Ch. 29: Training (2)

"Alright. I know that I've been training you in swordcraft, but we're not going to be using our swords today, alright. We're training the basics, today." Rosy decided. Adrian had his Whiteblood sword strapped to his waist, just like Rosy's sword was strapped to hers, but Rosy'd determined that Adrian's swordsmanship had problems at a level deeper than his handling of the sword itself. 

Rosy's martial arts roots ran far deeper than Adrian's. As the princess of the Rose vampire clan, she'd needed to be strong, but with her father being a heartless bastard, her value as a child had been based entirely on her use as a pawn, rather than her bloodline itself. Fortunately, Rosy was a one-in-a-million talent, even among Royal Vampires. By the age of five, she'd mastered dozens of different styles of fighting, from judo, to taekwondo, to capoeira, etc. The girl's latent talent had absolutely blown her mother's mind, sparking her father's greed.

As a result, she was introduced to even rarer styles of fighting. Centaur spear techniques. Gryphon evasive techniques, and lastly, Dracon Martial arts, taught to her by Doma Drake himself. Finally, she'd fused the techniques together into her own special style, one that didn't have any waste at all. After ten years of using her style in battles across the country, Rosy could confidently say that when it came to fighting, she didn't have an equal. 

Her style was broken up into two parts. Aggressive Stance, and Passive Stance. She mainly used the passive stance in battles, since it was unrivaled in the fiend of stamina and motion conservation. Meanwhile, the aggressive stance had a lot of powerful movements, and was meant for shorter battles with more powerful, trained opponents.

She hadn't needed to use the aggressive stance in quite a while, and she didn't have much of a desire to teach it to Adrian. She'd been prepared to use it when they'd gotten caught in Bastion's trap, but she'd ultimately made the wiser decision to surrender instead.

"Adrian, you've got way too much excess in your movements. Sure, they make it more difficult to see through your motions, but in almost every circumstance, you're going to want to use smaller, more powerful movements, like this." Rosy demonstrated a punch. Honestly, Adrian didn't really see the difference between it and a normal punch, though.

"I don't get it."

"Alright, try blocking it, then." Adrian had been trained in hand-to-hand combat. Blocking a punch was nothing to him, so he agreed. Rosy punched him, and he tried to sweep it aside, but he'd misjudged her arm's position. Instead of hitting him in the chest like he'd thought, his arm pushed hers up into his face. Luckily, she'd held back and hadn't broken his nose, but she had made her point. 

"You moved your arm during the punch?" He realized. She'd lifted it up a few degrees when he began his blocking maneuver, using his own motion against him. It was an incredible display of reaction time and control.

"I also noticed that you put too much effort into blocking me. Try it again." Rosy made him attempt to block her punches two times after that, in an effort to show him where his weaknesses were. The first time, she'd used the momentum of his block to grab his arm and twist it, sweeping his leg in the process. The second time, she'd collapsed her arm into the block, using the momentum from it to elbow him in the head so hard that he almost lost consciousness. 

"I get it! Minimum motion, right?!" Adrian asked, rubbing his temple, which was exploding with pain from Rosy's elbow.

"Exactly. Master your motions and you'll never find a block that you can't smash through. Or a blow that you can't deal with." Rosy explained, "That's the basic idea behind my martial arts. Read your opponent and use their motions to create an opening to strike. Nothing's stronger." She told him proudly. 

Rosy'd never tried to teach anyone her special martial arts before. She'd never trusted anyone enough to dare bother, after all, but to Adrian, she was a great teacher. Unfortunately, no matter how skilled a teacher she was, it wasn't something that Adrian could master in a day. Rosy's martial arts relied on absolute mastery of every tiny motion that your body could make. Even not including the advanced things, like tiny subconscious muscle twitches, or those movements that the body couldn't do without a bit of pain, it was a nearly impossible level of control.

No matter what Adrian did, his suspicion that he'd never match up to Rosy no matter how much he trained was starting to feel more than correct as she showed him some of her movements. Every time that he believed that he was making progress, she'd test him and find a hole in his motions. Everything he did lead to failure.

He tried to punch, and Rosy somehow stole his momentum, kicking him in the stomach hard enough to make him vomit. He tried a dozen different ways of blocking, and each one caused him to receive some sort of blow, even if she was pulling her punches. Even if he somehow managed to stop whatever attack Rosy transitioned to, it'd only end up adding to the power of her next blow. 

Eventually, they started sparring, with Adrian totally on the offensive, Rosy promising not to retaliate at all. Punch, into a kick, then he'd show an opening, wasting too much motion. Kick, into a punch, then he'd lose a bit of power. Rinse and repeat. Nothing even made the girl break a sweat.

Finally, they'd been out there for two hours, and their time for morning exercise was up. Adrian felt like he'd become a little stronger, but the girl in front of him only seemed more and more unfathomable. Their connection was stronger than ever before.

...

"AAGHHH!!!!!" Jasper'd been screaming all night, but his pained scream this morning was his loudest one yet. Stuck in her room, Sydney could only listen to her servant's updates, fretting.