"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."

Oh Jesus, did Robert tell her this was some kind of LARP and she needed to play a - no, address that later, that's not her fault right now and her English clearly isn't good but it is in fact his job to be gracious about this sort of thing. 

"Don't be sorry! Sign means you put your name down in a special way that legally makes it so you agreed to the writing on the paper. We have a piece of paper that says, if you get hurt learning swordfighting, you agree it's your fault for swordfighting and not our fault for letting you. Reynhard will shout at me if I let you pick up a sword without signing it, and technically he's right to."

Very technically. Gabriel can agree with needing to sign a waiver to get hit, but he thinks newbies needing a waiver to hit him is silly. 

"Oh. I no think I can do that, I no read English."

"It's just a liability waiver, kiddo. You have to sign them for everything. Jenny can probably sign it as your guardian."

Jenny is diligently filling out the liability waiver over at the marshal's table, chattering while she does. "- anyway it's so kind of you to let her try this sport of yours! I'd never heard of it!"

Reynhard sees Gabriel looking at him for approval and gives him a thumbs up. Waiver has been signed. The kiddo is allowed to fall over and break all her bones now if that's what she desires in her heart.

"Well, we all selfishly want plenty of new folk to hit, or we start running out of targets."

"....right, yeah, I forgot guardians did that for minors. Looks like we're all set!"

Gabriel pinches the helmet padding on both sides of his helmet so it doesn't slide out or fall around when he lifts it over his head and shakes the aventail out around his shoulders. Then he wrestles it onto his head, grabs the bar grille and pulls it firmly down until his chin fits into the chin strap.

"Alright, Iomedae, wanna have a go at hitting me?" 

She DOES. Also that helmet design is impressive. There's something profoundly reassuring about seeing America's impressiveness directed at something that makes sense, like good helmets. 

Swinging at his plate mail is stupid; the thing to try instead is to get the sword in between the pieces. Or to knock him over and rip his helmet off, but she was asked to show she knows what to do with a sword, not to show that she knows how to kill a man in armor. 

She straightens up into a good stance with her sword and then tries to take off his arm.