Chapter 16 – Father and Son
Sarah, Chrono, Nanoha, and Sarah were the first ones to get there besides Lee's Uncle Kousei. They had teleported there to get good seats for Sora and Lee's mom Mary. They went inside to find that the students were still there. They were helping with the preparation of the arena floor. Their uncle was super reinforcing it with strong steel (though how he prepared it in time was anyone's guess). The students looked puzzled as to why but they did what their master told them to just the same. They were told since it was still before they usually went home that they could stay and watch in hopes that they could learn something if they could actually see anything. They were not family members and none of them were anything but normal but they could still be inspired. Everyone else got there within the next half an hour and another 10 minutes and they were all seated. It took about an hour for the place to be set up and the fighters still hadn't arrived yet. Lee, John and Sora arrived 5 minutes before the fight, Lee having gotten caught up in getting more information about Ki out of them, finding it amazing. Sora headed for the stands and Lee and John headed for the floor.
It started with intense but normal speed combat. By normal it meant normal SHUNPO speed that was still blindingly fast. They matched off against each other blow for blow. Lee then did a rapid-fire jab attach called KOTOTSU. It was blindingly fast but weak. It made all twenty hits in a matter of seconds; about a quarter of them hit but seamed ineffective. They were really light hits. Next came his dad with an attack that Lee had never seen before and was completely unprepared for. John was a good 15 feet away, but he slashed down at the ground and to Lee's shock, something very transparent seemed to slide off the sword. Lee initially thought it must be magic, but that couldn't have been possible, and besides he could tell that it was something else entirely, but he didn't have any time to think on it as to his complete surprise, he felt himself get hit, just as if he had just been hit hard with a stick in the stomach, except there was a slight sort of unexplainable burning sensation. His father smiled, "Like my EZUNA. Here, for your education. Another application of Ki, you can use it to reinforce and control the force affecting something. In this case, I reinforce my sword and control the force coming off of it, as well as a bit of reinforcement on the air, and with a strong swing, this creates a vacuum, which in turn creates a kind of flying blade with the air. It is quite nice because I can attack from a distance." Lee ran it through his head and tried to find a way to counter it. He was also throughout the entire battle trying to think about this Ki thing his father had described to him earlier and how he could use it, as he thought it would prove vital to beat his father. If nothing else, he at least had seemingly found the secret to his father's super human skills.
Now that he knew what it was, he noticed that he could feel it somewhat too. His father was launching another EZUNA at him. This one seemed to travel through the ground so he dodged with a jump. This was a bad move because it left him defenseless in midair. His father tried to launch another EZUNA through the air this time. Lee decided to try and please the crowd. That was actually the reason they were going slower than usual, to be flashy and get the crowd excited.
Lee didn't know what to do, so he decided to throw caution to the wind do the last thing anyone expected. He surprised everyone as he pulled his sword back as if for a wide swing and for a brief moment, he focused very hard, trying to put the Ki he thought he felt within him into the blade of his sword, remembering his father's explanation just moments ago. He could sort of feel a trickle of something going from his hand and into his sword, and suddenly got an idea of how this technique worked. With immense focus, he slashed his sword hard, willing the power he had gathered in it to fly forward to his aid. To his, and more then that everyone else's surprise, what Lee produced was not his father's near imperceptible vacuum slash, but a much more significant flying blade, so powerful that it was sucking the air near it away, almost making it visible as a distortion in the air, and to Lee and John, it even appeared to be glowing faintly with what was undoubtedly Lee's Ki. This attack was clearly more powerful than the much weaker version his dad made, blowing through it like nothing. His dad, surprised at this, barely had time to react. Not knowing the power, he decided to dodge.
This ended up being a good decision due to the fact that to everyone's surprise, when it hit the edge of the arena, it cleanly sliced through the arena floor cutting off the steel-edged corner to make a small sloping side as if it had been warm butter, proceeding to make a large gash in the floor below. Everyone looked surprised at this, but Lee most of all. John looked at Lee with amazement. He had never seen someone with so much latent, or now not so latent Ki at his age. It was one thing to be able to sense and feel Ki within the body, for those came with experience and time naturally, but to be able to harness it like that, especially outside the body required one to not only learn to control it, but to build up enough raw Ki within the body to be able to have the excess needed to use it in any external manner, which generally took years, but Lee was clearly gifted with a high amount of it naturally. It was ridiculous, and more than that it was as strong as John at his current level, which could be potentially hazardous. John, "How about we stop using the EZUNA, I don't want to destroy more of 's property or my hide for that matter." Lee, who hadn't expected to even make something remotely as well as his dad's agreed out of fear of his own and others safety.
They continued their battle, which escalated quickly. The crowd was roaring with excitement. They kept speeding up; their speed was evenly matched. They fought for almost fifteen minutes. Then Lee decided he had given the crowd enough of a show and it was time to get things started. Though he never had tried it before, the theory seemed simple enough, and he had been able to do the EZUNA so how different could this really be, and so he tried to focus his Ki into his feet. His dad was coming for a KUZAITO or power thrust and slash combo. It is actually one move that utilizes the speed and power of a thrust with the flexibility and freedom of movement of a slash to create a powerful one hit attack in a saw like motion. Lee waited for his father to get in close and then he vanished. The crowd and his dad were in shock. Just then Lee delivered a downward swing to his fathers shoulder that made a nice connection. His father jumped back and realized what his son had just done. Without even practicing once, Lee had not only perfectly copied his EZUNA but from only a small description had copied the ZAE SHUNPO technique as well. This was dangerous for John as Lee had potentially more Ki then he did currently which gave him the potential to be faster than him if he didn't act quick. His father then used ZAE SHUNPO and caught up to him. They decided to try and go for the good fight and started to attack each other with their best techniques. Lee surprised his dad again with his seemingly god given talent for copying and attacked him with his own KUZAITO twice in succession. His father decided to follow suit and attacked Lee with KOTOTSU. They repeated this trade of attacks going back and forth repeatedly.
John suddenly called for a time out. Lee, "What is this about?" He asked but he had a good idea. John, "Lets stop beating around the bush and go all out." Lee, "I thought we were going all out." John, "How can you do that without taking off your weights first." Lee in a casual voice, "Oh yeah, I forgot I was wearing weights." Lee and his dad took off any weights that they still had on. In the fight with Sora, they took them off at the start but now they were doing it on a different level taking off both preliminary sets and the second, much heavier sets that Lee hadn't taken off yet. He was curious on how much he had really improved. They got back into the arena after the crowd stopped being in shock after watching the people moving as fast as lightning take off accumulatively 20 kilos a piece. Nanoha seemed to almost faint at the sheer thought of carrying around an extra 20 kilos by choice. In fact, even Chrono and Sakura were having a hard time believing their eyes. Lee and his dad decided to not use ZAE SHUNPO for the rest of the match. It would have been dangerous. There is only so much a body can handle at once and the dramatic change may have torn up their bodies. At least that's what John had said.
John made the first move, speeding at Lee at an insane speed. It seemed to be even faster than his ZAE SHUNPO a minute earlier. Lee knew he was in for it but to his surprise, when his dad tried to swing and he dodged by circling him, he went so fast that he ended up running straight past him and losing his balance. His father looked a bit surprised. Lee got up and tried running across the arena to his dad. He then just realized how much the weights were holding him back. "Surprised Lee," his dad smiled, "I will let you in on a little secret. It is not just the weight of the weights that the training equipment was doing to slow you down. They were placed on those spots for a reason. They cover up the area where the muscle is most active and forces it to try and not move much. This means that your movement from you muscles itself without the weight was being cut in half. The weight is just for muscle growth but the weights themselves are also like restraints. They keep the muscles compact. Therefore when you took the first set off, you gained another half of that muscles power put due to there being two weights in each spot, you only gained the a quarter of the restriction of your muscle back. Then you got the bigger one off and gained another 25 percent. Now add to the fact that you have two legs and you become exactly 100% faster from muscle restriction alone. Now add the fact you got the extra weight removed and you actually increase you speed by 200%. That is 4 times the increase over the 50% increase you had originally. A real shocker isn't it." Lee looked amazed at what his father had trained him into without him even knowing.
It took Lee a few tries to get the hang of it but he eventually gained complete control over his speed again. He was clearly faster than he was a few minutes ago while using ZAE SHUNPO. It was back to an all you can take and more high speed bout of father vs. son. The two combatants were starting to tire out. They were also going too fast to be seen by the audience but Lee had a suspicion that he could go a little faster if he concentrated. He tried and to both fighters surprise, Lee seemed to almost double his pace again. His father was getting worried now. He wasn't sure if he could keep up anymore. He decided to try and go all out now. He too was able to speed up to almost match but not quite achieve Lee's speed. John had to admit to himself that his speed training had worked almost too well for his sons. They both seemed to be faster than him now. He almost felt like an old man except that he was still faster than anyone outside the arena at the time. Lee then did a quick slashing combo he had developed during training. His father saw it coming but had no time to dodge. He instead countered with a lightning fast thrust to side slash combo that knocked Lee off balance causing him to retreat a few yards backward.
Lee looked into his dad's eyes and they both knew without words what had to be done if one of them was to win. They both went to opposite sides of the arena. They both then faced each other and held their swords up. They aligned the hilt to be even with their face and put their other hand on the tip of the blade. Next they both bent their legs. The left foot back and diagonal from the upper diagonal right foot, both facing straight forward. Then they took the first step, then the second step, both slowly to build up momentum. Then the third step and then they vanished. They both entered zero time. Their initial thrusts collided at the points and then they went, inside zero time, into a risk it all battle of slashes. Their swords clashed inside the Zero time battle as they tried to make a connection. Both knew the first one to hit would win due to the exhaustion they had both suffered from for half the battle. Lee made a swing for his dad, which he dodged and his father did the same with similar results. Then, his father did a strong downward slash straight to the top of his head. Lee was defenseless against it. He thought his father was going to accidentally kill him. His father looked at it and instantly tried to pull it back but couldn't for some reason. Probably due to the fact that he had no more power left in him because he poured it all into this attack. Then, very briefly, a small dark golden barrier appeared right in front of Lee's face. It pushed the attack just a bit to the side towards his shoulder. Lee was in shock and didn't realize what happened next. They both reappeared at opposite sides of the arena from where they started. To the crowd's surprise, when they looked at the combatants, they saw that both had a single slash in the exact opposite place. Lee had it going down on the left. John, his dad, had his going up on the right dangerously close to his heart but a little ways off. John, "Just a bit more." He dropped his sword that broke into tiny splinters on contact with the floor. Lee replied in a tired weary voice, " 'just a bit more' my ass." And with that Lee fainted backwards revealing that he had innumerable slashes on his chest. His sword crumbled into dust as it dropped. His father looked around to measure the damage. There was a scorched crack leading to the middle from where they had both started meeting in the middle where there was a crater from the sheer power of the blows that they took in Zero Time. John went over to his son and carried him all the way back to the infirmary.
The infirmary had been moved to the spare room in the back of the training dojo where they had just fought. Lee woke up and looked at the time. It was 2 in the morning. The match had started at what he thought was 9 so he thought he had been out for 4 hours. Just then the nurse came in and said, "Don't worry, it's fast. You've only been unconscious for about 20 minutes." Lee felt better at this. He didn't want to believe that his father would hurt him too badly. He had done worse in training before. It seemed his dad was resting in the bed next to him. Lee then realized that all of his weights were back on and seemed to be heavier ones. His dad got up from the bed. John, "Good match. You were close; I'll give you that. I'd say that you're almost as strong as Sora but not quite, but definitely the faster. You got some damn good speed." Lee, "Why do I have heavier weights on?" John, "To help your muscles relax. As your muscles are still not used to all the extra weight being lifted like mine are, they couldn't relax and kept stiffening up which isn't good. The heavier weights are to help them readjust to having weights on them. Being heavier ones is just because yours seemed to have been damaged in the fight so I am lending you mine for now because you need them more than I do." At that point, John rolled up his leaves and leggings to show what appeared to be a third, and even a fourth weight band set that he must have been wearing during the fight. Lee came to the realization that as strong as his father had been in the match, it could have very well only been the tip of the iceberg when it came to his true strength. Just then, everyone from Sakura to his own mother came rushing in. They all started asking him if he was okay and what happened and other stuff.
About a half an hour later, they left for the end of the reunion party at the mansion. Though the tournament was more than triple as long as it usually was due to the amount of times they had to repair the ring, it was already 11 at night when the end of reunion party started. No one had eaten dinner yet so they all dug in non-the less. Everyone went over to Lee and congratulated him. Then they all looked over to the mini stage where John was being given the solid gold 24-inch trophy. Then Lee went up for the runner up prize. It was a check for 100,000 yen (around $1000 in American money). He thanked his uncle for it and started thinking about what he would spend it on. They partied until about 1 in the morning and then they all went home. Sakura's and Chrono's parents were a little worried due to their children's and foreign exchange students lateness but they were alright. Nanoha apparently had recorded the entire tournament using raging hearts visual playback so that Lance could watch. He had after all stayed home to keep an eye on the potential Saren Stone appearance. He watched in amazement as she tried to explain what happened as best she could. In the end, they decided that these sword people were just not normal and stopped thinking about it. Lance who understood the original logic of Lee's swordsmanship was now at as much of a loss as Nanoha. Lee arrived home a few minutes after his friends and headed straight for his room. He jumped onto his bead and fell straight asleep.
Authors Note:
So yeah, anyone who thought that Lee had a chance to win this fight clearly hasn't been paying attention. John won, AND he held back. By how much, I'll let you speculate, but know that whatever you're imagining, it's by so much more. John is a certified badass, plain and simple. In addition, the concept of Ki is expanded upon in this chapter. Ki isn't just use for reinforcing the body or allowing for super human physical feats, it can be used externally too, so look forward to that to be explored more in the future.
