Hunter
Mom finally decided to show us where she has been going at night. Apparently, the people she has been visiting need her help a lot, but they really like kids. She even said that the little girl she was helping would teach me a little bit about fighting. What the hell could a little girl teach me about fighting? Lol she will probably start crying immediately if we ever actually fought.
I guess I will humor mom and not go too hard on her when we actually fight. After all, she still needs to look good for Sarah when they work together on makeup or whatever they are doing.
We get there, and a woman a little taller than mom answers the door. My first thought is that she is weirdly pretty. My second thought is that I hope she isn't the one giving me pointers, because those rippling muscles and broad shoulders tell me I would have a very bad time.
Yulia
I assume my human form today, which means I don't have wings or extra appendages, my fingernails are not shockingly long and sharp, and my canines are not a little bit overly long and pointed. However, I am still easily 6 feet tall and my muscles and bones are reinforced enough that I could still lift a small SUV overhead.
I answer the door when I hear the physical therapist pulling up. Moira managed to convince her to bring her children, which I am unsure of. I am pretty sure Moira should be a little more concerned about the consequences of being around children, who I hear are perpetual disease factories. My supernaturally augmented immune system will be fine, but hers is especially vulnerable.
I open the door and give the normal pleasantries, but I cannot focus on the physical therapist right now. The little girl hiding behind her has my full attention. At least, she does until I notice the slightly larger boy sizing me up. I shoot him a pleasant smile and almost laugh out loud as I watch him visibly pale.
I can tell my dear little wife is absolutely going to adore her time with him, but that is her problem. As soon as they enter the house, Katie asks me if I am willing to watch Ashley. Ashley, for her part, has noticed I have a TV and asks if we can watch a cartoon together.
For some reason, this gives me a feeling of trepidation, but I can't immediately see the harm in agreeing, so while Sarah, Hunter, and Katie go back to the full size gym Moira had somehow had installed, I pick up the little girl who I already know I would slaughter armies for and we sit down together on the couch. I make sure to keep one ear open for Moira.
I have already informed my wife that if she gets herself sent to the hospital by a 9 year old, I will tell everyone and even post it on social media. Knowing how prideful she is, this should be motivation enough to be more careful today.
Moira
Nearly every part of Moira's body was humming with excitement at the thought of being able to train in combat, even if somebody else would be the primary beneficiary. She had very carefully set up a heavy bag, which she had to use telekinesis to move, shamefully. It had never even crossed her mind that she could ask Yulia for help and it wouldn't even be hard for her.
But Moira had put it there herself, and she was rather proud of it. She had also set up a mat in the middle of the room for any stretching that needed to be taught, or any wrestling that might be done.
There was plenty of other exercise equipment in here, even stuff that Moira couldn't use yet. She also had an extensive collection of dumbbells, kettlebells, and plates. At the edges of the gym, there were doors leading to the indoor track, the swimming pool, and the armory. That last one may not necessarily be on the official blueprints and Moira may not have gone out of her way to show it to her wife when they moved in.
Moira didn't think they would need any melee weapons and was certain they would not need any firearms or other ranged weaponry. She fully expected an 11 year old and a 9 year old to be at a relatively low level of competence. Naturally, they would be more than willing to listen to instruction in order to rapidly improve.
As one can see, the real experience Moira had with children was very limited. Limited, in fact, to primarily evacuating them ahead of active battle zones that were spreading in their direction or other emergency responses. The only other experience she had was training older children, young teenagers really, for battle. Hopefully a battle they need never participate in, but if most or all the adults fell in battle they would need to be able to secure a retreat.
Children who had more…petty concerns were far less likely to acknowledge the instruction of someone barely their elder.
Moira was pulled from the brink of falling into a cascade of memories perhaps better left forgotten, about far too many children she had trained personally falling in battle to secure a retreat for their even younger siblings, when a knock was heard on the door to the gym. The only one that connected back to the living room. Moira snapped out of it and opened the door with what she hoped to the gods above was a welcoming smile and not a pained grimace. The answering smile on Katie's face and the presence of both Sarah and Hunter rinsed the remainder of the regret from her mind.
She didn't have to train these two for war, just to keep themselves and others safe at school and out on walks and stuff. For those kinds of situations, she was never given enough time to train them to anywhere near their potential. Just enough time to grow a little too attached to each and every one of them.
These two, however, she could feel free to grow attached to, but she would be the one leaving them in the end. Maybe it would hurt less that way.
"Hello, Miss Belladori. Shall we begin with your exercises then?" Katie asked innocently.
Moira scowled at the interruption, certain that she would regret agreeing to this. On the other hand, she technically already had, so she could only school her face into a more neutral expression and comply with her physical trainer's every demand.
She knew very well that adults tended to underestimate how long their "This will only take just a minute" could actually be, so she put a random action movie on one of her tv's and a romcom on another. Surprisingly, Hunter seemed relatively interested in the Rom-com, while Sarah was primarily interested in her exercises.
Moira was more than happy to explain what each exercise was for, how it was meant to help her condition, and why she seemed weaker than she should be. Well, that last one she sort of left out several pertinent facts, but the point remained the same. Anything that Moira was unable to fully answer, Katie filled in the gaps with information that Moira made sure to burn into her memory.
Sarah began also doing the exercise, saying that if it could help Moira it could also help her. Moira had to stop a few times to ensure that Sarah was doing them right, as doing them haphazardly or incorrectly could be counterproductive or even lead to serious injury. While in the long run, Sarah would clearly need to incorporate more weights and more resistance to certain exercises, it was actually better she start with a relatively low weight to learn what doing it right looked like first.
Katie recognized that her young charge would like to have sufficient energy to still work with Hunter, but she still made sure Moira ran through 3 full sets of her stretches and exercises, some of which were just poses that were somewhat complex to maintain, before she was finally allowed to take a break before taking control of the room.
"Alright Sarah, let's leave these two alone."
"The girl may remain if she would like." Moira quickly intervened. Though her words sounded like she was allowing it, her tone almost akin to a royal proclamation indicated that it was hardly optional.
"Please Mom? I think Moira's really cool and I want to see what she has to say." She seemed motivated by more than simple curiosity, but Moira did not comment on this, nor did she use what she could bring to bear of her psychic powers to pry further information out of her.
Katie, realizing that her employer had taken a liking to her daughter and was the one paying the bills in the end, decided to leave it alone. Besides, it would be kind of weird to tell the girl teaching her kids to fight that girls shouldn't learn to fight.
"Okay, but is it alright if I remain here, just to make sure nobody gets hurt?"
"In my experience, Miss Flannigan, when something goes wrong during combat training the window to intervene is nonexistent. However, feel free to immediately run out and get my wife if that does happen." Moira's words were hardly comforting, and they didn't directly address whether Katie could remain, but she quietly sat down on the bench to observe as Moira and her children gathered around the heavy bag.
Hunter was already grumbling that he didn't know what exactly he was supposed to learn here.
Moira pretended not to hear him, but the deep-ocean blue in her eyes darkened imperceptibly for just a moment before recovering. Anyone who fully knew who she was would have immediately backed down had they caught sight of this, but she deliberately kept her eyes averted from the one who was shaping up to be a troublesome student until the moment passed.
"I want each of you to, one at a time, approach this bag and throw 10 of your best punches consecutively. You will each have 15 seconds." Moira's voice carried a greater hint of chill than it had before.
Sarah managed to fire off 8 punches before she ran out of time, and normally Moira would have quite a bit to say to her individually about their quality. However, she was much more interested to see how Hunter would fare.
Unsurprisingly, he fired off 4 punches before cradling his right hand as if he had sprained it. Without saying anything, she held out her hand and waited. Once he realized what she was demanding, he placed his hand in hers and soon the green light of nature magic washed over the injury, before the white light of holy magic followed. It was a very minor injury but Moira had yet to truly build up her mana reserves so she estimated she might be able to heal this exact injury another 20 times or so.
"Can either of you tell me something you did wrong?"
"I think I am not standing right, somehow." Sarah replied promptly.
Moira glanced at her thoughtfully before bemoaning the fact that she couldn't have this borderline prodigy as her only student.
"I was too weak to push through my pain." Hunter answered, having clearly given the matter only a surface level examination.
"Sarah is correct, but I wish to address Hunter's comment further in depth. There are certainly places in training to push through your pain, but after dealing yourself a significant injury like a sprain or a stress fracture is absolutely not one of them. Basic training mistakes like that can reduce great warriors to functionally cripples in a very short span of time. A basic rule of thumb is that if your pain is generalized and is a dull ache that feels very much like your muscles are just exhausted, then you can push on to a point. If you have a sharp, localized pain which makes it difficult for you to continue or even focus, seek out medical attention immediately, and at the very least rest the limbs associated with the injury and get ice on them."
"Now Sarah, I think I am rather fond of you, so do not take any of what I say next personally." Moira took a deep breath, realizing that her blunt nature almost ensured that what came out of her mouth next would definitely feel personal.
"Your stance is incorrect, but part of the problem is you mistakenly think that your punch primarily features your arms. Your arms are only your point of contact. In a well developed punch, most if not all of your body will be involved, including your feet as your body completes the movement. You were not moving with enough force for it to matter, unlike Hunter here, but you also were making a fist incorrectly. The first step is to not have your thumb wrapped in your fingers. That can work great with softer punches but you run the risk of injuring your thumb with harder punches." Moira looked at the blank stares that Sarah, Hunter, and sadly even Katie were giving her and sighed.
"Here, Sarah. Let me show you." She showed Sarah how to correctly make a fist, first by example and then by gently moving Sarah's fingers into the correct position.
"The second flaw is that you are holding your wrist, elbow, and shoulder wrong. As you punch something, the force you deliver with your hand will also be delivered back into it, in a sort of line of effect. If you hold your wrist like that, most of that energy will stop in your wrist or even your fingers, which can cause significant injury. In your most powerful punch, you want the energy to travel all the way up your arm and even into your chest, distributing the force over a large area and creating less backlash."
"The third major flaw is that your punch lacks any real force. The first part of the punch is the snap, where you snap your arm and consequently your fist with maximum speed into your opponent. Unless your opponent is made of glass," Moira paused, barely managing to keep the flush out her face at the thought of her own fragility, "this alone will not carry enough force to do any significant damage, nor will it serve as a deterrence in a real fistfight. The lions' share of the force in your punch will come from the follow through. There are two aspects to this. The first, is that where your fist will make contact with your opponent is not your target. Your target is directly straight through them. If the point of contact is your target, then all the momentum and energy of your punch will be spent before the impact. If your target is on the other side of your opponent, then the momentum and energy will continue to penetrate into their body."
"The other aspect of follow through is throwing your weight around. Literally. The force of your punch is basically how fast you can accelerate your body weight behind it times your bodyweight. If you put all these things together, you can put together a solid or even devastating punch that does little damage to you. Be careful not to aim for the head, shoulder, or hips as these areas are usually much harder than usual and therefore more likely to cause a nasty backlash. You want to primarily impact soft flesh, such as the inner thigh, groin, lower abdomen, and throat."
"I heard somewhere that elbows are much harder and stronger than fists so it is better to use elbows for heavy impacts." This, surprisingly, came from Sarah.
"There is some truth to that statement. However, your arm doesn't end at your elbow for a reason. Unless you are very well trained in fighting like that, you will be unlikely to overcome the loss of reach and speed fighting like that will almost certainly cause. Furthermore, unless you know what you are doing, you can easily do yourself a devastating injury almost certain to take you out of the fight. Raise your hand if either of you have shattered your elbow before? How about your kneecaps?"
Both children were silent, staring at her with wide and horrified eyes.
"Your elbow is indeed a stronger joint than your wrist, but what you are suggesting is a little advanced for your current level of ability. Furthermore, your elbow's greater strength will be fully utilized in any punch I have you throwing, hopefully by the end of the night."
"Allow me to demonstrate, if you will stand clear."
With that statement, Moira threw a punch at full power right at chest height, moving and twisting her body in line with the punch. It was surprisingly powerful and graceful, and the effect on her two students would have been perfect if it weren't for the very obvious cracking noise that came from the point of impact.
Moira had gotten overly excited and forgotten that her bones were currently far weaker than they should be and brittle to boot. This accidentally undermined her point, when the reality is if she had thrown a punch with no technique but plenty of reckless abandon like Hunter, she would have done herself far more damage.
"Oh my God. Do you want me to go get help?" Katie asked.
"It's fine, just a minor injury. It will heal soon enough."
"Minor injury? Your fingers are clearly broken and so is part of your hand!" Sarah interjected.
"Hey kids, want to see a magic trick?" After that comment, Moira forced her injured hand into a fist before slamming it into the opposing palm, where she then forced all the bones more or less into their proper positions. This was not a substitute for having it looked at later, but it would allow her healing factor to do its thing without causing further problems.
She then waited about 30 seconds before doing a couple of movement exercises to ensure she had sufficient range of motion in her fingers.
This had finally gotten the result she had wanted, as her hand was mostly fine and her two pupils were now looking at her with admiration but also a little fear.
Katie was looking at her like she was crazy.
She went to the supply closet and pulled out another heavy bag with some difficulty. Katie rushed over to help her and honestly she was more than happy to let her right now. Soon it was hung in a second mounting point with more than sufficient distance from the first to ensure that the two children would not interfere with each other but still close enough that she could move between the two to observe and give advice.
For the next 45 minutes, she had them practicing heavy punches in sets of 20 for 30 seconds at a time. The next 30 seconds would be spent either resting or doing one pushup for every punch they failed to throw. Moira conveniently had a whiteboard, and on it she had a column with Sarah's name attached to it as well as one for Hunter. Periodically, seemingly unmotivated, she would add a new tally mark underneath one child's name or the other.
This seemed to have little to do with whether or not they threw their full set of punches, and at first neither child could figure it out. Moira would also give them advice during their rest periods to hopefully improve their form and efficiency. Sarah used her advice to be able to no longer accumulate pushups for her rest time. Every ten sets, Moira had them rest for a full two minutes instead, where she would check each child's hands, wrists, and elbows for injury. They would also be allowed water.
Sarah learned more than just how to smoothly transition from one punch to the next, as the 6 incredibly sloppy push ups she had done in order to observe Moira giving that advice were all accompanied by a tally mark, which seemed to be added automatically by the marker itself instead of Moira personally. She knew that wasn't normal but nobody else commented on it so she left it alone. She learned that every time she threw a punch incorrectly, she gained a tally mark. Every time she did a push-up incorrectly, she would gain a tally mark.
Fortunately, it was a very large whiteboard, as Hunter had soon accumulated about 45 while Sarah had successfully limited it to 15. Sarah had no idea what would eventually happen with the tally marks, but she had the feeling it wasn't going to be as pleasant as the one with the least wins a prize or something.
At the 45 minute mark, Moira called a break and allowed them both to use the restroom. Thankfully, there were 7 in this house, one for the main living area, one by the pool, and one for the master bedroom and one for each guestroom. This kept the fighting to a minimum. She knew damn well this would not keep the cleaning to a minimum, but honestly one used more of her energy than the other.
The children assembled in front of her, with the final tallies now conveniently sporting the number converted into Arabic numerals for ease of reading. The final score: Sarah with 30, Hunter with 97. Hunter had kept a steady progression on his tally board from start to finish, while Sarah had initially made quite a few mistakes, concentrated on doing it right and mostly curtailed them towards the middle, but then got tired towards the end.
"To be honest, you two did far poorer than I had previously expected. I was originally going to make you both run laps for an amount of time equal to the number of times you did something without proper form, but I don't really want to be here for nearly another two hours. Sarah, I am glad you thought about why I might be scoring you two and made an effort to improve in response to my advice. Hunter, I am honestly not entirely sure you were really trying. I have had to cast a healing spell on at least one of your bones 5 times today, despite continuously trying to teach you how to avoid further injuring yourself."
"Look, I am going to be honest. If you are unwilling to listen to my instruction because I am a girl or because you think I am weak, then I am fully willing to allow you to continue to ignore me outside of my presence. If you do indeed wish to improve, then by all means make a little more of an effort starting tomorrow. Also, as siblings, you may get into conflicts but you will often find yourself only having yourselves and each other to rely on as you go forward in life. As such, instead of giving you guys individualized punishments, you will have to both clean this place up and set it to rights. You can and should leave the bags as I do not believe it is safe or in any way advisable for you two to attempt to move them, either in tandem or individually."
"Hunter, if you are serious about this, then you will stay and do as I ask, and you will not get into a fight with your sister. In fact, your sister may be able to help you see where you went wrong. Sarah, I recognize that you think this is unfair, but at any point you could have mentioned what you figured out to your brother, who is obviously a little bit slower on the uptake. I find it disturbing that you would allow and even sort of encourage your brother to continue hurting himself and putting himself at risk for a petty advantage in something you seemed to consider to be a competition. You probably did not think of it like that, but that is the actual consequences of your actions, or in this case, inaction."
"Hunter, enthusiasm and raw power are only one part of a fight. Without technique to back it up, you will be more of a threat to yourself than anyone." Hunter, who was feeling a bit aggrieved at how targeted he had been just now, finally burst into tears. Moira raised her eyebrow but showed no other reaction, though inwardly she felt a tiny twinge of guilt.
"Miss Flannigan, I would request that you leave your children here with me. I am more than equipped to feed them and house them. However, I also need time to train them, and if my guess is on the mark, My wife has currently fallen head over heels for your youngest."
"Oh shit, I entirely forgot about Ashley!"
"Worry not, she is probably being absolutely loved and adored by my wife right now."
"As for my children, what do you two think?"
"That sounds pretty cool." Sarah said evenly. She actually recognized the validity of what Moira had said, even if it did seem unfair.
"Are you going to be mean to us?"
"That depends. Are you going to continue disrespecting me and taking my advice for granted?"
Hunter shook his head.
"Then I will only be mean to you if by that you mean train you harder than you have likely ever committed to exercise before in your life. I will not be needlessly cruel. However, lunch will be served at midnight, and I fully expect the gym to be back how it goes by that time. There are cleaning supplies in that closet and a helpful set of diagrams and pictures showing how everything should be arranged. While you will not be moving the heavy bags, you will sanitize them, as well as the mats underneath them. You will do the same for all the benches and weights that were touched today." Moira made a nearly obsessive habit out of doing these tasks herself, and she was fully aware that she would likely need to go over everything when these two children were supposedly done with their task, but she didn't mind that much.
"When you are done, you will return the remaining cleaning supplies to where you found them and the towels and rags in the buckets conveniently placed by the door labeled 'towels' and 'cleaning rags'. They need to be laundered after being used and they have to be treated differently due to the sanitizing chemicals. We will revisit the 'run until time equal to your mistakes has elapsed' idea if even one of them has been incorrectly sorted. See you at lunch."
With that, she turned and walked confidently out of the gym, pulling Katie along with her. The task she had left them was indeed monumental, but she could have it done within an hour most days. If she was having a bad day it would require at most twice that. If she was having an even worse day, she was likely in the hospital and therefore not dirtying her gym.