Hanna wasn’t sure what she had expected. Maybe a round of handshakes or introductions, nothing fancy. What she got instead was a few seconds of stern and suspicious stares from most of the group, accompanied by a raging silence.

“I’m not sure what stories you have heard, but we are the ones who are keeping this village alive, the backs that those weaklings cower behind when visited by the harsh, outside world”, Birgitta said with a voice both proud and full of contempt. Hanna didn’t have the heart to tell her that she hadn’t heard shit about their little group. Given the way some of the guys in the room were squirming, not everyone shared Birgitta’s views on the matter.

“We don’t normally group up like this", Birgitta continued. “But they had just returned from a run, and I figured they needed to meet the group’s newest member.” She then turned around, addressing the group. “With that done, there is no need for you whiny fuckers to stick around anymore. Get back to your happy families and dull lives, I’ve grown tired of you starring daggers at me”.

The motley bunch took the bitterness in Birgitta’s voice in stride, walking off with only some murmuring and slight headshakes. Once they had left, the room seemed empty and void of life, in a way that it hadn’t felt earlier.

“I guess you have some questions?”

Hanna had plenty. “Are we done with the locks and bars?”

Birgitta narrowed her eyes at her. “Sure”, she said. “But it is earlier than I had planned. Try any shit and you’re dead. Healing or not”

Hanna smiled at that. She would need to be retarded to try. “Deal”, she said.

“Now what? What happens now?”

Birgitta looked baffled. “Really, no questions about the group you’ve just joined?”

“Nah, I’m good”, said Hanna and waived her off. “I got the gist of it from your motivational speech”

Birgitta ignored the girl’s lack of interest. “Except for generally protecting the village, we are the only ones that actually venture outside of it, leaving safety behind so that they can have theirs left.” She paused. The tone of the voice and the look in her eyes saying a lot about how she felt about that division.

“The outside world is a fucked-up place…”, she continued before trailing off. It seemed to Hanna as if she was speaking from experience. Birgitta was caught in contemplation and said nothing more, so Hanna steered the conversation towards a lighter subject.

“Now what, are we going to continue cutting me up?” She asked, trying to put some cheerfulness into her voice.

Birgitta visibly pulled herself out of her dark memories and gave Hanna a crooked, approving smile. “Not for a while”, she said. “It’s high time we punch some actual skill into that scrawny frame. When I’m done with you, our enemies are not going to know what hit them!” She gave Hanna a hearty slap on the shoulder, almost pushing her over.

After that followed a couple of hectic weeks. They were physically exhausting, but at the same time very rewarding. Each day had a set routine: early breakfast followed by sparring until lunch, then more sparring until dinner. The day was always finished with a few brutal hours of strength training or cardio. Figuring out the specifics of the strength training had proved tricky, as her odd strength-to-weight ratio meant that basically all exercises based on body weight were pretty much worthless. The solution had been to bring in heavy rocks and logs from outside, and by the end of it, Hanna was certain that she had handled the logs in every position imaginable.

She had always loathed cardio but found it a bit more agreeable now, since the time spent running was pretty much her only time spent outside of the bunker. But then again, she spent way too many hours running up that bloody mountain, so it wasn’t exactly a rose-tinted dream either. Birgitta had been hesitant to let her out of the bunker at first, but since they couldn’t really get the job done inside the bunker, the compromise had been Birgitta hounding her heels and Hanna promising to be on her best behaviour. Of course, Birgitta had made sure to communicate that anything else would result in unspeakable horrors.

An unexpected upside of her weird healing was that she recovered from workouts incredible fast. If she had the energy to spare and food on the table, there was virtually nothing stopping her from constantly pressing herself harder. Hanna had never been one to shy away from pain and hard work, and she threw herself into the routine with great gusto, amazed at the quick gains she was getting. She was putting on weight like crazy, despite the drain that her healing put on her. Surprisingly enough, it turned out that the trick to gaining weight was downing a ton of food. It had turned eating into a dull chore, but the results spoke for themselves.

She and Birgitta never talked much, and when they did, it was mostly about what Hanna had done wrong, or that she needed to work harder. Despite that, she found herself growing fonder of the old woman as time went on. Not to the point that she genuinely appreciated the company, but enough that she wasn’t constantly fantasizing about kicking her in the face. Underneath her though and grumpy exterior there were some more toughness. But underneath that, Hanna thought she could just about make out an actual person, who was trying to make a difference in her own, fucked-up way. She might act like she doesn’t care about anyone, but the energy and dedication she put into teaching her told a different story.

When Hanna had teasingly said as much during one of their spars, she had gotten an unforgiving kick in the chest that threw her flat on the rock-hard ground and knocked the wind out of her.

“I’d be fucking ashamed if one of the Regulars wasn’t up to snuff”, had been her excuse as she left the scene.

Hanna hypnotized that she had only left because she couldn’t keep her poker face in place. She had smiled at the imagined picture of Birgitta hurrying away with cheeks rosy from embarrassment.

During all their spars, the main focus was always on moving properly. Birgitta had been dead set on teaching her a stable foundation, getting her to adopt footwork and movement patterns that would be applicable in various styles of combat, and which allowed her to constantly weave around attacks, positioning her so that she would always have an opportunity to strike at her opponent. It was an aggressive style, but it was a match made in heaven for Hanna, since she didn’t really have to worry about being cut.

By the end of the second week, they had begun working sword and shield training into the routine, and it amazed Hanna how easily the new movements fitted into their deadly dance, like putting a puzzle piece into place when all of the surrounding pieces was already there. Not that she was very good with the sword, it was just inspiring how right it all suddenly felt. A couple of weeks was in no way enough to make someone adept at fighting with blades in close quarters, but they had kept a breakneck speed, and despite her penchant for not worrying about hurting her student, Birgitta had proved a formidable teacher.

Hanna had no clue about how she would fare in an actual fight against an armed and experienced opponent, but she felt like she would have kicked some serious ass against any ordinary person from before the valley.

The style that Birgitta was teaching her almost never struck with the sword against another sword, making all the movie-fights she had seen a pointless reference. Instead they would move away from the blade, angle the blow away with the shield, or disrupt the blow completely by striking the opponent when he was mid-attack. “Never stop attacking”, had been the constant slogan. The point wasn’t that she would be wailing like a windmill, but rather that everything she did should in some way be an attack on the opponent, even if she was plain dodging. It required an aggressive mindset that had been hard to apply in the beginning, but Birgitta had expertly solved that by mocking and striking her into a mad fury.

The break in the routine came after about three weeks. Hanna had groggily gotten up from bed and half asleep begun stuffing her face with mountains of porridge, when she had eventually noticed a new yet familiar face walking into the room. It was the huge man that she had met when she first got here. He looked more resolved than gruff this time, and he was intensely studying her as he made his way over to her. Either he was a very challenged thinker, or he had one of those faces that clearly showed what he was thinking. It was almost cute, especially combined with the immature sulkiness that he had displayed the last time they met.

Hanna flinched as she felt a hand on her shoulder, but relaxed when she saw that it was Birgitta’s. The woman loved creeping up on her, and she sadly had the skills to do so without trouble. Maybe that had been the reason for the man’s intense scrutiny, maybe he was just looking at Birgitta standing behind her, getting ready to pounce on her like a kitten?

“The fun is over”, Birgitta said. Hanna wasn’t sure what fun she was talking about.

“I wouldn’t call you passable with a blade, but given your weird body, I think you’ve learned enough not to die immediately”.

Hanna caught the compliment that was hidden in there and patted the hand on her shoulder in appreciation. It made Birgitta pull back her hand as if it was burnt, just like Hanna new she would. She smiled in her victory.

“Anders will be taking over for now”, Birgitta said as she sat down on a chair by the table. “He will teach you how to poke people with a stick from the safety of a few meters”.

“I will teach you the art of the spear”, the large man corrected her with a sneer on his face.

“Whatever”, said Birgitta, before she turned towards Hanna. “You are in luck, girl. When it comes to stick-waving people to death, this walking pile of meat really is something else”.

Anders seemed to grow tired of her insults and glared at her. “Was that all, boss?” He asked, making it obvious that his last word meant something else.

“Yeah, I’ve had enough teasing you. Run along now, I’ve got better things to do”, she said before lazily putting her feet on the table and her hands behind her head.

The large man huffed and shuffled his way out of the room, in his irritation forgetting to say anything to Hanna. She just stood there watching him go until Birgitta spoke up.

“You to girl! I’ve spent about as much time with you as I can stomach.”

“Am I finally trusted enough now to leave?” Hanna asked, not really believing it to be true.

“Nah, no-way. I just know that you can’t do shit with that old oaf around. He is a pedantic stickler, but he is faster than he looks. Tip from the coach though, don’t piss him off. He will be sulking for weeks if you do.”

Before she ran off to catch up to the man, Hanna darted back into her room to grab her few belongings. It wasn’t much, but it had grown since she got here. Just a couple of days ago, Birgitta had thrown her a sharpened version of the training sword she had used until then, with a proper scabbard and all. It was a really short sword, the blade was just over the length from her elbow to her fingertips, but she felt a combination of awesome and silly whenever she put it on her waist.

Birgitta had been right, Anders really was faster than he looked. Sure, it had taken her a few minutes to get ready, but he was already standing by the main entrance to the bunker when she caught up with him. He casually lifted the heavy bar from the door with one hand, making Hanna think that he might actually be a match for her in pure strength. While Birgitta was agile, fast and deadly, it had been obvious from the get-go that Hanna outclassed her in strength like a grown-up compared to a kid. Not that it made any difference, Birgitta still beat her up whenever she felt like it.

As Anders opened the door he spoke properly to her for the first time. “Birgitta said that you are stronger than you seem”, he said.

“That’s funny. She told me that you are faster than you ought to be”, Hanna paraphrased heavily, unable to resist the moment.

Anders gave her the same glare that he had given Birgitta, no doubt seeing their likeness. “Cease your yapping, child”, he said as he handed her an enormous spear that Hanna had mistaken for a part of the fortifications. Her hands barely reached three quarters of the way around the shaft, and the length must have been past three meters. At the end of it was a thin, triangular tip that seemed deadly sharp. It made the spear that she had carried to the cave when she first got here seem absolutely puny. Speaking of which: “Hold up”, she said. “I forgot my training spear, I’ll be back in a minute”. She began putting Anders’ spear down so that she could run back and get her own but stopped when she heard the big man’s judgemental laugh.

“Silly girl. Forget that ridiculous thing! When it comes to what we will do, size matters.” He said as the laughter died down.

”…What is it that we will be doing?” She couldn’t help but ask.

The look he gave her told Hanna that he hadn’t gotten the innuendo.

“I will teach you to stand fast in the face of adversity, to strike with immobility and bring to a stop the mightiest of charges”.

Hanna just rolled her eyes at the ridiculous speech. “What will we actually be doing?”, she asked as she put the man’s spear on her shoulder, taking the lead out of the cave.

“We will be whittling and hunting”, he said, while smiling at her with playfulness in his eyes, advertising that trickery was afoot.

Hanna sighed. They were definitely not going to be whittling and hunting.