What Comes Around

Cole

When he got new students, they were to arrive an hour before the others. Only so he could get a full feel for what style of swordplay would suit them, not everyone could wield the same sword.

To start off with, with a few years of training and passion, some of his students have been able to pick up a second sword, another set of katas. Cole didn't teach anyone anything until they were ready to be taught, or until he was ninety-seven percent sure they were going to anything stupid with it.

Like the cheerleaders Kieran paid him to teach, he kept them to sword dances only, most likely useless in battle with its large hilt, but he had never tired using them in combat. Nor did he wanted to find out the hard way if he was right or wrong, some other idiot could test out that theory.

"You must be my new student," Cole stated as Ajay walked into the room with his niece and two others. The Little Red Lion had always been his favourite, she was cute. But like most Australian animals, they were cut until they were clawing your face off or breaking your spine into three parts.

"Josephine," she told him, her clothes made it look like she wasn't ready for a swordsplay lesson. Then again, Kieran had told him she had only known about it since yesterday. So maybe she didn't know what to expect. Thankfully she did come early, so she could borrow some Abigail's clothes.

"You ever had lessons before?"

"With a sword? No."

Really? He thought as he looked at Ajay, he just raised a brow as Josephine stared at him. The ass smile as he handed Josephine a blunt short sword, a challenging glance to just attack her already, which he did.

Cole didn't think his rapier would be blocked as quickly as it had been, the blunt blade being pushed away from Josephine's neck as she stared at him. Her golden eyes wife, her stance was firm, steady and yet, it still looked like she had no idea what she was doing. Even more so, she pushed his sword away from her and turned out of his reach. Going back on her heel, she quickly was back into his personal space.

Smiling, he stopped her sword from hitting him. Her grip adjusting as her sword slipped underneath his, pushing it up and to the side, her sword stopping near his neck.

Cole knew he was going to have fun with this one.

××××

Half-trained.

Some idiot had left her half-trained and he wanted know to who had come with that wise idea, what was worse than an idiot who had no idea what to do with a sword. Was an idiot who somewhat what they were doing with a sword.

He was going to have to a friend of his to smack the idiot around, or just make sure said idiot never got their hands on another student to leave them in same state.

"Never learned?"

"No."

"You'd never be good with a zwuihander or a claymore," he admitted. Or a long sword, anything that might over balance her smaller frame, with enough training she might be able to pick up a rapier or a cutlass.

"Or a long sword," Josephine admitted when he looked at her, she just raised an eyebrow. "Researched sword types for an article, comparing them to guns."

"Good girl. Who's the boy?"

"Not a student," Ajay told him.

"Kieran wanted me to test her on daggers," Cole told them picking up a few, if she was throwing them. Then he couldn't give her blunt ones, they wouldn't go into the fabric. Not with the fabric the MacLea family, clan, made. "Ever throw a dagger?"

"Pass me one and find out," she told her, handing her one, he learnt that her aim was pretty good. She might be able to handle a bow and arrow, but throwing knives were something that could be interesting for a director who knew what they were looking for.

"So who taught you that?" he asked glee in his voice as Abigail started to explain protect to the blue haired male. Guessing from his green tinted face, she had gotten to groin protection.

"A friend," Josephine told him, a slight pause as she tilted her head to the side. "Atalanta O'Milly. She used to be our school's best fencer until she moved."

"How did she learn how to throw daggers."

"A friend of hers taught her. Part of the local Irish Mob, her mother was part of their protection. Until they moved out of the area."

"I'll be looking up Miss O'Milly," Cole promised. She sounded like the type of person that Kieran wanted in his school, but that could until he spoke to said idiot again.

"You have connections with the Irish Mob?" Josephine asked him.

"Good drinking partners," Cole told her, grinning as she looked at him.

"Not all Irish are drunks," she told him.

Cole almost laughed at that one, it was true that for years the Irish were seen as no good drunks. Years of image because the English could never really take over the island. Cole knows that they've been trying since their Pagan days.

Cole always thought they were sick of the Celts over taking Britain, more so since Bodica pulled them into battle. So they looked at Scotland and Ireland, shock their heads and went, nothing to see here.

Sure they won against Bodica, but like with the rest of the European Celts. They didn't go down without a fight or a bloody battlefield. From what he had found out about the Romans, was that they were descendants of those who had lost the Battle of Troy, by a wooden horse of all things.

Rumours said that they didn't want to offend Athena; Goddess of Wisdom and Battle. Cole found history fascinating like that, even if his tutor had been paid to make sure he knew one version of British history like the back of his hand.

History was never that straight forward, unlike maths there wasn't just one answer. There were many, history written by the winners. Having to account for why the person might have wrote down what they did, who they disliked and why that be the case.

What did they have to gain by writing one group of people in one way, and different group another.

"Ja'far's calling," Abigail told him. Ja'far was the only who could call him during class. If only for the fact that Kieran could get himself into, and out of, the strangest of stunts.

Many of them he would back at fondly, even if at the time he was cursing the idiot seventy ways to hell and back.

"Ja'far?" Cole asked as Josephine and Abigail looked at him with wide eyes, which wasn't fair. He didn't another person with wide kitten-eyes to wrap him around their fingers.

The Mac-Leas were going to try kidnapping this one, adopting Josephine didn't their clan. Even if she was more of a swordswoman, then a hand-to-hand fighter.

She was going to have fun with that, as much fun as he had.

"I can't believe I got through," Ja'far told him, his voice was faint and he sounded like he was going to pass out. "Come to the school. There's an old building."

"Old building?"

The blue haired male quickly said something, in a language that he didn't understand. It was almost as if someone had dumped in the middle of Italy, again, with a single bag on his person and without knowing a single word of the language.

"Bring Ajay," Kieran shouted. That would explain why Ja'far sounded tired, Kieran had found something else to throw himself at, something that might excite a Red Lion of all people. "He'll love it, Abigail too."