"Okay," Pulastri said, slapping his hand against his side again. "I need to see what we have to work with."

He held a hand up parallel with his head, and suddenly the floor around us started to change. I didn't feel a difference at first, but one moment it was the mat I'd come to expect from the sparring matches. The next, the whole thing started to change over to hard wood with a sparkle.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was looking at a strange bit of hard wood that was like nothing I'd ever seen before. I was on an alien planet after all. Why would the hard wood on their dance floors be different?

"That's a neat trick," I muttered, wondering how they pulled that off and figuring I wasn't going to get an answer anytime soon.

Another whip crack brought me back to Pulastri. He stepped forward to me and held one arm out to the side as he held another one out like he was going to take me by the waist. I blinked and stared at him, and then I looked over at Varis.

"Is he serious?" I asked.

Another whip crack. I looked back at him.

"Does that hurt when you do that?"

I got another whip crack in answer. He glared at me. Like he would love nothing more than to break every bone in my body. But he wasn't going to do that, because it would mean I wasn't able to undergo the pure torture that was his dance class.

"You will pay attention and do as I say."

I glanced over to Varis again, though I got the feeling there wasn't going to be any help coming from her.

"Just do what he says," she muttered under her breath, sounding for all the world like a student dealing with a hard-ass teacher who didn't want to get in any more trouble than she was already in.

I took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. Okay then. I guess I was stuck in this and would have to make the best of it.

"I'm not going to be dancing with Torens or Varis?" I asked.

"You need to learn the steps first. The Combat Intelligence tells me you don't have an implant as is proper, so we're going to have to do this the old-fashioned way."

"Wait a minute," I said, but he'd already stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder and grabbed my other hand and pulled it up so we were in something that resembled a classic ballroom dancing pose from back on Earth. Then his hand moved down to my side.

This was a little different from what I was used to. He was holding the hand that was jutting out at a right angle rather than having it going straight out like on Earth dances. His grip on my shoulder felt impossibly hard. Like he was trying to hit me with all the strength he had. But I was also standing up to it. Sort of. Maybe.

"We are going to teach you how to let the general lead, as is proper."

"The general leads?" I asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Of course the general leads," he snapped. "How else would you do it?"

"Back on Earth we let the dude do the leading a lot of the time. At least with dancing like this. The kind of dancing I'm used to usually has the guy just kind of standing around while the woman uses him as a stripper pole, which is its own special brand of fun."

Everybody in the vast room was staring at me. Which was a touch awkward, but I embraced that awkwardness. I figured there were going to be way more awkward situations I encountered before this whole situation was said and done, so I might as well get used to it.

"Was it something I said?"

Pulastri was looking at me like I'd lost my mind. Torens and Varis were staring at me, and both of them were blushing. I totally got why Varis was blushing. I got the sense from the link that she enjoyed the idea of doing that kind of dancing with me.

I had no idea why Torens would be blushing like that. I didn't dare flatter myself to think there'd be another livisk woman in the room who'd be interested in me. And it's not like I'd be interested in her even if she was interested in me.

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"Tough crowd," I muttered.

"The general will lead because she is the general," Pulastri said, his voice a low growl that said he was going to brook no nonsense. Which was saying something since he already seemed like the kind of guy who brooked no nonsense to begin with. But he was really getting frustrated with me now.

It was a tone I recognized all too well from my academy days. Back when my mouth had a habit of writing checks my ass was going to have to cash. Usually in the form of having to do extra work, or extra push-ups, depending on how much I'd ticked off whoever I'd mouthed off to.

"Okay, so the general is going to lead and I need to learn how to be led," I said.

"Exactly," he said, his voice a dangerous purr as he stared at me with his hands on me.

The one holding my hand up above tightened, and the one on my waist did the same. Like he was trying to send me a message. But as with so many other things regarding the livisk lately, I could barely feel it.

"Step back," he said. "And try to keep pace."

I looked down. He stepped forward and I mirrored it. Then he stepped to the side and I mirrored it again, but he wasn't going slowly to make things easy on me. My eyes went wide as I could see the fast-moving disaster unfolding and tell exactly where this was going. He was smiling, which was even more unpleasant than his glares.

This asshole was enjoying every moment of this. He was trying to trip me up, the son of a bitch.

I glanced over to Varis and Torens, but it didn't look like they were doing any sort of lesson over there. No, they were just watching me and Pulastri doing our thing. Varis was biting her lip and trying very hard not to giggle. Endless amusement flowed through the link. She was enjoying my lesson almost as much as I wasn't enjoying it.

Maybe more.

I looked down to my feet again. I tried to follow along. Only his feet moved forward and then to the side. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he was trying to pull something straight out of judo. I had a moment to look up and see a satisfied smirk on his face, and then a moment later I was going down.

If he was going to pull a judo move on me to try and sweep the legs then I was going to pull a judo move as I hit the ground and slapped my hand to the floor to try and absorb some of the kinetic energy from the fall. Thankfully the antigrav slow fall was still working even after the floor's transformation.

I glared up at the dude. I wanted to yell at him. To ask him what the big idea was.

But there was that smile. It said he wished a bitch would, to call back to a bit of wisdom from the ancients. Like ancient humans. Not the Ancient precursors to us and the livisk, and a few other hominids we'd discovered at various levels of advancement as they pulled out of the primordial funk our precursors left us in.

I decided that this bitch wouldn't give him the satisfaction. Even if I really wanted to.

Instead I hopped up and shook myself off. I hit him with a grin.

"That was fun," I said. "Are we going to do it again?"

Pulastri stared at me. It was a stare that went on and on. Almost to the point it became awkward and uncomfortable. Again.

Which is what I was going for. If he thought he was going to out-awkward or out-uncomfortable me then he had another think coming.

Finally, he let out a low growl.

"Prepare yourself."

"Consider me prepared," I said, holding my right hand up with my elbow at a perfect right angle, and my left hand ready to grab him by the shoulder.

Which still felt a little awkward, for all that I'd never done a bit of ballroom dancing before in my life. I guess it was just one of those things. I'd seen it done so many times in entertainments, and even saw it in the Haunted Mansion at DisneyLuna, that it was baked into my brain even though I'd never done it.

He moved and we were off again. This time I was ready for the first few steps, but I inevitably lost the plot as he continued moving faster than I could keep up. I was careful to keep my eyes on what was going on this time around though. I tried to memorize the steps as best as possible.

I was surprised the third time around when the memorization seemed to go a whole sequel trilogy of a lot faster than I expected. My eyes went wide. First because I was doing so well, and then because suddenly his feet were tripped in mine and both of us went down.

Again, there was that antigrav slow fall doing me a solid. Pulastri landed next to me, doing a slow fall of his own. He glared at me, his mouth a thin line, and then he surprised me by getting up and offering a hand.

I looked at that offered hand in the same way someone might regard a snake that had just appeared in front of them offering to slither up their arm with a promise not to bite. I didn't trust him for a moment, but I grasped his hand as he pulled me up.

"You're doing much better than I thought you would," he finally growled.

He sounded reluctant to even say that in the first place. That had me believing him more than anything else. Like he didn't want me to be doing better than he expected. Like he'd been looking forward to torturing a human for however long this was supposed to last.

But there was grudging respect there. I could give him that.

"Glad I could surprise you," I said, hitting him with a wink. Which earned me a scowl all over again. Then he readied himself, and we started at it one more time.

I still sensed amusement coming through the link. I looked over to Varis who was finally starting to do a little bit of dancing with Torens. Though she was doing something far more complicated than anything I was capable of.

I turned back to Pulastri and realized I'd been doing the initial steps more on memory than anything. Which made me feel good. Right up to the moment I went tumbling to the floor again.

I looked over to Varis and her complicated two-step, or whatever they were doing, and my resolve firmed.

Dancing. I never thought dancing would be part of my combat effectiveness portfolio, but if that's what it took to do combat with the livisk nobility? Then you bet your ass I was going to study this until I was the best damn human dancer on this planet.

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