" - well, okay, honey, you don't have to, I'm sure you can also just go and practice swordfighting and not pretend anything. Barry said to wear comfortable, loose clothes, and I thought to myself, well, fantastic, that's all she wears anyway."

Iomedae is reasonably confident that her 'foster parents' are virtuous people endeavoring as far as it is in their power to do a duty that they took on because they believed it was important. She should admire them for that, and she should be grateful.

"Thank you, sir. I will try make some friends, have some fun."

"Fantastic, kiddo. I'm proud of you for trying something new." He would like her to drop the 'sir' but probably that'll happen naturally as she gets to know them better. 

Jenny arrives early and looks around anxiously for the person in charge. She wants to make sure they have some context on Iomedae and her traumatic situation, so that Iomedae doesn't just retraumatize herself with this whole swordfighting thing. There are some people around. They're mostly in costume. "You didn't say we were supposed to wear Halloween costumes!"

"Well, Barry didn't mention that."

That man is in armor. Real armor. 

Iomedae is suddenly filled with a reckless yearning. She has not been filled with a reckless yearning in a long time. It is like remembering that you can feel temperature, or smelling again for the first time at the end of a long cold. 

There are quite a few people who aren't in armour or garb, because this is a practice and not an event, but it's pretty understandable that the people in armour are significantly more eye-catching. 

The Kalomeros chapter practises on Tuesday evenings and Saturday afternoons in a church with a pretty big lawn. In winter they retreat inside one of the church's back rooms (the ones that are usually for music practice and group therapy meetings) but in summer they like to be outside on the grass. The church doesn't mind, and barely charges them anything for use of the space because they're a nonprofit.

There's a few people around the edge of the lawn who are sitting in folding chairs and on steps, mostly in mundane clothes, their laps and folding tables covered with sewing projects and musical instruments and calligraphy pens. Only one of them is wearing a thirteenth-century gown - and that's because another woman is helping show her how to pin all the veils and layers onto it.

Practice is just getting started, so people are still armouring up. Several people stand by haphazard piles of discarded metal and leather, gossiping while they lazily strap themselves in. There's no rush; there'll be plenty of daylight. Someone has brought a box of donuts and is distracting the fighters with them. 

One fighter has already been in armour for a while; it's impossible to see much of them under their ill-fitting armour but they wear a blue-and-white tabard. They have been pacing, waiting for an opponent. As Iomedae and foster family arrive, one of the other fighters finally gets his helmet on - the finishing touch to his armour - and walks out to salute the patient earlybird. 

"Looking for a dancing partner?" 

"Always."

She aims her sword forward to show Roger the thrusting tip. "I have a pointy."

On her other arm she has a shield. She hasn't registered a device yet, so she's painted it white with a blue unicornate seahorse as a way of showing allegiance to Atlantia. 

"As do I!" he says with the same motion.

They both salute each other with a half-bow, swords raised upright in front of their visors, and then - BLAM!

Roger's sword hitting Lucia's shield full-force, with all the weight of his hip and his driving back foot behind it, makes a noise loud enough to be mistaken for a gunshot. 

Sir Gabriel - he's Sir Gabriel, here, this isn't the office - trots over as soon as he spots Iomedae and her parents.

"Robert! Good to see you!"

Gabriel is in very real armour - and unlike Lucia and Roger, who both wear cobbled-together collections of steel and plastic and leather and random hockey gear hidden carefully under handsewn tabards, Gabriel has gorgeous glittering steel. He has a fluttering red-and-gold armour cloak that falls only halfway to his hip, a martlet motif engraved on his chest and his helmet tucked under one arm.

He completely ignores Roger and Lucia battering each other behind him. He's pretty used to tuning it out. 

"I take it this is your foster daughter?"

She is not the shape that Gabriel assumed she'd be when Robert mentioned that they were trying to get her more active, and he is deeply confused as to why anyone thought that was necessary. That is a lot of muscle. He mentally revises his list of loaner kit that might work again. 

"That's right, this is Iomedae! This is -" she blinks around at it. "- lovely. Are you the person to talk to about - Iomedae's situation -"

Where Iomedae is from wearing that armor would convey that you were a very important man. In America there is a lot of steel. So only maybe a very important man. But it is one thing to know this and another to know it instinctively. Iomedae is instinctively terrified and angry at Jenny, for addressing the man like that. 

(It might be mistaken as being terrified or angry about something else.)

"Her - situation?"

Gabriel is perceptive enough to pick up on Iomedae being suddenly very upset. He has no idea why, but the most recent thing that happened was that Jenny asked him a question, and so he's abruptly deeply concerned that he's about to answer that question wrong.

(He doesn't think Robert is the kind of guy to mistreat a foster child, but he doesn't really know Jenny at all, and besides how well do you ever really get to know your colleagues in a sterile office environment? It's not that he'd suspect anything, but suddenly his hackles are up a little.)

If this kid is trying to be private about something, that.... would make a lot of sense actually! She's a foster kid, she might not want her foster mother to talk to anyone about her 'situation'. It's nobody's business whether or why she's in foster care; on this field she's an aspiring Atlantian fighter and that's the only thing anyone needs to know. 

He can give a very bland and innocent answer here. "Well, Reynhard over there is currently the marshal, so you could talk to him if you have any safety concerns. You can talk to me about scrounging loaner kit - we don't have a real Iron Key at the moment so I'll just be seeing what we can find that fits." 

"Thank you! I'll talk to ...Reynhard." And she'll walk off to do that and let Robert catch up with his coworker.

She does not intend any insult, she's just ignorant - Iomedae does not know how to say that. It...looks like she doesn't need to? That's good. 

"Iomedae's been really excited for this," Robert says, watching her concernedly. "First time I've seen her really light up about something."

"Oh?"

The kid in front of him does not seem like she's lighting up. That is the opposite of what just happened. But that may well be an entirely social fuckup... Gabriel can try running the standard script and see how she responds and go from there. 

"Alright, well, wanna give it a try? This is my sword - it's rattan, but it's about the same weight as a real medieval sword would've been." He offers Iomedae a taped-up rattan stick with a roughly hammered metal basket hilt, flipping it around to give it to her hilt-first. 

- she reaches out for it immediately. Her whole posture changes. It is a silly looking practice sword, the balance isn't in fact quite the same as her real sword the police took, but he is offering it to her for training and so it is a sacred thing.

She was really kind of expecting to have to diligently run errands for a long time before arguing someone around to allowing her to -

 ....quite possibly he can detect that she's a paladin, even if no other Americans can. That rather makes more sense than his offering swords to random foster children. But right now it doesn't matter. 

"WAIVER!!!!" shouts Reynhard from across the lawn. 

"I'm just letting her hold it, I'll put my helmet on before I let her hit -" 

Reynhard gives Gabriel his best stern no-nonsense sort of frown. "Waiver! No exceptions!"

(And then he'll quietly, with an apology, go back to whatever he was talking to Jenny about, because he does in fact trust Gabriel to not do anything unsafe. He's just got the seneschal breathing down his neck regarding actually making everyone sign the waiver right now.) 

"....right. Iomedae, if I can get you to sign a waiver real quick because otherwise people will get mad at me, then you can have a go at hitting me with this sword and see how that feels." 

Iomedae doesn't know the word but she can plainly interpret it all the same: a reprimand for giving the sword to a foster child. From a man that the man in gleaming steel plate feels the need to listen to. 

"Sir. You are great of men, God smile on you. I am sorry. I not know - sign."