Shelly is going about her usual morning routine. Get up, do exercises, check the checklist while eating breakfast, go for some swimm-errrr... what's this?

Combat training? Again? Already? "...has it been a week already? My checklist says combat training."

King Max chuckles. "Time sure flies... but no, it hasn't been a week. I decided it's time you step up in combat training. You don't take it seriously, so you're falling behind. It's one thing to not be as good as the elite, but I have soldiers betting anyone in our military could take you one-on-one."

Shelly pouts. "So? I'm just a girl. What's it matter if they COULD beat me, they won't."

King Max head-shakes. "Not the point. Shelly, just trust me, take your lessons, and do me proud."

Shelly groans lightly and says, "...yes, daaaad." before finishing breakfast and heading to combat training.

  Seabear.  Nauticalish words.  Wheel of thesaurus turn turn turn.  Tell us the pulled out of hat name we should learn... "That is effort. We're going with Charles"... oookaaay.

  Charles is in that place where you've had enough training to not be considered fresh meat, but haven't done anything of note or worth respec.  Today he has the good/bad luck of being involved in the same training class as royalty.

Captain Bubbles used to be the butt of many jokes due to his name. This is why he is now one of the more jaded and fierce fighters in the kingdom of Urser. He's the teacher today. "Going over some trident drills." he says matter-of-factly. "But first, we'll cover some basic commands."

He says, "Attention!"

Shelly stands at attention, with a silly almost-smile and eye-roll.

  At least they weren't a Male Unicorn named Sparkles.

  Charles stands at attention, he's not bored that's just a professional expression/Charles's default face.  He does wonder if there will be any puncture wound accidents this time, and if they restocked on bandages yet.

Captain Bubbles roughly corrects Shelly's stance. "Don't even have the basics down, eh?"

Shelly says, "Taking orders wasn't part of my training since I'm, you know, royal?"

Captain Bubbles says, "Well you gotta learn the orders so you can give 'em, Princess. Hate to say it, but there may come a time you'll need to lead men and women to their deaths defending the kingdom. If that time comes, you best know how to give orders."

Shelly hrmpfs, looking aside.

Captain Bubbles says, "Now... Aboout face!"

Shelly turns around.

  Charles wonders if there is any significance to a 'One day you will need to lead people into battle' speech followed up by 'learn the turn around the other way' order.  Or if it's just one of those coincidences and Bubbles isn't suggesting she will need to know how to properly order troops to run away.

Or maybe it's to face a sudden ambush. He looks at Charles. Then to Shelly. "We'll go over some more basics later. I wanna put this stupid rumor to rest once and for all." he hands wooden poles to Shelly and Charles. "Spar."

Shelly cringes a bit, looking over at Charles like "seriously?"

  Charles refrains from taking a swing at the word of Bubbles, as he has begun to suspect all those times people went at him the instant someone said 'spar' was just people giving him a hard time.

  "Yes sir.  Hopefully the only loss of Dignity is mine sir."  Okay, NOW it's a proper amount of heads up.  The classic standard of 'hope you can trip them' is put into play.

Katy is a crab.  But not just any crab!  She's a GHOST crab!  Master of stealth and infiltration!  Super evasive magical get-past-palace-guards epic awesome... or maybe she's just small and tends to go unnoticed.  There's a reason little critters can infiltrate even well guarded places.

Katy is watching the goings on with a big grin, slowly clamping her claws in anticipation.  :D

Shelly meeps and is tripped. But even at her teenage girl prankster maturity level, she doesn't say "Hey! I wasn't ready!" because... well.. she was ready. But thanks to being tripped, she rolls aside and gets to her feet, retaliating with a swing to Charles' legs.

  Charles isn't distracted by O.O crabs because of their stealthyness.  So he manages to block 'the thing I just did five seconds ago'.  Of course, now he's out of obvious courses of action and reaction to hide behind and defaults to probing stick jabs to see what happens.  Thats like, trying to win using nothing but the light button man.  Without being blanka.

Katy Crab claps for Charles!  Klack Klack Klack!  ^.^  She skitters to a new vantage point to watch from.

Shelly seems able to parry the jabs and seeing as it's staffs, she is also able to use the one end to attack while parrying with the other end. Shelly has an adorable "I don't wanna hurt anyone" look on her face, but she's doing OK.

  "Unless you're trying to lull someone into a false sense of security, that look won't really help against someone willing to attack you in the first place."  A cute girl! GET HER!... Oh, she looks sad about this, NEVER MIND!

  You know what's a sport they probably play at least occasionally in Urser? Hockey.  You know what they do in hockey fights?... No, we're not pulling up Shelly's shirt, get your mind out of the gutter.  Stick Checking!  Why just body check someone when you can also hit them with a stick in the process?

  Some nameless NPCs watching place bets on whether or not Charle's gets flipped over the princess.

Katy has gotten her claws on a plastic straw and is now doing her best impersonation of a stick fighter!  Swing!  Swing!  Accidentally bend straw!  Lose grip on one end!  Straw snaps back straight, causing it to spring out of the other claw, launching end over end into the air!  Katy reaches snapping claws up into the air, skittering about, trying to catch airborne straw!

Shelly was just about to best Charles when she sees an adorable crab playing and gets distracted. She winds up smacked in the arm and cringes. Captain Bubbles facepalms and says, "Alright, that's enough."

Shelly is ducking her head, looking embarrassed. "...cute... crab..." she mutters with a "trying not to smile" expression.

  Some poor nameless so and so is out 5 sea bucks to another nameless so and so.

  Charles of course, stops trying to beat a princess with a stick on Captain Bubble's say so.  Even if he was the sort to brag about this sort of thing, he wouldn't because of how silly that would sound.  "At least you have the basics down..." will not say 'So does that crab'...

  Because really, that Crab would so beat shelly in a fight... If, you know, it was a giant crab... who was using a staff instead of giant claws... This logic is flawed.

Cute... Seabear! Katy thinks, as she intentionally fails to pick up the straw from off the ground, instead perpetually scooting it closer to Shelly.  Did you know that in RL there are crabs that can walk in all 4 directions rather than just sideways?  Well there are.  And they blow bubbles.  It's true!