Hands on Training

The training Kaito had gone through this morning was light compared to what he was going to have to deal with in the foreseeable future. He was still fresh in this and Sagumi could not push him too hard, not yet at least. He had the framework necessary to begin his training in Tae Kwon Do and they had begun building his foundation for strong legs and an equally strong core. They would serve him well in times to come but for now he needed some rest, the trials and their training would tire out trained adults and was probably even worse for children. As Koneko came in to view, Sagumi had to work hard to stifle the strange surge of both excitement and amusement that Koneko was still wearing the training garb he had assigned her. He had figured even she would have given up on such attire after their first use but she was nothing if not dedicated. It was admirable, if a bit sad. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it...or how depraved you were, the outfit made the training he had planned for today...awkward. In a good way, of course.

After he let Kaito go rest, he beckoned Koneko to come with him. Grabbing one of the many torches off the wall, the master of martial arts would take her in the opposite direction that he took Kaito. Instead, they would be going deeper into the mountain. They would walk for a good few minutes, deeper and deeper into the chasm. Sagumi would finally stop in a long, dark hallway before gently placing the flaming stick into its holder on the wall before turning back to his scantily clad disciple, a strange mixture of arousal and bemusement on his face as he began explaining what they were going to do.

“The body has five senses, tactile, olfactory, auditory, optical and gustatory. Some consider the sensing of energy a sixth sense but it is still mostly tactile. Now, out of these five senses, the one that provides the shortest requisite time for the brain to process is tactile and as you know...speed is important. We will focus on that today.”

Sagumi would quickly shoot his right arm forward, angled upward at a forty degree angle and aimed for her shoulder. It wasn’t too fast that she could not react but it was going to force her to block instead of simply dodging it. They were going to do a wing chun exercise known as the sticky hands, she was going to learn to rely on all of her senses and if she couldn’t, well, Sagumi had no reservations about hitting her. Despite the over-sexualization Sagumi had no qualms about sticking her with, first and foremost she was his student and a student of the martial arts doesn’t have a gender.

Sagumi has had many disciples over the many, many years that he had been alive. He'd approached some using his normal personality, he's raised some by being jovial and approachable, and he had trained some by being a harsh, grueling taskmaster. Sagumi had trained many, many great warriors and the repetitive use of the word "many" is absolutely necessary in this context. The best of those great warriors that his training repetoire had produced however were the ones he did not go lightly on, the ones he did not coddle. Over time he found that coddling produced mentally weak warriors and mentally weak, cavalier warriors were dead ones. Even if Koneko was not at risk of becoming so, Sagumi had decided how he was going to train Kaito and Koneko and her reaction to his opening attack only convinced him of his decision. He had told her to focus on all of her senses, he told her what he wanted her to do. If she was smart, she would have understood the importance of her simply touching his arm, she would understand the necessity of contact, she would understand the lesson he was trying to teach. She did not have an appropriately intelligent approach to the situation, she was instead swatting his arm away, as if he were joking. She would quickly learn that this was not the case, this was not the game Sagumi made everything else. This was serious and it would be in her best interest to start treating it as such.

Koneko, unfortunately, was going to be quickly acquainted with the fact that Sagumi’s chauvinistic groping and general antics had no place when they were training. This was serious and Sagumi did not know how to teach in any way that was not rough. As she blocked the overhead, hammer-esque blow, she was showcasing that what Sagumi was saying was not getting through to her. He had hoped she would begin to grasp the basics of what he was saying, but he could tell by the way she moved that she view it more as an irritated attempt at sparring more than it really was. He would have to use a dramatic example to hammer his point home it would seem. As soon as she pushed her arm forward, to brush his arm away, Sagumi would spring in to action at a speed that Koneko, quite honestly, was not able to follow yet. As soon as his arm was being brushed away, all of his muscles coiled in a deliberate, organized fashion as his body rotated, generating centrifugal force as his hips torque and his knee rose up to his chest. As his body would finish the small spin, his right leg would fire forward into her stomach, he did not put his full force into her, if he had he would have put his foot through her gut, but it was strong enough to catapult her ten meters down the hallway. She wouldn’t be seriously injured, but she would have the wind completely knocked out of her and her body rocked by the sudden impact. Sagumi readied himself back in a relaxed, standing stance before letting out another soft sigh and pacing his way toward the woman.

“Did you feel that? Not the kick of course, I’m sure you felt that and you’ll probably feel it tomorrow morning too but that’s not important right now. What was important is what your arm felt when it brushed mine away. You should have felt quite a lot, if you knew what you were doing. Whenever you move, your whole body moves. There are always tremors through the body and in the most trained of martial artists, practitioners use their whole body as one, one well oiled machine. The symmetry and unison give them strength, they also allow a particularly observant individual to use that against them.”

Sagumi stopped a few inches away, glaring down at the girl. The warmth he usually exuded? Gone. The carefree and jovial and ultimately snarky demeanor? No where to be seen. This Sagumi was not the one she knew, this was not the friend she would have outside these sessions. He was her teacher and he was going to hone her into a weapon, he was going to do exactly what she asked of him and more. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how masochistic she might be, she was not going to come out of it unscathed. There was no play time, she would not brush his arm away in such a cavalier manner again and she would not do anything outside of his explicit order unless she wanted far more pain than Sagumi had just administered.

“Now get up, and attack me, do try to hit me, I’d rather not have to put your head through the wall due to laziness.”

The dark hallway was lit by the singular torch and Sagumi had not positioned it in a way to accommodate for needing to send Koneko flying down the hall. Sagumi walked with deliberate steps toward the fallen woman, the light flickering ostensibly through the hall and framed Sagumi’s eyes, the rest of his face obscured in the darkness as his piercing gaze broke down Koneko’s recoiled form. It wasn’t a matter of not noticing that she was moving slower, it was a matter of not caring. It was irrelevant to the lesson he was trying to teach and even if it weren’t, strength did not allow for excuses. Strength did not apologize, there was no reason or justification for weakness. There were always going to be some reason why you’re not at one hundred percent. Poor conditions, lack of light, indigestion, the list goes on for miles. If she let something silly like a little extra weight affect her so, then she was going to die, that simple. Perhaps she was too sheltered to appreciate the reality of that, Sagumi did not know. He was forced to kill many people, constantly, his whole life involved wanton slaughter for the sake of following orders and the simple truth of “kill or be killed” was a constant reminder that excuses for why someone can or cannot do something would typically land you on the latter, “or be killed” half of that truth. Before Sagumi could open his mouth to parrot this truth to the fallen woman however, something he was not remotely prepared for happened.

A small, well smaller than Koneko and himself at least, he supposed it was average height for most people, woman seemed to appear out of thin air and the look on Sagumi’s face noticeably shifted from severe and intense back to his more accustomed to jovial curiosity. The man’s eyes trailed down to the finger that was angrily jabbing into his toned and firm chest before his eyes slowly shifted back to the woman’s face. There was something different about it, something animalistic. She was saying something but Sagumi didn’t really pay attention, or care. Based on how angrily she was jabbing his chest with her finger he assumed it was some kind of scolding. The man’s eyes shifted toward the sword at Koneko’s feet. That was the only logical reason for this sudden incursion, nothing else made any logical sense short of the temple complex getting a very attractive ghost to haunt it and while that would be rather awesome, it seemed rather unlikely as well. No, the logical conclusion was that it was in some way connected to Koneko’s Zanpakutō, which in and of itself was somewhat weird. Out of all the shinigami that he had met and/or killed, none of them had their weapon manifest in such a way. He’d seen their weapons fire energy blasts, extend to dramatic distances, transform into other weapons, he even saw one transform into a giant lizard and try to eat him. He had never seen one manifest itself as a woman and he had never seen one do so without any visible changes to the Zanpakutō itself. There was only one more important test to perform on this phenomenon. As the potential Zanpakutō spirit/haunting ghost prostitute began repeatedly and in rapid fire poking Sagumi’s chest, he returned the favor. With a very quick, yet gentle motion, Sagumi threw two palm strikes directly at the girl’s chest and gripping, pushing her back a few inches and holding her at arm’s length and far enough away that she could no longer poke his chest.

“Yes, feels like a tangible woman, fascinating. We’ll come back to these...I mean you, later.” Whether or not she went through with her poofing or not, Sagumi quickly blew past the girl, leaving her most likely stunned behind him and moving toward Koneko, his facial expression slowly shifting back to the more severe and intense variety as he glared down at her, surprisingly intimidating for such a slender man. “If you cannot fight through your hindrances, you shed them, or you die. This isn’t soul society, this isn’t luxury, you’re not protected. You either stand on your own now or you’ll die, one of the myriad of creatures out there will kill you or I might be too disgusted and do it myself. Welcome to the real world, now get up and follow my commands or go home. Now attack me.”