"You'll have to wait until you're seventy and the public has forgotten why it cared. A tragedy."

"Oh, the public cares, does she?"

"I'm not the public, I don't know. You'd have to ask Daipan. Or Tiffany."

"What? Come over here and help me teach the newbies."

"I see the public has other priorities."

She turns to Tiffany. "You're just doing safety training now, right? Want my help?"

"Alright, time to show off, teams. Let's start with Eistir, Tiffany, and Michael. New guys, pick a lane and stand behind. Behind the ones next to it if you want the best view of their technique. Watch their breathing, especially, that's a key trick."

The whole set of targets get slid further back, and they line up in the lanes.

Anita, obviously, watches Eistir.

She stands stiff, all the slack draining from her stances as she narrows her gaze to a point, eyes and ears covered with safety gear. She picks up the weapon, moving it smoothly in front of her, closing the chamber and readying it to fire.

She takes a series of deep breaths, the gun held out in position.

And then slightly faster breaths, and just after the exhale of each, a shot - one two three four five - and it's done.

Even at nearly twice the range the scatter is tiny and there's no visible direction of bias.

"Daaaamn...", Anita says, briefly hoping Eistir could hear and then remembering the earmuffs.

She lets her breath come in again, and sets down the gun before reeling in the target.

The other two on the team both do almost as well, but it looks like this was a good night for Eistir - they measure it and say it nearly matched her personal best.

"Well," she says to the newbies, "Clearly we need some of you to stick around, because one of you's my lucky charm."

"You probably say that to all the girls. Come on, next set of the team line up, same deal."

They do more rounds of shooting for the newcomers, with different people giving advice.

(Tiffany advises Anita, with similar physical motions and contact that feels completely different and doesn't feel like there's even the ghost of attraction involved.)

And then Daipan is getting their Athena accounts to contact them and giving out the team email and telling them what to do if they're interested in trying out, or if they aren't but are interested (every Tuesday), and apologetically noting that there will be a fee for future practices, for the costs of running the range.

"Think you'll try out? You really do seem talented."

"Much as I'd love to be your lucky charm... I don't think so. I enjoy it, I'd enjoy getting good at it, but... Eh. I don't have the words for why."

"Feels bad?"

"No, just... something's missing. I don't feel like I'm actually - exercising? No. Fighting? No, still wrong, it's all a little fake even in my favorites. But I can feel it."

"Bet you could see what I mean if you came and watched tomorrow. And I could give you lessons."

"You just want another chance to take a pass at me."

"Nah, I can do that right here. Make a bet - kiss me, whoever comes up for air first has to go to the other's favorite weapons club tomorrow night."

"You," Eistir says, "Are dangerous. But no bet."

"Well, then you'll just have to catch me somewhere else. Master's but you can find me near course 10 usually. Or building 35 tomorrow night." She winks, and turns to leave.

"...Maybe I will," she says, but doesn't go to follow her.

Anita doesn't see Eistir at HEMA practice, and gets on with drills and fighting, slightly disappointed.

She's good. Improvises a lot more than most people - she always claims it's because she's smaller and needs the edge - but it works for her. Frequently after a bout she and her opponent will go back and step through some of her variations to see whether they're worth trying to make repeatable, but they usually aren't - spur of the moment reads that have counters if things are slightly different.

It's been a couple hours since the swordfighting started. Notably, long enough for the pistol practice to be over for the night.

Guess who's snuck into the folded-up bleachers while Anita was busy doing one of those comparisons?

She has stopped checking, not having noted the time their practices are supposed to take normally.

It's a few minutes before she goes again, in which she is resting, conveniently not somewhere that either made her look toward Eistir as she sat down or somewhere she'd be in Anita's view.

Then she's back on the floor with another opponent - this one's a tall guy, thin but fairly well-muscled. Anita starts out on the offensive, but starts giving ground quickly, but... acrobatically. She's making up the ground by turning around him, controlling the plane of the fight. She's not obviously winning but she isn't obviously losing either.