//retro to capture
"I can!" It seemed like the word 'fight' had caught Thea's attention, and the young Fireball made her way over, the usual grin on her face. Paws shifted back and forth in anticipation and excitement as she chirped, "I can teach you!"

To be honest, Thea probably wasn't the best teacher, since she had a tendency in the past to keep attacking her opponents well after defeating them, but she was learning the difference between sparring, and fighting. "Why don't you just come at me, with whatever you've got?" She mewed, tail swishing back and forth as she waited for either a no, or an attack.

Blue eyes narrow, and her grin grows wider in response. "I think I should be telling you that!" She chirps, and lifted the paw he was targeting, aiming to shove him, a bit roughly, to the side. She usually wasn't one for restraint, and this barely was. Thea kind of enjoyed playing with opponents before crushing them. It was just her nature, to win.

The concept of going easy on the younger and less experienced child never occured to her, let alone letting him win to boost his confidence, just measuring his skill before taking appropriate action. Her mother had never coddled her like that, just sent her right back out to pick a fight with the older kids, until she managed to win. She assumed that was the way it worked.

Lucia knew how to fight but that didn't mean she was interested in teaching. Admittedly, it was far harder than when she was immortal, when the world would shape itself around her if she so much as wished her. The realm of the Fae was kind to those who belonged to it, and the Autumn Court had been her home. Storms would come at her beck and call, the world would freeze if she commanded it to. Here? None such luck as that, just Lucia, her training and her iron.

She watches, waiting to give advice once the duel had finished. By advice of course she meant criticism and certainly not constructive. Blunt and cold. She supposed she could also step in before somebody got killed it came to that. She hoped it would - a bit of blood always made things more interesting.

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Training exercises were never something that could be considered easy to do when someone was a soldier. The Freelancer had learned the hard way just exactly how far the program had been willing to go when it came to sparring and other training that they went through. It was incredibly difficult at the start, but once someone got the hang of it it was fairly easy for him to do. Washington acquired just as many injuries as he did when he was out in the field and that was certainly something. Thanks to the advanced medical team that they did have, they didn't have medical leave for a long time as they were usually healed within a weeks time. He spent years in the program so he eventually learned the different protocols on what to follow when he was indeed injured.

His entrance exam when he was in his early 20's had nearly killed him in the process. Washington didn't think about how cruel the test actually would be and that he was bleeding on the floor. He had been shot plenty of times during the war and had severe burns from the explosions that did happen to him while he was on the battlefield. He could take it. He was able to pass the entrance exam because of his habit of being able to improvise. There was on the incident that still stuck with him though and that was when Agent Texas had made her appearance in Project Freelancer. At the time he didn't know what her appearance would end up doing to the program and how it would ultimately destroy it, he simply thought about how good she was in a fight against three of their Agents. Taking on Maine, Wyoming, and York wasn't exactly an easy feat.

He was pretty sure though during the course of the sparring match that there were going to be a couple of broken bones that would need to be mended. There were different types of sparring on the Mother of Invention, and it usually consisted of simple sparring which meant that they wouldn't have any intention of hurting one another. Or, regular sparring which meant that they were going to use whatever method necessary and if someone broke some part of their body it meant that it was their own fault and they should have tapped out before getting to that point. It was a lesson well learned. Either way, the training session with Agent Texas didn't exactly go as planned when both Maine and Wyoming started using live rounds on the training field. Going against protocol and nearly killing Agent Texas near the end of it, but also severely injuring York when they threw a grenade and it ended up taking the others eye in the explosion.

The one thing that confused Washington was the fact that they weren't punished for their actions, the Director stating that they should be ready for anything. It was a difficult pill to swallow, but he was a soldier and used to following orders so he didn't talk back to the Director once the other said that nothing would be done. Training children though were not something that Washington really thought about. He had entered the military when he was around 18 years of age, and it was only then that he started training. He didn't think that most of the groups that they were coming across were all that much of a fighter. At least he hadn't seen them try to instill some sort of combat either. Washington didn't think that they even remotely trained themselves as he had yet to see them do anything. The armored smilodon considered all of them to be on the level of civilians, but even if they were considered such, he wouldn't be the one that would go out of his way to protect them. That wasn't his mission and if one of them died then it was on them.

Even if they still treated death as if it was some sort of joke. With the broken leg that he has, he isn't really all that capable of doing much when it comes to being in combat. The Freelancer needs to let his leg heal before he can even do anything, and since he considers his comrade out of commission it meant that he had a lot of stress on his shoulders for the past couple of days. Washington heard voices that he did not recognize, and he stopped where he was. His helmet covered face looked in the direction of where a couple familiar faces were at. There seemed to be young animals that were there, and he could barely hear the sounds of struggling. Interesting.

Washington began to make his way over, noting Bastille was already there and so was Thea. Everyone else he didn't really know, and he kept off to the side keeping his distance from everyone else. He liked his personal space, and since it was during the day it would be a simple pitstop during his patrols that he had going on. He watched as the two animals attacked each other, his golden eyes narrowing behind his visor slightly. Was this dangerous for animals that were this young? It honestly didn't matter to the former human since it wasn't exactly his business in the first place. He would simply watch and gather intel like he usually did. As long as he could avoid Texas, he was fine. He craned his neck to the side until he heard a crack, before shaking his head. He had a headache every day now and it was certainly painful. He never brought it up though and never would. "speech"