"Good."

- okay, she's going about this the wrong way. You'd think the major advantage you have over someone who can't move is reach, but lots of people are skilled at fighting when they have less reach than their opponent and any woman knight is going to have to be. And the duchess Nicole can still land hits totally adequately while on her knees. The thing to do is the exact opposite, to get right up in front of her and - she's not allowed to knock her over, but she can prevent her from getting any leverage -

Oh, clever girl. Most new people have to be explicitly told about that idea; it's counterintuitive. Iomedae really does have some great instincts. 

With Iomedae crowding into her personal space, Nicole's field of view is suddenly all full of shield. On her knees, she's only about as tall as Iomedae's shield anyway. She could try shuffling backwards to get away from Iomedae, but she's never going to be able to do that faster than Iomedae can walk forwards.

So she leans backwards and cranes her neck back and holds her hands above her head to present any kind of defence, and that's tiring. Now she's on a timer where she has to kill Iomedae before she gets enough lactic acid buildup in her shoulders that it starts to slow her down; she's fit and she'll be fine as soon as she can shake her arms out, but she can't shake her arms out without dying.

Nicole is still a very, very good fighter. She can keep her sword tilted back over her head to protect herself from the scorpion shots, and block four things by ducking into her shield, and then wait for Iomedae to look for that big overhead wrap and pop her in the elbow. But it's suddenly actually visibly hard work for her, and she drops her arms immediately after Iomedae calls good so she can rest her sword and shield on the ground. 

"Great thinking! Yes! That's exactly how you do it!" 

But it didn't work! Though she has some ideas for how to use the advantage better -"...again?"

It didn't work because Nicole has the thousand tiny advantages that come only from years of experience - feeling the right timing in her gut, putting her sword exactly where she aimed it, every little muscle optimization that makes her hands a little bit faster, the efficiency of her shieldwork - but Nicole reckons she beats Iomedae ten times out of ten if they're fighting on their feet, and maybe eight times out of ten if she's on the ground and dealing with Iomedae shoving her shield in her face.

"Again - and if I miss and hit your shield, it's okay to lean into me a little bit - you can't shield bash but you can make me take the weight of your shield on my sword arm until I'm tired of that." 

"Lean is -" demonstrative gesture? If it's about rules she doesn't want to take the chance of not knowing a word and she really doesn't know very many English words, though she's apparently conversational enough people keep forgetting that.

"Yes, exactly. No bashing - hitting - with the shield but that is okay."

"Okay!" Then she'll try again. It has not occurred to her to be upset about losing every fight; that is how you get better and don't die.

Nicole lost every single fight when she was a newbie. She didn't have any senior female role models to tell her that anything would ever be different, either. She just had to keep showing up day after day after day and losing fight after fight after fight. And she didn't die.

She can't read Iomedae's thoughts but she likes the fact she is persevering. 

Then Iomedae will mostly lose fights to her for as long as she'll put up with it. She'll try imitating moves she just saw, and moves she only half remembers, and just applying brute force to the problem and hitting Nicole's shield as hard as she possibly can repeatedly.

Nicole wants to refrain from killing Iomedae on the way in, so she lets her in to try out the shield-leaning suppression technique and - oh, now she's up in her face battering her shield repeatedly really hard. This pretty rapidly becomes surprisingly unpleasant; Iomedae is a few weight classes above her, Nicole's sword arm is rapidly tiring from Iomedae's shield being inside her shoulder, and "as hard as she possibly can" is pretty damn hard if you're Iomedae. 

She does her best to reach up around Iomedae's shield to catch her with an offside while she's doing her return. It takes a rapid shuffle backwards to give her the space, but she gets a split-second window and lands it.

"You see now how you don't die always if you lose a leg? - One more, then let's give you a water break, and I can show you some techniques for fighting on your feet if you like." 

"Yes thank you ma'am!"

Okay! Nicole gets set up again and decides - not to let Iomedae win, exactly, but that she can certainly afford to give away a win on the last fight and it'd probably be good for her to see that she wins more if she does the right thing and loses if she doesn't. She's got enough of a sense now that she can just fight at Iomedae's speed, and if she wins she wins.

The opening attack from Iomedae is timed beautifully - another thing she's figured out without being told about it - so that Nicole has to focus on defending herself as Iomedae steps into range, and now Iomedae's back in that advantageous position with her shield in Nicole's face, and Nicole wasn't even prepared for it so now her sword is somewhat trapped under that shield. She leans back to try and give herself some space and this time she doesn't get the space; Iomedae steps in on her sword side and batters her over the head.

"Good! - really good. You learn fast! Let's go get some water." 

Iomedae will happily trot on over to get water, though she's not too winded from the exertion. Until a week ago she was picking vegetables all day every day. "You great warrior, Heaven sing."

"I've been fighting a very long time! You are very talented."

Once she has her helmet off, Nicole will also snag a plastic knife and cut herself off a quarter of one of the donuts. "What brought you here? I'm very glad you came."

"I was made foster child of Robert and Jenny. I told them I a holy warrior, want to sword, and Robert found this order. "

"Oh, this isn't an order exactly. There's people here in several different orders and some who aren't in any. - feel free to grab snacks if you want, they're for everyone." The table now has the fruits Nicole brought and some cheese with someone's homemade bread, in addition to the donuts. 

She very much wants to ask what 'holy warrior' means but she's trying to get a feel for whether the answer is the sort of thing that ought to be discussed aloud in front of plenty of people who haven't been told anything about magic.

Iomedae looks questioningly at Jenny who has strong opinions about food.

"The fruit's good for you, sweetheart! It'll give you energy for fighting!"

Then she will take some of the fruits, not too many so as not to be rude. "This is no holy order, Sir Gabriel telled me. But - this still help me grow to holy order, I think."

Hmm. "Well, yes, we'll teach you how to use a sword. What kind of holy order do you want to join?" 

"One for grow strong, fight Hell."

"Iomedae, they told you this isn't a religious thing. It's not respectful of these people to go around injecting religion into their - hobby activity -"

"- this order not religious, is why I need find order is religious."

"We can look up - nuns - when we get home but I really don't think they'll let you swordfight. I'm just asking you to respect these people while you're here."

"Iomedae is alright, don't worry - I did ask." Nicole gives Robert a reassuring smile. 

If hell existed she would probably also quite like to fight it, she supposes.

"...nuns probably won't let you swordfight, though. I don't think any religious order... maybe some of the really hardcore Buddhist monks, I don't know." This is not a topic she wants to stay on if it's going to get Iomedae in trouble with her foster dad. "Anyway, if you want to get involved here, we practice Saturdays and Tuesdays here, and the neighbouring barony has archery on Thursdays. Arts classes are usually first Monday of the month and we take turns to host."