Open Post: The Arms of the Emperor are Never Idle

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon spends her mornings in the practice yard, bright and early, despite the cold. She jogs and stretches to get her blood pumping and her muscles warm before she draws her sword, and then after drills she brings Tally her coffee, and then after that it's back to more sword—unless Tally hauls her off to some other activity, which she pretends to hate but is secretly devastatingly grateful for. The absolute worst part of this place is all the time. Endless stretches of time, with barely any work to be done.

In some ways it's just like the Ninth—except on the Ninth she knew her exits. They were few, sure, and near-impossible, but she knew them: buy her way out, fight her way out, trick her way out, or truly earn it.

None of those apply, here.

She breaks for lunch, and wanders the halls trying to locate various Clues and Mysteries that might end up giving her a way out, and mostly just finds people. More and more people.

She's not antisocial. She likes the people here, more than she's openly liked anyone in her life, individually or as a group. But a gnawing restlessness keeps her on the move rather than letting her time fill up with idle conversation as so many here do. She's always hunting for something to keep her busy, to wear out her body so that when she sleeps her mind is forced to rest rather than serving her a lovely buffet of the worst things she's ever seen and even worse things she hasn't, the things she was yoinked away just in time to miss.

Sometimes it even works.

[This post is open in perpetuity until something happens to make me close it, at which point I will edit it and say so! Feel free to find Gideon in the morning doing sword drills, or tooling around inside, opening and closing drawers and trying peel the wallpaper off in case there's flesh underneath.]

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[ninth_cavalier]

Gu Xiang's whip-sword rings like a bell every time Gideon blocks it, and she has to block it a lot. For the first time since she's gotten here Gideon finds herself wishing she was wielding a rapier: the lighter sword would be faster and easier to maneuver, letting her get a counterattack in between Gu Xiang's strikes, and she could wield it one-handed and bring her punch-knife to bear. As it is her two-hander may as well be a shield.

So she wields it like one: she starts not only catching Gu Xiang's strikes but meeting them with strikes of her own, smacking the flat of her blade as hard as she can against the flexible metal, making it ring louder and louder and trying to jar the hilt against Gu Xiang's grip. She pushes towards Gu Xiang with every block and tries to bear down, as well, making use of her (unusual) height advantage to try and break her randomized pattern into something more predictable, looking for an opening.

[thepurpledanger]

Gideon's really good, actually, and it's starting to piss Gu Xiang off! She can feel herself being pushed and herded, and she doesn't know what Gideon's trying to accomplish, but her wrist is feeling rattled--she's used to taking blows like this with the giving leather of a whip, and the whip sword absorbs almost none of the shock. With a huge push of qi, she leaps somersaulting over Gideon's head, snaking in a glancing blow just past the peak of her arc. She's not aiming for anything in particular; she's just trying to hit something. "What style of martial arts is that?" she asks as she lands and whirls back a few swift paces. Her face is alight, gleaming with delight and fury.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gu Xiang does land a blow—a long, shallow cut to Gideon's shoulder that would have been much less shallow if not for the padding of the coat Kade had made her. "Hey!" Gideon objects, much more to the damage being done to the coat than the pain—but at least the barrage of blows has stopped, and she can pivot to face Gu Xiang again and catch her breath a little. Obviously what she does isn't martial arts and has no name, but all that means is she has the opportunity to name it. "You like it? It's called Sweet Moves for Hotties who Get Mad Bitches, uh, Style."

[thepurpledanger]

Gu Xiang's eyes go wide. "I want to learn to get mad bitches."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon grins, huge and shit-eating. "Absolutely," she says. "But only if you teach me to use your sweet whip-sword."

[thepurpledanger]

"Deal," says Gu Xiang immediately. "My name's Gu Xiang." She clasps her blade in both hands and bows.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon bows back. "Gideon Nav," she says. "You drew first blood. Does that mean we're done?"

[thepurpledanger]

"You think you can do better in a second round?" says Gu Xiang, readying her sword with all the confidence of a housecat squaring up to a Doberman.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon just grins and comes at her, sprinting toward her and swinging a massive blow at her off-hand side. She knows Gu Xiang is fast, but she's not convinced she can block a full-powered strike with her thin blade—or for that matter her (comparatively) thin arms. Also, she's a simple guy, and 'hit your opponent really hard' is a strategy she can really get behind.

[thepurpledanger]

With a sharp sound of effort, Gu Xiang leaps over the blade, backflipping over it--but she's in a bad position, and she knows it. She dances back over the churned earth, buying space even as she knows that it's putting her on the defensive. And Gideon is right: she isn't equipped to fight defense. With a curl of her lip, Gu Xiang braces a foot on the fence around the practice yard and pushes off, spinning through the air like a drill, blade a whirling point of steel.

[ninth_cavalier]

"Motherfuck--" Gideon swings her blade up, bracing the blade with the flat of her offhand, angled above her head like she's hiding from a hailstorm. It's incredibly undignified, half-crouched, her legs spread wide and awkward like a crab. As she barely manages to fend off the point of the blade, she's yelling: just an unbroken, "AAAAAAAAAH--"

[thepurpledanger]

It works, though; Gu Xiang goes sailing past, and has to fight to arrest her momentum enough to land. "Why do you wear that facepaint?" she asks as she slews through the mud and melting snow. "Are you a ghost?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon straightens up slowly from her crouch. "The facepaint's because I'm a nun, sworn to protect the Locked Tomb," she says, "and for intimidation. But I might be a ghost, actually, unrelatedly. How would I tell?"

[thepurpledanger]

A quick jab at her while she's rising; however, Gu Xiang's nowhere near close enough for it to connect. "Someone decided they didn't want you to be alive, so you had to run away to a place where you're as good as dead."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon blinks, not even bothering to swat the jab away, but keeping wary. "What if I'm the one who decided not to be alive, but I got taken away to—well, here? Does that qualify?"

[thepurpledanger]

"Doesn't count," says Gu Xiang. She tries a sidelong sling of the whip sword that goes ting against the flat of Gideon's blade. "You're not a criminal or an outcast, you're just depressed or a hero or something."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon snorts, and aims a swing at Gu Xiang's legs, though she knows she'll just hop it. "What about if I'm a mysterious orphan who grew up in jail?"

[thepurpledanger]

She knows Gu Xiang will hop it, and she's right--but Gideon also knows that Gu Xiang's a show-off, so if she's quick, she'll be able to loop that swing right back around to clip Gu Xiang as she somersaults over Gideon's head.

[ninth_cavalier]

She does exactly that, thinking of what she'd tried to do with Lan Wangji and failed. It's half intended as blow and half intended as block, in case Gu Xiang gets that whip around fast enough. The tip of her blade does catch Gu Xuang's sleeve—she can't tell, yet, whether it actually catches flesh.

[thepurpledanger]

Unlike the cultivators here, Gu Xiang wears her sleeves tight to her arms; the tip of the blade draws a long, straight line that stings like ice across the back of Gu Xiang's forearm. As soon as air hits it, though, the cut burns. As soon as she lands, Gu Xiang holds up her arm to show off the slash; a single, cherry-red drop of blood slides down to stain the churned mud and slush.

"You cut me right open!" she says with a kind of menacing glee. "Mysterious orphan who grew up in jail, huh? I guess you're a ghost after all!"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon grins wide. "Guess I am," she says. "Didn't know ghosts could bleed."

[thepurpledanger]

"Everyone bleeds," says Gu Xiang.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon nods. "True enough. Some people might not bleed for long—but that's why you gotta make it count."

[thepurpledanger]

A grin that shows all of her teeth. "Exactly. I like you, Gideon Nav. We're going to be friends."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon matches her grin and sticks out a hand to seal the deal.