"Definitely. Although I'm guessing you're not much for yoga, huh?" Brigitte says, with a brief smile of her own. (Is that a touch of gentle teasing in her voice? Maybe.) The flush in his cheeks from the hike shows he's probably ready for the workout session, too. She hasn't pried about where he's been camped out these days, but she's already gotten a sense that he might be one of the north village residents -- Maine would be immediately recognisable walking around the southern outskirts even if she didn't know him.

And then, like a terrier seizing a bone, she jumps business-like right into the subject that brought them here, the lynchpin for their training: "My shield back home was more like an empty frame, with an energy barrier? Since I don't have that tech, I'm having to go pretty medieval with my replacement." Brigitte was experimenting with alloys, trying to make the metal as light as possible without compromising its durability, but that still meant hefting more weight on her arm than she was accustomed to. "So, arm strength it is."

You didn't need a second glance at Maine to know that strength training was probably his forte, and that he knew what he was doing. She suspected he might be a good trainer, for the things that the local martial artist wasn't especially well-suited for.