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Sorry that this one is developing slowly... I decided to put more into kit's fights than the first time, so he won't be fighting every week, especially since he has to have some time to learn, but I promise shortly he will actually fight and not just train, but in the mean time CHARACTER DEVELOPEMENT.", "description_bbcode_parsed": "Once again I have another piece of the adventure from Kit's end. Sorry that this one is developing slowly... I decided to put more into kit's fights than the first time, so he won't be fighting every week, especially since he has to have some time to learn, but I promise shortly he will actually fight and not just train, but in the mean time CHARACTER DEVELOPEMENT.", "writing": "All morning Kit thought about the battle network. He understood the concept, but he really wasn’t sure how he’d do. All he kept thinking was that so many people were going to see him humiliate himself. He didn’t mind the idea of fighting, or even losing, but if it was live for people to see, people all over the world, how could he deal with that?\n\nThen it came to him that maybe he wouldn’t be able to fight, he wanted to, but he wasn’t sure would be able to fight. Doubts began to pile up in his head, even if he did manage to fight, who’s to say that it’d do him any good. What if he did his best, and then he just went out and embarrassed everybody who’d helped him this far.\n\nHe was working with Daisuke hitting the gloves for the first time that night, now that he could throw a proper punch they were training him in the different types of punches, and they were also working on dodging and guarding himself. Daisuke was telling him something but he was so distracted he didn’t know what it was. Then a second later he felt a hard sting on the side of his head where Daisuke had used the mit to hit him in the side of the head, more like a slap than a real punch but it brought his mind to the surface.\n\n“What’s... on your mind?” Hitomi asked him shyly.\n\n“I’m just thinking about things,” he tried to cover it up as he lifted his hands into a guard and prepared himself to go back to his training.\n\n“Like what?” Daisuke asked as he put his hands down.\n\n“It’s about the league,” Kit told them at first.\n\n“What’s bothering you?” Hitomi pressed him.\n\n“I’m ok with the league, I really am, but about them recording my fights, allowing people watch them whenever. What if I can’t do it? What if I get into a fight and I choke? What if I get stuck against a guy so much better than me that I can’t fight back? All this pressure, if I go out there and humiliate myself that would be bad, but I’ll also be embarrassing everybody who is devoting so much of their time to help me,” Kit told them finally.\n\n“You’re afraid? That’s good, if you ever go into a fight and you’re not afraid, then you’re in trouble. You’ve been thinking about this quite a bit, but I’ll tell you, there are two different theories on this sort of thing. Fear is a negative emotion based on not having control. Some people fight embracing that and any other negative emotion they have, trying to turn it into a sort of fuel, Kisara and I fight this way, wearing our emotions on our sleeves,” Daisuke started to explain.\n\n“So you’re saying that I can use this in a fight?” Kit asked hopefully.\n\n“Not necessarily, there is a second theory too. Renka and I fight in the exact opposite manner. We distance ourselves from our negative emotions, try to contain them, because we are incapable of channeling them like Kisara and Daisuke are... when our emotions come out they control us... not the other way around. Things like fear, anger, doubt, all of these things can paralyze us if we’re not careful with them,” Hitomi explained.\n\n“No offense, but I’d like to be more like Daisuke then,” Kit told her after a moment.\n\n“It doesn’t work that way kid. You don’t get to choose which side you work on. You work the way you work and that’s how it is. Judging by the fact that you’re thinking about it so much, and you outright said it, you work by containing and separating yourself from your negative emotions,” Daisuke commented.\n\n“How do I do that?” Kit asked Hitomi specifically.\n\n“You reaffirm yourself in your training, you reach inside yourself and you take courage. If you’re afraid that you won’t be able to strike back, then you won’t. Distance yourself from your fear, if you’re afraid that you won’t be able to strike back, then you don’t strike back, you strike first, and don’t forget to breathe,” Hitomi told him.\n\n“It sounds cliche, but it’s true. If you lose, you lose, there’s no shame in that,” Daisuke added on.\n\nKit had always heard that words were just words, but for the first time he began to understand that it wasn’t so. He could feel his doubts and worries lifting off his shoulders as he took a deep breath. “Ok... back to training,” Kit said as he focused himself. For a while he took the stance just like they had showed him; orthodox boxing form, shoulders and hips slightly rotated to his right, left hand and foot forward, using the right to block. Kit kept using the punch they’d told him was a cross, he used his guard hand to strike more than his outside hand.\n\n“Hmm... I wonder,” Hitomi said aloud.\n\n“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Daisuke asked her.\n\n“What? What’s going on?” Kit asked them.\n\n“Switch your stance up, put your right foot and hand in front of your left, and try that,” Daisuke instructed him. “Hitomi you watch for the results.”\n\nKit continued to practice with Daisuke for a few minutes before the master stopped him. “He didn’t get better... but... he didn’t get worse either. No noticeable drop-off,” she told him.\n\n“Now that is weird, but that will be useful for him,” Daisuke remarked.\n\n“What’s going on?” Kit asked them for a second.\n\n“We just switched you from an orthodox to a southpaw boxing style. It’s basically the reverse, the effect is that it changes the way you have to fight. Usually a person is better in one stance than the other, but in this case you’re about the same in both, meaning that your performance doesn’t drop-off when you switch. The catch behind this is that while you don’t perform any better, switching stances may allow you to get better, in that you can fight the same way you usually do while your opponent has to remember to switch things us. Usually only left-handed fighters use southpaw, though there are some exceptions. What makes this even more useful for you is that we can train you to switch stances in the middle of a fight, which means that you can change a fight on people, you fight in orthodox stance for a while and then out of nowhere the southpaw stance comes in and suddenly the game is changed, everything they’ve learned about you thus far is reversed... it’s very difficult psychologically to suddenly try to... unlearn everything you know about a fighter,” Hitomi tried to explain it to him in detail.\n\n“There’s a risk involved with changing forms though too. Against certain opponents you’ll have a hard time because if you change to southpaw your most powerful weapons are suddenly more exposed, and thus easier to neutralize,” Daisuke told him after a moment.\n\n“We could solve that problem,” Hitomi suggested after a moment to think.\n\n“You and I are on the same page there... give him a broken wing and force him to adapt,” Daisuke told her thoughtfully.\n\n“Wait... are you talking about breaking my arm?” Kit asked them suddenly.\n\n“Oh yeah... I suppose we could do that, but instead we have this sling that I rigged up that keeps your arm strapped to your body, so you can’t move it... it forces you to gain strength and dexterity in your left hand because most tools in modern society are made for right-handed people,” Daisuke told him. “Hitomi created it, but  I call it ‘the broken wing’,” he added as an explanation.\n\n“We’ll start with it tomorrow morning... after your morning run, you will wear it at all times unless specifically designated by one of us until the day the league starts for now,” Hitomi said strictly as they began.\n\n“Alright for this set I want you to give me a jab, a straight, two jabs, an uppercut, and a right hook from the orthodox stance,” Daisuke instructed him as he stood ready with the mits.\n\n“Er... how do I do those again?” Kit asked after a moment.\n\n“Geez kid, we just went over this. Alright, for a jab you take your front hand and go straight in with it. Usually it’s used to gage your opponent’s defenses, check your reach, however it can be damaging if it manages to slip past their guard. The straight is pretty much the same as a jab with your back hand, you don’t use it as often because it requires your inner defense to be down momentarily, you can cover for your outer guard but not your inner guard... at least not yet,” Daisuke began to explain to him. “Also traditional fighters and boxers tend to use their dominant hand in back, so when they do throw a straight it’s usually a clobbering blow,” he added.\n\n“For a hook you have two options, depending on the range. A close-mid range hook you’ll turn your shoulders and hips leading into it, keep your shoulders square, and the idea is to get in behind your opponents guard on that side and hit them on the side of the jaw, your elbow will trail your fist so you can get as much power as possible behind the hit,” Hitomi coached him. “For the long range hook it’ll look a lot like a jab or a straight, really the only difference is as you’re going in you’ll try to just slip around their guard, instead of having the elbow trailing it’ll be slightly bent so you just get past the guard,” she explained the subtle differences.\n\n“The uppercut is basically the mid-range hook coming from below, when you go up to deliver it you drop one shoulder so they make a slant to try and get every bit of momentum that you can behind it, again the goal is to slip beneath your opponent’s guard and put it right on their chin. These are the four basic punches of boxing, we’ll get into some more advanced stuff later, but for now you’ll work on how to use these in combinations,” Daisuke finished the lesson for him. ~\n\nAcross the floor Kisara was taking her second break of the night, usually she only took three, but tonight they were barely even two hours into training and she was stopping again. She sat down on the weight bench as she took a bottle of water and watched across the area to where Kit was training. He was so focused on his lesson, his brow furrowed as he tried to absorb what Daisuke was telling him as he hit the mitts. He was only throwing out basic combos as he was instructed by Daisuke, but even like that he looked almost cool. Something weird was going on, she’d tried to talk to him a few times, but every time he was around she got nervous and ended up coming across a little bitchy with him.\n\n“Is everything ok, Kisara?” Renka asked her as she continued hitting away at another heavy bag.\n\n“Yeah... why wouldn’t it be?” she answered back.\n\n“Well, usually you take like three breaks all night, but now you’re on your second break only two hours in. Are you watching Kit?” Renka asked her sister as she stopped training for a moment.\n\n“N-no,” she stuttered it out, and she acted flustered when she said it. Why did she care if her sister knew she was watching him? She felt her face start to burn this weird color of red.\n\n“Huh... you know you’ve been kinda bitchy to him today. He actually thinks you’re upset with him, but I wonder...,” Renka started to say.\n\n“Wonder what?” Kisara asked her eagerly.\n\n“Do you have a crush on Kit?” Her sister just sort of blurted out.\n\n“No... no... no?” Kisara answered her. At first she sounded resolute, then a bit doubtful, and the last one was a question.\n\n“AH KISARA THAT IS SO CUTE! You should find out how he feels... you two would look absolutely adorable together,” Renka squealed as she wrapped her arms around her sister joyfully.\n\n“Keep it down will ya? He’ll hear you if you shout any louder, and it’s not like it’d ever happen,” Kisara hurriedly tried to hush her sister.\n\n“Why not?” Renka asked her after a moment.\n\n“We’re different people, I mean I’m me... what about me is girly? I mean if it were you then it might be possible, but I’m just... not like you,” Kisara  tried to explain it to her.\n\n“What do you mean by all that?” Renka asked her now, she was genuinely confused.\n\n“Well... you like puppies, you wear pink, you’re skin is soft and everywhere we go boys think you’re cute. Me? I like fighting, and most of the time I scare or intimidate the guys around me... there’s nothing feminine about me, and honestly... I don’t want to have to change for somebody else. If he’s going to like me I want him to like me as who I am,” Kisara attempted to go into detail for her sister. “Things are fine as they are... if something happened it would just make things awkward between us... promise me you won’t meddle in things,” she begged her sister.\n\n“If you say so,” Renka said with that strange look on her face. ~\n\nRenka didn’t care what her sister said, she wasn’t going to let things stay the same as they were. For the first time in years Kisara had shown a girly side of herself, Renka was going to help her sister here. Even if she wasn’t very girly, Renka had always thought her sister was really cute, at least when she let down her guard. Kisara would never push things forward on her own, but Renka thought with a little work that things might be able to go pretty smoothly, the trick was going to be getting Kisara to let her guard down around Kit more. Renka had a feeling that now that she was aware of things with Kit that she would put her walls up even more around him, and that was not the way to change things. If Kisara wasn’t going to make things happen on her own, then Renka would just have to meddle. ~\n\n“Alright, now that you know a bit about offense, it’s time we teach you the flip side of the coin. Defense is sometimes tricky to understand, because most of the time it’s reactive, whereas 90% of offense is proactive,” Daisuke explained. While he spoke, Hitomi began to put on a pair of gloves, since it was still early in his training they wore 10 ounce gloves to get him accustomed to fighting. “What we’re going to do first is work on your guard, I want to make sure it’s put together well enough that you can take a few hits, keep your hands moving where you think she’s going to strike, try to block Hitomi with your forearms and elbows, if you use your hands, odds are she’ll just punch through and make you hit yourself in the face,” Daisuke explained it to him as Hitomi took a spot opposite him.\n\nAs Hitomi was punching Daisuke finally saw the first indication of all the bullying over the years... other than his incredible ability to take a punch, he closed his eyes as the blow was incoming. “You gotta keep your eyes open to see where she’s going to hit. If you keep closing your eyes she’s going to land a clean strike and it’ll hurt more than if you block it,” Daisuke tried to coach him. When they came back to it a moment later Kit closed his eyes again.\n\n“I suppose we should take this as a good thing... it means you’re not completely perfect as a student... my master used to tell me no student ever is when I was first learning... I was starting to think he’d lied,” Hitomi said somewhat shyly.\n\n“Alright, I think we should demonstrate this one for him. Watch me carefully, when Hitomi goes to strike I keep my eyes open the whole time, I’ll keep my guard down so you can watch my face,” Daisuke explained as he took a position opposite Hitomi. “I can’t block so try not to hit too hard,” he told her, and then to Kit “It’s important even if you’re going to get hit to keep your eyes open, sometimes you can find a way out of a hit if you just keep your eyes open.”\n\n“I-I know, but it’s hard,” Kit admitted somewhat dejectedly.\n\n“If you’re gunna make it as a fighter you have to get over this sort of thing,” Daisuke told him bluntly.\n\n“Daisuke-sensei, with all do respect, you can’t push him so hard on this. He’s been bullied for years, and instinct has taught him that if he closes his eyes it will be better,” Renka called over to him from across the floor. Hearing her stick up for him had a confusing reaction on Kit, on the one hand he was glad that he meant enough that she would say something, on the other hand it felt sort of disgraceful that she’d had to. He was embarrassed by it.\n\n“Hitomi... conference?” Daisuke asked as he tilted his head away from Kit. The two of them spoke in whispers for a few moments before they seemed to come to a consensus about something. “Kit, come here for a sec,” Daisuke motioned him over after a short trip to the locker room, he was holding something but Kit couldn’t see what. “Let me see your hands,” Daisuke demanded. Hesitating, Kit held his hands up in front of him. There was a strange ratcheting sound and then Daisuke was pulling one arm behind his back with something, then more ratcheting a Daisuke let go, but Kit couldn’t move his hands.\n\n“What... the hell?” Kit asked as he tried to jerk his arms around in front of him, but they were handcuffed behind his back around a pipe that came out of the wall.\n\n“We decided to handle this using a combination of positive and negative reinforcement. we’re going to take turns hitting you while you  can’t guard yourself. For every time you close your eyes, the next hit will be hard, not dangerously so, but still we’ll put a bit of mustard on it. If you keep your eyes open then the next hit will be light,” Hitomi explained as she stood there somewhat shyly.\n\n“Wait, how will you decide the first one?” Kit asked them. Hitomi bopped him in the face pretty solidly, it didn’t make him bleed, but it did hurt.\n\n“Hard,” she told him. “Also, Daisuke keep track, he closed his eyes, even the demonstrations count,” she commanded him. She hit him again, this time considerably lighter. “Soft, the next two are hard, then we’ll start keeping track,” she announced.\n\nThey spent the rest of the pre-dinner session trying to get this drilled into him, by the end he could keep his eyes open a little over 1/3rd of the time. His face was starting to show some discolorations from the beating.\n\n“We better get some ice on your face or it’s going to swell, and then it’ll hurt like hell. Kisara, I’ve got to cook, so how about you get an ice pack for him,” Renka suggested as she started on her way out.\n\n“Uh... ok?” Kisara responded with a bewildered look on her face as she followed her sister out the door. Kit was left alone on the ground floor of the back building, this was the one hour before dinner that he was free to do whatever he wanted. During dinner he had to eat at the big table in the main building, after that he would have to go back to his training for a few hours before tucking Ayano in, and then he would focus on his studies, or if there was no homework he was free to do whatever he wanted. He didn’t really have any idea so he just kinda sat on the bench and waited for Kisara to get back. ~\n\n“What’re you playing at Renka?” Kisara asked her when they were alone on their way to the kitchen.\n\n“Why do I have to be playing at something?” Renka tried to ask innocently, but Kisara knew her too well.\n\n“His face wouldn’t swell up from that small amount of bruising,” Kisara pressed her.\n\n“Oh... that? Well... he doesn’t know that, and... you know... if you get the ice for him you could hold it to his face for him all delicately, and then he’d get all embarrassed because you’re helping him, and he’d go to put his hand up to hold it, and his hand would accidentally trap your hand, so for that brief moment you’d be holding hands, and then he’d get all nervous because he’d realize that you’re showing your embarrassed cute face, and then he’d get a whiff of your scent and he’d realize that he likes that, and you know... one thing leads to another and suddenly he’s getting anxious to see you and after a while he asks you out, and you say yes, and you date nervously for a few months because you’re not sure how the other feels about you, then eventually you realize that you really do love each other, and then one night you decide to go to the next step, and neither of you are sure you’re ready, but then when you get started you realize you are, and then you have a few weeks of awkwardness at realizing the other one saw you naked and neither of you thinks you were very good, and then you get sick and he gets worried and takes you to the doctor, where you’re reminded that you didn’t make preparations, so you go home nervous and then you tell him you’re pregnant and at first he freaks out, but then he gets really happy because it’s with you, and then you to make up, and get married, and have kids, and live happily ever after. Just like a true love story,” Renka swooned. Kisara could almost see the hearts replacing her eyes as she stood there cuddling with her clasped hands... in her mind she could tell Renka was squealing with delight at the imagined situation. That’s when she realized that Renka didn’t always function in reality.\n\nIn Kisara’s mind the whole event was much more awkward, even hearing Renka mention holding hands with him made her blush. She shook her head after a moment when she realized that Renka was dealing in fantasy once again and that things would definitely not go how she’d said. “Renka, I asked you not to meddle in things,” Kisara warned her.\n\n“I’m not meddling in anything... I’m hurrying things along,” Renka answered her.\n\n“There’s nothing to hurry along... nothing is going to happen except you’re going to get my hopes up and when it comes to nothing it’s going to hurt. He’ll end up with some girly girl... most-likely you, and I’m fine with that,” Kisara told her sister in an exasperated tone.\n\n“What if he doesn’t end up with a girl like me... what if he meets a girl who only uses him for her own pleasure, someone who plays with his feelings and then throws him away? Would you be ok with things then?” Renka pressed her.\n\n“I’d probably just go and kick that girl’s ass,” Kisara told her.\n\n“Don’t you see... you could bypass all of that if you just made him fall for you... it’s for his own good that you’re doing this,” Renka told her in her convincing voice... she really believed in what she was saying, and that made Kisara start to believe.\n\n“I don’t know about all this... like I said I’m hardly even a girl,” Kisara tried to wiggle her way out.\n\n“Don’t worry about that... we’ll just have to show him more of your girly side,” Renka said as they reached the kitchen. Renka pulled out one of the ice packs and wrapped it in a towel for her sister. “Now... you hold this up to his face, and don’t let go of it until he puts his hand up to hold it himself... hold it there for a few seconds after. And show him a concerned look, he’ll think you’re absolutely adorable if you show him you’re worried about him, and what boy wouldn’t want an adorable girl worried about them?” Renka instructed Kisara before she pushed her away. Kisara gave her a nervous look back, but Renka gave her two thumbs up to encourage her. Kisara had serious misgivings about this whole plan. The fact is things seldom when as Renka envisioned.\n\n", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "All morning Kit thought about the battle network. He understood the concept, but he really wasn’t sure how he’d do. All he kept thinking was that so many people were going to see him humiliate himself. He didn’t mind the idea of fighting, or even losing, but if it was live for people to see, people all over the world, how could he deal with that?

Then it came to him that maybe he wouldn’t be able to fight, he wanted to, but he wasn’t sure would be able to fight. Doubts began to pile up in his head, even if he did manage to fight, who’s to say that it’d do him any good. What if he did his best, and then he just went out and embarrassed everybody who’d helped him this far.

He was working with Daisuke hitting the gloves for the first time that night, now that he could throw a proper punch they were training him in the different types of punches, and they were also working on dodging and guarding himself. Daisuke was telling him something but he was so distracted he didn’t know what it was. Then a second later he felt a hard sting on the side of his head where Daisuke had used the mit to hit him in the side of the head, more like a slap than a real punch but it brought his mind to the surface.

“What’s... on your mind?” Hitomi asked him shyly.

“I’m just thinking about things,” he tried to cover it up as he lifted his hands into a guard and prepared himself to go back to his training.

“Like what?” Daisuke asked as he put his hands down.

“It’s about the league,” Kit told them at first.

“What’s bothering you?” Hitomi pressed him.

“I’m ok with the league, I really am, but about them recording my fights, allowing people watch them whenever. What if I can’t do it? What if I get into a fight and I choke? What if I get stuck against a guy so much better than me that I can’t fight back? All this pressure, if I go out there and humiliate myself that would be bad, but I’ll also be embarrassing everybody who is devoting so much of their time to help me,” Kit told them finally.

“You’re afraid? That’s good, if you ever go into a fight and you’re not afraid, then you’re in trouble. You’ve been thinking about this quite a bit, but I’ll tell you, there are two different theories on this sort of thing. Fear is a negative emotion based on not having control. Some people fight embracing that and any other negative emotion they have, trying to turn it into a sort of fuel, Kisara and I fight this way, wearing our emotions on our sleeves,” Daisuke started to explain.

“So you’re saying that I can use this in a fight?” Kit asked hopefully.

“Not necessarily, there is a second theory too. Renka and I fight in the exact opposite manner. We distance ourselves from our negative emotions, try to contain them, because we are incapable of channeling them like Kisara and Daisuke are... when our emotions come out they control us... not the other way around. Things like fear, anger, doubt, all of these things can paralyze us if we’re not careful with them,” Hitomi explained.

“No offense, but I’d like to be more like Daisuke then,” Kit told her after a moment.

“It doesn’t work that way kid. You don’t get to choose which side you work on. You work the way you work and that’s how it is. Judging by the fact that you’re thinking about it so much, and you outright said it, you work by containing and separating yourself from your negative emotions,” Daisuke commented.

“How do I do that?” Kit asked Hitomi specifically.

“You reaffirm yourself in your training, you reach inside yourself and you take courage. If you’re afraid that you won’t be able to strike back, then you won’t. Distance yourself from your fear, if you’re afraid that you won’t be able to strike back, then you don’t strike back, you strike first, and don’t forget to breathe,” Hitomi told him.

“It sounds cliche, but it’s true. If you lose, you lose, there’s no shame in that,” Daisuke added on.

Kit had always heard that words were just words, but for the first time he began to understand that it wasn’t so. He could feel his doubts and worries lifting off his shoulders as he took a deep breath. “Ok... back to training,” Kit said as he focused himself. For a while he took the stance just like they had showed him; orthodox boxing form, shoulders and hips slightly rotated to his right, left hand and foot forward, using the right to block. Kit kept using the punch they’d told him was a cross, he used his guard hand to strike more than his outside hand.

“Hmm... I wonder,” Hitomi said aloud.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Daisuke asked her.

“What? What’s going on?” Kit asked them.

“Switch your stance up, put your right foot and hand in front of your left, and try that,” Daisuke instructed him. “Hitomi you watch for the results.”

Kit continued to practice with Daisuke for a few minutes before the master stopped him. “He didn’t get better... but... he didn’t get worse either. No noticeable drop-off,” she told him.

“Now that is weird, but that will be useful for him,” Daisuke remarked.

“What’s going on?” Kit asked them for a second.

“We just switched you from an orthodox to a southpaw boxing style. It’s basically the reverse, the effect is that it changes the way you have to fight. Usually a person is better in one stance than the other, but in this case you’re about the same in both, meaning that your performance doesn’t drop-off when you switch. The catch behind this is that while you don’t perform any better, switching stances may allow you to get better, in that you can fight the same way you usually do while your opponent has to remember to switch things us. Usually only left-handed fighters use southpaw, though there are some exceptions. What makes this even more useful for you is that we can train you to switch stances in the middle of a fight, which means that you can change a fight on people, you fight in orthodox stance for a while and then out of nowhere the southpaw stance comes in and suddenly the game is changed, everything they’ve learned about you thus far is reversed... it’s very difficult psychologically to suddenly try to... unlearn everything you know about a fighter,” Hitomi tried to explain it to him in detail.

“There’s a risk involved with changing forms though too. Against certain opponents you’ll have a hard time because if you change to southpaw your most powerful weapons are suddenly more exposed, and thus easier to neutralize,” Daisuke told him after a moment.

“We could solve that problem,” Hitomi suggested after a moment to think.

“You and I are on the same page there... give him a broken wing and force him to adapt,” Daisuke told her thoughtfully.

“Wait... are you talking about breaking my arm?” Kit asked them suddenly.

“Oh yeah... I suppose we could do that, but instead we have this sling that I rigged up that keeps your arm strapped to your body, so you can’t move it... it forces you to gain strength and dexterity in your left hand because most tools in modern society are made for right-handed people,” Daisuke told him. “Hitomi created it, but  I call it ‘the broken wing’,” he added as an explanation.

“We’ll start with it tomorrow morning... after your morning run, you will wear it at all times unless specifically designated by one of us until the day the league starts for now,” Hitomi said strictly as they began.

“Alright for this set I want you to give me a jab, a straight, two jabs, an uppercut, and a right hook from the orthodox stance,” Daisuke instructed him as he stood ready with the mits.

“Er... how do I do those again?” Kit asked after a moment.

“Geez kid, we just went over this. Alright, for a jab you take your front hand and go straight in with it. Usually it’s used to gage your opponent’s defenses, check your reach, however it can be damaging if it manages to slip past their guard. The straight is pretty much the same as a jab with your back hand, you don’t use it as often because it requires your inner defense to be down momentarily, you can cover for your outer guard but not your inner guard... at least not yet,” Daisuke began to explain to him. “Also traditional fighters and boxers tend to use their dominant hand in back, so when they do throw a straight it’s usually a clobbering blow,” he added.

“For a hook you have two options, depending on the range. A close-mid range hook you’ll turn your shoulders and hips leading into it, keep your shoulders square, and the idea is to get in behind your opponents guard on that side and hit them on the side of the jaw, your elbow will trail your fist so you can get as much power as possible behind the hit,” Hitomi coached him. “For the long range hook it’ll look a lot like a jab or a straight, really the only difference is as you’re going in you’ll try to just slip around their guard, instead of having the elbow trailing it’ll be slightly bent so you just get past the guard,” she explained the subtle differences.

“The uppercut is basically the mid-range hook coming from below, when you go up to deliver it you drop one shoulder so they make a slant to try and get every bit of momentum that you can behind it, again the goal is to slip beneath your opponent’s guard and put it right on their chin. These are the four basic punches of boxing, we’ll get into some more advanced stuff later, but for now you’ll work on how to use these in combinations,” Daisuke finished the lesson for him. ~

Across the floor Kisara was taking her second break of the night, usually she only took three, but tonight they were barely even two hours into training and she was stopping again. She sat down on the weight bench as she took a bottle of water and watched across the area to where Kit was training. He was so focused on his lesson, his brow furrowed as he tried to absorb what Daisuke was telling him as he hit the mitts. He was only throwing out basic combos as he was instructed by Daisuke, but even like that he looked almost cool. Something weird was going on, she’d tried to talk to him a few times, but every time he was around she got nervous and ended up coming across a little bitchy with him.

“Is everything ok, Kisara?” Renka asked her as she continued hitting away at another heavy bag.

“Yeah... why wouldn’t it be?” she answered back.

“Well, usually you take like three breaks all night, but now you’re on your second break only two hours in. Are you watching Kit?” Renka asked her sister as she stopped training for a moment.

“N-no,” she stuttered it out, and she acted flustered when she said it. Why did she care if her sister knew she was watching him? She felt her face start to burn this weird color of red.

“Huh... you know you’ve been kinda bitchy to him today. He actually thinks you’re upset with him, but I wonder...,” Renka started to say.

“Wonder what?” Kisara asked her eagerly.

“Do you have a crush on Kit?” Her sister just sort of blurted out.

“No... no... no?” Kisara answered her. At first she sounded resolute, then a bit doubtful, and the last one was a question.

“AH KISARA THAT IS SO CUTE! You should find out how he feels... you two would look absolutely adorable together,” Renka squealed as she wrapped her arms around her sister joyfully.

“Keep it down will ya? He’ll hear you if you shout any louder, and it’s not like it’d ever happen,” Kisara hurriedly tried to hush her sister.

“Why not?” Renka asked her after a moment.

“We’re different people, I mean I’m me... what about me is girly? I mean if it were you then it might be possible, but I’m just... not like you,” Kisara  tried to explain it to her.

“What do you mean by all that?” Renka asked her now, she was genuinely confused.

“Well... you like puppies, you wear pink, you’re skin is soft and everywhere we go boys think you’re cute. Me? I like fighting, and most of the time I scare or intimidate the guys around me... there’s nothing feminine about me, and honestly... I don’t want to have to change for somebody else. If he’s going to like me I want him to like me as who I am,” Kisara attempted to go into detail for her sister. “Things are fine as they are... if something happened it would just make things awkward between us... promise me you won’t meddle in things,” she begged her sister.

“If you say so,” Renka said with that strange look on her face. ~

Renka didn’t care what her sister said, she wasn’t going to let things stay the same as they were. For the first time in years Kisara had shown a girly side of herself, Renka was going to help her sister here. Even if she wasn’t very girly, Renka had always thought her sister was really cute, at least when she let down her guard. Kisara would never push things forward on her own, but Renka thought with a little work that things might be able to go pretty smoothly, the trick was going to be getting Kisara to let her guard down around Kit more. Renka had a feeling that now that she was aware of things with Kit that she would put her walls up even more around him, and that was not the way to change things. If Kisara wasn’t going to make things happen on her own, then Renka would just have to meddle. ~

“Alright, now that you know a bit about offense, it’s time we teach you the flip side of the coin. Defense is sometimes tricky to understand, because most of the time it’s reactive, whereas 90% of offense is proactive,” Daisuke explained. While he spoke, Hitomi began to put on a pair of gloves, since it was still early in his training they wore 10 ounce gloves to get him accustomed to fighting. “What we’re going to do first is work on your guard, I want to make sure it’s put together well enough that you can take a few hits, keep your hands moving where you think she’s going to strike, try to block Hitomi with your forearms and elbows, if you use your hands, odds are she’ll just punch through and make you hit yourself in the face,” Daisuke explained it to him as Hitomi took a spot opposite him.

As Hitomi was punching Daisuke finally saw the first indication of all the bullying over the years... other than his incredible ability to take a punch, he closed his eyes as the blow was incoming. “You gotta keep your eyes open to see where she’s going to hit. If you keep closing your eyes she’s going to land a clean strike and it’ll hurt more than if you block it,” Daisuke tried to coach him. When they came back to it a moment later Kit closed his eyes again.

“I suppose we should take this as a good thing... it means you’re not completely perfect as a student... my master used to tell me no student ever is when I was first learning... I was starting to think he’d lied,” Hitomi said somewhat shyly.

“Alright, I think we should demonstrate this one for him. Watch me carefully, when Hitomi goes to strike I keep my eyes open the whole time, I’ll keep my guard down so you can watch my face,” Daisuke explained as he took a position opposite Hitomi. “I can’t block so try not to hit too hard,” he told her, and then to Kit “It’s important even if you’re going to get hit to keep your eyes open, sometimes you can find a way out of a hit if you just keep your eyes open.”

“I-I know, but it’s hard,” Kit admitted somewhat dejectedly.

“If you’re gunna make it as a fighter you have to get over this sort of thing,” Daisuke told him bluntly.

“Daisuke-sensei, with all do respect, you can’t push him so hard on this. He’s been bullied for years, and instinct has taught him that if he closes his eyes it will be better,” Renka called over to him from across the floor. Hearing her stick up for him had a confusing reaction on Kit, on the one hand he was glad that he meant enough that she would say something, on the other hand it felt sort of disgraceful that she’d had to. He was embarrassed by it.

“Hitomi... conference?” Daisuke asked as he tilted his head away from Kit. The two of them spoke in whispers for a few moments before they seemed to come to a consensus about something. “Kit, come here for a sec,” Daisuke motioned him over after a short trip to the locker room, he was holding something but Kit couldn’t see what. “Let me see your hands,” Daisuke demanded. Hesitating, Kit held his hands up in front of him. There was a strange ratcheting sound and then Daisuke was pulling one arm behind his back with something, then more ratcheting a Daisuke let go, but Kit couldn’t move his hands.

“What... the hell?” Kit asked as he tried to jerk his arms around in front of him, but they were handcuffed behind his back around a pipe that came out of the wall.

“We decided to handle this using a combination of positive and negative reinforcement. we’re going to take turns hitting you while you  can’t guard yourself. For every time you close your eyes, the next hit will be hard, not dangerously so, but still we’ll put a bit of mustard on it. If you keep your eyes open then the next hit will be light,” Hitomi explained as she stood there somewhat shyly.

“Wait, how will you decide the first one?” Kit asked them. Hitomi bopped him in the face pretty solidly, it didn’t make him bleed, but it did hurt.

“Hard,” she told him. “Also, Daisuke keep track, he closed his eyes, even the demonstrations count,” she commanded him. She hit him again, this time considerably lighter. “Soft, the next two are hard, then we’ll start keeping track,” she announced.

They spent the rest of the pre-dinner session trying to get this drilled into him, by the end he could keep his eyes open a little over 1/3rd of the time. His face was starting to show some discolorations from the beating.

“We better get some ice on your face or it’s going to swell, and then it’ll hurt like hell. Kisara, I’ve got to cook, so how about you get an ice pack for him,” Renka suggested as she started on her way out.

“Uh... ok?” Kisara responded with a bewildered look on her face as she followed her sister out the door. Kit was left alone on the ground floor of the back building, this was the one hour before dinner that he was free to do whatever he wanted. During dinner he had to eat at the big table in the main building, after that he would have to go back to his training for a few hours before tucking Ayano in, and then he would focus on his studies, or if there was no homework he was free to do whatever he wanted. He didn’t really have any idea so he just kinda sat on the bench and waited for Kisara to get back. ~

“What’re you playing at Renka?” Kisara asked her when they were alone on their way to the kitchen.

“Why do I have to be playing at something?” Renka tried to ask innocently, but Kisara knew her too well.

“His face wouldn’t swell up from that small amount of bruising,” Kisara pressed her.

“Oh... that? Well... he doesn’t know that, and... you know... if you get the ice for him you could hold it to his face for him all delicately, and then he’d get all embarrassed because you’re helping him, and he’d go to put his hand up to hold it, and his hand would accidentally trap your hand, so for that brief moment you’d be holding hands, and then he’d get all nervous because he’d realize that you’re showing your embarrassed cute face, and then he’d get a whiff of your scent and he’d realize that he likes that, and you know... one thing leads to another and suddenly he’s getting anxious to see you and after a while he asks you out, and you say yes, and you date nervously for a few months because you’re not sure how the other feels about you, then eventually you realize that you really do love each other, and then one night you decide to go to the next step, and neither of you are sure you’re ready, but then when you get started you realize you are, and then you have a few weeks of awkwardness at realizing the other one saw you naked and neither of you thinks you were very good, and then you get sick and he gets worried and takes you to the doctor, where you’re reminded that you didn’t make preparations, so you go home nervous and then you tell him you’re pregnant and at first he freaks out, but then he gets really happy because it’s with you, and then you to make up, and get married, and have kids, and live happily ever after. Just like a true love story,” Renka swooned. Kisara could almost see the hearts replacing her eyes as she stood there cuddling with her clasped hands... in her mind she could tell Renka was squealing with delight at the imagined situation. That’s when she realized that Renka didn’t always function in reality.

In Kisara’s mind the whole event was much more awkward, even hearing Renka mention holding hands with him made her blush. She shook her head after a moment when she realized that Renka was dealing in fantasy once again and that things would definitely not go how she’d said. “Renka, I asked you not to meddle in things,” Kisara warned her.

“I’m not meddling in anything... I’m hurrying things along,” Renka answered her.

“There’s nothing to hurry along... nothing is going to happen except you’re going to get my hopes up and when it comes to nothing it’s going to hurt. He’ll end up with some girly girl... most-likely you, and I’m fine with that,” Kisara told her sister in an exasperated tone.

“What if he doesn’t end up with a girl like me... what if he meets a girl who only uses him for her own pleasure, someone who plays with his feelings and then throws him away? Would you be ok with things then?” Renka pressed her.

“I’d probably just go and kick that girl’s ass,” Kisara told her.

“Don’t you see... you could bypass all of that if you just made him fall for you... it’s for his own good that you’re doing this,” Renka told her in her convincing voice... she really believed in what she was saying, and that made Kisara start to believe.

“I don’t know about all this... like I said I’m hardly even a girl,” Kisara tried to wiggle her way out.

“Don’t worry about that... we’ll just have to show him more of your girly side,” Renka said as they reached the kitchen. Renka pulled out one of the ice packs and wrapped it in a towel for her sister. “Now... you hold this up to his face, and don’t let go of it until he puts his hand up to hold it himself... hold it there for a few seconds after. And show him a concerned look, he’ll think you’re absolutely adorable if you show him you’re worried about him, and what boy wouldn’t want an adorable girl worried about them?” Renka instructed Kisara before she pushed her away. Kisara gave her a nervous look back, but Renka gave her two thumbs up to encourage her. Kisara had serious misgivings about this whole plan. The fact is things seldom when as Renka envisioned.

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