"Ow! You didn't have to hit me that hard!" Cris said as she sat on the dojo floor, rubbing her shoulder where Raph had just nailed her.
"Your the one who wanted me to hit you. So I hit you." He looked down at her. "I thought you said you knew how to fight?"
"I do! I'm just a little rusty." She replied.
"A little? I heard you squeaking all the way over here."
"Oh shut up!"
"What's the matter? Truth hurt?"
Leo just shook his head at the display as he swung a practice stick at my left side, my non dominant hand.
I tried to bring my asp up to block but was way to slow and he got me in the side. "Son of a bitch!" I exclaimed as I dropped my asp, clutching my side.
It had been about two weeks since Leo woke up. Raph had since given him a detailed report on our bumbling rescue effort. This morning he had politely told me it had been put off long enough. "You want to help, you are going to train." Were his exact words actually. His posture didn't leave any room for arguments, standing there with his arms crossed and a whole new, no nonsense, look on his face. Raph, standing next to him, had looked at Cris. "That goes for you too, firecracker."
I knew Leo the lover, brother, leader, fighter, protecter and father figure. Now I'm meeting Leo the trainer and he was an asshole.
"Again." He said stepping back to let me pick up my asp. He was concentrating on my left side, they had made me two asps and he was damn sure going to make sure I could use them both, at the same time. I was right handed which meant he was focusing on my left side. Once I was set he came at me again this time I got the asp up in time but it spun out of my hand when the stick hit. I growled in frustration.
"Again." He said once again stepping back. We had been dong this awhile now, well over an hour and for someone who was not in the best physical shape I was really having a hard time. I was getting tired, frustrated and if he said 'Again' one more time I was gonna slap him, well try to anyway. But still he pushed me on, refusing to end the lesson. Raph was pushing Cris just as hard.
On the other side of the dojo Cris once again hit the mat. "Too slow." Raph told her. "Get up and do it again."
"How many times are we going to do this?" She asked him, anger creeping into her voice as she got up.
"Until you get it right." He snapped, then swung at her again and once again she hit the mat.
There was no doubt about it they were hard trainers. They didn't pull their punches and they had no qualms about telling you your weakness, and they would use your anger against you. I had finally lost my patience and was able to block the stick as it came in but I hit it harder than I should have. My arm swung out wider than I had intended and Leo's stick came right back in and this time I also found myself on the mat.
"Get up." Raph snapped at Cris as she was also sprawled out on the mat again.
"Fuck you." She gasped, trying to get the air back into her lungs. She fell hard enough to knock the wind out of her.
"Maybe later. Now get up." He watched her intently as she struggled to get to her feet. "What's the matter? A simple block to hard for you to remember?"
"Oh shut the fuck up." Cris growled at him.
"Why don't you come over her and make me." He replied. "If you can." He shot his arm out and hers came up in a block, he then brought in another swing and this one too was blocked. His kick however knocked her back to the mats.
Leo had by then nailed me in the ribs again. "God damn it..." I moaned as I rolled on the mat, holding my rib cage. Yup he wasn't going to hold back. He wasn't going to pound me full force but he was definitely going to make me work. I would either learn, or get hit. I decided I wanted to learn as I was really tired of getting hit. I picked myself up off of the floor with a determined growl and again picked up my asps.
"Again." He narrowed his eyes at me as I set myself. He came at me in a rush and I blocked the swing, and the next. He then brought his other arm in and I blocked that one as well. The fourth one I couldn't block however and I braced myself for the impact, but he pulled his stick up short. I stood there trembling from exhaustion, my breathing coming in tired gasps, with the stick just inches from my side. "Enough." He said calmly pulling the stick back. I collapsed to the floor, my body unable to take anymore.
"Holy shit..." Cris said. I looked up to see her and Raph watching us.
"She's as quick to learn as you are, cupcake." Raph said to her.
"If you would have blinked you would have missed it." Mikey said admirably from the wall where he and Donnie were leaning, watching.
"On both of them." Donnie agreed. "They still have a very long way to go though." He looked at me as I sat gasping for air on the mat. "A very long way."
Leo had knelt down next to me, once again the caring lover. "Are you alright?"
"No... but I'll live." I looked up at him slightly confused. "Are we done?"
He gave me that half smile of his. "For today. You learned your lesson, you managed to block my hit and kept me from hitting you."
"That's all I had to do was block one stupid little hit?" I asked him in disbelief.
"If it was so easy, then why did it take you so long?" He asked simply.
"Because you a friggin master ninja! How do you expect me to-" Then it dawned on me. I had blocked his strike. A strike that he wasn't holding back on, plus a few more. And I was tired and pushed beyond my limit when I did it.
"Exactly." He said with a smile as he saw the lights go off in my head. "That was the point. To push you as far as you could go and more. If you can block that on your last legs then the next time it will be easier." He helped me up then addressed both of us. "Never underestimate what your body can do, it has more stored inside than you realize. You just need to learn to get past that barrier that you can't when you think you can't and you will find out that you in fact can."
"Whoa, that was so deep it confused me." Mikey said.
Donnie looked at him. "If your tired, hit harder." Was the simple translation.
"Got it."
Leo turned to Donnie. "I'll hand them over to you now. Make sure we didn't bust them up to bad."
Donnie pushed himself off of the wall. "Come on you two. Let's got get you checked out, before your so stiff and sore you won't be able to move."
We passed inspection but we had bruises on us. If we ever had it in our heads that they would go easy on us, those bruises reminded us otherwise. Fucking jerks. And if we thought we would get out of training because we looked like plum halfbreeds we were mistaken there as well.
"Move your ass!" Raph snapped at us the next day. Ropes...they had us climbing ropes. I haven't climbed a rope in years. "You think we will be able to carry you all the time?"
"I dunno," I mumbled. "I kinda like it that way."
Cris giggled. "It was kind of nice." I couldn't hold back a giggle of my own.
Suddenly we both quit laughing as a very sharp point made it way onto our bottoms. "I said move. Get up that damn rope." Raph said quietly.
Grumbling to ourselves something along the lines of making Raph eat his own sais we pulled ourselves up. At least they were nice enough to give us ropes with knots tied into them, still didn't mean it was easy. I felt like I was in basic training all over again, with ninja turtles as drill sergeants. We actually made it to the top, about thirty feet or so, when Cris looked down. Then her face went white and so did her knuckles on her hands. She quickly closed her eyes.
Shit, I knew what was happening, her fear of heights had hit her. I looked down at Raph and Leo and they were watching us intently. I sure hoped they knew what they were doing because I wasn't able to get her down, not with out falling myself. But I wasn't going to go back down the rope and leave her there either. They just stood down there and watched us. What the hell? Weren't they going to get her down? They were the ones who pushed us up here.
Well fuck it, if they wouldn't help her, I would. "Cris, look at me." She opened her eyes and kept them glued to my face. "You can do this." She was still frozen on that rope. "Do you really want, Raph to come up here and get you? He'd never let you live that down." That got through, I saw something flash in her eyes and she slowly made her way back down. I looked down real quick and saw that they were still standing there but Raph had moved under her, a slight look of worry in his eyes.
By the time we got about half way down my arms were starting to tremble, but I wasn't going to leave her until we were both at the bottom. Leo's eyes narrowed and he moved under me well, at least they were willing to catch us instead of letting us splat all over the mats. I can honestly say I was furious with them by the time I got down. "Why the hell didn't you go get her! You know how she feels about heights!"
"Two reasons." Leo said calmly. "First, exactly how would us going to get her make her over come that fear? Second, you went up as a team and you come down as a team." Well that simple explanation just shot my pissy boat out of the water. "We expect the same here as we would out there, if you can't look out after one another in a calm setting then that leads to trouble when it gets hectic."
"But you already know we would do that." I said.
"Yes, I do. But it never hurts to reinforce it. Any chance you get to practice it makes the whole bond that much stronger. The stronger we are as a team the better chance we stand." Again plain, simple logic. But one that had to be pointed out to me, there was a lot more to this than I had originally thought. I was so lost in thought of the simplicity of it that I almost didn't hear Leo say. "Now, let's continue where we left off yesterday."
Cris and I just groaned. This was going to be a long day...