Aiana: SwordXPlanet Volume 1

Olympians

The rest of the day as well as the next morning turned out to be quite hectic. Servants, hastily chosen temporary councilors to replace the ones who had died, and military officials ran around the palace carrying messages between the various groups that met to discuss the coming assault. Once it was all cleaned up, Queen Mesha was in her throne room during half of all her waking hours, talking with officials, reporters, and other VIPs, and in the other half she was traveling around the city meeting the press and the army. The Paragons never left the palace, but the servants told them enough about how the entire planet was in near panic from the recent attack and declaration of war. Suddenly, the people's daily lives had to be cast aside for absolute and utter patriotism, for that was the least of the sacrifices needed to win a war.

As for the five Paragons, they spent most of the hours that they didn't spend resting training. Ro switched her summer dress for a suit of light training armor, just like her friends, and picked up a wooden sword and shield as well as a borrowed automatic blaster so that she didn't waste any of her own special ammo. But she had not been prepared for this kind of training. Gaira's regimen was the most intense she had ever experienced in all her multi-century life. It was certainly well beyond what she thought her body was capable of, but Gaira insisted that this was the perfect amount, since this was the first time she would be entering a warzone.

For two hours every day Gaira made them run laps around the island, with few to no breaks. The pace that the boy imposed was considerable for a distance run, but most of the five followed after without complaint. Oz bounded across the ground with long, energetic strides, Tris kept a reasonable distance behind his leader to prevent rapid energy loss, and Tess, the athlete, ran by Gaira's side like she wasn't even trying. Only Ro ran at their tail, huffing as her lungs burned from exhaustion and her legs and shoulders ached like they were going to fall off. She had always relied on her natural ability and memories to carry her through combat, but now they were only barely keeping the inexperienced fairy at her friends' pace. Indeed, she had occasionaly trained her body on Faeria to keep in shape in the improbably case that she needed to defend her friends, but conditioning like this was from another world outright.

After an equally grueling set of anaerobic excercises, the five put theirselves to work in training for combat. Once again, Ro had practice swinging her sword and aiming her gun at home, but at her own pace. This time, when she practiced her marksmanship, Gaira gave her little to no time to aim, commanding her to fire at different targets after intervals of little more than a second. Sometimes he commanded them to fire at the targets while running, making keeping a steady hand even more of a challenge. And when the time came to fight in close quarters, Ro was surprised to find that strokes at air were not enough to satisfy the self-appointed drill sergeant. Ro was pitted against her friends in mock duels.

Unlike her, her friends were no stranger to battle, and had multiple years of both training and real combat to heighten their reflexes, tone their muscles, and sharpen their technique. Ro gulped as Oz the giant, her first sparring partner, loomed over her, holding a scimitar meant for a man considerably smaller in his hand. But his size did nothing to hinder the speed of his strikes, and Ro had to stay light on her feet and low in stance just to keep him from accidentally taking off her head, let alone strike him. When Tris took his turn, Ro hoped he would treat her a little more gently. He just smiled gently, before unleashing a storm of furious strikes that resulted in both a snapped sword and a shattered shield. After Ro picked up a new piece, Tess stepped up. Ro wondered how she was going to fare against her without any weapons of her own. So she made the first strike carefully. Tess, puzzled at the lack of finesse in her friend's swing, just stepped forward, turned around, grabbed her arm, and flipped her. Ro staggered back up, only to gulp again as Gaira stood in front of her, arms crossed. She realized that despite the fact that he was the youngest one here, he was actually a few inches taller than her. The fairy knight raised up her shield in defense and advanced. What happened next happened two fast for her eyes. The boy didn't even have to get into stance. He just crouched down and darted forward, and the next thing she knew, he had his legs stretched out below her shield, his wooden dagger pointed at her crotch. "Rohas, I don't know if you people have anything down there, but I could have caused you some serious discomfort if I was a Dagger."