The next day, Ingrid does some special training.

"I've got my turn with the box... But how am I supposed to get my morning training in and use it at the same time?"

Normally, for a woman with a schedule as rigid as hers, there would be no question. Nothing got in the way of her morning routine. Ingrid had kept it the same since the day she came to the Officer's Academy, determined to hone herself into her ideal image of a knight. An extra hour or so of sleep had always been a distant second concern. How could she weigh anything against training that would could save her life, or the life of an ally, on the battlefield?

Today found a new Ingrid, however, with a new priority. "I can and will train every morning of every day... But who knows how many chances I'll have to study this box privately? In a way, since my shift with it is before everyone else's, I have a responsibility to make the best use of it."

As if that explained everything that was now happening, Ingrid finished tying off the lance she'd planted tip-down in the dirt of the stable ground, having used thick ropes to bind it to the rafters. This wasn't even one of the wooden training lances; it was one of the few actual weapons ordinarily stored at the training grounds. It was in awful condition, but the important thing to Ingrid was it was its round handle was made of smooth iron. After all, when Ingrid had first arrived at the stable, she'd made a few exploratory turns around one of the wooden pillars that supported its roof and found the movement entirely too clumsy. She tugged on the vertical pole she'd newly erected and, finding herself satisfied, moved to shifting her weight onto it. With both hands wrapped around the pole, Ingrid tested a quick spin around it, leaning back in the spin and hearing the wooden structure creak from the load it had surely never experienced before.

Still, nothing broke or fell apart, so it was good enough for her. She stepped off and wiped sweat from her forehead. "Excellent. I've thought up a perfect way to exercise and get the usual benefit of strength training at once. Now, there's just one more thing I need..."

Dorothea Arnault, a rare commoner among the members of the Black Eagles house that hailed from the Adrestian Empire, let loose a big yawn as she headed towards the stables. Even this early in the morning, and even with stable duty, Dorothea was looking her best: she wouldn't be caught dead without her fashionable black cap, her shoulder-length brown hair well-kept and waving, and just the right touches of makeup. It was all a bit much for someone about to do manual labor, but in an Academy full of catches to bump into at any hour of the day, she was determined not to be caught unprepared. "What a pain in the neck... How's a girl supposed to get her beauty sleep? One person fails to properly clean up after a horse, and before you know it, it's everyone's problem... Well, I know I wasn't the one responsible. Why am I the one out here doing this at the crack of dawn? Just because my shift was the first one-"

The young woman's complaints began to trail off as she looked off into the distance. The farthest stable across the field, which shouldn't even have a horse in it, was shaking as if a beast was banging against the walls. She approached cautiously, growing more concerned the closer she got. A bit closer, she could see between the gap of the building's fence and its roof. She could tell that something had been fastened to the roof beams. Every so often she would see a mysterious golden mane whip past and then disappear. And then... a blue woman's foot?! The position implied that whatever creature, what it was doing to its victim would be a gruesome sight.

Dorothea gulped, then raised her voice. "Is someone in there? Are you okay?"

There was no response. As Dorothea got even closer, she started to realize why; initially, she interpreted that there was some sort of beast yelling in an almost human voice. Quickly, however, her musically-trained ear corrected her. What she was hearing was some type of music, but not a kind that even the well-traveled former diva had any familiarity with.

She understood that if she called out again, she'd probably be able to summon a loud enough cry to be heard over the music. For some reason, though, she felt she didn't want to interrupt. Her own hips began to jerk in time with the rock-and-roll drumline, swishing her short skirt and showing off the skin between its hem and the tops of her tall boots. Her open jacket offered a glimpse of the slight shaking of her bust, bound by a black top beneath. She was too curious about what she was seeing and hearing to notice what was happening to her own body.

When she reached the corner of the fence and peered around, her sea-green eyes grew wide and her jaw hung open. She stared at the scene in front of her, unable to **** a word out.

Her friend from another House, Ingrid, was the one whose blonde hair she'd been seeing repeatedly over the top of the fence. That made a bit more sense now that Dorothea could see it clearly: Ingrid was all over the lance she'd erected in the middle of the wall, occasionally climbing it, locking her long legs around it, and managing a good rotation down. The dance wasn't the only new thing about Ingrid, either. Dorothea realized that her friend wasn't wearing her skirt at all. It had been set aside, and the blue leggings Ingrid wore now were far more sheer than normal, failing to hide a coordinated, darker blue pair of panties that didn't seem like Ingrid's usual taste. It definitely seemed designed to draw the eye. "Did Ingrid own something like that...?"

Furthermore, there was no beast here at all, Dorothea now vaguely recognized that what she had been hearing was a man's voice singing a song, and it was coming from what the songstress's brain was processing as an expensive music box. The number of individual instruments coming from one place was blowing her mind, even competing with the surprise of her famously stuffy friend doing energetic turns on a pole.

When Dorothea's own eyes finally locked with Ingrid's on one of the latter's passes, she was sure the Blue Lion would be sent tumbling with a yelp of surprise. Ingrid did yelp, but didn't seem to lose a step in her performance. Instead, she unintentionally answered another question about what Dorothea had been seeing earlier. The lady knight-in-training flexibly bent back on the pole, lifting one of her legs in display, high enough to peek over the top of the fence as she tossed her glamorous blonde braid back in show. "D-D-Dorothea!" she shouted, her face red in a way that seemed far too embarrassed for such a skillful display.

Dorothea had only a moment to crack a smile, believing that she was about to start teasing Ingrid about what she'd just seen. Instead, in another surprise, the songstress found her body rebelling, pivoting on its heel and swinging her skirt in wide, powerful arcs for her friend. "Ingrid?!"

"Hold on... I'll turn it off!" Ingrid tried to reassure Dorothea. She'd discovered earlier that she ought to be able to turn the Boom Box on and off at will, as long as she wasn't intending to escape it permanently. For some reason, however, her body didn't seem to want it off now. It had perched itself grinding her ass idly against the pole in a crouch, in a good position to face Dorothea and see what the music was doing to her.

The scenario would have been mortifying enough for Ingrid it was just Dorothea seeing her, but seeing Dorothea affected by the music added a new layer of oddness. Ingrid was aware she was seeing moves that would have been very similar to the kind Sylvain had seen her do the day before: the same powerful thrashes of the body, hands traveling the body suggestively, and too-short skirt flapping with every move. Of course, Dorothea didn't dress as conservatively, and momentum seemed to threaten to finish showing Ingrid the spicy, lacy, deep-red number her man-hunting peer had worn that day.

"You... said you were going to turn it off...?" Dorothea asked over her shoulder, her hand reaching behind to pinch the back of her skirt and swish it even more provocatively. The motion alternate to her hips saw it repeatedly pulled taut across her curves.

"Y-yes... D-Dorothea, I need to tell you something!" Ingrid struggled to shout over the music. She turned and leaned back, so far that her hair was hanging down away from her face, her sharp green eyes looking at her friend upside down. "This Box makes you dance, and I can only turn it off if you choose to dance to it again. So, sorry, b-but can you perhaps, um... move past the fear of having your body move against your will more quickly? That way, I can free us."

"That's the most incredible thing I've heard, and I've just heard this music! I have so many questions, but- tch!" she clicked her teeth as her body turned and moved towards Ingrid. With her elbows held below her chest and her arms up to frame her breasts, she began shaking it in front of her friend's inverted face. The orbiting globes pushed against her top and the lapels of her uniform jacket like they were trying to escape. "F-forget it! The only question I have is, um... it isn't dangerous?"

Ingrid felt like she was going insane with Dorothea's uniform-clad chest waving upside-down in front of her, peering into the valley of cleavage. She tried to answer her calmly. "As you can see, it's incredibly foolish, but I don't believe it's dangerous!" She'd been yelling, but she lowered her voice, now that she was able to speak in close proximity. "What would be dangerous, though, is if we can't turn this off by the time someone comes looking for us."

"I can't just... stop being afraid of it on command, you know!" Dorothea complained, before leaning forward and briefly burying Ingrid's face in her shaking chest. Mortified, she pulled back. "Sorry, sorry! You have to explain more!"

Ingrid shook her disheveled bangs, then turned on the pole once again. She ended up facing Dorothea with her legs spread and the pole between them, her toes perched on the rim of the lance's handle, bouncing in a squat while leaning away. "I was training. I was going to try to use it while doing my workout."

"Why?" Dorothea found her leg propping itself onto the side opposite Ingrid, flashing the lacy set of panties she'd given a glimpse of before. She began peeling off her tall black boots.

"The Blue Lions are studying it. I'm supposed to help to do that, but- eep!" Ingrid was cut off as one of her feet began brushing along the exposed skin of Dorothea's bare leg. "I... really just wanted to listen to this song! Isn't it incredible?"

"Oh, yes, incredibly juvenile!" Dorothea snapped, unable to believe she had been **** into this position because Ingrid had gotten excited about privately listen to a bawdy song like this one. "I don't think you're giving me the full story, but... You know what? Okay. If I have to promise to do this humiliating dance with you again, I'll live. Just please let us be done with it for now."

"...You have to actually want to do it," Ingrid reminded her, her apologetic frown counteracting the overly-affectionate footsies her legs were playing with her female friend.

"Sure, sure. How could I say no to that face? But, please... I don't think we're going to be able to keep this hidden for long, and... I'm getting a little worried about where this is going next!" Now that her boots were off, Dorothea's body seemed to be trying to pull her up onto the pole opposite Ingrid. The rafters of the barn creaked loudly in protest.

"It'll be part of my daily routine. You'll join me again at the same time?" Ingrid asked.

"Oh, Goddess... yes, yes, very well, whatever you ask!"

Ingrid didn't speak a confirmation. Instead, she managed to lean far enough back from the pole to reach the Box on the crate behind her, pressing down the 'pause' lever and managing to free them. Immediately, both of them stumbled to the dirt.

After the two had picked themselves up and brushed themselves off, Ingrid was **** to give Dorothea an explanation before she was even allowed to put her skirt back on. The Blue Lion kept the explanation of how she'd come across the box as vague as possible, only saying that a man had used it on her then fled before she'd gotten a look at him. She also left out some of the more colorful details of the meeting where the three members of the Blue Lions had decided to test the Box more thoroughly. Finally, she left out exactly why they were (supposedly) interested in testing this: to make it a tool for the benefit of the Kingdom.

Dorothea wasn't satisfied. "Ingrid, if I'm going to trust you with this, I need to know at least enough that I can tell some wicked mage hasn't cast a spell on you, and you haven't been replaced by an imposter. The skinny thread you spun there is lacking some details, isn't it? Why did you come to settle on this particular song?"

Ingrid realized she wouldn't be able to escape without some level of detail, and decided she'd try to protect only the most critical points. She sighed and hung her head, looking up at the concerned songstress past her messed-up bangs. "Truthfully... the man who used this on me didn't just make a fool of me and run off. I... had a conversation with him. During that conversation, he mocked my ability and aptitude for dance. He thought I wasn't capable of rising to the saucy implications of the song-"

"...Was this man Ignatz without his glasses?" Dorothea asked, dumbfounded.

"Ignatz! Does Ignatz have something to do with this?!" Ingrid was shocked. She barely knew the Golden Deer House student they were discussing, aside from the fact that he wore glasses-

"No, I'm asking if the man was blind! If he wasn't blind, he must have been...? Forget that. Ingrid, your dancing isn't just saucy, it's the whole pasta dish! Why, I felt my heart skip a beat, and I'm a lady who's seen quite a few performances, you'll note."

"You felt what?" Ingrid flushed, raising an eyebrow, before changing her focus. "I mean... my dancing is fine then? You didn't find it clumsy or stiff?"

"Well, there's room for improvement in any performance, but in terms of pure power to turn men or women of certain inclinations into howling wolves, I'd say you're quite there! And now you're practicing this dance at the cost of your own pride, just for him? You'll have this poor man by the pursestrings, I'd say! If it were me, I'd already be making shopping plans."

"Hold... Dorothea. I believe there's been a misunderstanding," Ingrid was still blushing, but she had a new severity to her eyes. "Allow me to clarify. This has nothing to do with catching the romantic interest of the man in question. I'm not looking to make the one who tormented me for his amusement into a new husband, it may surprise you to hear! No, my intention is to show him a dance so incredible I can turn that misguided impression he had on its head and make him eat his words."

Dorothea looked at her with wide eyes, before eventually chuckling, then breaking into full-blown laughter. "Oh, Ingrid! I should have known this was about your pride. Now this is all starting to make sense."

"Right?" Ingrid nodded emphatically. "This isn't just about my pride, either! The words this man spoke so carelessly could even be taken to mean that this man didn't find me marriageable! It is extremely important to my family and responsibilities that I have confidence in my desirability, Dorothea. I mean... not that it's something I think of regularly, but I would at least like to be reassured it is not a fault."

"... Do you want this man to marry you or not?" Dorothea muttered under her breath. She shook her head when Ingrid gave her a puzzled look. "Never mind. Ingrid, you're a noble and I'm a commoner, but on this matter, I totally relate. In fact, I think you've raised a very good point. In a battle of desirability, this Box of yours is like a secret weapon... a trump card that ought to make the two of us the most desirable women in Garreg Mach! If we can master this performance, men will be picking us over the Archbishop, I imagine." She whispered the last words, acknowledging it as a somewhat sacrilegious joke between friends.

"I have no intention of making an advertisement of this!" Ingrid defended, stepping into her skirt and feeling self-conscious. "It's just for the point of correcting this man's mistake."

"Right, the man. I have to confess, I'm feeling somewhat jealous of him... What was his name again?"

"Dorothea..." Ingrid looked at the other woman without amusement.

"Hmhm, I had to try!" She clapped her hands and sighed, taking stock of the work she still had to do. "Well, Ingrid, this was fun and I am excited to do it again. That dance of yours truly does feel like a performance someone should be paying for. Take it from a former performer! Now, however, the performance I've been tasked with giving is a cleaning of the stables, and I've already used up half the time I allotted to it. Mind giving me a hand?"

Ingrid agreed immediately, tucking the Boom Box away with a last, longing glance. She had no reservations at all about helping a friend do a chore that was second nature, but there was a part of her that wanted to ask if they could do it with the music playing. "Dorothea..."

The woman had already put her boots back on and grabbed a broom, looking better suited for the task she'd come to do. She peeked back curiously.

Ingrid swallowed the question that had been on her mind and leaned into the responsibility. "This Box is a secret. I'm not supposed to show this to anyone outside of the Blue Lions. I'm putting a lot of trust into you, counting on you to protect it."

Dorothea laughed at this. "More like you conscripted me into it, wouldn't you say? Anyway, your secret is safe with me." Her smile grew a little tighter as she swept the barn clean. "I know I don't have the best reputation around some of the more snootier parts of school, but I'm no flighty gossip. If I say I'm good for it, I am."

The blonde raised an eyebrow as she finished untying the lance she'd worked so hard to string up earlier that morning. "I don't listen to rumors of that sort, and I'm not judging you. I am, however, placing quite a lot of trust in you, so I'd ask you to appreciate that."

That response brought a brighter smile to Dorothea's lips. "I certainly do! Thanks, Ingrid."

The two women went about their work busily after that. Ingrid was a natural at stablework, and the two were done in less than half the time Dorothea had planned... Of course, since they'd already burned half the time she'd planned, that left them finishing right on time. As a result, Ingrid wasted no time retrieving the box, bundling it up, and making haste towards the mess hall. Her schedule and her grumbling stomach both required her to eat breakfast promptly.

Dorothea watched her go. She was preparing to put away her cleaning tools before something caught her eye... Something she'd noticed earlier and forgotten about, after all of the distractions. Curiously, she called out to stop her friend. "Ingrid! I've got one more question that just came back to me when I saw you cutting a dashing figure out of here... Are you changing up your image? Are you sure you aren't trying to catch a man's eye?"

Ingrid groaned impatiently. "I told you, the dance isn't about that-"

"Setting aside the dance for a moment. Those leggings are new, aren't they?"

Ingrid looked puzzled, then stopped and stared at her own legs. "Are they...? No, these are the same ones I always wear, picked out of the same place as usual. Now that I look at it, these ones are a bit thin, aren't they? I must have worn them out practicing earlier..."

Dorothea laughed again. "Ah, Ingrid... What a thing to say! Well, I'm sure you don't think twice about what you put on in the morning. Promise you'll fill your head with a little more attention to what you wear and a little less on what you'll eat for breakfast, hm?"

"Yes, well, my head is hardly full enough of breakfast for my tastes," Ingrid cut off the conversation, flushing at the teasing. "Good day, Dorothea."

The songstress continued giggling as she watched the other woman storm off. When she spoke again, it was to no one but herself and the stables. "To think, she'd try to convince a woman like me that leggings of an entirely different material were those usual workhorses of hers, messed up from exercise. I know a lady on the hunt when I see one, Ingrid... I just hope that mysterious man of yours is worth it."