Challenge
Not long after Lady Shinra was done with her call, she and the others decided to return to the fire, winding around the SOLDIERs who were awake at that time. By the time they got there, they were finding others who had woken as well, but that was the natural waking of those used to starting out early. Right then, Lady Shinra hadn't wanted to try riding Shana, so the horse had stayed in the corral while the others went to get some food and relax for awhile. When they saw who was awake right then, though, Edward wondered if they would get any amount of rest.
Lord Long was awake, as were some of his people, and the three they'd brought back from Weiss' camp were as well. The problem was how they—all three—glared at Lord Long, and he glared back at them. When he saw Lady Shinra approach, he turned his attention to her enough to say, "I cannot believe you would make agreements with barbarians and enemies. That is weakness and betrayal waiting to happen!"
"Funny, but you didn't complain last night," she commented as she sat.
"You had the excuse of exhaustion then. I had thought you would come to your senses by now," the Xingese Lord replied bitingly. Lady Shinra just seemed bemused by the words, and Ed guessed she was only just realizing he was right about the Xingese ability to adapt to changes in their surroundings.
"As though you have the right to say anything, you and your all-powerful Emperor, who gives none free will!" the male Clansman threw back at Lord Long.
"More will than barbarians and the 'Supreme Emperor' of the Mongols," Lord Long returned, his smoldering gaze on the Mongol representative. Ed was sure he'd have already killed the man if he didn't think it would be in poor form.
"You wouldn't recognize an actual barbarian if one hit you over the head with a mace," the woman Clansman threw in.
"Don't interfere or 'help', woman!" the male Clansman turned to glare at her, and the Mongol man actually sighed tiredly at the two.
"You wouldn't have enough of a brain to help yourself if I didn't step in," she replied to him dismissively, then turned her gaze to Lord Long. "And you—your nearest neighbor in Xing is a real barbarian, much worse even than the Mongol Emperor, which was why we didn't flee in that direction! If you would count Lord Wing as any sort of equal or Lord, there is truly something wrong with your mind!" At that, several people who had been drawn by the argument actually sighed.
"How dare you insult a well-respected noble family—" Lord Long began, even as the Clan male burst out, "Stay out of this or I'll put you in your place!"
An ear-piercing whistle which made everyone in hearing range cringe caused silence, then Lady Shinra lowered her fingers from her lips—she'd been the one to whistle so shrilly—and comment, "Throwing insults at one another isn't endearing me to any of you, you realize that, right?"
"What would a crippled woman know?" both Clan members retorted in anger, and Lord Long just stared impassively as the Mongol flinched slightly. Ed wondered what the result of that would be, but had his answer shortly.
Lady Shinra commented curiously, "Is that so?" and rose again, her new cane in one hand as she braced herself with it. Moving away from the fire and the logs set there, she stopped and invited, "Attack me, then. I dare you. After all—I'm a cripple. What do you have to lose?" At that, Ed smirked and sat back to watch the show.
"Won't the men wrapped around your finger interfere?" the Clan man sneered. The words produced quite a few snorts and chuckles.
"Yeah. No one here needs to," Ed commented. "And you just pissed her off. Make it interesting, please."
"You aren't helping, Edward," Lady Shinra commented, rolling her eyes.
"Heh. This will be easy," the male Clansman sneered, drawing his blade and charging at her—only to find her cane knocking his sword, and his whole arm, aside before the head of it was under his chin with enough force to knock him flat on his back and seeing stars.
"Easy. For me," Lady Shinra commented in a flat tone. "Even the least able of our combatants knows better than to underestimate me so incredibly badly." She then paused and looked up at Lord Long to say, "You've been doubting my ability. Since it's come to this, send your best. I'm tired of the doubt, and since you all seem to be so barbaric that your primary way of judging a capable leader is by physical prowess, only a show of force will do any good here. Go ahead. We'll settle things now."
He stared at her for a moment before asking, "You are inviting the best of our soldiers to test your skills?"
"That's what I just said," she answered, and Ed smirked again.
"Is that really all right when her legs are damaged?" Trisha asked in quiet worry from right behind Ed.
He turned to look up at her and say, "It's actually fine—she's a match for the top SOLDIERs and Turks. Don't worry so much about her, Mom."
"Hey, we're not done yet!" the Clan woman glared, then jumped at Lady Shinra.
While her sword was shoved aside in the same way as the man's, she was smaller and faster, so dodged to the side, pulled back a bit, then jumped forward again, and it was only on the second approach that Lady Shinra reacted. That time, her cane was aimed at the other woman's leg, which resulted in her sprawling on the ground with a cry of pain as she reached down to hold her leg.
"Not to be a stick in the mud," Shiro began cheerfully. "But where did that cane come from? I am quite certain she did not have it last night."
"Oh, Edward made it for me this morning," Lady Shinra replied easily. "I'd had one before, but sadly, it didn't arrive here with me. I very much like having one back in my hands, since it was always one of my primary weapons." Her sharp gaze lifted to the Mongol man, who immediately blanched and held both hands up in a peace and warding motion. "At least you seem to have some sense."
"I am also only alive just now because I chose not to fight," the Mongol answered, to everyone's surprise. "And honestly...How none of your 'guests' seem capable of seeing the strength in you, I have no idea. You have power enough to sit on and hold the Mongol Throne for a good long time, despite the drawbacks of your injuries and age. I have no need to challenge you to know that."
Lord Long's gaze became annoyed and he called, "Li, Ho! Which of you thinks you'd fare better against this woman after having seen some of her skills?"
"Not nearly enough," Li replied dryly. "And what I am seeing runs along the lines of an assassin. My own skill will not work well against that style."
"Ho, then," the Lord replied, turning to the man, who looked thoughtful.
"Possibly. I will do my best, Lord Long," the man agreed, and approached the woman, at first by a slow pacing as he assessed her—then by a sudden flurry of motion as he took on a fighting style rather similar to the one Lan Fan and her grandfather had used. Ed watched curiously as he kept feinting and Lady Shinra kept not responding to the feints—doing so was literally a waste of her energy. Because he kept moving, though, keeping track of him was getting hard.
When the blond boy saw Lady Shinra close her eyes, he smiled and wondered if Ho realized that was a bad sign. By his persistence, likely not. Or, he recognized she was tracking him in a different way now, but because his Lord had told him to fight, he was going to persist until he was either called off or not fit to fight anymore. That was the one problem with the kind of loyalty people like the Xingese and Mongol Emperors demanded, and others in other parts of the world. In Amestris, it was more expected that troops who met more than their match would withdraw to report and ask for help, not that they'd keep fighting a losing battle until they literally lost it.
"That's not good!" Trisha murmured.
"It's fine," Rashad told her, and Ed felt, rather than saw, her surprise—he was focused on the fight. "Trisha, there are times where sight becomes a hindrance in a fight, and by Ho's speed alone, this was one of those times. Eyes can play tricks on you, and you'd think he was several inches behind his actual position—in a match to the death, or one like this, those inches would be crucial in winning or losing the match. It takes training to fight without your sight, though, and she wouldn't be risking it unless she has that training."
"...I see. She really is formidable, isn't she?" Trisha commented thoughtfully.
"More than," Rashad agreed.
As Rashad had been speaking, the man had tried a serious attack, only to meet her cane, making him back off again before he was knocked to the ground like the other two, who were recovering by then. And knowing what kind of people they were, Ed was sure they'd add their own attacks to the match with Ho. Thankfully, Turk-trained Lady Shinra was more than prepared for those odds—all Turks were, and as their founder, she was no exception. Three more times, Ho tried a serious attack on her, and was deflected on all of them, though everyone wondered why Lady Shinra's head was tipped to the side in something like puzzlement, even as her eyes stayed closed.
Then came the turning point in the battle—both of the Clansmen tried to attack Lady Shinra at once. On the heels of their attack, Ho launched another, and Ed thought he was doing it in the hopes that the other two would have distracted her.
Instead, the woman whipped out her cane to one side, striking both of the barbarian blades aside by shifting its path after the strike on the first blade, and spun in a half-circle to intercept Ho's attack. When she and Ho both froze for a moment, his blade was caught in her chakram blade, and in the next moment, she'd twisted the chakram to yank the sword from Ho's hands. The Xingese man backed off in obvious shock as she spun again, freeing the sword from her chakram, and once again struck out at the other two, her chakram catching the man's blade and her cane striking the woman's forehead before she could get her blade into position.
Everyone stared for a long moment as she straightened, dragging the Clan man's sword from his hands as she did, seeing the unconscious woman and the two disarmed men.
"Well done, Lady Shinra. Now, since you've made your point, please sit down," Vincent commented dryly.
Her eyes opened and moved to Ho curiously—and Lord Long sighed and nodded as Ho lifted both hands in the same motion the Mongol had used.
"As I said," the Mongol commented. "To me, at least, her strength was obvious. I had no need to test what I already knew."
"And that has absolutely nothing to do with your nice, long chat with Nina, right?" Ed called over in amusement.
The man's lips quirked in faint amusement, but he offered, "It would be unlikely for a child to make up the kinds of stories she told me of Lady Shinra's strength, but I could never have known that without meeting the woman herself."
"Then I have to commend you for that," the blond boy offered, and the man blinked.
Lady Shinra turned to the male Clansman and quirked a brow, and when he took a wary step back from her, she gave a nod and returned to her seat by the fire.
"I did warn you," Tseng commented to Lord Long, who made a face. The Wutain then found a seat beside Ed, just as Shelke and Yufi joined them and Ria jumped from Shelke's shoulder to Ed's.
"If that fun is over, we found a hole filled with Materia!" Ria announced happily.
"Is that what you spent the night doing?" Ed asked her in bemusement, noting how all the Xingese and the three representatives stared at her in shock. He wondered why for a moment, then remembered Ria had never spoken in front of them before—she'd only been providing a projection of data before. And he wasn't even sure they knew Ria had been the one doing it. Carbuncle landed on Tseng's shoulder, making the man glance at it in slight puzzlement as Ed sent it a mental, :Thank you for not jumping on my head.:
:I still don't like that,: Carbuncle replied in a pouting tone. :But until you calm down, I'll be more careful—you're dangerous when you're in a mood.: Ed had to work to not snort out loud at that.
"Part of it," Ria agreed. "Because Shelke and Yufi asked. Shelke also checked the Materia slots she made for me, but that was mostly to see how they'd changed, since I already knew they were fine from my self-diagnostic. They changed a bit, and she thinks she can make armor and weapon slots work better now, if she adjusts those the way mine have been."
"Nice," Ed blinked. "That's not a bad idea, anyway.
"We need people and bags and baskets and things to bring the Materia back here," Shelke added.
"Rosso, could you and yours help them?" Lady Shinra asked.
"Sure thing," Rosso agreed. "Can it wait until after we've eaten, though?"
"Of course—collecting spare Materia shards isn't an emergency. Now...what are we going to feed the tiger cubs this morning?" the woman asked.
"Leave that to us until we can get them some milk," Veta of the Motos offered. "We can at least get them something they'll be able to ingest and digest for the moment."
"Good, thank you, Veta," the woman agreed with a smile.
By then, Ho had rejoined Lord Long, and Al burst into the middle of the group at the fire with a pail full of water—healing water, probably. The boy set it at her feet and said, "You need to drink some. I don't know why I can tell, just that I can. So, drink some."
As the woman blinked at him, virtually everyone else immediately around them began chuckling. "He isn't wrong," Ed pointedly told the woman. "Especially after you spent so long bonding with Shana, then having to fight personally."
"I knew the latter would happen eventually, though," she pointed out. "You were pretty clear on that, yourself. They'd never believe I had such strength without seeing it for themselves, no matter how much strength or deference they saw from those around me." Lady Shinra shrugged. "It's the same way in business. You can tell them all you like not to play games because you'll catch them, but until you make good on it, they won't believe you. By then, it's too late for them. At least in this case, they really aren't feeling anything but bruised egos."
"True," Ed admitted. "That doesn't mean you shouldn't drink Al's healing water." He then turned to look at the Xingese Lord. "So, how comes the assimilation and adaptation, Lord Long?"
He scowled at the boy in annoyance and asked, "You pushed us to the limit on purpose, did you not? It was intentional so nothing else would seem quite so difficult to assimilate later, yes, young Avatar?"
Ed shrugged and grinned. "You guys are adaptable if you're anything. I wasn't worried about it, because chances are, you'd have just raised your limits to compensate."
That actually just caused the man's shoulders to sag in shock before he sighed heavily and sat on one of the logs across the fire from Lady Shinra. By then, she'd been given a cup so she could drink some of the water and Al had moved it so the others who were in pain could also get their helpings. "You do realize humans have an actual limit, yes?" the Lord asked him tiredly once he'd sat down.
"Sure," he agreed, meeting the man's gaze. "But what you think is your limit isn't even close, because you've never actually been pushed to it before. I have. The threshold is a lot higher than most people assume. So is the threshold for human stupidity if they willfully want to refuse to see something obvious that's right in front of them. And the two can, and often do, work hand-in-hand. You made a choice to not believe others who vouched for Lady Shinra's skill and strength, though in your case, I think that's mostly because you didn't want to wrap your mind around the 'invalid' part of the equation. To you, an invalid is just that, and can't do anything, not someone highly able, but with a physical restriction."
The Lord was obviously annoyed by the words, but didn't reply. In the meantime, everyone was able to eat, including the three new representatives, and once they'd finished, Rosso and her unit headed out with Shelke and Yufi. Ria stayed on Ed's shoulder.
When everyone else finished eating, Lady Shinra faced the three representatives and said, "So, each of you is representing your people to me, so would you care to tell me to what end? One at a time, please."
Each of the three spoke, one having literally been chased from their homes, one having gotten wind of the approaching army so they could leave ahead of them, and the last being the Mongol defectors. None of the groups were especially large, but they needed ways to escape that army, permanently, or they would all, to the last child, be very dead. Mongols never took back someone who had fled and 'betrayed' them, and by the way they'd marched on the Clan villages, they had intended the genocide of those Clans. They would hardly change their minds on that.
By the fact that they had followed them far enough to find the new growth in what had once been a desert, that was especially true—the Mongols were just planning to slaughter them all, currently for unknown reasons. It was also a determined and directed slaughter, and even the Xingese Lord looked somewhat ill by that. What the Gaians had advantages in were their SOLDIERs and Turks, and in the support of their sentience. Ed knew that, and he knew Lady Shinra knew it, too. Pulling in Shiro and Amestrian alchemists was only a boon, especially with both Drachma and the Mongols turning out to be problems bigger than even Ed expected.
Why had these things not been issues on his last time through?
That would have been because of dimensional variants, he realized.
The Drachmarans he'd previously known hadn't done exactly what these ones were doing, which had given them an edge. They hadn't used it on Amestris yet probably because they were still perfecting it. In the case of the Mongols, they could always have been exactly that way, but it had never been an issue while Drachma, Xing, and the Xerxes desert were all boxing them in. On the other hand, they also may not have developed in quite the same way, so had been easier to box in for those groups in the first dimension.
"Ed, I almost hate to ask this, but what does Minerva think we should do with them?" Lady Shinra asked finally, after thinking about the data for a few minutes.
"Well, if we assume Xing will be friendly trade allies and the Mongols are going to have most of their army wiped out, it may be possible for the two Clans to go home, assuming they can bring themselves to take that risk," Ed began. "But I don't know how well it would work, because what's left of the Mongols would still be their neighbors, and they'd still all be boxed in by Drachma and Xing. If it's true Minerva, or Amaterasu, blocked Genesis from killing some of those Mongols, she, or they, meant for them to find new homes—the Mongol refugees are ours, literally."
As the woman nodded and the Mongol man blinked in surprise, the blond boy paused for a minute to ask Minerva about the Clans. After listening to her answer, he gave his head a shake and said, "Yes, the refugee Mongols are ours, and no, she and—yes, Amaterasu—are both sure the Clans can't actually go 'home'. The Mongols already moved farmers of their own into those areas, and that's no fault of the farmers'. Right now, they have two choices.
"The first is that there are some mountains to the south, not too far from the southern Sea, where no one has actually claimed the territory, so if they went now, they could settle there and be absorbed by the people who will later arrive to claim it. If nothing extreme changes, it will be a much kinder and fairer absorbing than what the Mongols had clearly intended. One of ours—an Ishbalan or Cetra—would have to go with them initially to guide them to the right place. Places, two neighboring valleys. That will make them separate from each other, but able to trade with one another if they want to until the other nation comes to claim the area.
"The other is that they stay in our lands. They would be taking mountainous regions, and we do have more than one set of mountains. The catch to that is this—they're going to have to change to suit our basic laws and beliefs if they stay. We don't really care what 'Gods' they want to worship in the general sense, but things like their desire to look to the 'physically strongest' and in one Clan's case, their complete disregard of women, will have to change, otherwise they can't stay here effectively. So, that's both options. Lady Shinra, you know yourself what benefits they can get by being here, so you can explain that."
"So wait—are you saying we both have to agree to the same option?" the Clan woman asked angrily, and the Clan man scowled.
Ed's surprised gaze moved to her before he said, "In theory, that would give you some sense of familiarity. I think Amaterasu and Minerva expected you would. In practice, no, you don't have to both agree—you can each make a different choice. If either chooses to go south, you'll still have a Cetra guide, plus whoever we send with the Cetra to help them get back here, and if you stay, you'll still have whatever we can provide, including lessons on how to adapt to our way of living. All your people will need to think on what's best for them—your leaders can't just assume they can make this particular decision for all of the Clan. We'll give you time to think on it, either way."
Lady Shinra nodded at the words, and the woman blinked in surprise as the man scowled more deeply. It was the Clan woman who asked, "But then, what benefits do we get by being here? We can't really share well with our Clans if we don't know."
"Besides a much wider range of jobs for all your people, male or female?" Lady Shinra asked in amusement, and both Clan members blinked in surprise that time. "We don't only have basics like farmers, carpenters, tailors, and hunters, we have plenty of jobs besides, ranging from invention to entertainment—games, songs, artwork, and so on—to animal taming and breeding to more than I can think of to name. You can ask around to find out what kinds of jobs everyone did while you wait for your Clans to get here.
"As for our current system, we have an actual support system to take care of people in case of illness or injury—being unable to work won't be the end of you. A school system will give you preliminary training which will make you suitable for most of those jobs, and an apprenticeship system exists. You can tailor your training to hone it as you work out where you want to take your life, as well, and many of the most capable you see here have participated in that very system. There's more, but it will be a very lengthy discussion not everyone here needs to sit and listen to. If you want more, we can keep discussing it while everyone else finds other things to do."
"That's my cue to take a hike," Ed grinned as he hopped to his feet. "Genesis, let's get back to work, while we can!" Ria made a happy noise at the words.
"Right..." the man answered in bemusement from somewhere near the edge of the circle around Lady Shinra and the guests.
They quickly moved to their usual place out of the way to go back to work. In the meantime, Lady Shinra began describing their system in detail to all the guests—even Lord Long and most of his academic fellows wanted to hear it—while everyone else, other than a few, like Vincent, headed away to do other things.