Aery blinked, quite impressed that Orion had remembered all of their names. And then again as he used her nickname, without the slightest hesitation. The kid was fabulous. But then, didn't he have to be, to do what he did and still keep his skin intact?
She looped the rope three times around her right wrist, tying it loosely. The handle she left hanging. She coiled the rest of it once around her shoulders and three times around her left arm, so that she was left with a weight and maybe a foot of rope dangling from her left hand.
"I've never used one of these before. After this we should go hand-to-hand, assuming I'm not unconscious. Fair warning, you may have to knock me out if you honestly want to put me out, because I don't quit."
"She absolutely doesn't. When she was eleven, and even tinier than she is now, I broke eight of her ribs, her collarbone, her right humerus in two places, right femur in three, her nose, her jaw. Blacked both eyes. Cut her up pretty bad, since we were using daggers. And she kept getting back onto her feet, hopping on one foot for the pain in the other one, not able to see for the blood pouring into her eyes, and she kept fighting until the blood loss made her too weak to hold her knife." Peter said.
Aery winced as she remembered that. They'd had to take her to the emergency room after that, and she'd had to explain the whole parent-less thing to eight different doctors who thought she had a concussion and had forgotten everyone she knew.
"I'd really prefer hand-to-hand, actually. I'm utterly out of my league here." Aery shifted. "I wish you could use weapons that weren't so... unique. Daggers, that sort of thing. Or just hands. Just not these rope-thingies."