She laughs. "I have certainly spent far fewer hours working on that specific exchange than you." Casne is very good and did much better than she expected. (Her performance was completely by cheating, to be clear.) "And I dropped into white style too many times; giant-slayer's is missing too many counters. I think if we wanted to practice with the plate style we'd need different rules, though, since it was derived for the difference between fencing and real combat."

"What rules are you envisioning?" he says, intrigued.

"That's the hard part, isn't it? It's a stance that is dependent on taking blows instead of deflecting them. We could block at full strength and strike at five percent, but there would be no good tracking-and-measuring system if we wanted to focus on the battle." Well, she could call in Piava, but Casne might have a better idea -

"Five percent of your full strength will still give me some trouble, not that I'm necessarily opposed, but if you want a way to track without either of us needing to spare attention to it... agh, I'd love to ask Tefano, either to sit in and watch or to design us something that can track it for us, but he's much too busy these days."

"We can call it three percent, if you like."

Piava? Can you track it for us?

Sesnai, do you have some kind of precognitive reason for showing this random teenager the fighting style you concealed from everyone you have ever met for your entire life, or do I need to prepare to clean up a body?

The former, as it happens.

I can track it for you.

"All right, that's covered." One of the scoreboards flashes to life. "Top left, my shields, top right, my renormalized output, bottom left, your shields, bottom right, your renormalized output. Reasonable?" Also, she's going to go get herself some water; best to stay hydrated during exercise.

"Sure. It might take me a bit to calibrate my output down to a reasonable approximation of three percent; if you wanted alarmingly precise psychic control you're barking up the wrong Eshiaf. But the theory's sound and the practice will follow."

He, too, gets some water. It's been a tough workout and it's about to get tougher.

"I've been working on that! You and your brother are both extremely impressive." Honestly, she's surprised Casne is this good (not being an elf), but her Admirer will inevitably come with some useful skills...

"I'm the meathead in the family," he says cheerfully. "But I'll admit I'm a very impressive one."

"Indeed."

And it's on with the plate stance! Sesnai sees no reason to stop just because her muscles are slightly killing her, if they aren't going all the way! If she has to she can telekinetically puppet her body tomorrow while it recovers, it's not like it'll be the first time she's done something like that.

Important lesson of the plate stance: Sesnai is really, really easy to hit, but not tremendously easy to get through her shields; normally you need to concentrate your defensive power to deflect a sword-slash if you can do it at all, but Sesnai is, uh, not normal.

Other important lesson: You know how you're supposed to concentrate your entire power into your blade if you want to get through, and how lightning bolts and force-blasts, if projected long distances, don't really compare to the amount of energy you can concentrate if you're just shielding your body at distance 0 from your body?

Sesnaiilaisa Adaitan does not particularly give a shit about that, not when she can fire off sideways blasts from her sword in a direction that has nothing to do with the one she's swinging it in, any time she gets close enough to Casne to be a bare miss. She is going to get hit so many times, and so is Casne. She will endeavor not to break him.

...yeah, he's doomed. But he's not going down without a fight. Several fights, even. And he's clearly having the time of his life about it.

He will manage to score some hits-that-count, if he can catch her while she's focusing too much of her strength on attacking, and leaving gaps in her armor as a consequence! She expects the score to be in her favor, though eventually even Sesnai will get tired.

The score is quite solidly in her favour, yes, though he's made a respectable showing.

"The most fun I've had all year!" he concludes happily, when they're good and done. "Can't wait to be your brother-in-law! Please tell me you get along with Tefano, I'd be heartbroken if you dumped him."

Good!

"Tefano is wonderful! I have no intention whatsoever of dumping him and I expect to still be looking after our descendants two hundred years later."

"Good! That's what I wanted to hear."

Then in that case, she do her cooling-down stretches, bid goodbye to Casne, shower, and head off to bed. Any updates on the situation from Nairia before she heads to sleep?

"This Aillis girl is pretty elusive. I couldn't manage to coincidentally run into her in the hallways no matter how hard I tried. She doesn't seem to have been making much of a social impression, either, which is weird because she makes a positive social impression on everyone she breathes air with down to the people who score her on math contests and you'd think she'd notice that she has this power. I guess the fact that she's not actively trying to get a head start on using it is consistent with the thing where she has not already charmed her way into a life of luxury."

"How odd," says Sesnai. "How very odd." Sesnai would have expected her to spend her time on some kind of resource-building. "Piava, can you check for suspicious shipnet activity?"

"No, no mysterious people plotting other than us."

"Well, wake me in the morning for Operation Prophecy, then." (To Piava.)

And, to Nairia, "I expect we'll learn how her plotting works tomorrow, if she doesn't try anything during the night."

"Either we'll learn how her plotting works or we'll learn she's playing the long game," she agrees. "Or, I suppose, she's a helpless pawn of Fate and has no idea there's even a game to be won here. One of those. Goodnight, Princess."

"Goodnight, Nairia."