"Hmm, the Shigan. What do you know about it so far? You over there." The instructor before us asked with a bored expression on his face.
Before I turned around to observe the student that had been called upon I checked out our new instructor for the Shigan. Contrary to Lockhard, this guy was rather plain and normal looking. He had one of those faces you see once and immediately forget after turning away from the man.
He had a medium height for a human with brown hair and the already mentioned plain face. Of course, now that he was clothed in training uniform you could see the steely muscles underneath, which every member of the Cipher Pol field agents possess after years of training the Rokushiki. But imagine this guy wearing plain baggy clothes. Nobody would notice this guy!
'I guess there is a reason why he specialises in the Shigan. The perfect assassin if there ever was one…' The man's appearance made it abundantly clear to me to not discard the plain looking guys, even in a world as this. Calm waters can be rather deep after all.
The student that had been called upon though stiffened under the instructor's eyes, patiently waiting for the answer to come any second now.
"W-well, err, the Shigan. Ehm, it's kind of like a pistol, just instead of a gun you use your fingers…?" The boy stuttered out, uncomfortable under the attention he received from the whole group gathered in the clearing, consisting of all those still training under Lockhard and Katherine, the kami-e instructor.
"True but a very basic understanding, if can even call it that." Our instructor said while his bored looking face observed the clouds floating in the sky, as if he was seeing something more interesting there than before him. Not that I could blame him really. Must be pretty dull to teach snot-nosed brats a technique's basics over and over again, while you yourself are on a level in the technique the brats can only dream about.
Letting out a sigh our instructor seemingly willed himself to look back to us while gathering his thoughts on how to proceed for a second after which he continued.
"The Shigan is, in its basic form, a rapid movement technique designed to incapacitate your target, be it in the form of killing or crippling. It cannot, however, be used in a nonlethal way. It simply was not designed for a nonlethal purpose. Maybe one of you will discover a few nonlethal properties of the technique over time but that doesn't change the technique's purpose.
In order to produce a decent result in the Shigan you will be trained in three categories. Either you have trained in the Kami-e or the Tekkai already, building a foundation for the Shigan in the form of muscles in your forearms. That is the first category we will be focusing on for now. Strengthening your forearms and fingers further until the have enough strength to endure the force of the second category. The speed.
In order to produce a decent Shigan you obviously need the speed to generate enough force in order to puncture your target. For this we will begin with weights on your arms exclusively. Those will, of course, be increased over time while you will be punching through increasingly thick things that will hamper your movements. Water, sand, mud, etc.
Now, the third category however I will not tell you about. It will be something you all will be taught alone, without your friends and comrades to support you. But that is still far in the future so don't worry about that yet. Now get up and grab yourselves some weights. You can find them over there." The instructor said, pointing over to my right where a small pile of brown leathery things was located.
While we all began to bustle over to grab ourselves said weights I couldn't help myself but go over our instructor's words about the Shigan. The first two exercise categories were pretty obvious in my opinion. Though, the third made me curious and a little apprehensive.
After all, the Tekkai's most important part was the mental component. What if the Shigan had something like that as well? Our instructor had said that the Shigan was, explicitly, designed for lethal purposes and it wouldn't surprise me if they had something rather dark in mind in order to introduce these children to said lethality. Probably also in order to further weed out those that didn't have the fortitude for the line of work we were trained for.
While I grabbed myself a pair of weights, checking them out, Brueno sidled up next to me with a frown covering his face.
"You think we are trained well enough for this?" He asked and I was a little surprised to discover the uncertainty in Brueno's voice, before I had to remind myself the guy was still a child, no matter how tall he was.
"Ye. Lockhard knows what he's doing and I don't think we are bad students. Not by a long shot. Any thoughts on the third training exercise?" I replied while needling him for his thoughts on the whole thing. Some outside input never hurt.
"Hmm, not really. Haven't thought much about it. Maybe a test or something? I mean, why else would they not tell us about it?" His words caused me to hum in contemplation. His idea wasn't far off from my own but I shoved those thoughts to the back of my mind for now as the instructor waved us over to him.
"Alright, everyone got a pair of weights?" The man asked into the circle and after checking each child nodded to himself slightly in satisfaction.
"Now, those weights are designed for your whole arms instead of a specific area, as you may have guessed already. You wear them like a glove for the whole arm while your fingers are still free as that is the part we will be using for impact training.
Mind you, the Shigan isn't exclusively made for your fingers. If you train it hard and long enough you can use your toes or elbows as well, though the later is a lot harder due to being a lot bigger in size than your fingers." The instructor told us while showing us how to put on our training weights.
The weights looked indeed like a glove made of leather, littered with small metal plates that packed quite some weight now that I wore those things. I could already tell that the training would be uncomfortable.
We were then brought before a sandpit and told to kneel inside of it. "In order to harden your fingers enough to withstand the force of the impact we will be starting by punching into the sand with all five of your fingers straight. Like this, watch." The instructor said after which he proceeded to impale the sandbox at his feet with all five of his fingers, again and again, alternating between his left and right hand. After a while he stopped and motioned for us to go ahead.
We did and it didn't take long for the first children to start grunting in pain, their fingers getting bruised and cut up rather quickly while punching into the sand. While Brueno and myself had obviously learned to endure pain instead of evading it we held up better than the other kids. Well, Brueno did. I myself had actually no problems with this exercise. Devilfruit kept myself from being injured. But I had known this would happen beforehand, which was why I, instead of learning to endure the pain of this exercise, focused on increasing the strength of my punches. Pain, after all, was a mechanism of the body in order to warn of danger to your own health. The stronger the pain got the stronger the urge to go softer and slower, in order to keep yourself from harm.
I didn't have this restriction so I hammered away with gusto. I kept going and going until we were told to stop, immediately halting the whimpering and whining around me. I pitied the children around me quit a bit and respected them for pulling through with the exercise. And yet, there was no doubt that a lot of the students would drop out of our class sooner or later.
It was a ruthless way of selection but it was probably for the best. The world showed no mercy to you either so it was better for those with lacking conviction to drop out.
After this exercise we switched over to push-ups. Though, our push-ups were a little different from the usual ones. Besides receiving further weights for our chest-area we were also told to slowly walk upwards with our feet and hands still on the ground. This had the mean effect of increasing the weight our shoulders and arms had to push upwards until we would someday do push-ups in a handstand, no doubt. But for now, we were only doing the walking upwards. It was hard enough, I tell you.
In the following hours we alternated between the exercises of punching the sand and push-ups until we were reduced to a sweating pile of exhaustion.
Tomorrow we would train in the Tekkai and Kami-e again while the day afterwards would be the Shigan. There is no rest for the wicked after all. Not long after wolfing down my dinner I found myself back in my room, with my legs folded under me, soon disappearing in the calmness of meditation, until it was time to go to bed.
With a sigh I covered myself with my sheets and after a few minutes of just enjoying the comforts of my bed I slowly drifted away into dreamland, and soon was all but gone.