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Rita Ma      Goodness knows how Rita, innocent and totally normal girl, found out about the Shrine of Adversity. Goodness knows where she got a bona fide harpoon. But here we are.

     Hefting the solid metal serrated spear in one hand, she gives Hibiki an eager wave with the other as the magical girl enters the arena. It's set up as a replica of the beach where they fought the Elon Ark together: a modest strip of sandy shore surrounded by cliffs, with a simple staircase descending from higher ground to the sand below and calm blue-green waters gently lapping. Shells and pebbles are scattered where the sand is damp; this must be low tide.

     I have a weapon and the terrain is in my favor. But if Hibiki wants to get hands-on with her teaching, I'll have to fight like humans do, not like a monster. Is that even something I can do? This body's instincts... they'll fight me every step of the way. So I can't feel bad about unfair advantages.

     "Hi, Hibiki!! I wasn't sure how you wanted to train me exactly, so... I thought a place like this might be best? That way, you don't have to worry about me being safe!" She smiles sunnily, her eyes shutting for a moment.

     "Maybe after, I can take you out for sushi, too? You deserve it, offering to help me like this!"

     I filled up before I came here. Even if she bleeds, I know I can restrain myself... but that just means I'll end up feeling starved.
Hibiki Tachibana     Hibiki has sort-of kind-of heard about the Shrine from passing comments, but she's never been or thought she'd ever actually visit. The way in has her looking around with a certain amount of awe, and the familiar, recreated beach reminds her of something that the high-tech training rooms back at Second Division's base would be capable of doing, but even more realistic. Yeah, this'll definitely work for what they're here for.

    With one hand in her jacket pocket and the other waving back towards Rita as she hits the scene, the other girl gets a small smile and a nod. "It's not that big of a deal, Rita. But i won't say no to going out to eat after. I dunno about you, but training always gets me hungry."

    She rubs at the back of her neck after. "And that makes two of us. I don't think I've ever taught anyone...anything before, at least like this." Her head tilts up to look up towards the sun for a few moments, then glances back at Rita and punches a fist into her palm lightly. "I'm a 'learning by doing' kind of person, and the way I learned was pretty messy, so I think the best thing is to start by seeing what you can do and working as we go."

    Hibiki's eyes shift down a little. When her hands come apart, she gestures towards what she's holding with some curiosity. "By the way, you didn't have one of those before, did you?"
Rita Ma      Rita sticks her harpoon in the sand point-first, unties the thin ribbon in her hair, and then re-ties it to bind it back into a tighter ponytail. (Of course, that's all for show. Her 'hair' is just an illusion of shapeshifting tentacles- but Rita can almost forget that herself, and old habits still persist.)

     "What I can do"... how much can I show her without her getting suspicious? Hibiki's really strong, isn't she? I saw it myself. Of course I can't use 'those' powers, but... if I don't put my back into this, she'll beat me too fast to even teach me anything.

     All the while, she keeps smiling and talking. "I don't really know what I can do! My dad, Teon... and my brother, Bota. They were both really strong monster-slayers. I hope they rubbed off on me, but there's only one way to find out!"

     That'll be my excuse. No fancy tricks, but this body of mine... I'll find its limits. Maybe she'll suspect something, but helping people is more important than keeping this secret. In the field, when things are really important... there won't be any sense in holding back like that.

     She picks the harpoon back up from the sand, hefting it in both hands. Her stance is textbook in the broad strokes, but unpracticed in the details- she really did learn that from watching her brother! "Most Harpoonists don't really use harpoons," she says, "but it's 'the most basic thing'. I thought it would be a good place to start! It's not a complicated weapon, right?"

     From twenty feet away, she tenses up, her eyes focused intently on Hibiki. Then-

     -a fluttering of fabric, plumes of sand erupting in the wake of impossible-to-track footsteps, a sharp breeze-

     The slice itself is amateurish, shallow, and hesitating in its force. But it comes so rapidly and unexpectedly as to be practically impossible to dodge.
Hibiki Tachibana     "If it runs in the family, I'm sure there's something there," Hibiki says in a way she hopes is reassuring. She doesn't actually know if that's the case, but it sounds like something that makes sense. Rita really does idolize those two, it sounds like...it's hard to imagine just how strong that standard that the other girl is holding herself up to must be.

    ...But there's no mistaking /something/ is there. Even if there wasn't much time to see anything in detail back then, Rita handled Elon Ark really well. Before Hibiki knew it, she had gotten on top of the thing, after all. It's not going to be training someone who has absolutely no idea what they're doing. This time, she'll get a first-hand look at everything.

    Rita readies herself, and Hibiki does the same. Her footing spreads apart, knees buckle, and her hands come upwards in tight fists. She notices that tensing and follows suit exactly the same, eyes narrowi--

    No wonder she never got a good look before. She's way too fast. Hibiki's arm came up on its own, with the cut of the harpoon tearing open the thick material of her jacket sleeve and going on to just barely draw blood past that. She'd barely caught it down past the tip before it went farther. "...That's pretty good. If you did it any harder, it would've seriously hurt. But that hesitation is natural...!" She picked up on that.

    There's a small grin on her face, before-- "Balwisyall nescell Gungnir tron..."

    Her pendant shines and erupts in golden light that forms around her body, limbs, and head in the shape of her Symphogear's components, 'poofing' into existence piece by piece rather than the one-and-done transformation like before. The gauntlet around her blocking arm pushes to the side to try and send the harpoon wide and open up Rita's guard.

    While her now-armored boot follows the motion in a spinning kick aimed for her opponent's stomach. Hibiki's not hitting her that hard, because she doesn't know how durable she is to back up that speed. But it'll be plenty enough to knock her a couple feet back the way she came, and for Hibiki to come out of the motion just in time for her scarf to floof into being.

    "But is it because you're not used to swinging at other people? Or because you don't want to hurt me?" It's a genuine question.
Rita Ma      Knocking Rita's weapon aside is the easy part: she's got no training with it whatsoever, so it's just an unsophisticated piece of sharp metal in her hands. That leaves her open for the roundhouse kick- but of course, an attack as dramatic as that is telegraphed. To Rita's eyes, at least, if no one else's.

     Every part of me is screaming to grab her leg with my tentacles, but I can't! Hibiki... I can't let her know I'm broken like this. But how else can I defend myself? Think, Rita-

     Too late.

     Rita lunges backwards as the kick connects with her abdomen, robbing it of some of its momentum at the cost of landing supine- then fluidly rolls back and springs up again into an almost feral three-point stance, her eyes briefly wide and fierce. When she catches herself in that low-to-the-ground, coiled-to-pounce stance, she straightens back up instantly as if shocked, clutching the harpoon a little tighter.

     I can't let myself slip like that. I'm trying to learn how to fight like a hero, not a animal! But her blood... I can smell it already. It's not making this any easier... and neither is her strength. That wasn't even full-force, was it?

     "I've hurt people before," she admits, though she doesn't sound proud of it. "But it wasn't like this. They weren't good people, like you are. Is that an okay way to feel?"

     She opened up my stance before attacking. Is that how heroes fight? Can I do that too?

    c "How did you learn to do this? Did you have anybody teach you?" Not waiting for an answer, Rita lunges in at blinding speed again- second verse, same as the first. This time it's a stab instead of a sweeping strike. But the stab isn't aimed for Hibiki- at the last second, it diverts course to pin her scarf to the ground. As soon as the trailing accessory is nailed to the sand, Rita drops the spear and turns the momentum of her lunge into a bare-knuckled hook aimed right at Hibiki's jaw!

     Rita might be a fellow featherweight, but there's more force behind that simple, uncertain blow than any normal human being- grown man or precious imouto- ought to be able to muster.
Hibiki Tachibana     Once her momentum cuts with a brace of her still-grounded foot into the sand, Hibiki's guard is back up - there is a brief moment where her brow furrows, picking up on that wild positioning that Rita had caught herself with. It snapped her mind back to--something, once. But that expression doesn't last long, as Rita picks herself back up more properly. Still, that was...

    "I think it is," she replies, in that brief moment where Rita is thinking to herself. "...Though, I know there are some people out there who are just plain bad. But some of them...their good is just stuck deep down. I think that's why hesitating like that is never a bad thing. If a fist doesn't have any hesitation behind it...it doesn't have any weight."

    That sounds like quote right out of a movie, but she believes it. Her opponent lunges in, and she responds by digging her heels down into the loose earth and getting ready to twist her body to defend--but the feint, from someone who did such an unskilled first strike, catches her off. One of her scarves' tails are stuck down, and it slows her up just long enough that by the time her head is whirling back around towards the other girl, she gets clocked.

    Head-on. "Got me...!" It comes out muffled. Her teeth rattle and it sends her stumbling back, only not going farther because of the durable cloth still being impaled. Hibiki uses that to her advantage though, catching herself and rebounding back forward in the short distance between them. "No--I spent years teaching myself to fight on my own!"

    Even though she definitely uses martial arts, there's still something more 'wild' and unlearned about it. Like some of the tighter motions she goes for are something she's actively forcing herself to do. Part of that shows through when a return-hook shifts halfway through into a palm strike aimed at Rita's chest.

    "I've tried to learn how to fight more normally since then, to work together better with Tsubasa-san...but it's not easy! And why I didn't think I'd be a great teacher!" She makes a wrenching motion with most of her body's weight behind it after--pulling her scarf free the hard way (without any tears!?) and sending the harpoon spinning up into the air. But if Rita wants to catch it, she'll have to contend with Hibiki chasing her with some actual punches to lay on some serious pressure.

    "Your father, your brother--they're Harpoonists, right? How did they fight?"
Rita Ma      "Maybe you're right. If I could hesitate at times like that, even with bad people, maybe it'd be better. But it isn't like that at all. I don't think I can be the way you can," she answers with a slight grimace.

     Rita's eyes widen as she stares down Hibiki's incoming hook-turned-palm -strike. She sees it coming- that's plain to tell- but she seems frozen like a deer in the headlights, unable to tell her body how it should respond.

     'Turn invisible'. 'Dive into the water'. 'Bite into her arm'. Everything my body wants to do is something I can't allow. But that palm strike... Hibiki's reining herself in too, isn't she? Does she know what it's like to be betrayed by your reflexes like this?

     It connects, sending her reeling back a few more staggering steps. The wind is knocked out of her, dazing her for just a second. But in that moment of disorientation, that moment when she doesn't have full control of herself, Rita can't stop her body from saving her. It ducks under one blow with fluid predatory grace, deflects another with her forearm, weaves around a third and rakes her nails along Hibiki's arm as it passes.

     The fourth and fifth blows don't have a chance to land. Rita leaps thirty feet straight up before she can stop herself, grabbing the harpoon in midair and twisting around to face downwards at the magical girl. Her eyes are wide and gleaming.

     Logically, she's going to make a diving strike. Logically, it'll be a second before that connects. But Rita's body is smarter than that. It flings the harpoon downwards to stab Hibiki just when she'd expect to have a moment to brace.

     Rita lands in that low stance again, but doesn't catch herself this time. Instead she pounces to follow up the spear-throw, aiming to tackle Hibiki backwards into the ocean and leave them both sprawling in the shallow water. Only after that maneuver succeeds or fails does she compose herself enough to speak up again: "They didn't fight like me. Or like you. That's why I think you could teach me. The way you're wild... I can feel it. Is that really an okay way to be a hero?"

     She sounds hopeful, not accusatory.
Hibiki Tachibana     "You don't - hn! - have to be," Hibiki responds in the process of throwing her blows, eyes narrowed as the first follow-up goes wide. The next is deflected. Not bad. She knows what it looks like when instinct takes over and you're not thinking about it, it happens to her all too often. "I'm me, and you're you. That's natural. I'm pretty unreasonable, so you wouldn't want to be like me anyway." There's a small wince as Rita's nails go along the exposed part of her arm. "But that's one good thing about having other people by your side...they'll be there to help you if you were really going to do something wrong."

    Her line of thought is promptly cut there as Rita unexpectedly takes to the air, leaving the wide-eyed Symphogear user to follow the motion all too slowly. Is she going to come down from above? No--she figures out what's really going on only when the harpoon has basically left her hands. Both gauntlets come up, metal scrapes against metal, and sparks fly as she barely knocks it to the side, leaving a long gash on the surface of one limb's armor.

    Which leaves her wide open to the tackle that ensues, bringing the fight exactly to where Rita wants with a large splash. She rolls through the water a few times, manages to come up to a knee in the shallows, and takes a moment to get her breath back. "Hah...an okay way to be a hero..." She repeats, pausing for a moment.

    "...I'm not really one at all," Hibiki answers, eyes closed. "But if you really want to know what I think...yeah, it is. You're not a 'hero' because you fight clean and fair, or by some invisible rules. I think that matters less than you think. You're one because of the reasons you're fighting in the first place."

    The Gungnir girl flips backwards and onto her feet. A knee comes up, and then her entire leg. "Tell me the truth, Rita--" Her muscles tense, her breath is pulled in sharply, and the pistons in her leg armor eject themselves out from the front.

    Her heel comes down below with thunderous force backed up by the mechanisms slamming back into place, a shockwave erupting out that sends water and wet sand out in all directions as a meters-high deluge that'll wash over her opponent.

    And mask what she's doing next, which is leaping right through it with a flying knee strike meant to strike Rita right in the center of her mass. "--You were trying to hide how you caught yourself before, weren't you? But now your movements are coming a lot more naturally...!"
Rita Ma      When Hibiki pauses to catch her breath, so does Rita. She needs the breather just as much, if not more; her chest rises and falls like a bellows, trying to keep up with the exertion of her body after being winded by repeated body-blows.

     'I'm not really a hero at all.' 'You're one because of the reasons you're fighting in the first place.' "Then what are you fighting for, Hibiki?" she finally manages to say, between gulps of air. "You're so nice... I can't believe something you'd fight for isn't heroic."

     Her eyes widen until they're nearly bugging out of her head when the magical girl slams down her heel. The wave of water and sand robs her of vision. She leaps up once again, trying to clear the wave and get a birds'-eye-view... and then narrowly blocks the followup crushing knee with crossed forearms, glaring out from behind the X of limbs with a wild-eyed expression.

     When she skids back onto the beach, leaving long furrows where her shoes dug in, her arms are already starting to bruise. She picks the harpoon back up from where it lies, but before she can use it, her wild-eyed feral look fades to a more human expression of surprise in response to Hibiki's accusation.

     She noticed... but I was doing a terrible job hiding it, wasn't I? This body won't let me fight like a hero.

     No. That's wrong. She just said... if I have heroic intentions, then whatever I do is how a hero fights. My body won't let me fight like a human, but... maybe those could be different things.

     "You caught me," she says, casting her eyes down and away. Her hand comes up to rub her arm guiltily. "I can already fight a little. But I didn't want to fight like that; I wanted to fight like you do. ... The way you do things, I don't know if I can learn it after all. You're so graceful and inspiring, and I'm... this way."

     "Even if what I'm fighting for is good... I can't inspire anybody. I can't show anybody my heart through my fists. I can't fight like my dad or my brother did."

     She tosses the harpoon off to the side like a piece of trash, but her eyes stay locked on Hibiki's. Her expression is faltering; uncertain. "Is it still okay if I want to learn from you? What should I do, Hibiki?"
Hibiki Tachibana     When Hibiki comes back down after the mess she just made, her guard is up--but only for as long as it takes her to notice that Rita has had the fight suitably knocked out of her for the moment. She blinks as the other girl turns her gaze away, and her own arms slowly lower to her side. "Rita..."

    She listens to everything she has to say silently, her lips pursing tightly beneath her scarf, hands at her sides steadily balling back up. It wasn't a mistake, seeing that Rita was trying to hide something. She knew that. But hearing her like this...being this unsure of herself, drawing in on herself...

    She can't take it. 'I'm...this way. I can't show anybody my heart through my fists. I can't--' It reminds her too much of back then.

    There's another sharp inhale, and after a moment, she starts walking forward to cross the distance and approach Rita. Her eyes remain set on hers, with uncertainty of her own in them--but more determination than that.

    And when she gets in front of her, Hibiki stops. She reaches down without breaking eye contact, scooping her hand up into hers, gripping it tightly, and holding it up to clasp her other around it from the other side as well.

    "I have way too much selfishness to be a hero. Because I'm not just fighting for other people, I'm doing it for myself too...and I'm always worried about something awful happening that'll ruin it all. But..." She gives their joined hands a little shake, if she doesn't pull away.

    "...This is what I'm fighting for. The kind of life where I have ordinary days and can just say, 'sure, let's go train together, I'm not good at teaching but I'll give it a try' without worrying. There was a time I thought I wasn't meant to be around anybody else. Like I was a monster or a weapon more than a person. That the only thing my hands could do was destroy, and I'd never have the chance to have things like this--but someone important taught me they could do a whole lot more." There's another shake, for emphasis.

    "So get caught up in doubting yourself. You're not me. And you're not your brother or your dad, you're you," she repeats. "I made it here. And you're right here too, doing your best to learn how to become a hero, because you want to help people. You're ashamed of the way you were fighting...or maybe just scared. I used to be scared, too. I still am. But if you really want that and believe in it, there's nothing to worry about. Even if you can't be like us, there's definitely somethign you can do that nobody else can!"

    Her tense posture relaxes a little, and it takes a moment to click that she kind of went off on a tangent. She finally breaks eye contact to glance off to the side with very poorly-hidden fluster and a pretty awkward pause before she continues.

    "...A-Anyway, that was a lot of words just to say that you should just...do stuff your way and not worry so much. I know how bad getting stuck in your doubts is. So...I'll still help you. I-If you want."
Rita Ma      Rita tenses up slightly again, seeing Hibiki approach with balled-up fists- no, on second thought, that isn't why she's tense.

     That scratch on her arm, from the very first attack... I still can't ignore it. Even one drop of blood makes my stomach twist itself in knots. I'd never hurt Hibiki like that, but the fact that it's at the back of my mind at all...

     She swallows, and you could assume it's out of nervousness. But even before Hibiki takes her hand, her expression is crumbling into a teary mess. There are glimmers at the edges of her eyes- she's tearing up inside her disguise-suit for real, and the perfect mimicry is selling her out, its emulated eyes beading with salty seawater.

     So of course she takes her hand. Her other hand wipes the nascent tears from her eyes. "Hibiki, I... you're not a monster, I promise. Not like that." Not like this. "And I- I can't tell you..."

     Rita loses track of her own thoughts in the wash of emotion. She gives up on the hand-holding in favor of a real, earnest hug. Even if her whole outer shell is a lie, even if what's inside is alien and awful, the way her body gently shakes with unspoken feelings can't be faked.

     Hibiki, I'm not what you think I am. And I'm not strong enough to tell you. I want to be loved as Rita, as that innocent girl, and not as the thing I am now. But, even if you knew... I could almost really believe you'd accept me even then?

     It takes a few moments for that shaking to stop.

     "'Even if I can't be like you'," Rita says, finally disentangling herself. "I'm not... scared of it. I'm scared of how people will see me. But you... that, makes me a little less scared. So... so-"

     She tries to say something eloquent. She tries to say something beautiful and clear, something that'd perfectly explain her feelings without letting all the messy ugliness out with it.

     Like a lot of pretty things, it dies in her throat.

     Instead, she finally manages through a teary, rueful smile: "Do you think we could go get sushi now?"
Hibiki Tachibana     Hibiki wasn't sure what to expect after all of that--but the hug catches her off-guard, her eyes widening some as arms wrap around her. It takes her a moment. But she can feel that shaking, running from Rita's body to hers, and her own come around to return it. Tightly, firmly. She doesn't say anything, holding it and waiting it out until Rita is ready to break away to speak herself.

    ...That pause. There's no way for Hibiki to know what it would've been. She's just experienced being unable to speak her feelings with words alone too many times to not recognize it a little when she sees it. It's...

    ...'I'm scared of how people will see me.' She understands that. And how it can be scarier than being scared of yourself.

    "...Yeah. Let's go get some food." Hibiki's transformation disperses in a brief burst of light, leaving her back in her jacket-with-torn-sleeve and her own small smile on her face. "It usually makes me feel a little better. That got a little heavier than it should've been, huh...?" Her expression grows a little apologetic, but the smile doesn't disappear. She's not putting it on just to put it on.

    Rita has definitely had...a lot of troubles, that much she knows. But that's enough of that for one day. And going out to eat together should be something to be happy about. So-- "C'mon, let's go. I'll pay for it, too. As much as you can eat."