"...I'm not seeing the point."

Billy folded his arms and looked me up and down.

"I have powers, and that's not going to go away, so what's the point of learning to use weapons?" I asked, regarding the various weapons that the other members of the Burgess Branch were using.

"One thing ya gotta know about the world you're going into." Said Billy, serious for once. "Expect the unexpected."

"Never liked that phrase." I grumbled. "What am I expecting exactly? Anything to happen? Then why not say 'be prepared for anything'?"

"My point still stands kid. You are going to learn with several different weapons, just in case of the unlikely occurrence of you losing or not bein' able to you your powers. Understood?"

"...Fine, okay."

"Good, then let's get started."

Billy walked over to the weapons store, reached in, and pulled out a wooden sword.

"Catch."

I caught it just fine, and just stared at it. I could understand why I was being given the practice sword and not a real sword, but I'd fought off Descendants of Pitch on my own. I could handle a proper weapon!

Billy seemed to sense my train of thought.

"If you wanna try a proper sword, be my guest." He gestured to the long sword behind him.

I strode over and lifted it off its rack.

And almost dropped it.

The tip thudded against the ground as I tried to lift it, but it was so heavy! I couldn't even get it above my hips.

"Properly forged swords are heavy kiddo." I scowled at the nickname but Billy continued. "You might be half decent in a fight, but your upper body strength is pathetic. You have to train."

"Fine." I handed the sword back to Billy, which he put back in the rack with ease.

"Good, now pick up the wooden sword and I'll start teachin' you the basics."

I grabbed the wooden sword from where I'd dropped it on the floor.

"After a while I'll teach you how to use different swords." Explained Billy. "And you'll probably only use 'em if you have no other weapon, so not training with a balanced sword will do you some good."

"Why are you telling me all this now?"

"You've got a good academic mind kiddo. You'll remember most of this, while you're payin' attention. Now, to actual fightin'."

Billy stood with his practice sword in both hands, directly opposite me.

"There's a lot of leg work here. Arm strength is really only necessary to lift the sword, when it comes to defence and offence, a good technique and ability to parry rather than block is all you need."

"Aren't there different ways of doing it? With different swords?"

"Yeah, and I'll teach you as many as can, because the idea here is not to train you with a weapon to use forever. It's to teach you how to adapt to use any blade you might need. So no flashy stuff, only basics."

"To start," Billy drew his sword up. "You want your sword to follow your back leg for defence, so if you watch me."

Billy moved his left leg back, drawing his sword close to his body with the tip still pointing at me.

"This is a move originating from China, the left parry. You try."

I nodded and pulled my left back so that it was bent, putting a lot of my weight on it as I drew up my sword to a hopefully similar position.

"Good, you just need to turn the blade a little." Billy went over and adjusted it slightly, so the sword edge was vertical. "There we go. Again!"

The next few hours Billy put through the same four moves so many times I getting incredibly bored. He, however, wasn't satisfied until I could parry his strike without thinking, and after three hours, I could.

"Good work." He said as the others collected their water after some hard training from Nigel. "We'll expand on this next week. In that time I want you to practice with anything you've got lying around. A broom, a stick, whatever."

I resisted the urge to groan, I normally like homework, but after three hours, I thought my arms were going to drop off.

Billy seemed to notice this however. "There's a phrase I heard somewhere. 'The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle' That's the point we're trying to get to kiddo. The easier it comes to ya when you train, when your life is actually in danger then it should be second nature. Got it?"

"Yeah, I got it."

"Good. See ya next week."