8 Chapter 15: Hit It

Taitsuke wakes up to a light tapping on his bedroom window. He tries to ignore it the best he can. 'Damn birds.' The sun doen't seem to be up yet. The noise is persistent. When he looks at his alarm, it is only 4:30 am. He gets up groggily and opens his blinds to see a pair of red eyes staring gleefully at him. Sleepily, he closes the blinds and goes back to bed.

"HEY! What'd you do that for!" The light tapping turns into a loud knocking. "Wake up! It's time to train!" The word train triggers the muscle-brained part of Taitsuke. He jumps out of his bed and excitedly opens the window.

"Training? Are you going to teach me?!"

Yua steps in as if she's walking through the front door. She has a faint smell of alcohol, but is totally alert. "Of course! Did I not mention it yesterday?" Taitsuke shakes his head. "No. You just said that you were going out drinking and then left."

She opens the door of his bedroom and waltzes to the fridge. "Hm.. I see. Well in any case, let's go. I'm starting to feel tired, so we gotta get a move on before I hit the sack." She pulls out what are now expired curry-pans and replaces them with a variety of health foods. Handing him a green liquid drink and some weird grounded paste she says, "Here. Get ready and eat this. It's going to be a long day for you."

With the night still hanging overhead, they head toward the west part of the island. Barely finishing the gross paste, Taitsuke is doing his best in sipping the questionably green liquid. "What the heck is in this thing?"

Yua doesn't bother to explain fully. "Just a little something to help with training." His stomach churns for a bit, but other than that, nothing else feels different. They reach a flattened area encircled by nine huge boulders. Yua stretches out her arms and proudly shows it off. "This used to be my training area back in the day! For the next few days, you will be spending most of your time here!" She walks to the middle and motions him to follow. "Now! Before anything else, let me check what your internal progression looks like." Taitsuke walks over with a bit of doubt. 'I know that she is a Chibushi, but will she even be able to help me? I mean I've had practically three years with no progress.'

She places her hands on his back and checks his Chi flow. "Hahaha... Wow." She then puts her hands over his heart and yells, "Release!"

Taitsuke's body flings backward 20 meters backward and stopped by a dead, hollowed out tree. "OW!! What the hell?" He staggers back up and runs over with full force her, but before his flying kick could reach her face, she vanishes and then reappears on the top of one of the boulders. Standing back in the middle of the circle he roars, "Why the hell you do that for?!"

Stretching her neck nonchalantly, she points back at the poor tree. "Now go circulate your Chi back through that dead tree."

Bitterly, he retreats and does what she says. He places his palms onto the tree and starts to circulate his Chi. 'It's smooth!'

"You probably wondering what I did to you. Well.. in a sense I just took out some blockages in your chi circulation. Now, it should feel like you're running on smooth cement instead of swimming upstream."

He can't help but smile in amazement. He's never felt circulating his Chi be this easy.

For the next few hours, the two don't move from their positions; Yua sleeps soundly on top of a boulder and Taitsuke trains diligently underneath the dead tree. The sun begins to warm the chilly morning air when a rustling bush alerts the two of them. Taitsuke quickly prepares a knife from his sleeves and throws them in the noises direction when Yua appears in the nick of time. With the knife between her fingers she turns to Taitsuke to say, "Just continue what you were doing."

A few feet away from Yua, Mai holds up her hands high after seeing the knife in her hand. "Um. Hello."

Tossing the knife back to Taitsuke, Yua rushes to lift her up in the air. "My goodness! Are you Mai-chan? It's been so long! do you remember me?"

Frightened by the strange woman treating her like a two year old, Mai lets out a creeped-out, "No."

Yua sets her back down and pouts. "Oh.. Well, I'm Yua. I used to eat at 'baa-chan's restaurant all the time. I knew you when you were in diapers!"

'She calls her 'baa-chan.. weird. Just like me.' Mai steps cautiously walks backwards. "Sorry. I don't. It's hard to remember every single person my 'baa-chan becomes close to."

Yua nods her head as if she understands. "I see.. That's too bad.. Anyways, would you like to join us?"

Along with Yua odd friendliness, she solidly denies the offer when she sees Taitsuke Ryoko in the corner of her eye. "No. I'll go somewhere else to train.."

"Oh! Perfect! That's exactly what we're doing. Right now, I'm teaching Taitsuke how to use a specialized Wood-element exercise."

Trying hard to excuse herself, "I'm actually a pure Earth element.. So.."

"Don't worry! I use the earth element as well."

Mai looks at her in skepticism. "You just said that you use wood-element.. But aren't you a rabbit? Don't you also use the Dark-element."

Yua streches her wrists in excitement. "Yup and yup. But what does that have to do with anything? The world has many surprises. Double, triple, who's to say one can't have quadruple Blessings?" With a flick of her wrist, the nine boulders rise up in the air until they are as high as the trees. Then, with a snap, they float lightly back down to their original positions. "So, would you like to learn?

Mai's eyes as wide as saucers, she responds, "Yes!"

Yua leaves Taitsuke to continue his exercise and takes Mai to the middle of the circle. "So, Mai-chan, show me what you got."

Wanting to impress her, Mai shows her, her best technique. Circulating her Chi to her legs, she moves in a dancing like motion and she creates a Formation, or space marked by her Chi, underneath her feet. After half a minute, Mai finally finishes it and stomps downward. "Release!" The ground between the boulders liquefies and Yua begins to sink.

"Ah. Quick sand. Nice."

Mai frowns in frustration at her reaction. 'Naoki-sensei told me that field-manipulation an impressive technique to have. As a type of Formation technique, it allows one to control the terrain of the battle. Being able to control the terrain usually means to control the flow of the battle. Though it isn't an attack that can directly injure the opponent, it's a very useful skill..'

Yua notices that her lack of enthusiasm offended the girl. "Oh. I'm sorry. I do mean that it is a nice technique that you showed. What else you have?"

Determined to impress Yua, Mai shows all of her best moves, all of which were also formation techniques.

Other than physical enhancements such as an increase in strength or speed, there are many ways one can use their Chi. For example, one can use what is called 'quick release', a burst of 'solidified' elemental energy, or Chi. It can be like a blast of fire or ice, a gust of wind, a generation of electricity. In a sense, they are a quick jab and not a full-powered punch. 'Quick releases' are usually used in close-range combat, but the skill is the foundation of all other elemental skills.

What Mai showed, was the use chi to create formations. By using specific movement, mantras or chants, one can create much stronger and wide spreading attacks, but its downfall is that the time to perform the skill usually takes quite awhile.

For about half an hour, Yua analyzed the girl. 'It seems she sticks to one style...' After showing everything she has, Mai flops to the ground completely out of breath. 'It also seems that because she uses such taxing techniques, she runs out of Chi quickly....' Yua clasps her hands together. "Good job. Now for my analysis." As if she's already recovered her energy, Mai sits up, eager to hear what she has to say. "You have many skills that can be said to be both defensive and offensive. However.. that's it."

Mai winces at her short evaluation. "That's it?"

"Yup. That's it."

A vein forms above her olive-green eyes. "Does that mean I'm good or bad?"

Yua thinks for a bit. "How should I put this.. I guess in a way you have a fatal flaw.. Well anyway, that's enough for now. I think it'd be a good time to do a bit of sparring."

She pulls Taitsuke away from the tree and places him in the middle with the agitated girl. "Mai try fighting with Taitsuke for a bit. And Taitsuke, don't bother trying anything new yet. Just use your normal style." Jumping back outside of the circle, Yua exclaims, "3, 2, 1. Go!"

Without any hesitation, Taitsuke lunges quickly forward, bombarding Mai with an array of kicks and punches. Using her Chi, she dodges each attack and does her best to keep her distance from him. 'He's a bit slow or.. I should say average. If I can recall, he's usually somewhere in the middle during physical evaluations and always dead last in our class rankings... I just need to stop him for a bit and it will be over.'

The distance in between them increases little by little. 'Crap.. She's faster than I thought.. If I can't reach her through hand to hand combat then...'

For the first time, Mai stops dodging. Feeling something was up, Taitsuke jumps high into the air to dodge whatever she was planning. She stomps on the ground then yells "Release!" Beneath him, the earth cracks and turns into a circular pit.

'Dang it. She tricked me.' While still in the air, Taitsuke stretches himself himself backwards and rotates himself away from the pit. Briefly touching the ground, he uses a bit of Chi to spring upwards with his hands before Mai exclaims 'release' again.

'Crap he was quick that time.. but it's no use I already finished my formation. Once he comes back down, he'll just fall into quicksand.' When Taitsuke was bombarding her with attacks earlier, Mai was sure to perform her 'dance' pretending she just dodging.

With the pit being a feint for her real attack, Taitsuke had to be quick. While he's falling, he pulls out two knives from his sleeve and throws them in her direction. She reacts as fast as she can and dodges with the knives missing her face by only two centimeters.

Taitsuke lands in the quick sand and two locks of Mai's sandy hair falls down. "Ah.. Sorry. I didn't mean to-"

Impressed, Yua clasps her hands once more. "Great job! Both of you!"

Mai sulks, "What are you doing? No one has won yet." Yua goes over to retrieve the two knives lodged in a tree.

"What do you mean? I think there was a clear winner." She throws the knives back to Taitsuke and smiles. "Good job winner."

Furious, Mai juts her chin forward. "How? I clearly dodged those throws and he even fell for my trap!"

Yua's eyes turn a bit cold. "You dodged it? I don't think so... Hmm... Taitsuke." Pointing to a peeling target painted on a tree 30 meters away, she orders, "Hit it."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________