UUUUUUUUUUUUGH

(Bern is kind of terrible at sword drills; he does not have much in the way of manual dexterity, and it is not really an environment where he can put his strength to good use.)

How is getting knocked over by Asher for using his strength?

Insufficient! Bern's stance is pretty stable but when he goes off-balance he switches completely to "must fall without damaging my precious head or precious hands" mode instead of trying to push back at all.

"Excellent technique!"

Wei Wuxian wants to know if he can use his sword to play jump rope. 

He will hear the praise and completely fail to integrate it into anything because Asher is obviously going to say something like that and anyway praise only makes people expect more of you.

Back to corner-hiding!

Wei Wuxian is about to learn a very valuable lesson about either his hand-eye coordination or pain hurting, and she's mildly curious which.

While she's distracted by that Asher is going to try to knock her over.

Yeah, she figured. How goes her attempt to trip Asher?

Alida is smaller and more malnourished, while Asher has less experience actually fighting. 

They both wind up on the floor.

When you try to use a sword as a jump rope it whaps you in the face. 

And Alida lands properly, rolls, and comes up in one motion, quietly smiling.

Does Asher fall correctly?

Of course he does, and then in one smooth motion he rolls to his feet. 

And he's smiling, too. Well. In one sense, that's good news. In another... less so.

"Good to see we all know how to fall," she says pleasantly.

"Yep! Because that means I can show you the cool stuff!"

And he is going to both test their ability at and try to teach them how to do cartwheels and handstands and forward rolls. 

Wei Wuxian catches on with a profoundly unfair ease, given that at least forty percent of the time he's doing something Asher didn't tell them to do. 

Alida is pretty fair behind, but is good enough at learning not to be in last place.

... Because Bern is. His default reactions to "someone is trying to make me do an uncomfortable thing" are to cower or to obey with no initiative or understanding whatsoever, and however much his mind is aware that obeying Asher is his top priority, his body is pretty sure that the important thing is that he does not do anything that could damage his brain, eyes, or fingers.

What they might notice is that Flynning is oddly like dancing, in that the point isn't really to hurt people-- the point is to show off that you could hurt people, if you wanted to.

... You know, that's a very important insight.

She gets a lot better at Flynning, once she has it.