Chapter 2: Daily training
Kiara tried to block the incoming blow, but it was already to late and she was thrown on the floor of the dojo.
"Again", resounded the stern voice her teacher.
"You know, i would appreciate it if you`d actually try to teach me more than just how to get back up again after having taken a beating", the girl complained.
The response she got to that little quip made her wish she would have kept her mouth shut.
"Oho?", her teacher hummed amused. "If you`ve got enough energy left to be disrespectful, i reckon we can do at least 3 or 4 more rounds." A devious smile found it`s way on his face as he uttered that sentence.
Kiara grunted in pain as she got back up on her feet and took fighting stance once more. She had bruises all over her body, mostly on her arms and legs but also a nasty fresh one on her back that really started to hurt. There were no broken bones as far as she could tell, which was a miracle, really. In the first few training sessions she had with her teacher she had carried away 1 broken arm and at least half dozen fractures all spread out over her entire body. They did not stop training until she had broken the other arm, which rendered her incapable of wielding a sword. She then was delivered to the 4th division of the gotei 13 where she spent a wonderful week in heaven to recover, only to get thrown right back into the hell that was the 11th division. There, she was once more exposed to the "training sessions" that her teacher gave her every day.
Said training consisted of him throwing her a wooden sword, yelling at her "defend yourself" and then attacking her full force.
She had gotten better at it, at least a lot better than she was when they started training, but still far from good enough to not walk or move in a funny way because of some very painful injuries after calling it a day.
As soon as she had taken her position, her teacher took his own and another sparring fight began. They started slowly, circling each other and looking for a weakness in the stances of their opponents. After a few moments her teacher took a step towards her and attacked with a fast swing from above, which she tried to block and redirect to the floor by holding her wooden blade in an aslant angle. At first it seemed to have worked but then her opponent grabbed her right wrist with one hand and reversed the grip on his sword so that he could ram the handle into her stomach.
She however had seen that coming and moved her left hand on the handle of his sword in order to prevent it from making painful contact with her digestive region. She then launched herself up in mid-air using the strong grip of his left arm and strength in his right arm, with which he was holding the sword, as support to get her feet in front of his face and deliver a fatal hit to his head.
Unfortunately for her, he reacted quicker than she could anticipate his actions and moved his head out of the way before she could land a hit. With him now practically holding her above the ground, she was at his non-existent mercy once again. She didn`t have to wait for long for a new wave of pain to coarse through her body that was caused by her teacher who slammed her back first on the floor.
"Look kiddo, i`d teach you more, but as it stands now, you wouldn`t even survive in a fight against an unarmed opponent, much less an armed one. And so long as that`s the case", he continued smiling as he let go of her arms and allowed her to take a few moments to catch her breath again "we will continue this training until you can actually deal some decent damage to me. Then i`ll teach you more."
She would have loved to throw something back in his smug face, but she was still busy trying to fill her lungs with air again.
Finally, she was able to cough a few times and then take a deep breath. Slowly she got back up, supporting herself on her practice sword. She was getting really frustrated, since that was pretty much the only thing she had heard since he started training her. Three months ago, she had woken up in the 63th northern district of Rukongai, without any memoryof where she was or how she got there. She was then almost immediately found by the man standing in front of her, Makoto Souken.
He told her her name, explained where she was and how she had gotten there. She was in Soul Society, the world of spirits, which she herself had become. She had died in the human world and had been sent to this world by a Shinigami. She had no family here or a place to belong. She would eventually gain one, but she`d be on her own for a long time before that happened. The only option she had athis point had been the Makoto Souken`s offer, which was that he would train her to become a Shinigami, a peacekeeper between the worlds. He had warned her from the start that it would be painful, brutal and difficult and that she would be taken into the 11th division, the most violent of them all, in which he held the 4th seat but this…
"We have been at this for 3 months, day in and day out. Ever since you found me we`ve been doing nothing else, when you were around and when you weren`t I had to sparr with other people who were stronger than me, who possessed an equally non-existent amount of mercy as you do. But there is no real progress, it`s always the same pattern. We start, i get beat up, you tell me to get better and the whole cicle repeats itself." She knew she`d get herself into trouble if she kept talking, but after all this time she had to get at least something out of her teacher.
"Everyone else in this place is just plainly swordfighting and nothing else and I have been doing exactly that. Nobody who fought me up until now wanted anything else, but you somehow do, even if you don`t tell me so. I know I agreed to let you teach me how to fight, but could you at least give me a little hint as to what you expect from me? "
He looked at her for a very long amount of time, without uttering a word and then closed his eyes as several emotions were scurrying over his face. After a while he let out a defeated sigh and answered her question much more calm than she had expected.
"Yeah, I guess I might have been a little unfair", he stated bluntly. "Sit down, i`ll explain it to you."
She hesitated, as she was a little perplex that her teacher would just change his mind like that.
"Come again?", she asked confused.
"I said sit down, i`ll explain it to you", he answered.
"This is a trap isn`t?"
"No it`s not."
"Sure it`s not."
"I`m telling you, i`m serious."
"I kind of get the feeling that you aren`t-"
"I am, now sit down before I change my mind."
On that statement she dropped her caution and simply sat down opposite from him. She put her sword to her left side and waited for him to talk.
"Alright", he began, "I think I need to get a little more precise when I say unfair. What I meant was that what I am expecting of you was something you could never have showed me. I wanted to test you with these fights, in order to see if you displayed any kind of Reiryoku or Reiatsu control."
"Any kind of what now?", she asked, confused again.
"Let me finish and you won`t have to ask these questions", he said in a slightly annoyed tone that told her to not interrupt him again.
She smiled sheepishly and put on an apologetic tone. "Sorry", she said.
He continued with his explanation. "Reiryoku means the power within, so to speak the power or potential that is inside your body. Reiatsu or spiritual pressure is the physical manifestion of that power, which looks something like this." He closed his eyes for a second and suddenly started glowing and was surrounded by a red cloud of energy. It disappeared just as fast again, leaving Souke to look normal again. "I`m pretty sure you`ve seen some form of it already, over at the 4th division, when they were healing you."
She thought about it and quickly remembered how she had witnessed that on the numerous occasions that she had "visited" the 4th divisons hospital.
"Ah yeah, there was always this greenish energy surrounding their hands when they were accelerating my healing process. I always got the impression that was a healing only thing since i`ve never seen something like that here in the 11th division."
"Yeah well", Souken continued "that`s because what they are using is something called kido, a kind of spellcasting that requires precise reiatsu control and the closest anyone in this division has ever come to, save for me and everyone above me, is just releasing their spiritual pressure in an uncontrolled and undirected manner, without giving it any form or purpose at all. The only thing that does for them is to either paralyze their opponent or strengthen their own physical abilities. Plus, the 11th division ain`t really comprised of the type of people that use kido or any non-physical based combat methods, since pretty much anyone around here is a fighting addicted adrenaline junkie, but that`s something you already figured out on your own, didn`t you?"
Oh yes, that she had. Ever since word got around that she was trained by the divisions 4th seat, she got constantly challenged, just for the hell of it. Being tutored by a higher up made somewhat of a celebrity and a target at the same time. When she could she mostly evaded those challenges, which gave her something of a bad reputation, but she didn`t care about that, since every time she gets one of those challenges it`s when her training is already over and at that point, she really doesn`t want to fight anymore than she already had to. However, the fights she did take on were either a tie or, rarely, a win for her. In that regard the training she did with Souken had some merit.
"My initial goal was to get you to think and try if you could use that power too. Since they are spirits just like yourself, I thought you`d make a connection between the dots."
"How would i? No one here uses that and all you ever "thaught" me was self defense."
"Yeah I noticed from your little outbreak just now", he remarked, slightly cynical.
"What I was trying to do was to get you to control your Reiryoku and by extension your Reiatsu, but I think it`s easier if I actually taught you that myself. The learning effect won`t be as great, though I reckon at this point you don`t give a damn."
She couldn`t hold back the snark on that last sentence.
"I`ll give you the basics", he continued, "and the rest is up to you."
"Wait, I thought you were gonna teach me?"
He smiled deviously and stood up. "And now I just told you what i`m going to teach you. Learning effect is still the best when you do it yourself. All i`m providing now is… a little jumpstart." He put his training sword back into it`s holder at the dojo`s walls and non-challantly made his way to the exit.
"But that`s gonna have to wait. For at least a week, since i`m gonna be busy."
Ah, so he`s leaving again, she thought to herself. But 3rd seat Yumichika Ayasegawa isn`t here. And neither is lieutenant Madarame. Captain Kenpachi (luckily) wouldn`t even bother with me since i`m way too weak. That only means… Oh no no no no.
"Can`t you take me with you this time?" she asked slightly unnerved.
He looked back at her and from the apologetic smile on his face she could already tell what the answer was gonna be.
"Sorry kid, this kind of work is way out of your league. Better take the upper exit", he advised her.
He stopped in front of the sliding door and looked back at her.
"As in it right now. You know when i`m gonna open these doors , those people out there won`t hesitate."
Oh, she knew vividly. Although she had only been in the 11th division for 6 months, she had lived trough that onslaught time and time again. Even Souken pityed her, which is why he built a secret exit into the roof of the division dojo where he gave her private lessons. He waited until she had put the training sword back, picked up her real one and climbed up the walls and reached the special mounts they had placed there, until he opened the sliding door. By the time he had stepped out and left the door open she had already exited on the roof and kept herself close to it until the first men had already stormed into the dojo, looking for a fight. She smiled to herself,got on her feet and started running on the rooftops. Given her peculiar situation as personal apprentice of 4th seat, Souken had prepared several hideouts for her on the entire division area. Only a few people knew where those were including everyone above Souken himself.
Makoto Souken was a strange person. He was sarcastic, a Little vicious, sometimes mean-spirited, and a little sadistic, but at the same time the first person who stood up for her, immediately took her under his wing without any questions asked and sometimes he was even unexpectedly kind and caring. Except when it came to fighting. When it came to that he was relentless. But if nothing else, he was the closest to a real family she had.
He was also fairly new in the 11th division, only 2 months longer than she has was, but they had already accepted him as one of their own since he had gone toe to toe with Yumichika ans Ikkaku at the same time ofr a while until they overwhelmed him.
He had previously been in the 6th division under Captain Kuchiki Byakuya. That however was all she knew as she never really got a chance to get out of the 11th, since she either had to fight, do chores, or was lazing around on the orders of her captain like the rest of the division/squad.
Since Souken wasn`t around, she`d ask for some time outside of the squad to finally get a chance to learn more about Soul Society. I`d be a nice change for once in a while to see something new.
Author`s notes:
Told you it`d get longer.
If you`ve got your own opinion, PM me, or, better yet, Review the Story. I`ll always welcome consturctive criticism.