Keika was actually relieved when she was told what her disciplinary action would consist of. She was afraid of something strictly punitive that would serve only to punish her, but something positive had happened instead. Yes, it would eat up almost all of her free time, but she had expected that to come with the punishment anyway. The fact that she would end up leading the squadron of Paladins was quite exciting and, working closely with Master Pierce and her father, she was soon deep into the project.
She quickly found out that establishing a new military unit from the ground up was a demanding task. With good support and guidance, however, the ground work was all done within a few weeks. After two months of labor she submitted the completed work, along with her ideas as to what trials should be used for the Paladin competition. As soon as this was done Valerie and Keika embarked on the much more interesting task of designing their personal uniforms and gear. At last, a shot at doing something with a little style, Keika thought.
It had been decided that the uniforms of the unit members would be essentially the same as the regular army, but they would wear black ArmaCloth with golden armor to distinguish them from the gray and silver of the rest of the army. The king had given her permission to design something different for herself and Valerie. Their outfits could be out of the ordinary, but nothing outrageous. When Jefferson Parks learned of the project he excitedly volunteered to assist the girls with the designs. He was a frustrated clothing designer locked in a society with a draconian dress code, and this was a chance to do something different.
The uniforms would have to be flexible. Some research into the properties of ArmaCloth revealed the fact that it performed best if the fabric was taut. This suited Keika just fine. Val and she would look smashing on the battlefield. They designed basic ArmaCloth fighting outfits that were tight and form fitting in both black and white. The team added high collars and epaulets on the shoulders, white with gold piping. The new uniforms came with matching knee length boots, gloves and a garrison cap for non-combat wear.
She could have them wear which ever color uniform met her fancy. They would look great as a team with the blond Valerie dressed in the white and her in black. That could be reversed or they could both wear white or black and they'd look breathtaking! When Keika told her this, Valerie started teasing that she was going to be dressing her like a doll to match her moods, but Val was pretty caught up in the idea also. Jefferson had a great time helping with the designs and lamented constantly that he wasn't allowed to wear anything fancy or flashier than his utilitarian Chamberlain's uniform.
After they had finished, Jefferson gazed at the final design for a while, "My oh my, girls, with your figures you are going to look amazing in these outfits!" He chuckled, "Why, your appearance alone will bring entire enemy armies to a breathless halt!" The smile on his face faded, "But your father will never buy this. We will have to stack the deck to get him to agree to allow you to wear these." The smile returned, "... and I think I know how to do it. Let's design two other outfits, one racier than the other. We present those first and he will reject both immediately. Our actual design will look conservative as compared to the other two and we will present that as our more orthodox design. Maybe he will go for it."
They then got to work making two other, more extreme, uniform designs. The first one had a small top, little more than a bra with hip hugger shorts and knee length high heeled boots and the second design had a short uniform top with long sleeves and an exposed midriff and hip hugger pants with knee length high heeled boots. They were not serious uniforms and would not provide sufficient protection. The king would hate the designs and refuse to allow them to wear such outfits. But, after two rejections he would be much more likely to agree to the actual proposal.....maybe?
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Firefly Light
Ficțiune științifico-fantasticăIn the not too distant future mankind's world has collapsed. The population of, what had been over 7 billion, has been reduced to a tiny fraction of that number. Nature has reclaimed most of what man had built. Time has been turned back to before th...
