“That is what I saying, that in a real fight many people still able fight after hit. …I no mind Lucy asking. If a holy warrior should do some thing different I need to know that.”

...she can't help it, she really likes Iomedae. Lucy often has moral objections to things that other people thought were fine or excusable, and usually when she brings them up, those other people do mind - and mind quite a lot.

She had not been aware it was self defence, when Iomedae first mentioned it, and she supposes she really doesn't know the circumstances or the situation. But the pressure to object right now feels so much less urgent with a strong signal that Iomedae is the kind of person who might even theoretically be open to ever discussing it again.... which they will probably need to happen because Lucy isn't certain she can be friends with someone who killed someone unless it was for a really good reason, but she does want to be friends with Iomedae.

"Better to stop an attacker than not," she agrees quietly. This is a truth she can say without getting into the calibration questions. 

"So, yes, sometimes people can still fight after they've taken a lethal hit, but - they'd still be dying eventually, right? And for the purpose of tournaments, once you take a hit that is good, you lose immediately. We want to train to not be dead at all - it might be easiest if someone just hits you with a good and a light so you can see what the line is."

"Oh, it is good if but for god it would kill you later? - yes please hit me both."

Gabriel would normally just hit people but with Robert and Jenny both hovering he is pretty hesitant to whack their foster child over the head with a stick.

This is something Nicole can rescue him from, probably, he's pretty sure a woman hitting Iomedae is going to come off as less alarming to his extremely normal coworker. He will look over to where she's sitting - she's chatting with the sewing group politely and sipping water, which is not how he'd recover between fights - and see if he can wave at her. 

Nicole is more than happy to stroll over! After Gabriel explains to her with a few quiet words, she can tap Iomedae in the helmet. "This is light."

Tap again, slightly harder - "This is still light."

Tap again, right on the borderline - "This is just about light, but if you don't want to get hit very hard you can call it good when you're new, and people won't hit you so hard."

Tap again, hard enough to make Iomedae move - "This is good."

"...I think that would not kill me even with steel! The helmet is American."

"You'd definitely be dead with no helmet, though, right? And with a medieval - not American - helmet, it might break it." 

"Break a not American helmet, yes. So good is, if not wear American armor, and no God, then would be dead?"

"....I'm not sure what you mean by no God. If you mean - it would be a miracle and you'd have to get lucky but you could be alive - yes, absolutely."

"I mean, - people who work for God, who no warriors, what they called."

"...hmm, monks? Nuns, maybe? Clergy? There's - a lot of ways to work for the church and I don't think any of them would be relevant?" 

"God not save the dying?"

"Not to the best of my knowledge."

Nicole is aware of some things like - incredibly magical healing fountains deep beneath the Earth or possibly in the fae realm which might save the dying - but they seem to work perfectly well for atheists and Hindus and Buddhists and pagan witches and other people who don't believe in the Abrahamic God. 

"I will tell him he should do that! I think I know now what good is and Lucy won all the fight, or all but one maybe."

"No! You won the first one, I was stupid and gave you the opening but you still won it, and then when I hit you in the leg you only would've lost the leg - we go down to our knees, to simulate a leg injury, but you can keep fighting - and then after the hold you won two fights, with that scorpion shot and that face thrust - I didn't think you knew how to do that!" 

Out of context that would sound like a relatively normal sort of thing for a religious person to say - Iomedae will pray to God to spare the wounded, that's lovely, plenty of Crusaders probably did that - but for her to be calibrating blows off the assumption that God would save her, it kind of sounds like she actually thinks God might. Gabriel was tentatively hypothesising raised by the fey, but there's no fey that would tell their human changeling child that they had a direct red telephone to God to ask for their blood to stay inside their body please.

Unfortunately there is absolutely no way he is getting this kid alone to ask questions like do you know about magic and are you aware that magic is supposed to be secret and where the hell is Taldor anyway.

"I think a couple of Lucy's were light, yes, when you were moving away from her so she didn't catch you as close as she wanted to. It's always hard to tell as a spectator, but you're pretty fast on your feet. And Lucy, you still forget your hip sometimes."

She does NOT forget her hip, she's done HOURS of pell this week, it's just sometimes she's feinting and sometimes she's tangled up and sometimes she's doing the smaller-fighter thing of trying to use the spring of her knees for power rather than rotation. She's going to smile and nod though because smiling and nodding is the polite thing you do when the knights are wasting time talking instead of letting her get hit with a stick, which is how she actually learns. 

" - I think if you lose a leg you die always. Other person then has more -" she doesn't know the word for it but she demonstrates. Someone without a leg has no reach and can't move very fast and it should be easy for the uninjured fighter to kill them.

"Oh? Want to try?"

"Yes!"

Nicole has been training really quite hard for the past several months because she wants knighthood badly. If she had a white belt, she'd be totally unconcerned about Iomedae - no newcomer should be able to touch her if she doesn't want them to, no matter how talented - and thinking of going easy. She doesn't, though, and that means she cannot slip up in front of Gabriel and Reynhard and risk them thinking badly of her. She's been kicking everyone's asses relentlessly because right now she has something to prove. 

She goes to get her helmet and, when she pulls it on, her whole mindset switches into a fighting stance. The world looks so different through a visor. It makes her brain see everything in terms of threats and openings and movements and joints, rather than colours and faces. 

"She's really fast," Lucy whispers to Iomedae. "...go get her."

(Then she's already bouncing off to get water and see if anyone else wants to fight her.)

Nicole salutes Iomedae gracefully and settles comfortably onto her knees. "Alright. Same rules as a normal fight, but you can't walk all the way around my back, and it won't matter if you hit me in the leg because I already lost the leg. Whenever you're ready."

Ah okay 'can't go behind them' makes it a harder problem. It still ought to be a substantial advantage. Iomedae will start not-circling-because-that's-not-allowed and then attack.