Claire brought me to the part of the gymnasium where the fencing club always held their training sessions. Apart from us two, there was only one other girl already present. An upper classman by the looks of it who’d her blue dyed hair tied back in a ponytail.

“Hey Maya!” Claire called out and waved to the girl who was unpacking her fencing outfit.

Maya looked up from her bag and stared at us before waving back. “Hey Claire, is that the new blood you messaged me about?” She stopped rummaging in her bag and walked towards us. Her thumbs stuck in the pockets of her pants, making her look incredibly nonchalant. She stopped in front of us and looked me over. She was a bit taller than me but not by too much.

“Yep, Aurora, this is Maya. Maya, Aurora.” Claire introduced us to one another.

I reached out my hand. “Hey. Nice to meet you.”

Maya smiled and took my hand in hers, giving me a firm handshake. “Nice to meet you, too.” She then swiftly let go and walked back towards her bag, which kinda confused me.

Claire looked at me, bemused at my facial expression, and signed to me to follow her towards Maya was preparing her gear.

“Let’s see where you are at.” Maya started to dress herself in her fencing uniform.

“Hmm, what do you mean?” I tilted my head. “You want to have a match already?”

“I want to see how skilled you are.” Maya nodded and then looked at Claire. “Could you go and get a uniform for her in the storage room? I think a large should do.”

Claire nodded and jogged away from us.

“I’m totally new at fencing… well… I know the basics… but…”

“That’s fine, I do this with every new member.” She winked and continued putting her uniform on.

It didn’t take Claire that long to rejoin us with a suit of fencing gear. “Want me to help you put it on, or will you figure it out yourself?”

“S-some help would be cool…”

“Oh, is the great Aurora Beaumont nervous?”

“You wouldn’t be? Why does everyone always immediately want to fight me?”

“Everyone? Has anyone fought you before?” Maya looked up for a second.

“Uh… it’s just a manner of saying…”

“Ah… I see.” Maya shrugged and continued while Claire looked at me with an air of suspicion before she finally decided to put that aside for later and help me with the gear first.

“Okay, basic rules of sabre. Sabre can use both thrusting and cutting attacks. Only hits above the waist count. Generally, hits to the gloves will also not be counted.” Maya explained after Claire hooked me up to this score counter thing. Which presumably used electricity to see if one would get hit or not.

“Let’s see how well you’ll do with just that.” While I could not really see it, I could tell Maya was smirking behind her mask.

-Oh boi… this was a mistake…-

The result was unsurprising. We ended on a score of 21 to 9. My fight with Aileen had been completely different. -I guess you can’t really compare real sword fighting to fencing…- However, when I removed my mask, Claire was standing there, clapping like an idiot.

“Wow, Aurora, you did amazing!”

“Did I? I lost terribly, didn’t I?” I tilted my head in confusion and stared at the scoreboard.

“No, she’s right, you really did a good job.” Maya congratulated me as well after she had unhooked herself from the machine. “Your footwork and technique are shit, but your reflexes are out of this world.”

“Noone has ever managed to get more than 2 hits in on Maya before on their entry.” Claire explained. “You managed to hit 9 and the fights lasted quite a bit longer than they usually do.”

“It was very impressive indeed.” Maya smiled and reached out her hand to me.

I grabbed it.

“Welcome to the club.” She shook my hand and then walked back to her bag.

“Wait… that’s it? Don’t I need to do something else?”

“Like what? You’ve already proven you’re a natural talent.” Maya laughed. “I’d be crazy if I didn’t let you in. And apart from that. We accept people from every skill level. It would be stupid to push people away who want to learn about our fabulous sport.”

“I guess so…”

Claire grabbed my shoulder and squeezed, giving me a smirk. “Amazing. Anyhow, now let’s get you out of this gear.”

“Ah, isn’t there any training today?”

“Nope.”

“Then why is Maya here?”

“She does theatrical fencing as well.” Claire said. “They are having some practice today, so I knew she was going to be here.”

“....Isn’t theatrical fencing part of the fencing club?”

“It’s a completely different discipline.” Maya said from the sidelines. “It’s more like theatre than it is fencing.”

“But aren’t you in that club too?” I turned back to Claire.

“I’m in the theatre club, yeah. But not in the theatrical fencing one. I prefer to keep my sport and my passion separately.”

I shook my head. “I am so confused right now.”

“We fence in some plays.” Claire continued. “But that’s nothing compared to what Maya has to do. It’s way more intense.”

“We allow spectators to join our training sessions if you’d like to stay and watch.” Maya said. “The rest should be here in 10 to 15 minutes or so.”

“Would you like that, Aurora?” Claire asked.

“Uh…Sure, it’s not like I have anything else to do today. Shima has an auto-feeder now anyway, so it’s not like I need to be home any time soon.”

“An auto feeder? What’s that?” Maya asked.

I explained the gift I got, obviously without saying who got it for me.

“Oh, that sounds pretty useful. Although the couple of cats I have would probably break it, the adorable bastards.”

“It’s pretty rigid, though.”

“They’ll manage, somehow.”

Claire pulled my sleeve. “We should really get you out of this, though, before they think you’ll join them.”

“Probably for the best, yeah.”

The fencing gear donned off and put back in storage, Claire and I sat in the tribune and waited for the rest of Maya’s theatrical fencing club to appear. In the meantime we just conversed with her about casual business like school and whatnot, I did find out that she was bisexual though.

“Aurora must be thinking all the theatre kids are some kind of queer now.” Claire laughed.

“Aren’t they?” I smirked.

“Well… most are to be fair.” Claire took a sip from her water bottle and laughed as well. “What about you?”

“I recently found out I am, in fact, lesbian.” I admitted while lounging back against the next row of seats. It was actually quite funny how easy I found it to admit such a thing towards someone I’d just met, but Maya was really easy to talk to, and the fact that Claire trusted her said a lot as well.

“She even has two girlfriends.” Claire poked my side with her elbow.

“Two!? Really!?” Claire pulled that ‘not bad’ face I’d seen as a meme once. “So, poly then?”

“Mhmm.” I nodded. “It’s still pretty new though and it’s a lot of figuring things out.”

“I can believe that.” Maya nodded as well. “I find it hard enough to communicate with one person at a time.”

“You seem to be doing just fine right now.”

“I meant it in a romantical way.”

“Ah, yeah, that’s fair.”

Maya smiled and at that moment a couple of others walked into our area of the gymnasium. They all were carrying bags with fencing equipment.

“Rest of the group’s here. We’ll get ready and put on a little show for you.”

Maya was serious, as when they were done getting dressed, everyone chose a partner and started sparring with each other. It definitely wasn’t a lie that theatrical fencing was so much different from sabre we’d done earlier. The amount of flash, flair and bravado that was on display before us was jaw dropping. While it still looked incredibly realistic.

“How do they do all these things?” I asked to noone in particular, but Claire saw fit to reply to my question.

“It’s all a big show, really.” Claire pointed out the opponent Maya was fighting. “Before they fight, they basically tell each other what their tells are for their attacks from certain directions.” The girl Maya fought almost got a hit in but right at the last second Maya parried it beautifully. “For example, during normal fencing, you want to have as little tells as possible for your attack. But in theatrical fencing you slightly exaggerated your attack before you actually strike. So it’s actually pretty easy for your opponent to counter.”

Now that I knew what to pay attention to, it was definitely getting easier for me to tell. “Oh, I see… But don’t you need to know how to fence pretty well to do this?”

“Yeah, that’s why some of those girls are also in the normal fencing club. Like Maya. But others joined that one specifically because they thought it was more fun.”

“I can definitely see why.”

“And sometimes they also do funny stuff like light sword fighting from Galactic Conflicts.”

“What!? Really!? I want to see that too!!”

“I’ll ask Maya when their next session is after we’re done.” Claire giggled.

-Maybe I should join theatrical fencing instead…. Light swords are cooool….-