starter for @ask-frederick
Most of Cynthia's training in her time had been fairly roughshod. While there had been a few Pegasus Knights left to teach her the basics - a handful of who she'd been crushed to realize had died in the Plegian war in this timeline - most of her technique was picked up through experience, tailored to fight the lumbering Risen rather than other human opponents. When she'd had the idea to try and mimic what she thought made her parents so much more capable at this kind of conflict than her, she'd been under the impression that it was a good idea.
Perhaps it was, but approaching Frederick about it was like going from zero to one hundred miles an hour in a second flat. She'd had some image in her mind of him teaching her some moves, perhaps drilling it a few times before she could get on Ajax and ride him off into the sunset, secret training complete. Instead, he'd insisted that the first thing they needed to work on was her physical conditioning. The laps had been fine, as had the pull-ups (to an extent), but the push-ups were slowly staring to kill her. Her arms felt like they were full of jelly rather than bone, and more sweat than she knew what to do with was running down her face as she began to pant heavily. Now that nobody else was watching anymore, she felt like she didn't need to keep up appearances.
"F-Frederick, I don't want to look weak or anything." The princess panted, not stopping her reps despite her exhaustion. "But can we please take a break? I'm dying out here."
She gave him a pleading look, pausing for a moment to wipe the sweat out of her eyes so that he could actually see how desperate she was. "T-this is way harder than I thought it was going to be."
