//------------------------------//
// Catching A Break 
// Story: The Olden World 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
//------------------------------//

"Good one," Valey remarked, nodding as she juggled a bean bag in one wing. "Now, ready..." She crouched, wound up for a throw... and spun, the little sack completely failing to leave her side.

Starlight stared impassively from across the deck of the Immortal Dream, not even flinching.

"And good again," Valey praised, stepping forward, a scattering of missed shots laying against the wall behind her target. "Really, I wish they would let us use fruit for this. So much more fun. But your reflexes are top catch!"

She jerked into motion in a flash... but nothing left her wing yet again, and Starlight remained impassive. One eyelid twitched.

Valey grinned. "Yeah, yeah. Keep it up."

Halfway through talking, the bean bag left her side, moving so quickly and stealthily the motion to toss it was nearly imperceptible. But Starlight leaned to the side almost pre-emptively, and it sailed within an inch of her lilac face, striking the wall with a thwack behind her.

"Hahaha! In your face, every guard in Ironridge who failed Admiral Valey's basic reflex training. Everyone said it was impossible, but nooo, you just have to be good." She proudly ruffled Starlight's mane with a wing. "I gotta admit, teaching you is actually really fun. Think fast."

Without warning, Valey slid onto her haunches, rotating a hind leg in a swift, low sweep at Starlight's legs. With a yip of surprise, Starlight jumped, neatly avoiding the blow. But without a way to change her velocity midair, it was easy for Valey to catch her, grabbing and holding the dangling filly in midair. Valey grinned. "You're good at dodging, but you gotta think more than one step ahead."

"That's not fair," Starlight protested, hanging in her grasp. "In a real fight, I'd teleport behind you and kick you. But if I do that while training, I'll just tire out my horn."

Valey bit her lip, setting Starlight back down. "Alright, fine. But you're gonna have a bad time if teleporting is your only way to get around that in a real fight. I can fly, so if you try to copy my style too closely without wings of your own, you're gonna have a bad time. Now let's try that again. Exact same move. You show me something you can do to get past it."

Starlight nodded, resuming her stance. Valey relaxed... and suddenly dropped again with the same spinning kick. Her cutie mark warned her Starlight was about to try something on her leg, but she didn't break the attack, curious to see what would happen.

Crack! A bolt of teal energy flowed from Starlight's horn, raising her on a tiny crystal pedestal so that Valey's kick struck the base. "Ow bananas!" Valey winced at the awkward contact with the surface, but Starlight had still raised herself into a similar position as before. Valey pivoted and grabbed again... but Starlight, still connected to the crystal pedestal, shifted its growth to boost her backwards, throwing herself into a fast backflip out of Valey's reach. By the time Valey could flip over the obstacle, Starlight was back on the ground.

"You have that kid doing backflips?" Harshwater asked, sipping from a mug and leaning against the open doorframe as she watched.

Valey shrugged. "Hey, I know acrobatics. Being able to move around is important, especially if you don't have wings. Easy to get outmaneuvered otherwise. And good stuff! I like that a lot more than the last one."

Starlight nodded too. "If I rely on my crystals to block everything, my horn will get tired. It hurts when things hit them and I have to hold them together. If I can dodge too, that's important."

Harshwater nodded, a blanket around her shoulders like a coat in the cool marina air. "Should have come out here to spectate you before."

"Eh, we do this on and off." Valey glanced at the docks. "About... how many months now? Two and a half, three and a half? Bananas, I've lost track of time."

Starlight cleared her throat. "Two weeks since Mistvale, a month in Mistvale, a month during the tournament, a month waiting for the tournament. And then a week or two in Izvaldi and Stormhoof the first time, and a month flying in from Ironridge, and two or three weeks there and in Riverfall..."

Valey wiped her brow. "Wow. Ironridge was that long ago? That's like nearly five months. And I guess we've been training for over three, then. Wow, yeah..."

"In a professional setting, that's almost nothing," Harshwater remarked, setting down her mug and taking off her blanket and stepping forward. "But here. Try me. I'm still getting my strength back after being bedridden, but I could use a little exercise."

Starlight watched her dubiously as she stepped closer, but squared her shoulders. "Okay..."

"Heh. This'll be fun." Valey took Harshwater's old spot, stealing the blanket and watching with interest.

Harshwater stopped three strides from the filly, sizing her opponent up with a look that indicated whatever they were doing had already started. She narrowed her eyes... and dove, aiming slightly for Starlight's right.

Starlight watched, reading her eyes, formulating her best guess of what Harshwater was doing. Most of her dodging against Valey relied on instinct and intuition, and here, her intuition told her Harshwater was somehow about to strike from the left... so she jumped further right, straight across the mare's oncoming path.

She saw Harshwater gasp, one hoof already deployed to land in a pivot and swing her hind legs and hindquarters around in a circular kick to cover a dodge to the left. The pegasus tried to change the direction of her spin at the last moment, but her unprepared legs failed her, and she crashed chin-first to the ground, sliding straight into Starlight.

"Counterattack!" Valey yelled from the doorway. "You've got the advantage!"

Starlight used her momentum and stayed right, dodging mostly out of the way of Harshwater's slide. She was a filly, but Harshwater was a pegasus, and pegasi weren't that heavy... With a burst of strength, Starlight tried to grapple her hind legs, successfully getting her hooves around them but underestimating her own lightness and getting carried along with the crash. A second later, the two of them were tangled in a pile on the deck, utterly undignified.

"Nope! Nope, time out!" Valey whistled, striding forward. "There are rules for grappling dudes and that just broke every last one of them." She paused, blinking at them. "Are you two okay?"

"She's fast," Harshwater grumbled, sitting up and straightening a bent pinion. "And I'm out of shape..."

Starlight winced at Harshwater's condition. "Sorry..."

"It's fine." Harshwater shakily stood up. "I'm fine. Lecture her about grapples."

Starlight tilted her head, attentive.

"...Right." Valey sighed. "So, the point of grabbing someone is to throw them. When you throw them, you either want them in the air or on the ground. Point is to make them not be standing. You can't follow anyone into the air, so no doing that, and she was already on the ground. When you grab someone who's already on the ground, you do it to pin them and keep them there. If you wanna practice that, we can, but you're too small to cover all the relevant limbs at once, especially on a pegasus. You basically gotta do a full-body hug. Finally, don't try to grapple anyone bigger than you unless you really know how inertia works and can make it be on your side."

"Okay." Starlight nodded attentively.

"Uhh..." Valey glanced again at Harshwater. "Go practice your jumps and kicks and stuff. Focus on the stuff we covered last week about getting more power into your hoofstrikes. Training's over."

Starlight bowed, retreating quickly down the staircase.

"She's diligent," Harshwater remarked. "You're not cutting anything off for my sake, are you?"

"Nahhh. Maybe. Yes." Valey looked away. "Nah, I just felt like a chat. And yeah, she takes being strong enough to protect her friends really seriously. She's already crazy strong, it just tends to almost kill her whenever she goes truly all-out. So I'm happy to show her slightly safer ways of stomping bozos than blowing up her horn, and she's super diligent and happy to learn. Great student. Gifted, too."

"Really." Harshwater didn't sound impressed. "I'm glad you have someone who can keep up with you."

"Here. Catch." Valey motioned with a wing as if to throw a bean bag at her, then threw nothing at the last second.

Harshwater flinched. Valey grinned.

"How does that even work?" Harshwater grumbled. "What's the point of that exercise?"

"Easy." Valey laid back with her forelegs folded behind her head and against the railing, juggling her bean bag with one hind hoof. "You gotta dodge when stuff comes your way. But if an enemy fakes an attack to make you dodge and then they don't commit, it's really easy for them to follow up and punish the dodge. If they're good, at least. But I know you and your mercenary buddies were at least that good back in Ironridge. So, it's training to tell when someone's really gonna whack you and when they're bluffing. You get out of the way in time without wasting energy."

Harshwater frowned. "Are you sure that's productive? What if you're just teaching her to read your expressions instead? No one can truly react that fast."

Valey blew a raspberry. "I can."

"You have a brand that breaks the rules," Harshwater countered. "You aren't just anyone. You know that doesn't count."

"Oh yeah?" Valey raised an eyebrow. "And Starlight has my cutie mark too? 'Cuz she can do this. If you ask me, we're both just that good."

Harshwater narrowed her eyes in frustration, then sighed. "Or she could just be reading you."

"Nah, she had the right of it on your attack thing." Valey kicked her bean bag higher, switching it to the other hoof. "Just wasn't the smartest about what to do about it. Like you said, three and a half months? There's only so much experience you can cram into a kid's head in that amount of time. She's just skilled, and a good learner. You watch, she'll learn."

"And then I won't have the dubious honor of being this ship's second-best fighter when I can barely walk." Harshwater snorted.

"Hey. You're getting better." Valey shoved her shoulder. "You don't need to lean on walls all the time to get around anymore. You actually can walk. And if you get good enough to actually do exercise stuff, you'll be great. Look, I believe in you, here."

"I already borrow the things we got for Crystal sometimes," Harshwater admitted. "She enjoys keeping herself fit too, and never forbids me from borrowing them."

"Sounds like her," Valey sighed. "Got any opinions on how she's doing?"

"How do you mean?" Harshwater frowned. "Emotionally, she's as poorly-adjusted as ever. That's not saying a lot coming from the likes of us, but I know a mare who can do nothing more than wait to see if the future will be better when I see one. Physically, she has that strange scar around her wrist I want to investigate that you told me was from Stanza's crown, but I can't. And it's impossible to check up on her foal when she won't let me touch her without making passive-aggressive, suggestive comments. She's probably full-term and only has a week or two left, but I can't tell you more."

Valey stopped juggling, catching the bean bag on her stomach. "Yeah, Felicity volunteered to come give us a hoof with her. Maybe the three of us together can make her listen and at least get her checked out, if not doing something better with herself."

"In fairness, for her this is essentially asylum, separated from her lover." Harshwater leaned back too. "There's not a lot for her to do, here. A normal, well-adjusted mare in her position would probably be very on-edge too."

"Yeah."

Harshwater hesitated. "Speaking of wellbeing, you like training Starlight, don't you?"

Valey blinked. "I mean, sure I do. Why do you ask?"

"It just looked like you enjoyed it." Harshwater folded her hooves as well, mirroring Valey's pose. "Wandering around barking commands, berating mistakes and showing off instead of moping about problems you can't solve. Laughing. I think this is good for both of you."

"...Heh. Really?" Valey's eyes grew slightly brighter, and a little smile found her lips. "Didn't actually notice that. That's cool."

"Glad you appreciate it," Harshwater said. "...Want to lay here and do nothing until lunch?"

"You betcha."