Masks

The girl was dressed in an outfit that might have blended in among the patients at an old school mental asylum, a place that she felt she might have just been at this point. There was no other way of phrasing it, these kids were not all that good. Sure, she had been among the world’s elite, fencing with the best of the best, but at a school for the supernaturally gifted, she expected her peers to be some greater shakes at the art of the blade. Alas, even her most basic of disengages eluded the understanding of most of her opponents.

Sure, she was quite overly sure of herself, but with each finely timed parry, the girl only bolstered her ego. Not a single blade had touched the crisp white cotton jacket she was wearing. Plenty of experienced fencers preferred their jackets to be made of Nylon for the increased range of motion, but she liked the feel of the old ones. A lot of her gear wasn’t necessarily along the cutting edge, but it still worked like a charm for her, and it felt more and more right as she continued her bouts. Her mask was just like any other. The tongue, bracing against her head of brown hair, read “Absolute,” and obscured her face from view. Her legs were covered in plain black sweatpants, not the white of a professional fencing setup, “Fancy pants,” as most called them. This was not a professional day. It was plain to see the girl was hardly trying.

The person across from her was similarly dressed, though their confidence was nowhere near as prominent as hers. His blade was held higher, more defensively, and, as the judge commanded them to begin, he hesitated. The girl meandered forward, taking her time as she advanced, moving fluidly yet effortlessly towards her opponent.

His blade was beat aside as she moved in for the kill. As she attacked, he stepped back, bringing his own blade back in an attempt to parry her. Her blade was disengaged, circling around his own as she aimed for a cuff. She missed by a hair as the boy retreated further. Visibly shrugging, she lifted her blade, aimed towards her opponent’s face, as she held point-in-line.

”Come on, lâche, get back here.” Came her voice, uniquely accented, a touch of french, and a hint of Kurdish. The boy hesitated, advancing once, twice, three steps towards her, until their blades were about to meet. He tried to take her blade, but she disengaged around his with her own, flying forward and…

Shunk

Her blade cut cleanly across the top of his mask, and with a loud beep the machine lit up, affirming that she had won the point.

”Point right” Said the judge simply. The two retreated to their original starting positions, as the other fencer complained of technical difficulties. The girl giggled as he tried to fix his wiring, sure that he had hit her. He was no great shakes as a fencer, not at all.

The girl lounged for a moment, pressing the tip of her blade into her foot and allowing it to bend slightly. She lifted the blade now, and the shiny engraving that read Leon Paul shone in the light of the indoor strip they were using. Pressing it against her knee, she bent it, straightening the fine piece of steel against her leg. It was a common habit of fencers to constantly adjust their gear in this way, and to her, the slightest of bends was unacceptable.

As the boy across from her continued to play with the wiring of his gear, sure that he had hit her, she felt the gaze of another fall upon her. Her eyes, dark and blue like the sky in a thunderstorm, fell upon a pair that mirrored her own. She had the advantage of her face being covered, so that the stranger would not know she was looking, but he seemed... Familiar, somehow. She felt as if she knew this person, his face, his eyes like hers...
"Fencers ready?" Came the voice of the instructor, as the boy was now standing at his position. She took in a breath of fresh air through the cold steel of her mask and stepped forward, coming en garde. "Fence!"

In Sabre, the preferred style of the girl, one was not allowed to cross their feet when they moved forward. Such a rule meant that advancing and, overall, aggression was typically slower than defensive acts or retreats. The girl knew this, but she also knew the trick to moving this way. Taking one quick step, she flunged through the air, flying towards the boy and aiming to attack his head once more. As he lifted his blade to parry, he would find the attack to be a faint. As he lifted to stop her attack, her blade would find its home in the boy's shoulder, dragged along is chest, generating the ever-satisfying sound of metal on nylon.

"Point right. Fifteen-Zero, that is bout." Said the instructor as she held out her hand, begrudgingly accepted by her opponent. It was the weakest handshake she'd felt in awhile. She stepped away, returning to the end of her line and unhooking her body cord. "Nice fencing, Gail." Said the instructor, as she reached up to her helmet, removing it at last and revealing her face, framed with brown hair, tied back in a ponytail.

"Thanks." She uttered, glancing back to the man who had been watching her. Who was this person?

And with her victory, Gail placed her helmet under her arm and backed up towards the electrical cord that had tethered her, one that she may as well have never activated... Ah, but it would be rude not to. She backed up, crossing her feet as she moved towards her end of the strip, her well-soled white shoes squeaking lightly across the wooden floors, along with the dull whir of the line being pulled back into its coil. She finally stopped at the base of the machine she was attached to, carefully unclipping herself and gently returning the cord to its home. Such machines were expensive, and simply haphazardly allowing it to zip back to place like a tape measure was disrespectful and damaging to the machine.

Now unhooked, she unzipped her Lame, dropping it onto a chair, whereupon she laid her weapon, gently sliding it into the tube that she used to keep it safe. She dropped the whole thing into her large bag, and began untying her shoes, dropping them in as well, and putting on a pair of tennis shoes. As she laced them, a man approached.

His voice startled the girl, even though she had noticed him watching her prior. She felt a strange sense of dread as she looked upon him fully, for the first time. He simply asked her where she learned to fence. She shrugged.
"A little here and a little there. I was with PUC Escrime for awhile, but they focused more on... Other styles... Sabre is my passion." She said, nodding to her equipment. "Not many Frenchmen care for it, unfortunately. I had to learn a bit here and a bit there." She explained. Perhaps she was being a little too forthcoming with this information, for she hardly even knew this man, but she didn't see the harm in this conversation, and besides, she'd already had her interest struck. She could talk for weeks about her sport, to anyone. "My best teacher was a South Korean man named Gu Bon-gil." She added.

"Why do you ask? Are you a fencer yourself?"