This seems very reasonable to Alfirin. Avoid danger if you can, destroy it if you can't. If you can't do that either...die, she supposes. And given those options, she's glad they're getting lessons that seem to take avoiding and confronting dangers much more seriously than the rest of her experience in the foster care system.

...dealing with the aftermath of an attack well seems sensible to cover too. She wouldn't have thought of that one on her own.

Great, the speech is given, time for warmups! 

Jogging around the studio is boring, and everyone (with the exception of the new students) is probably bored of it already. They can start with 10 laps of sideways skipping around the studio, with cartwheels at every corner for the students who can pull that off.

After everyone's done that, they can do star jumps - jumping in the air and flinging your arms up and feet out at the same time, and launching yourself to one side - for two laps around the studio.

And then twenty burpees (Seamus will demonstrate for the newbies.)

And then twenty knee-jumps, which involve jumping as high as you can and pulling your knees up to your chest at the same time. He will point out if anyone's knees aren't going high enough. 

Iomedae will do all of these things with ease and deep confusion about their purpose.

Alfirin will not attempt cartwheels.

By the end of "warm-ups" she's already feeling tired and out of breath again. She doesn't complain; she's weak and needs to become less weak and hardship helps with that.

Great! Everyone is now warmed up and will not (or at least will be less likely to) accidentally pull a muscle while doing routine exercises! 

(Alfirin and Iomedae are pretty clearly the youngest students in the class. The age range is from early-to-mid-20s, right up to mid-60s - the student who was getting a private lesson earlier, who is keeping up with the rest of the class and outperforming Alfirin, if not Iomedae.) 

Marian rides her bike right up to the mall and skids to a halt and hops off to drag her bike into the studio itself. (She's had bikes stolen before, multiple times, and she is maybe slightly paranoid about it.)

7:38, great, she made better time than she'd expected - 

....Uh. 

WHY is the kid who STABBED HER PATIENT (who is, incidentally, apparently being DEPORTED as soon as he's safe to get on a plane, and yes Marian is fucking pissed about this) apparently now a fellow trainee at her krav maga studio?? Which is supposed to be, like, her one stress outlet that does not contain anything related to her job??

Seamus is unaware that there is any social tension between Marian (who is chronically late to most classes, but has the best possible excuse most of the time, and he likes her because she has more will-to-victory and a higher pain tolerance than most people) and his newest students.

Great! Time to pair up and practice punching and kicking! 

He nudges Marian to pair with Iomedae. He's pretty sure Marian can take it. 

Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhwhy. 

"Hey," Marian says, in the most normal voice she can manage. "- You were at the food bank the other day, right?" 

Between being from rural Taldor and having mostly observed Evelyn, who knows everybody, Iomedae is implicitly expecting that Reno has a population of around 2,000 people and does not think this is a notable coincidence at all. "Marian! Yes, I work there Tuesdays Thursdays. You work the hospital, yes? Is everyone well at the hospital?"

No, because her patient from the other day who she has a lot of emotional investment in actually is being DEPORTED "- Yeah, pretty well? ...Or, I mean, a lot of the patients aren't, but as well as you can expect?" 

This is agonizingly awkward and– oh, right, she has a great excuse to cut this conversation short, because this is krav maga class and they have a goal here.  "...Okay, we're supposed to be practicing kicks. Do you know how to do a roundhouse kick?" Marian can demonstrate.

"No. What makes it a roundhouse kick. Is this -" she attempts to imitate it "also a roundhouse kick?"

"- That's pretty good but not exactly it? Uh, I think a roundhouse kick is basically - you kick up - swing your knee up, I mean, not your foot yet - and then swing your body around and kick sideways? ....I can try to demo it slowly but I might, like, fall over." 

Marian will demo a slow-mo roundhouse kick. She does not in fact fall over. 

Iomedae will try again. Her second attempt is better. "This not kill someone I think," she observes.

...It's probably really stupid to feel embarrassed about the insufficient lethality of the kicks you're trying to practice with the person who STABBED your PATIENT. Also Marian's brain should, like, seriously get around to shutting up about that at some point. 

"- Yeah, I don't know, I think the main point of it is to knock someone over and then you can, like, run away?"

(Marian has definitely knocked people over with her roundhouse kick before, but she doubts she could pull that off now, it looks like her current sparring partner - wow it's really awkward actually to not know her name - outweighs her by at least 50 pounds. ....Marian has occasionally been able to win fights with people who outweighed her but, like, not with just roundhouse kicks, and mostly via having more sheer determination and also cardiovascular fitness and endurance and stuff. She....is kind of doubting she could win on any of those fronts with this kid. 

....She is perhaps feeling some amount of competitive about that.)

You could probably knock over a random civilian this way. ...probably Iomedae is expected to be needing to fend off random civilians and 'this will not be very useful against wolves or soldiers' will mark her as Not From Around Here.

She nods. "Why we practice in twos?"

"- Uh, are you asking why we're not practicing, like, more than one person fighting you? ...We do practice fighting against a lot of people sometimes but - uh, I guess that's in the intermediate class, for more experienced students."

(Marian is considered intermediate-level, at this point, and she just makes it to whatever classes she can, and she appreciates how incredibly patient Seamus is about her schedule.) 

"...Anyway we should probably focus on the lesson?" Marian will hold the kickpad up for Iomedae to kick at. 

She can do that! She is remarkably strong and very determined and not trained in this at all.

This is very endearing! Marian is appreciating having her as a partner.

Marian is not as strong, but is very determined, and is slightly more trained in this. And also has a pretty high pain tolerance. (Maybe especially tonight, because she has feelings about today's shift and there is literally no one she can talk to it about and so the only outlet she has is - well, this.) 

...This was not strictly speaking part of the lesson, but maybe they can practice elbow strikes? Marian personally feels like she can hit things hardest with her elbows, and it seems like her sparring partner might want to know that sort of thing. 

Her sparring partner would be delighted. (Though she herself can hit things hardest with her feet, once she learns how; she's strong, and can bring a lot of force to bear.)

Meanwhile, Alfirin has been partnered with a man who appears to be in his early 30s.

He introduces himself politely to her; his name is Justis, apparently. He's tall and skinny and...honestly pretty clumsy, though he's being careful about it. 

She introduces herself in turn. Alfirin is short and skinny and clumsy like someone who was even shorter until recently and has almost no idea what she's doing. The first time she lands a kick it unbalances her and she almost falls over.

...Yeah that's pretty relatable. He too tends to almost fall over every time he lands a good kick. He'll give her some advice about holding a wide stance with bent springy knees and keeping your center of gravity low enough that you won't just fall over the first time you hit or kick something bigger and heavier than you. 

(There is no sign that he's noticed her gender, let alone her stretchy jogging pants.) 

"...How can I have a wide stance when I stand on one foot to kick?"

"Uh, I didn't mean while you're actually kicking, just, like, before your leg gets off the ground? And then you want to get your leg back down really fast, so you're on two feet again." 

She will try it, even though it seems unlikely to help with the problem where she falls over when she's standing on one foot and kicking with the other.