She didn't really follow most of that but she got the most important bit. "I want to learn swordfighting!!"

Yes! This is a need he can meet! He trained many years to be able to be the sort of person who can help with this!

"You are in the right place for that! - one second."

He will go and get his shield first because seriously - he thinks he's going to have an actual bruise on his ribs from her first attempt to kill him. He's used to newbies hitting him lightly and needing to be gently coaxed into hitting him harder with lots of reassurance that he is fine and not hurt, and also used to newbies having zero understanding of body mechanics, and regrets his life choices a tiny bit. Not very much. 

His shield has a gorgeous red and gold design with martlets. "Alright, show me that attack again, but this time I'm going to block with my shield because I like my ribs intact. Try to hit me in the helmet, I'll probably block with the shield, I'm just looking at your form."

She'll go for his visor. The sword is too thick to actually slip through the bars but it's what you'd want to do with a real sword, rather than ineffectually slashing at the side of his head.

She moves a sword like someone who has really had quite a lot of practice for a fifteen year old and who has good habits, or in particular the habit of picking blows that would be lethal if they landed and putting her considerable strength into them.

"Good!" he yelps, more out of the habit of acknowledging the blow than out of any active intent to praise. 

Gabriel shakes his head for a second, making sure his neck still works. 

Oof that was also unexpected and in a way that is entirely his own fault. Usually he tells a newbie to hit him, and they do a tennis-racket swing and then he demonstrates a flat snap and then they work on that for a bit. It was probably a matter of time before one of them decided to thrust him in the visor. It is, in fact, his own fault for not explaining the rules to Iomedae - she's not a native English speaker, she probably did not understand that he wanted the same attack again. And his own fault for not blocking it - he ought to be perfectly capable of blocking a thrust from a newbie if he's going to go around in a white belt, but he'd been holding his shield away from his bar grills so he could look at her form with his eyes. No excuses though. 

"Alright, so! We do combat on the honour system. If you hit someone hard enough that you would've killed them if it was a real attack, then they say good, and you win the fight. If you hit with a glancing blow or poor technique, so the blow wouldn't have penetrated their armour, they say light and you keep fighting. If you hit someone in the arm or leg, they lose use of that limb. Generally if you thrust to the face, you only have to do it very lightly and people should still say good, because you don't really need to use any force to put a sword in an open-face helmet and we don't want to break necks while sparring. So you only need to use directed positive pressure - just a bit of a push - for face thrusts. The power on your first blow was very good. Do you need me to say any of that slower or differently?" 

She caught maybe a quarter of that. She's usually only catching about a quarter of things, but if you smile and repeat back the exact words you can get by that way for many things.

Not for this, this is too important.

"I think, sir, that was rules, and important, and God help me obey, you say it again slower and also differently."

He can do that! He loves the honour system so much and is proud of the culture it represents.

"So, when we fight, we are pretending we are fighting in historical armour with historical swords. Chainmail or leather armour, open faced helmets, and real sharp steel swords. We don't want to actually kill each other, so we are using rattan swords and we have extra protection for our faces and as much armour as we like. But if you are hit by an attack that would have hurt you badly through some chainmail, if it was a real sharp sword, then you should say 'good', and that means you lose the fight. It's an honour system - no judges or electronic scoring. If you have lost the fight fairly, you must say so to your opponent. With me on that?" 

Oh, that is a good custom. It is the custom a holy order would have, if they needed to establish who had won fights for some reason. It is a custom that says, everybody here is honorable, so we can do things a way that -

- no, actually, her delight is building as she contemplates it, because - in a sense that is the entire and whole core of being a paladin, isn't it, that if you are honorable, and everybody can trust you to be honorable, then you can dispense with all the costly parts of everything which are just there as guards against evildoers. In Heaven probably the Emperor wanders the streets without bodyguards, and need not wonder which of his advisors are being truthful, because things are better when people are Good. The core of Goodness is not giving your food to the hungry, though you should give your food to the hungry. The core of Goodness is that honorable things are stronger than dishonorable things, that honor is a kind of wealth - 

- a kind she'd feared America didn't have -

"As in Heaven," she says. "I am with you."

Honestly 'as in heaven' is a very sweet thing to say and he can get on board with this whole.... Crusader persona or whatever is going on. 

"Great! And if someone hits you a lot harder than you're comfortable with, you can tell them it's excessive and they'll hit you lighter so you don't get hurt. If someone hits you and you think it would not stop you even with a sharp sword, you can say light to tell people that you are not dead and you can keep fighting. Does that make sense too?"

"I have not been - hurt enough to die but for God in a real fight. I would be - not sure, some things."

"That's okay! If you aren't certain in practice you can just say you aren't certain and we can help you learn calibration. Once you have enough armour to be safe, we can hit you good and hit you light so you can tell the difference."

Gabriel shoots an apologetic look at Robert. "Going to have to check exactly what she's allowed to do right now - how long until she's sixteen?" 

“She, uh, doesn’t know her birthday. I think they just put January 1st on the forms.”

He so so so badly doesn't want this girl to be told that she has to use nothing but foam swords and fight whichever twelve-year-old shows up for youth combat. Not with the way she lights up upon being given a sword - he can imagine it's probably a break from how powerless it must feel to be a foster kid. He also doesn't even know much about youth combat off the top of his head, because Kalomeros has never had a strong youth combat program and he thinks it's dormant right now.

"Would you give her permission to do armoured combat? She won't be able to authorise and fight in any actual tournaments until she's sixteen, but she can get some armour on and give it a go at practice."

He is PRETTY sure the marshals will not yell at him for this but he's also just not going to go and ask Reynhard what the rule is for people who don't know their birthday because he knows Reynhard is not going to know the answer and then Iomedae is not going to be allowed to fight until someone finds out. 

"Well, how dangerous would you say it is compared to, say, hockey, or football, or something?"

Roger and Lucia are very enthusiastically murdering each other in the background as this conversation happens. Roger just hit Lucia hard enough in the head that she staggered back two paces with a cry of, "Good!"

Then she's right back up in his face making a noise like a thunderstorm as she beats her sword on every edge of his shield, looking for openings that he isn't giving her.

A couple other fighters are moving out onto the field now, and one of the knights is lazily putting a newer fighter through some warmup exercises. Those produce significantly less noise. 

This would probably be easier if Roger and Lucia were not doing that! He can't begrudge them, though, they have that special rivalry that comes from starting at the same time and improving at similar rates so that they're always alternating which one is pulling ahead of the other today, and that kind of rivalry makes people want to take harder and dish out harder. He knows from experience. 

Bright smile. 

"We actually probably have similar or lower rates of injuries to football and hockey!" he says cheerfully. It helps that he's saying true things even if he's worried it's not going to convince his normal coworker from his extremely normal job. "I know it looks dangerous, but we have a strong community that looks out for each other, and we're very conscious of armour standards and safety.... you know, people shouldn't be hitting each other in football, but that often means they're not really wearing enough protective gear or preparing for when something does happen. We're always thinking about how we can make sure we're still able to fi-" don't call it fighting, "-do this sport when we're seventy."

"Kiddo, promise me you'll be safe?"

"It is good to die fighting as holy warrior. It is how I will die. My life give first to God, and no can obey you if you ask me not to give life to God.

But live longer if good at swording."

If Iomedae said that at home he'd probably just laugh and tell her not to die on him any time soon but she's being like this in front of his coworkers. 

Why are they upset about this trivial and obvious statement. "...I do not plan be foolish. I will no go to Hell, fight Satan, until very strong."

Yeah he's also got nothing. 

Three rounds back Roger noticed she was really tired and asked if she was done, and she gasped out, "Three more!" because that's what she says every time she's asked if she's done. Her dad says you're not learning unless you're tired and you're not growing unless you want to quit.

She taps the top corner of Roger's shield just enough to make him put it over his eyes and then steps sharply to the right and throws the wrap juuust far enough that it'll hit the unarmoured section on the back of his thigh, right underneath the bottom edge of his shield. As soon as he yelps acknowledgement, she's already going in for the hug. "Great fight!!"

Then she takes her helmet off immediately so she can wipe all the sweat out of her eyes, and looks around for somewhere to collapse exhaustedly, and - NEWBIE!! THERE IS A NEWBIE!!

Lucy considers it her SACRED DUTY to make sure she, with her long ponytail and her slight stature and her voice that she can't get to drop below a bright soprano tone no matter how hard she tries, is VISIBLE to new fighters just in case anyone ever thinks that they won't be able to fight because of their body or their identity. (She cries whenever she sings One Of Us.) 

"Hello!!" she says as she bounds over. "Welcome!!!"