You decide that it's time to keep your promise to Ichigo. After all, you have no idea when or even if you'll see him again after today. Before you begin, however, you allow the boy a chance to get some food into his system, taking the opportunity to finish cleaning your own plate and let your meal settle a bit.
To call what follows "training" is perhaps a bit generous. Ideally, you'd be giving this lesson in a quiet training hall after both you and your student were fed, watered, well-rested, and fully acquainted with one another, not in a crowded, noisy cafeteria while suffering from battle fatigue within an hour of your first meeting. There's nothing for it, though; you must work with what you have.
You begin by describing the nature of ki - the combination of physical, mental, and spiritual energies that make up all of who and what a person is. It is life and will and soul, blended together in a synergistic whole that can potentially be both tangible and powerful. Every living non-demonic being has it, though as with all other traits, it is present in different measures and flavors. Some people need decades of intense training to muster so much as a faint, invisible aura of presence; others pick up new techniques almost literally as soon as they see them used. As a rule, ki is best used to enhance existing aspects of one's being, or make otherwise ordinary actions... more than they were. You can make a punch hit harder, empower it to affect things that would normally ignore pure physical force, or even alter your striking range, throwing a punch that hits the other guy from twenty feet away. In a way, that's what ki blasts are - punching across space, taking the need to run up to the other guy out of the equation. Theoretically, you could even punch across time, but that way lies headaches like math, history, violation of causality, and ticked-off orangutangs. Or so Lu-sensei mumbled once; you've never been entirely sure if you heard him right.
Anyway, the first step in using ki is learning how to recognize it within your body. That's usually done one of three ways. The most common method is meditation. It's slow, taking most people years to get to the point of that faint whirl of aura, but it's also completely safe, and has a lot of additional benefits, mostly relating to organizing one's mind and exercising patience and good judgement (which tend to go hand-in-hand). The second method is to have a teacher who already knows how to use ki "wake up" the student's aura, which typically involves scaring the poor unsuspecting disciple half to death at every opportunity, and a great deal of brutal sparring. The third method is to fight a strong, ki-using enemy without suffering crippling injury or death in the process - though the closer you come to actually getting killed, the more strongly your ki reacts to try and save you. This is the quickest method, assuming of course that one doesn't die horribly.
You're not terribly surprised when Ichigo asks for pointers on meditation. You provide them - noting Tatsuki unashamedly listening in - but you also spend a fraction of your remaining ki to create a small orb of spiritual power, which you pass over for him to examine and get an idea of what ki feels like. You end up creating several more for the rest of the family, and Cordelia musters a few of her own, though they're smaller and less bright than yours, and maintaining them is visibly taxing on her.
"Everybody's ki is different," you explain, as Ichigo compares the spheres in his hands, weighing them like a living scale. "But there are certain commonalities."
"I think I see what you mean," Tatsuki says, staring down at the lights in her hands.
"This one is like a warm metal ball," Masaki says, raising an orb of your aura. Then she raises Cordy's. "This one is cooler, softer, and a bit... thorny. Sorry, dear," she apologies to Cordelia, "but that's the best word I can come up with."
"Don't apologize for telling the truth, Miss Masaki," Cordelia says in a tone made shorter than usual by the effort of controlling so much of her ki at range. "I know I don't."
"Which is part of where the thorns come from," you note.
Cordelia merely shrugs at that.
"I'm not seeing any difference," Ichigo grumbles in frustration. You're not surprised. An aura as large as his would muffle a lot of external sensations, and the bindings can't be helping.
"Don't worry about it too much," you tell him. "This is one of those things where some people just have a natural advantage."
"Yeah, but-" He glances at Kahlua, who is juggling the ki-orbs you provided for her and the Kurosaki twins, to the younger girls' giggly amusement.
"Like I said, natural advantage. Not to mention years of previous training."
"Almost from the day I could walk," Kahlua confirms.
"Notice, though, how Kahlua hasn't made a ball of her own," you add. "I'm guessing that means she has a natural disadvantage in the area of external manifestations."
The blonde frowns at you.
That's about as much progress as you're able to make before several of the tournament officials appear, bringing with them a small box with a hand-sized opening in the top. Taking up a position near a whiteboard pre-placed at the front of the cafeteria, they request that the finalists come up for a random draw, to determine the line-up for tomorrow's matches. You, Cordelia, and Tatsuki leave the table and join a small crowd of what turns out to be twenty-four other competitors. It's an interesting group: ten of the fighters are girls, including Fan Girl, Invisible Girl, and the latter's brunette friend; and three of the fighters have unusual features that suggest non-human lineage.
The draw proceeds swiftly, and soon the final brackets have been written on the whiteboard for all the room to see:
In the first match, Kurokami Medaka (that's Fan Girl) will be fighting an extremely pretty boy named Nathan Jones, after which the boy with the simple-yet-effective style, Mitsurugi Heishiro, will take on Fan Girl's blond friend, Hitoyoshi Zenkichi. A small, regal blonde by the name of Altria Drake is up against a large, unkempt boy who apparently answers to the name "Berserker," and two almost identically-dressed boys named Sabin and Vargas will fight next. Invisible Girl's name turns out to be Ayane - and just Ayane - and her opponent is a boy called Kagekaze Tenma, who has a most unfortunate nose. Ayane's friend, Kasumi - also no last name - will fight Cordelia, and then you will be up against a Western boy called William Marsh; he is about your size, with muddy-brown hair, a slightly greenish complexion, and a face that seems built for leering. A girl with literally black skin, white hair, and red eyes called Amae will be fighting a boy named Connor Hanrahan - Cordelia gives him a startled look, and whispers to you that he has to be the brother of the part-Brachen she fought. Then a Japanese girl named Taki - seriously, what is with all these people with no family names? - will face a girl with red hair and eyes named Morgiana. A small, bald boy who wears an orange gi like the disqualified Monkey Boy's, has a series of curious dots on his forehead, and seems to lack a nose will then square off against the wild-haired Chinese boy you saw muster a point-blank energy burst; their names are Krillin and Liu Kang, respectively, and they seem to know each other, trading a high-five when their match is confirmed. Tatsuki will then fight a dark-haired, wine-eyed girl called Tifa Lockhart, and the last match of the first round will be between an obviously non-human boy called Gorn - who wears a mask of perpetual stoic distaste and a bright jewel on his forehead - and a Japanese boy who gives only the name Lee, and has golden eyes.
Interesting lineup.
With the matches determined, the officials formally announce the conclusion of the Under Tens Division Preliminaries, and the beginning of the Under Fourteens Division Preliminaries. When you return to your table, you learn that the Kurosaki family will not be staying to watch the next set of matches, having an afternoon outing planned; that said, Ichigo has asked his parents if you could come along, and they don't seem to mind the notion of making room for a few more. Kahlua has "no particular plans," but you suspect she intends to follow you as long as she can get away with, if not even longer; Cordelia, by contrast, clearly has something in mind for the rest of her afternoon, and those plans just as clearly do not involve the smiling blonde. There is still no sign of Lu-sensei. And speaking for yourself, you could use a chance to rest and recover your strength for tomorrow's matches. Although Briar can heal you and Cordelia back to full physical strength and even replenish your ki, your magic is down to the dregs; you estimate that even a good night's sleep will only restore your power to about fifty percent of maximum, but if you throw in an afternoon and evening's worth of intensive meditation, you could bring that up to eighty percent or better.