Heed My Every Order

"Okay, that probably would be best. Then we could... whoa!"

Arthur barely had time to think about what was happening. There was a familiar reddish colored blur coming toward him and before he could say anything on the matter he felt it scrambling up him until it finally came to a stop at his shoulder. Blue eyes were wide with surprise as he finally looked down to see if he was correct in assuming that the familiar color really was familiar. There was Squirrel sitting atop his shoulder and looking quite proud of herself for being there. Evidently, she had missed the memo about the training session primarily being for humans.

"You again!" Arthur blurted out. He wasn't angry that she was there. Just surprised. It had occurred to him that Squirrel really didn't have a name, but was right then the proper time to clear that up? Probably not. Now Arthur found himself in an interesting situation. Eilonwy, Abigail, and Squirrel all were interested in training alongside him. How was this going to work?

Abigail moved thin, agile limbs away from the blonde and closer to Arthur. The blonde was too much like her own sister for her comfort level. Prissy, proper and a bossy know it all. Okay that last part she assumed. She stared at Arthur's shoulder at the strange creature perched there. She tilted her head to the side and got close to the critter. She loved animals, but this animal was different and strange to her.

"What's that?" She asked, "Is it...food?" The animal looked like something that would end up on her lunch plate eventually. "It likes you..." she said, not jealous of the squirrel, just stating a plain fact.

"Oh, no. No, this isn't food. This is... this is..." Arthur stammered for a moment before bringing a hand to his chin so he could think. Squirrel really didn't have a name, so how was he meant to introduce her? Such were the difficulties of having a little squirrel for a companion whose name he didn't know. "This is a friend of mine. I met her a while ago, long before the war. She's a squirrel." Arthur explained. He felt rather doofy explaining this much in that particular manner, but it seemed like the best way to go about it. That, and he couldn't think of any other way to really go about explaining. "These are my friends Eilonwy and Abigail. We were just about to start training together." he told Squirrel.

In the back of his mind, Arthur really wasn't certain of whether or not he was handling the situation well. Eilonwy was his friend and a girl he did, admittedly, like. Abigail was one of his newer friends and she seemed to be fond of him. Then there was Squirrel, who was convinced that he was meant to be her mate for life. When had things gotten so complicated? More importantly, how had he succeeded in getting the attention of three girls when back home no one even looked at him more than once before he'd become King?

Eilonwy looked at the squirrel for a moment before smiling. "She's so cute. Does she have a name?" she asked Arthur, but in her head she was rolling her eyes at Abby. Oh, sure, you're jealous of me but not the squirrel. That makes perfect sense. She turned to Arthur again. "So how are we going to do this, is your friend going to join us as well?"

Apr 17, 2012 13:58:13 GMT -5 @dwowfan said:

Mirage felt a little better about this whole training thing when she saw Jane. Smiling at her new found friend, and reassured by the fact that she knew about as much about fighting as she herself did. She stepped away from the blonde commander, intending to get his name later, and found a good space of ground in which herself and Jane could train.

"So...training..." she said, once again feeling awkward. She ran a hand through her platinum hair and bit her lip as she thought. She didn't really know anything about combat. Syndrome had taught her how to use a handgun when she had worked for him, but for one thing, she couldn't use a handgun right now, and for another, she'd prefer not to use one anyway, because of who taught her to use them.

Jane followed Mirage, a bit nervous about training at all. Where she came from fighting was...well, unladylike. And it was true that Jane didn't care about that stuff now but she had grown up thinking men were to do the fighting, moreover, that stuff never interested her all that much anyways. She was an intellectual and an artist, physical things were never her strong suit. And after moving to the jungle, Tarzan did most of the defending, the most she could do was swing on a vine. In some ways, she needed this, badly, but she doubted she'd be any good. She didn't even know what to do short of throwing a punch or two.

She could sense the other woman was about as prepared as she was. She laughed a bit. They certainly were an out-of-place pair, weren’t they? She wasn’t sure how much Mirage had ever been taught on the subject of fighting, but Jane hadn’t. However, Jane was the type to learn by doing, perhaps she’d learn as well. “I suppose it’s rather weird training like this, isn’t it? I’ve never done much fighting myself.” She said with a slight smile. “But it’s only a little sparring, I’m sure we’ll both do fine.” Now starting the training session was going to be harder, Jane didn’t just want to attack Mirage. However, one of them would have to strike eventually.

Abby played with her hair for a moment. Okay so asking if the squirrel was food was kind of stupid but the femme was alien to this planet. She didn't know a squirrel. Ears flicked back slightly as she glared at the blonde out of the corner of her eye. "A squi-rrel?" She repeated, "Is it a mammal? Like is it warm and fuzzy?" She reached out a claw to pet the squirrel then thought better of it and lowered her palm. She might frighten the thing.

"We'll train like I said, blondie," Abigail hissed, "You guys attack me. I'll defend myself."

Mirage recalled back to her time on Syndrome's facility once more, and remembered once watching the guards train. Most of their combat related training was how to use guns, but they did some hand-to-hand combat too. She supposed that trying some basic punches and blocks wouldn't be overly difficult. They could always ask one of the commanders to give them a push in the right direction later, and there was nothing wrong with starting at the basics.

"How about this?" she suggested, turning away from Jane so as not to hit her, and throwing a mock punch at the air. It was a little clumsy, but she was working from memory and very little experience. "Then, I suppose you could block a punch like this," she continued, bending her arm and angling it so that it defended her face. "It's not much, but it's something, I suppose. And we don't have to be aggressive - we can take it slowly for now."

"Oh, well..." Arthur hesitated. He still didn't quite know what to call Squirrel, and she had never indicated that she wanted to be called anything in particular. So, at that moment, he appeared to be quite stuck. What was he supposed to call her? Maybe it was time to ask Squirrel if she wanted to be called anything in particular. "I haven't really figured out what to call her. Do you... want to be called anything in particular?" Arthur asked Squirrel. "And... maybe you could train with us, too? I don't think General Phoebus would have a problem with it." he said.

"Three against one," Abigail said crossing her hands across her small chest, "Sounds good to me." Abby wasn't concerned. Her height and sheer agility would serve her well in this training session. Not that she wanted to hurt Arthur or his pet too bad. The blonde however...a few claw marks might not so mysteriously end up on her cheek, scaring that pretty human face. Femme's gray-blue eyes blinked and stared.

"Let's get started," she said, taking a stance in front of Arthur, holding up her claws.

Head butted affectionately against Arthur's cheek, the squirrel soon found herself being introduced to the two females he'd been standing with. The one with straw-yellow fur on her head was greeted with a pleasant chitter as the little animal assumed her to be like a nestmate, a sister to Arthur on account of their similar appearances. As feline eyes came close to Squirrel's though there was a sudden chatter of panic - though she'd never encountered a cat, Squirrel recognized a predator when she saw one. Like a fly-bitten horse the red flash was beneath Arthur's hair and peeking out from his other shoulder, tail curled around his neck for balance.

Only when her human perch introduced the pair by name and clarified her as definitely not food did the Squirrel pop back out again to stand on hind feet and sniff curiously at the alien girl, though everything in her little prey body screamed 'wary'.

With little understanding of the meaning behind 'training', Squirrel sat in silence and watched the three talk, leaning against the side of Arthur's head to cover one ear with a furry body. When the realization hit that they were still referring to her hit and Arthur turned, the dislodged Squirrel scurried back on his shoulder so she could meet his eye. "What to call?" Small head tilted as curiosity filled the female's face. Names were a foreign concept in and of themselves within what little society squirrels had. To clarify, Squirrel pointed a single clawed digit at her own chest. "What to call her? And what..." Squirrel licked her lips as the darker fur of her brows drew together in concentration, trying to formulate a human sentence the way Arthur and his friends were rather than her clearly broken grammar. "'Train'. What... It means?"

Hurriedly pulling her shoe on with one hand, her sword tucked under her other arm, the young Chinese woman staggered up to join the training session. During her time with the armies of China and the Heroes, Mulan's tendencies towards being late had been pretty well drilled out of her, but since Shang had vanished for a while, discipline had been becoming more lax in the camp, and lately, she hadn't been rising as early as she had been - it just hadn't been necessary, without the young general's rigorous training plans. It was just bad luck, she thought ruefully, that the day she'd accidentally slept latest had to be the first time for a while that Shang himself had been present at a training session.

"Sorry I'm late," she appologised, with a sheepish smile in Shang's direction as she finished with her shoe and quickly strapping her sheathed sword into place, before straightening to attention. She wore her shoulder-length hair permanently down now, but otherwise looked much the same as she had when she'd been showing up at similar training sessions in the Chinese army.

Catching sight of the three children present, Mulan's brow furrowed slightly. They might have only been a few years younger than her, but in the girl's mind, that was still too young to be called to fight in a war, and she made a mental note to bring up the matter with Shang later.

(ooc: Jane, can I just say that I love your posts? I can really hear the character's voice in your posts when I read them ^^)

She didn't know what a name was? Arthur found that rather hard to believe. Didn't she had some kind of callsign that the other squirrels referred to her by or something along those lines? "Hang on a second, Abigail. I have to clear something up with little miss Squirrel really quick." Arthur said, just to let Abigail know that he hadn't forgotten about her and Eilonwy. With that, he finally turned his attention fully to Squirrel so that he could explain what he was talking about properly. Someone had to, otherwise he would never know what he could call Squirrel and what he couldn't.

"What I meant was... well, I guess I'm trying to ask if you have a name. Something that sets you apart from the other squirrels. Like... well, I'm called Arthur. That's Eilonwy, and that's Abigail. Names, you see?" Arthur asked. it felt rather silly to try and speak with a squirrel, but by that point Arthur wasn't about to question the logic of the war. He'd been taking up conversations with Boris, after all. Conversing with squirrels seemed fairly normal by that point.

Eilonwy smirked at Abigail, at least she was spunky enough to hold her ground, despite being so young. Then again, she was only 13 it wasn't as if she was old, btu she was older than Abigail that's for sure. "Alright, let's do this!" she said rubbing her hands together, considering that Arthur was busy naming his squirrel friend, she could at least entertain the cat

(Gonna answer in two separate posts, kay?)

His frown broke into a grin as Mulan showed up. He moved from Pheobus' side, hands crossed behind him as he strolled towards the woman. His grin morphed into a fake frown as he marched around the slender woman, eyebrows raised in a non serious expression. "Well, nice of you to join us, Fa Mulan," Shang teased, "I'm so glad you could make it. Because the training schedule runs on your schedule, correct." He let out a low chuckle.

"Actually it might be good for the kids to see us spar," he pointed out, "After you kicked my rear so many times in training I expect a rematch is in order." He couldn't contain a grin. He missed seeing Mulan. Sure he saw her around every once and while but the girl hadn't done nearly enough or what Shang saw as her potential. She had the fight to do anything in this war, even had the power to end it. Or at least that's how he viewed it. He'd never had more respect for a woman in his life. Maybe his mother but that was about it. Though he sort of would hate to compare a woman he was attracted to to his mother.

"Hssssss!" The cat's fur stood up on end as she rushed at the blonde. Claws extended she thrust a claw out to try and steady herself while her body rotated and she lay out a straight kick with one of her slender legs. She was aiming for the girl's thigh to try and cripple her into falling on the ground. If she did that she'd be successful in throwing her to the floor. Ears pinned back, eyes narrowed as she peered at Arthur out of the corner of her eye. Who was this creature that took all of his attention? And what was it? Jealous kitty was jealous. Arthur was HER friend.

She peered back at Eilonwy to see if her attack had worked.