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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emperor Valerian" data-source="post: 2208043" data-attributes="member: 15043">Captain Felonca Takes Command...   I have to deal with THIS?Felonca reined up her horse just outside the small camp of the Eagle Cavalry unit, whose obvious state of sloppiness, ignorance, and lack of discipline looked closer to the nickname ‘Hog Cavalry Unit.’  She leapt off, and for a second stared about in disbelief and disgust.This is my unit?  They can’t ride, they can’t control themselves...  Her eyes flashed back to the sergeant, now curled into a ball on the ground as the burly peasants laughed at him.  They won’t respect their officers...  She heard another horse canter up behind her, and turned to see a very worried looking Nayu looking at her camp.“Um... this is not good...” the sorcerer said slowly.  “I’m guessing that soldiers shouldn’t be sleeping drunk on the ground, or...”“No, they shouldn’t!” Felonca snapped back.  Time to straighten out this mess!  Conveniently, the first of the sights that caught her eye cantered by.  THe young man on the horse looked absolutely petrified, his eyes watching its flicking tail as he desperately tried to stay on despite his saddle and gear being backwards.  His uniform was regulation colors, but faded, ratty, and filled with holes.  The steed itself didn’t seem to mind... free from direction, it ambled along, munching quietly on grass.“Gah!” he yelled, turning towards Felonca and Nayu.  “I can’t control it!  Help!  It won’t listen and it keeps going backwards!”“Um... excuse me?” Felonca asked, as Nayu gave a snort.“My horse!  Its going backwards!  I can’t stop it!” the young man screeched, at first flailing his arms in panic before he finally lost his balance, and tumbled to the ground.  He landed with a sharp thump, and rolled onto his side with a groan.  The valiant steed, meanwhile, found a particularly choice area of grass and stopped its ambling.“Good gods and ancestors,” Felonca swore under her breath, before helping the young man to his feet.  Some of them don’t even know what the FRONT of a horse is, let alone knowing how to ride one!!“Thank you, ma’am,” the young man shook the dust off his faded uniform and sighed.  “I don’t know what went wrong.  I got on the horse like everyone said, and all they did was laugh at me as it went backwards.  Then, they got bored, and started beating Sergeant Ping, and left me!”“What’s your-“ Nayu started to ask, before Felonca raised a hand.This is my unit... they need to know I am in command.“What is your name, soldier?” she asked.“My name is Sung Ojin, ma’am.  What’s your name?  You’ve been very kind to me, too bad you’re not in our unit, seeings you don’t have our leftover uniforms.  Your travel leathers look comfortable, I wish they’d given us some,” he continued to ramble until Felonca raised her hand again.Alright... commanding voice, yet comrade voice.  This young man doesn’t know, he needs teaching...“I am Zhong Wei Wa-Feng, commander of this unit,” she said, her voice crisp, calm, and commanding without sounding harsh and angry.  Immediately the young man’s face blanched as he realized he’d addressed his captain so casually.  Before he could sputter an apology, Felonca cut him off.  “Don’t apologize... I was assigned to the unit today, and you didn’t know.  I trust you’ll remember from now on?”The young man nodded, and Felonca smiled.“Good.  Now, Ojin, we must teach you how to properly ride a horse... but before that, there’s another lesson I want you, as well as the rest of the troops to see.  Follow me.”Felonca then strode to the chaos on the near side of the camp, soldiers busily emptying barrels of spiced wine and sprawled onto the ground.  As she approached, one of the drunkards raised his head, and lewdly commented on the girl coming towards him in leather.“Do you want me to take control of their minds for a bit?  I can make them behave,” Nayu offered quietly, until Felonca once again shook her head no.  Instead, she smiled at the drunk man and his mates, walked over to the barrel, and drew some wine into a clay jug.  She then turned towards the soldier, whose smile had grown big at the sight of a beautiful woman offering him more alcohol.  She held it just above his reach, and spoke quietly, calmly.“Rise to your feet, soldier.”The man and his three mates looked at her, and began to chuckle, then laugh uproariously at her...until she brought the claw jug crashing down on his head, breaking it onto a thousand pieces.“Up off your feet scum!” she barked, her voice cracking like a whip over the camp, her memories of the parade ground, the morning barking of orders from the Academy now flooding back to her.  When the confused man and his three mates didn’t comply, she administered several helpful kicks until they got the message.  Quickly, the four scrambled to their feet, stumbling about as they did so.“I am Zhong Wei Wa-Feng, your new commanding officer!” she snapped.  “What do I see in front of me?” she snarled, her form now bristling in hybrid as she paced in front of the four slobs.  When she reached the end of the line, she stopped, and stared directly into the eyes of the last man... the soldier that had made the lascivious comments.  “I see no soldiers!  I see louts, drunkards, people that are worth no more than a beating!  You have two choices in this unit, scum!  You can either learn to be soldiers, or...”She then turned, and with a sharp kick, shattered one of the large wine barrels, its contents spilling across the ground as the four men stared in shock.  She then spun back around, and stared the four in the eye.“...I can beat you to a pulp!”  She then leaned close towards the four, now stumbling and trembling.  “Choose wisely,” she whispered.“Oho!  What do we have here?!” a loud voice called, and Felonca turned to see the huge hulking peasant now behind her, the hapless sergeant now held by the scruff of his shirt in one immense hand, the other meaty paw clutched in a fist.  Behind him stood the same array of soldiers that had been laughing as the sergeant was beaten on the ground... nearly fifty people, or half of her company...That’s... half my unit there! she thought, momentarily resisting the urge to gulp.  They were all beating up a sergeant and laughing... they have no respect for order, and if they all rush me...Her mind flashed back to the recent meeting with her uncle, and the charges that both he and Hsiu long ago had laid against her, and she felt steel coming into her spine, ice coming into her veins.I am not afraid of these men... these are soldiers under my command!  I cannot show any fear!“Boys, I think this pretty lass thinks she’s our commanding officer!” the big peasant bellowed, and soon his laughter rumbled around the camp as the others joined in.  “And it looks as if she bought a pheasant in man’s clothing with her!”“She’s shorter than a dwarf!” another peasant laughed and pointed.  “She’s not a panther, she’s a kitten!”“Oh, what I’d like to do to that pretty kitten!” another one roared, leading to more laughter.Felonca didn’t need to turn around to know that Nayu was bristling at the comments, both directed at her, and those directed at himself.  She turned towards him momentarily, giving him the stare that told the story, and his half open mouth went shut.  Satisfied that he would not unnecessarily interfere, she coldly turned towards the instigator.“Soldier,” Felonca said as she calmly walked towards the burly man, “release the sergeant.”“Oh... look!  She’s so big, she’s going to give us commands!” the big on guffawed.  “I think she’ll go the same way as the previous Zhong Wei!”  He dropped the sergeant to the ground, before administering a sharp kick to the man’s ribs.  The big one then leaned towards her, his eyes glistening with malevolence.  “Are you going to pee your pants like Zhong Wei Ii did two days ago?”“Soldier, you have three seconds to stop attacking your sergeant, or I will kick your face so hard your teeth will come out of your ears,” Felonca hissed, her threat low and deadly.“Bah!” the big one laughed, kicking the sergeant again.“One...”“You couldn’t hurt a fly, you tiny pipsqueak!  I suppose you’re going to claim you are a Wa-Feng too!  I don’t care, even if you are a Wa-Feng!  You’re a little...”“Two...”“...piece of snot!  No one orders Yu Wasang around!  No one!  Not the generals, not the commanders, and certainly no Zhong Wei so small that I bet my...”His insult was cut short by the palm of Felonca’s hand slamming into the bottom of his jaw.  His head snapped back, his eyes rolling around in his head from the blow.  Mere millseconds later, as he started to stumble forward from the stunning blow, Felonca dropped low, and a sharp leg-sweep snapped his feet from under him and sent his immense frame tumbling to the ground.  He landed with a thunderous crunch, blood already welling from his mouth, as his eyes lolled back, his mind falling into unconsciousness.The crowd gathered about let out a collective gasp, and began to back away... slowly, as if they were too frightened to stay, but also too frightened to outright run.  Felonca looked up from her work, her pupils narrowed.They now see... they are malleable.  They are ready to learn...“Soldiers,” she said calmly, coolly, as if her blinding fast assault on someone easily thrice her size had not happened moments earlier.  A small group of men all pointed towards themselves, eyes wide, afraid they would not be called out for their part in harassing the sergeant.  “Soldiers,” she pointed towards two in particular, and motioned for them to come forward.  She then pointed to the unconscious brute on the ground.  “Pick up your fellow soldier.”Eyes wide, the two men in question did exactly as she asked, between them managing to heft the beast of a man between them, and at her direction, drag him towards a nearby healer’s tent.  For a second Felonca let herself watch the big man be dragged away, before turning back to the assembled soldiers.“An army is built on trust!” she barked, doing her best imitation of Hsiu’s voice of unquestioning command as he had shouted these same words to incoming students to his Academy some ten years before.  “Because of this, you should always help your comrades in arms!”  “Soldiers,” she pointed to two others, “help up your sergeant.”    The same routine happened, and as he was taken to the healer’s tent she called to her soldiers, “An army relies on the soldiers trusting, and following its officers!  Without trust in your fellow soldiers, and trust in your officers, we will fail as a force, and you will likely die!”Several faces blanched at her words, and more than a few hastily, fearfully nodded along with her words.  Her confidence now set, she began to pace in front of the line, continuing her first lesson to these raw recruits.  “Finally, an army relies on discipline, discipline that leads to this trust!  I intend to put this discipline into each and every one of you!”  Her pacing suddenly stopped, and turned to the assemblage of men.“EVERY SOLDIER WILL DROP AND GIVE ME FIFTY PUSH-UPS IMMEDIATELY,” she snarled in her best parade ground voice, a tone so sharp, harsh and commanding that even Nayu winced, “OR I WILL USE MY CLAWS AND SKIN EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU!!!”She hid a proud smile behind her furious face at the collective whumph of fifty-five bodies landing on the ground, and the sea of grunts as they began their physical training...= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Felonca’s player especially loved this set of events, so I had to type it up in detail for her. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  Next update will include Nayu’s experiences explaining his lack of books to scholars, as well as this whole menagerie getting on the march.AS for Felonca pummelling the crap out of the guy, it was a nonlethal sneak attack... which I believe she also critted on.  Needless to say, the man was only a mere 2rd level warrior, so 35 or so points of damage was more than sufficient to knock him out several times over. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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