Fire Emblem: High School Years (High School AU) - Junior Year

Chapter 33: Learning

Anna

"Keep your hands close to the silk - and be mindful of your elbows! If you move them around to move, your arms will feel like jelly."

"Got it!" Lissa did as I instructed, spinning the flag exactly as I taught her for about four seconds before falling out of rhythm. She noticed it as soon as I did, abruptly stopping. "Whoops...sorry, Anna."

I smiled at the girl. "That's okay! You just started and it's a pretty challenging skill to nail down! Your first few weeks will be bumpy but as long as you practice, you'll get it in no time!" I stepped closer to position her hands and arms correctly once more.

Guard tryouts had come and gone and with little surprise, Lissa got in. After seeing her excitement that first clinic, I knew it was meant to be. It didn't take long for me to take her under my wing and give her private lessons. Our coach would go over basics with the newbies, of course, but spinning a flag was a challenging and frustrating skill and anyone would appreciate any help they could get, especially those first few months.

Luckily, Lissa was more than willing to take extra time to practice. Gods knew I would've appreciated having an extra teacher/friend to help me when I first started.

After a few more attempts, Lissa managed to do a few consecutive drop-spins. "Good! You're making tons of progress."

She frowned. "Isn't this the most basic spin, though?"

"It took me a month to get those down."

"Good lord."

I shuttered at the foggy memory. "Yeah, I try not to remember those times." Not only because of that, but...well, others things my boyfriend's fourteen-year-old sister needs to know. Shaking my head, I picked up my own flag. "Let's move onto a new spin, shall we?"

Lissa grinned ear-to-ear, her nod causing her pigtails to bounce. "Heck yeah! This is so much fun!" she exclaimed. "I can't believe I wanted to cheer over this! At least my hands don't get itchy holding a flag!"

"Haha, yeah..." Maybe I should keep the fact that we use pompoms at pep rallies away from her, then...

"Anna? You okay?"

I snapped out of my daze. "Oh, sorry." It's for the best. "Just lost in thought. Shall we begin?"

Lissa furrowed her brow. "Can I ask a question first?"

"Go right ahead."

"So will it be frowned upon if I use my flag as a weapon against my brother? I'm totally not planning on using it as one if that's what you're thinking, but hypothetically, will it be effective?"

I sighed, shaking my head. "As your senior, I should say no." Dammit. I hate being a role model. "...Plus I may have already tested it and you're out of luck: Chrom knows how to combat a flag with his cymbals, now."

"Awww."

"I know!"

*****
Hi y'all. I mean, it's technically sunday? This chapter was semi-hard to write because I actually can't remember a whole lot from when I first started learning flag. It was years ago and I repressed several of those memories and I would like to keep them that way, thank you very much. I do remember, however, that learning how to do a drop-spin properly for the first time is legendary. Yay. Also Anna be like: "If anything happens to Lissa I will kill everyone in this room and then myself." Thank you so much for reading and look forward to reading more!