercise. Xiùlán had been retested six times in the intervening weeks, all with the same result. The trainers, even knowing ahead of time that Xiùlán had thoroughly handed each of her previous opponents their asses, walked onto the bamboo mat with a great deal of superiority, an attitude of 'this female … a human! … can't possibly be better than me'. Each had been injured seriously enough that continuing was out of the question. Her last exercise yesterday had been against two people simultaneously; a young man from the Earth island nation of Japan that was a champion fighter, and an asari huntress that fought with blocked biotics so there'd be no accidents.

Xiùlán had tossed the asari out of the boundary delineated by the bamboo mat. Sam had been in attendance for this and the previous two exercises; she found it difficult to accept just how powerful Xiùlán's legs were. Yuán had rapidly worked the asari around the mat while keeping her between the Japanese master and herself. Once she had the asari where she wanted her on the mat, she grabbed both forearms above the wrists, pulled them to her as she tipped backwards and landed on her butt. She continued moving, rolling backwards as she brought her bare feet up to place them on each of the asari's hip bones; swiftly straightening her legs like a pair of catapults, she forcefully propelled her hapless victim violently, backside first and head down, into the wall adjacent to the door, where she struck with a sickening ›THUD‹ before falling unconscious to the wooden floor. Xiùlán was on her feet before her victim hit the wall, turning to meet the threat from the Japanese master.

He had literally flown at her feet first … she grabbed both his feet and twisted them violently, aiming to fracture his ankles. He fell heavily to the mat, then immediately bounced up to confront Xiùlán with a flurry of thrown punches aimed at her face and torso, all of which she expertly deflected with her hands. He abruptly stopped in the middle of this to attempt a 'round house' kick to her face; this too failed to connect, as Xiùlán swiftly kicked him in his unguarded gonads as he was spinning to bring his leg around.

This appeared not to faze him in the least, as he reached in to grab her by the throat. Ducking under his outstretched arm, she whirled around, grabbed his arm from the 'outside' and applied pressure with her own forearm and body weight while hanging on to his wrist with a vise-like grip; this tore the tendons and ligaments at the shoulder joint in an extremely painful fashion, dislocating the upper arm with a sickeningly moist pop, rendering his arm useless. Seeing the groggy asari attempting to return to the match, Xiùlán ignored the man's howl of pain as she used his arm and body for leverage to lift her hips and viciously kick the huntress in the face, smashing her nose and splitting her lips.

The referee was frantically sounding the signal for all action to stop; Xiùlán released the injured man's arm and walked to her corner of the bamboo mat, where she stood, impassively watching the frantic first-aid efforts of the two instructors and referee. The asari was on her hands and knees, blue blood streaming from her nose, mouth, and injured crest; the Japanese master was holding his injured arm as tightly to his side as possible in an attempt to immobilize the shoulder joint. Both would need the assistance of medics and liberal quantities of medigel.

The referee came up to Xiùlán as the pair were removed on stretchers. "Serviceman, I don't think I've ever witnessed an attack by two people repulsed with such precision. Unfortunately, you've been accused of having a vicious attitude by the trainers of every person with which you've been paired." He had his hands on his hips as he now walked around a bit on the mat. "What the hell am I going to do with you, Serviceman? No one in the facility wants to be on the mat opposing you."

"I'm sorry, Sir. I was only defending myself … didn't realize that wasn't allowed."

"Dammit, Yuán, that's not what I'm saying here. I've watched your face in these matches," he said. Pausing to carefully choose his words, he continued, "It's like you go into a trance, as if … as if you're outside your body, directing it from above. Really scary to witness—I don't think you even realize what you're doing when it's happening."

"I've been training since I was five, six years old, Sir. When someone comes at me, I react. Don't have to think about it, don't have to analyze it. Reactions all happen automatically … every … reaction. Every … time. I don't think about the correct way to counter someone's attack … I just … do it." Xiùlán studied this man closely. "I won't apologize for knowing what I know. I refuse to be the person leaving this room injured."

"I'm going to have to cancel the remainder of your classes … hell, you've passed this course hands down. Never seen anything like it!"

"If you're shutting me down, I need a favor then," she said. "I'm training a fellow student, Serviceman Traynor. Would it be possible for me to utilize this room during my class time to train her? It would be a real benefit to the program … she's a really talented recruit, but she needs about ten years' worth of instruction in an eighteen month time-frame."

The man looked at her dumbfounded. "Hell, you should be teaching everyone here, but I'll see if I can pull some strings … get you accredited as a student teacher."

"Thank you, sir."