Let's get down to business (Mumble)

[Andrina]

Andy had hardly enough time to get her life back in order after all she'd been through in the last year before a war was all but upon Tintagel. She'd wouldn't have even been aware of it if invading troops didn't start marching in. Apparently being stuck in a lake left you pretty well uninformed. Still, if anything, she's resilient and stubborn at that. War shmore, her and Mumble were both alive and sane for the moment and thats what was important, well, until this war thing really started to get heated up and the threat of not being so alive came into play.

Andrina's imminent instinct was to stay and fight, despite her newly returned legs and generally small stature. This thought was quickly smothered once she got a hazy imagine of Mumble's attempt at being a warrior. Bless his heart, but he was a dancer and Andy was pretty confident even she could take him in a fight. Losing Mumble for the millionth time was not even remotely an option, they'd have to flee.

So off to the island they went where they stayed for a good while. Andy grew more resentful of their decision each day. Though she tried to hide it the best she could, but, eventually, her and Mumble both admitted to their guilt and thus a Andy formed the brilliant and terrible idea to teach Mumble how to fight. Mind you, Andy only knew how to fight because she insisted her father's guards teach her when she was pretty young, 14 or so. She hadn't actually been in a battle before or practiced much since then, so today was certain to be an adventure.

Andy had packed her trident, she'd found one in the weapon store a long time ago and kept it around just in case and because it reminded her of some fonder memories of home. She was actually pretty excited about this. I mean, theres a war going on and people are dying, but teaching Mumble to fight should be a riot. He was certainly fit at least....very fit...

This was going to take a lot of concentration.

She stood with one hand on her hip and the other on her silver trident and grinned a little dangerously before speaking.

Welcome, young Padawan! she said with as much glandular as possible. She'd picked up on a few things since she'd washed up on land.

outfit.

[Mumble]

Mumble had almost begun to regret asking Andy to teach him how to fight. It promised to be dangerous, accident-filled, and almost certainly emasculating, but on the other hand, staying here on this island was also emasculating, guilt-inducing, and also accident-filled (it was Mumble and Andy, really, between the two of them they could probably find a way to get themselves killed in a pillow fight).

Padawan? He snickered.

"Alright, Master," he said, grinning. "Teach me the ways of the Force."

He had serious doubts that he would ever be good enough at this to put up much of a fight on the other side of the water, but he knew they had to try. Sitting around sending up wishful thinking wasn't doing anyone any good, and it just wasn't enough for him any longer. And he wasn't going to hold Andy back any longer, either. If he felt a desire to help, without any combat training at all, her own desire to go and do something must have been that much more, what with her trident-wielding skills and all.

She looked downright gorgeous with the trident. Beautiful, and dangerous, and deadly and all those things that weren't really attractive at all unless they happened to be attached to the woman you already loved. Yes, he was nervous. But he was ready for this. He was going to make a difference or die trying (probably the latter) because he wasn't going to go on being a coward and doing nothing about the things he loved and the danger they were in.

The one thing he had going for him was that he was in pretty good shape. He had been a dancer for a very long time, and as a result, he had good endurance and strategically placed muscles. As long as he could draw some kind of parallel between dancing and trident-fighting, he could probably handle this. Yeah. That was what he kept telling himself, anyway.

"If we could avoid me dying until we're in an actual fight, I'd like that a lot," he quipped.

[Andrina]

I will![/color] she said with that bright confidence that she had almost lost with her days spent incapacitated by one thing or another. She could fight, so it shouldn't be too hard to to teach Mumble to fight....right? She tried not to let her doubts fill up her face as she circled him, but she feared he might have guessed a few given his comment. Still, keeping things light was a lot better then dwelling on what was happening across the water, so she smiled and offered a quip of her own.

Well I'm not making any promises, but maybe we should start with this She picked up a long, thick stick she'd found. It was a little longer than her trident, but she was trying to figure in the fact that he was taller than her. She'd also tied a weight to one end so it would feel more like a trident then just a plan old stick. Gillian, the guard she had persuaded to teach her years ago, had done the same thing to teach her in the beginning. He said that it's the fact that one side is heavier makes all the difference, if you get used to a stick weighing the same on both ends, you'd be likely to cut off a limb when you started working with something a bit sharper. Gillian was a nice, older man. He should have known better than to give Andy sharp things at any point in their training and maybe he'd still have all his fingers.

She tossed him the weighted stick while adding And if you die at all, I'll kill you. She narrowed her eyes and pointed as if the words would act as some kind of shield over him should someone get to close. Andy shook her head a little, fearing the dark places her mind had started to journey to, she'd almost lost Mumble way too many times for any kind of mention of it, but humor was a better defense than anger so she let the light heartedness linger.

Now Andy started, completely serious as watched him with deep concentration. Do you know any baton twirling? I mean....thats got some dance elements to it right? Or like....those girls that spin the flags around... She trailed off. There had to be some way to relate this to dance. She was certain that was the key. If Mumble could turn a spin into a roundhouse kick they'd be set.

[Mumble]

She was just as vivacious as ever, Mumble realized. He wasn't worried about her. She thrived on adventure, took challenging times as a personal inspiration to do better. He should have known nothing would keep her down for long. No, it wasn't Andy he was worried about. Theoretically, unselfishness told him that he should be more worried about her than he was about himself. But honestly, she was going to be fine. He could tell.

It was himself he was a little concerned about. When she started tossing him a stick with a weird thing on the end, he started thinking thoughts of lopping his own arm off, or putting out his own eye. He had to close his eyes momentarily and remind himself that sword fighting - or trident fighting, as the case may be - was just as rhythmic as dancing. That's what he read in books, so it must be true, right? Right. He caught the stick easily in one hand, and figured that had to be a pretty good start.

"Uh. I never twirled a baton. But I was in cheerleading. And oh, one time we danced with these pike things, but it was all for show. We never had to hit anybody with them."

He suddenly had a mental image of himself and Andy showing up at a battle, side by side, wielding tridents, and the undeniable badassery of that image brought a smile to his face. They would be famous. Legends. The lovers who fought together in the greatest war anyone had ever seen. Oh, yeah.

He grinned.

"I'll get it. Don't worry." he assured her. "It might take weeks, but I'll get it. So you want me to twirl it first?" He started to rotate the stick awkwardly.