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He still felt a slight shadow of the uneasiness in his stomach as he began to skim over the legal jargon behind a fighting league. He was just getting to the personal information of the form. Half a sheet of paper that he hadn’t filled out in over 2 years. Name, age, weight, height... these were all things he could provide, then it called for his address, his telephone number, his parental guardian, his emergency contact... the type of things that homeless orphans can’t provide.\n\nKisara walked in as he was looking at it, she had an ice pack rolled up in a towel in her hand. “Is everything ok?” she asked him, she sounded irritated with him again... he was getting in the way of her training like he’d promised he wouldn’t less than 24 hours ago.\n\n“They sure do want a lot of information, huh? It’s kind of intimidating them asking me to tell them all about me... fact is I couldn’t fill half these lines if I wanted to,” Kit admitted as she sat down cross-legged like he was in the middle of the sparring floor.\n\n“Yeah I guess they do,” she said in her usual tone as she reached out and gently touched the ice pack to the side of his face. He was bothering her again.\n\n“I can handle this, thanks,” Kit said as he reached up to hold it for himself.\n\n“Look, you need both your hands to handle all the paperwork, and I’m not busy so it’s not like I can’t help you for a little bit,” Kisara told him, as he dropped his hand from the back of hers, she sounded like she was getting angry.\n\n“Uh... ok... thanks,” he answered timidly.\n\n“You’re nervous?” she asked him, her voice was softer... kinder.\n\n“Even with everything they said to me, Daisuke and Hitomi have probably been fighting for years, for them it’s got to be easy to get in there and trade blows. I doubt they even remember what it’s like to be like me, or maybe they never were like me... though I suppose this doesn’t make much sense to you either,” Kit told her, he was a little defensive about all of this.\n\n“Like you?” Kisara asked him.\n\n“Confused... no... I suppose scared is the right word,” Kit answered.\n\n“Scared of what?” she pressed him a little.\n\n“I suppose I’m scared of my first real fight... you probably don’t even remember your first fight,” Kit shared.\n\n“Third week of summer, ten years ago, it was hot outside, Renka and I were playing at the nearby pool when we got separated, I panicked when I couldn’t find her, she’s very clumsy and prone to finding trouble. While looking for her I got surrounded by a group of boys, we’d played eastern football together at school... the one with the pads, tackling, and hands. They thought I’d been a little rough and that I was showing off and they decided to take this opportunity to even the score...” Kisara began to recall almost immediately.\n\n“Ok, so you remember the fight, but I mean... listen to you. You weren’t afraid of it!” Kit interrupted her.\n\n“I was terrified, they were all bigger than me and at the time I didn’t have anything for training to fall back on. When they started hitting me I didn’t know what to do, so I curled up into a ball while they kicked me. They beat me up pretty bad... Renka saved me when she and a lifeguard found me,” Kisara continued.\n\n“What’d you do next?” Kit asked her curiously.\n\n“Went to Perrin, started learning martial arts, went back and kicked their asses... all three of them at once. Then some other asshole friend of theirs came at me and I beat him up  too... that was the sweetest feeling I’ve ever had after a fight, except of course when I finally manage to beat Renka... that’ll be the sweetest feeling then,” Renka shared with him.\n\n“Incredible, ⅓ my age and still you were braver than I am,” Kit said with a shake of his head.\n\n“I don’t know that I was incredible, and you missed the entire point of the story. I was terrified of them, even when I went back, but it had to be done. I took time, got some training, and when I went back things were different. Here you are now, getting some training, and no matter how things turn out they’ll be different. Win or lose... you’re not the same Kitachi Sunahama that you woke up as yesterday,” Kisara lectured him. “Real change is made on the inside, if you can change here and here,” Kisara said as she touched her free hand to both his head and then his chest, “then changing here will be easy,” she said as she squeezed his bicep.\n\n“Here and here, huh?” Kit asked as he touched his head and his chest... he looked like he was thinking about something as he stood up and walked over into the corner, there was a quick ratcheting sound then he turned and it repeated. “Hit me!” Kit demanded of her.\n\nKisara just stood up with a smirk... she hadn’t expected that to happen, but she supposed it was as good a result as any. When she started hitting Kit she noticed he kept his eyes open more often, every now and then he would slip, but he kept his eyes open for over 90% of her hits (which was roughly 1000 in half an hour).\n\nWhen it was time for dinner Renka came in to get them. “Kisara! What are you doing? I told you to be gentle and I come back to find you clobbering him ruthlessly,” Renka said as she dashed over to Kit and held him close to her, like he were a giant doll. She looked at Kisara with an angry face.\n\n“It’s ok... I asked her to,” Kit told her shyly after a second.\n\n“You be quiet, I’ll get to you in one second. Kisara?” Renka said, the way she did made it sound like she was their parent.\n\n“He asked me to, as part of his training,” Kisara defended herself, her face was red like she was embarrassed.\n\n“Kisara... corner,” Renka said sternly as she tilted her head toward another corner of the room. Kit had no idea what was going on. ~\n\n“How is this going to help your cause?” Renka asked her sister.\n\n“MY cause? I was just doing this because you told me to, and you’d make my life hell if I hadn’t done as you said,” Kisara answered.\n\n“Kit is not going to fall in love with you while you bash him over the head with your fist... sometimes I swear you’re working against yourself,” Renka reminded her.\n\n“I didn’t want him to go out with me in the first place,” Kisara tried to argue.\n\n“Well you’re doing a pretty good job of ensuring that it never happens then,” Renka bit back.\n\n“I... I just figured if I established myself as the better choice to help him with his training, if I made it so he trusted me with that much we could just sort of get closer through that,” Kisara lied to her. Renka looked taken aback for a moment as her brow furrowed.\n\n“That... that’s not bad,” Renka was forced to admit.\n\n“It’s not? I mean... of course it’s not,” Kisara answered. ~\n\nFor supper that night Renka had cooked up a stir fry for the lot of them, Hitomi seemed especially excited about that, which was a change of pace for Kit.\n\n“Daisuke... could you hand me... the salt?” she asked him shyly, but as the other master lifted his hand to reach for it she snuck her fork out and took a forkful of it and stuffed it in her mouth. She really liked the stir fry enough that after she had finished she used her fork to scoop up the sauce and then stuck in her mouth like a lollipop. Kit had to laugh at that, despite the fact that she was young and beautiful, it struck him that she didn’t seem to act her age half the time.\n\n“Uh... I need a bit of help with my paperwork,” Kit told them as they were eating.\n\n“What can we do for you Kit?” the elder asked him.\n\n“Well... it’s about... my guardian. The form asks for my guardian but I don’t know what to put down,” Kit told them nervously.\n\n“What do you put down for your guardian on the school paperwork?” Perrin asked him evenly.\n\n“I always put my dad’s name in there, but I don’t know how to contact him... I haven’t seen or heard from him since our mom passed away... so I was wondering if I could list one of you as my guardian,” Kit explained.\n\n“I’m sorry, Kit, but you’ll have to list at least your father’s name, as long as he’s alive he’s your guardian in the legal system. You can list us as your emergency contacts and your home, but as far as the guardian is concerned... it’s still him,” Perrin explained to him. Kit got this somewhat disappointed look on his face. There was an awkward silence as Kit filled out something rather reluctantly that ended up being filled in by the TV, which so far had been part of the background noise.\n\n“... and coming up after the break Battle Network Legend and fight coverage coordinator Jaxon Davenport will drop by the studio to give us a preview of this season along with some of his insights as to who will make the cut and who won’t in the student division this year, hear his thoughts on various fighters, including the Kazumi sisters, right here after the break,” the Battle Network’s news anchor said as the cut to a picture of a ferret with a friendly smile a wave sitting on a couch before they went to a commercial.\n\n“So... Jaxon’s running the cameras for them now, no wonder I haven’t seen him in the fights lately, it’s been forever since we seen him around here,” Daisuke commented for a moment.\n\n“Ayano, don’t you have homework?” Kit asked his sister quietly as he turned to her.\n\n“I’ll get to it,” she said as she hopped down from the table and took off for her room.\n\n“I’m going back out to train,” Kit said as he bowed out quietly.\n\n“You really should stick around, Kit, Jaxon’s an experienced fighter, world-class even, and he has good eyes, his advice on your competitors could be invaluable,” Perrin called out to him.\n\n“I’ll watch it later,” Kit told him over his shoulder as he headed out to the gym. ~\n\n“I think I’ll have to talk to him later... it seems like he took that whole guardian thing pretty seriously,” Perrin mentioned as he took a spot over on the couch in front of the TV, the girls were gathering up the dishes to clean them.\n\n“He did seem like he was kind of anxious to leave the room,” Kisara commented.\n\n“I’ll say, he was in such a hurry he left his paperwork sitting on the table,” Renka mentioned as she pointed to it.\n\n“I can’t believe they have Jaxon running the cameras nowadays, though it does explain why their fighting footage has improved so much lately... I still owe him for that time he knocked me out in the student division,” Daisuke told Hitomi.\n\n“I lost three times,” she commented back.\n\n“I’ll get Kit’s paperwork and take it to him,” Perrin said as he stood up and gathered the papers. He looked down at what was written so far. “Huh,” he said after a second, his head had snapped up to the door that Kit had just left through, his eyes like they were zeroing in on him through the wall.\n\n“What?” Renka asked him. He quickly held the papers so that their back was to her.\n\n“I just learned something interesting about Kit,” he answered her after a moment, but it seemed like his mind was preoccupied with something, and with that he turned and left for the gym.\n\n“I wonder what that was all about,” Kisara mentioned as she shoved a plate into the sink.\n\n“It must be something important, he’s gunna miss Jaxon’s interview,” Daisuke commented. ~\n\nAfter the dishes were done and the interview was over, Renka and Kisara headed out to join Kit in the gym. When they walked in Kit was hitting the heavy bag, Perrin was standing there, watching him, throwing out advice, or giving him a new list of punches to throw. Daisuke and Hitomi came in behind the girls and they were just as surprised. Perrin Kazumi rarely even coached his nieces in their training anymore, yet there he was giving moves to Kit with this somewhat protective look on his face. He looked up as the others entered the room.\n\n“Good you’re all here, it’s time to train, and you two have some serious work to attend to... his footwork is atrocious,” Perrin commented with a smile as he stood up and walked away. “If you ever need somebody to talk to about what we discussed, just let me know, but I really do think you should tell them,” Perrin told Kit as he stood up.\n\n“Not yet... I don’t want this to change how they view me,” Kit told him dutifully, he had a fierce look in his eyes, he was motivated to resume his training. ~\n\n“Alright, we have to straighten a few things out before we go any farther so we know where you need work and where you’re already pretty solid, so I want you to spar with Renka until you’re done... and when I say that I mean I want you going until you don’t think you can any more, we’ll have you playing both offense and defense, for now we’ll focus on boxing, so please Renka, don’t grapple, don’t kick,” Daisuke explained to them as they slid the gloves on.\n\n“You want me to switch between offense and defense?” Renka tried to clarify.\n\n“Well, I don’t want you to do too much, I mean I want you to fight like you normally would, but don’t completely close him out if you can try to leave him a few openings,” Hitomi instructed her.\n\n“Don’t hold back on her Kit, she’s your senior by quite a bit,” Daisuke told him as they stood opposite each other.\n\n“So... are you gunna ring a bell or do we just go at it?” Kit asked them.\n\n“I’ll let him decide, he can throw the first punch and we’ll go from there,” Renka told them.\n\nKit approached her nervously as they both put their guard up, Renka looked at first like she were trying to remember the moves to a dance years after her last attempt, like this was unfamiliar. Kit realized then that it was they had placed some serious restraints on her, she was a ground fighter and a grappler by nature, asking her to fight him using only boxing was a difficult request to grant.\n\nSure enough after a second she seemed to figure out what she was doing. She took her stance and she seemed to float as she was moving about with a slight bounce in her step. She kept her feet moving, Kit had no clue what she was doing but he knew that he was going to learn that at some point. Kit stood his ground as she approached, she hit him a few times and he could swear she was trying to take his arms off, if she ever caught him in the head she’d have put him on the ground. One hit slipped past his guard and caught him in the ribs and he could feel them bruising over as her glove came away.\n\nKit could tell this wasn’t going well for him, so when she came in at one point he saw a small opening so he tried to catch her with a straight right, but at the last second she seemed to float around his fist, almost lazily.\n\n“That’s enough so far, he’s got a long way to go, but Renka, I want you to take one of his hits for us, you can guard it if you’re able, but we need to see one last thing,” Daisuke commented to her.\n\nRenka nodded as she looked at Kit for a moment, her guard up, she wasn’t going to try and dodge this one he could tell. He decided to try a straight right he wasn’t sure what they wanted to see, but he believed it would be how well he delivered the punch. So he came in a few feet and then let it fly. The result was about what he expected, Renka threw her guard in the way and caught the punch, in the process she back pedalled two steps, but her eyes were open pretty wide in a shocked look.\n\n“Whoa!” Kisara said as her eyes opened wide.\n\n“Thought so,” Hitomi shrugged.\n\n“Still, even you have to admit that was more than you were expecting,” Daisuke told her.\n\n“Maybe... a little bit,” she nodded.\n\n“What’s going on?” Kit asked them suddenly, it was like everybody in the room saw something he didn’t.\n\n“It’s good, but it makes things difficult. You’re more suited as a fighter to being a power hitter than a speed hitter. Renka managed to block your hit, but even so you transfered enough force that she had to take two steps back to stay on her feet, that’s pretty damn impressive when you think of it. The difficult part is that everybody here at the Kazumi dojo is more about speed than power,” Daisuke explained to Kit.\n\n“I didn’t think Renka was hitting that much faster than me,” Kit told them.\n\n“Because you’re thinking and seeing with the eyes of an outsider, for a punch, 1/10th of a second is the difference between a fast hit and a slow one. You have a lot of power, but you need help with your speed, technique, and pretty much everything else it looks like. We’ll take that into account and set you up properly,” Daisuke told him.\n\n“So... is this a bad thing?” Kit asked them suddenly.\n\n“I wouldn’t say that it’s a bad thing so much as it’s different. There is more than one way for people to fight. Most break down into two theories as far as attacks go, fast attacks are driven with the goal of creating flurries, whereas powerful punches try to inflict as much damage per hit as possible. Fast punches are harder to evade and so the boxer is usually forced to either block or take the hit, but they don’t do as much damage so they try to hit more often. Hard punches are easier to dodge, but are more punishing if they hit, this type of fighting is more about outlasting an enemy, getting to a point where they can’t move as quickly and then punishing them,” Hitomi explained it to him.\n\n“So... now we focus on making me hit harder?” Kit asked them.\n\n“What!? No!” Daisuke burst out. “Fighting doesn’t work like that kid, we can’t just focus on making you hit harder, if you never land a punch then it won’t matter how hard you hit. Instead we try to make you both faster and harder. The only real difference this makes is your natural affinity. There isn’t a fighter alive that made a career throwing only hard or only fast punches, everybody tries to mix it up to try and throw a person off. When we’re done you’ll be able to do both. You’ll still learn how to hit fast and how to hit hard, what this means is that you’re fastest hit will never be as fast as any of ours, but our hardest hit won’t ever have quite as much power as yours,” Daisuke spelled it all out for him.\n\n“First we teach you how to move... Renka would have killed you, even in a boxing match because your movements are slow and stiff. I don’t want to say keep moving, because that’s not necessarily the way you should be fighting, instead stand more on the balls of your feet, put a bit of a bounce, shift from one foot to another, you saw how Renka was moving, if you could start moving like that then we can go from there,” Hitomi coached him slowly.\n\nThey spent the rest of that evening working on his footwork, trying to get him to move his feet properly, and by the end of the night he had made a little headway. “We’ll keep at it, no matter how quickly you pick it up, footwork is hard to figure out, but it is so essential to what we do, we have to drill this into you,” Daisuke told him as they were closing up his training for the night.\n\n“If you get this, and keeping your eyes open, the rest of it will be easy,” Hitomi agreed. “... or not,” she added after a slight hesitation.\n\n“Don’t forget, tomorrow is your weigh in, they’ll want to know a prefered fighting style, you know a main art or whatever to drill into you... any choices?” Daisuke asked him.\n\n“Well... I like boxing as it is, I mean I know I’ll have to learn other stuff, but the thought of grappling and things like that make me slightly nervous... is boxing a martial art?” Kit asked them.\n\n“Hell yeah, it is. It’s considered one of the most basic, but that doesn’t make it any less effective,” Daisuke answered.\n\nHitomi seemed to be in thought for a moment. “The last boxer who made any headway in the sport came from Basin City too... Jaxon Davenport... there will be many comparisons,” she told him after a moment.\n\n“He took the student division world championship 5 times, and was a master class runner-up three years in a row. His career records were 127-13-3 as a master and 109-6-0 as a student... he set a world record for most fights in a single season with 26 and he still made the world championship in the end... a record that has stood for over 20 years now, so I suppose being compared to him as a fighter isn’t so bad,” Kit told them all.\n\n“How do you know all that?” Renka asked him after a moment of astounded silence.\n\n“Jaxon Davenport was my hero growing up,” Kit answered her after a moment.\n\nWith that Renka went back up the stairs to her room as Daisuke and Hitomi returned to the front building. At first Kisara just watched as Kit went back to hitting the heavy bag.\n\n“Show it to me,” she told him after a while. They hadn’t said anything to each other since the others left so he didn’t know what she was talking about.\n\n“What?” he asked her back as he kept working.\n\n“I want you to try and hit me, I want to experience this power that Renka did,” Kisara told him.\n\n“You heard the others, if you’re dodging around and stuff I can’t hit you, you move too fast,” Kit told her over his shoulder.\n\n“I’ll hold still then,” Kisara answered him.\n\n“I really don’t want to hit you... I didn’t want to hit Renka either, but they instructed me to,” Kit told her as he stopped working for a moment.\n\n“Just once is fine, and I’m sure I’ll get my guard up, I just want to see for myself,” Kisara told him. Kit looked reluctant as he stood across from her for a moment, she put up her guard as they approached each other cautiously. His straight right came forward and it caught her guard with jarring force, she took went to take a step back, but for some reason she still felt off balance so she took a second step. His hits were heavier than any of the others in the dojo, but she realized that part of the reason she’d taken two steps was that she honestly hadn’t expected so much from him. “I understand it now though, part of the reason she was able to dodge so quickly wasn’t just that your punches aren’t as fast... you telegraph your strikes, she could read where you were striking,” Kisara told him.\n\n“How do I fix that?” Kit asked her. Kisara just laughed for a moment.\n\n“It’s not that easy, telegraphing is something that is subconscious, it’ll take a few weeks of training for you to stop doing it,” Kisara tried to explain. “Besides, you should take it easy tonight, you weigh in tomorrow and that’ll be a little tough on you,” she reminded him.\n\n“I’ll be ok, besides I have to work hard to catch up to you two so I can fight in your class by the end of the season,” Kit told her with a laugh.\n\n“As if... you could train for the rest of your life and I’d still be worlds better than you,” Kisara rolled her eyes at him.\n\n“That may be so, but I’ll show you, by the end of this season, I’m going to make you admit that I’m a good fighter,” Kit told her.\n\n“The only way I’ll ever say you’re a good fighter is if you can beat me,” she told him proudly.\n\n“Then I guess I’ll just have to beat you,” he said with a laugh, he was laughing at how ridiculous the idea was.\n\n“Not in this lifetime,” Kisara laughed with him, after a second the two of them went back to their training.\n\n", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "While he waited for the girls to come back, Kit went upstairs to fetch his registration papers. He still felt a slight shadow of the uneasiness in his stomach as he began to skim over the legal jargon behind a fighting league. He was just getting to the personal information of the form. Half a sheet of paper that he hadn’t filled out in over 2 years. Name, age, weight, height... these were all things he could provide, then it called for his address, his telephone number, his parental guardian, his emergency contact... the type of things that homeless orphans can’t provide.

Kisara walked in as he was looking at it, she had an ice pack rolled up in a towel in her hand. “Is everything ok?” she asked him, she sounded irritated with him again... he was getting in the way of her training like he’d promised he wouldn’t less than 24 hours ago.

“They sure do want a lot of information, huh? It’s kind of intimidating them asking me to tell them all about me... fact is I couldn’t fill half these lines if I wanted to,” Kit admitted as she sat down cross-legged like he was in the middle of the sparring floor.

“Yeah I guess they do,” she said in her usual tone as she reached out and gently touched the ice pack to the side of his face. He was bothering her again.

“I can handle this, thanks,” Kit said as he reached up to hold it for himself.

“Look, you need both your hands to handle all the paperwork, and I’m not busy so it’s not like I can’t help you for a little bit,” Kisara told him, as he dropped his hand from the back of hers, she sounded like she was getting angry.

“Uh... ok... thanks,” he answered timidly.

“You’re nervous?” she asked him, her voice was softer... kinder.

“Even with everything they said to me, Daisuke and Hitomi have probably been fighting for years, for them it’s got to be easy to get in there and trade blows. I doubt they even remember what it’s like to be like me, or maybe they never were like me... though I suppose this doesn’t make much sense to you either,” Kit told her, he was a little defensive about all of this.

“Like you?” Kisara asked him.

“Confused... no... I suppose scared is the right word,” Kit answered.

“Scared of what?” she pressed him a little.

“I suppose I’m scared of my first real fight... you probably don’t even remember your first fight,” Kit shared.

“Third week of summer, ten years ago, it was hot outside, Renka and I were playing at the nearby pool when we got separated, I panicked when I couldn’t find her, she’s very clumsy and prone to finding trouble. While looking for her I got surrounded by a group of boys, we’d played eastern football together at school... the one with the pads, tackling, and hands. They thought I’d been a little rough and that I was showing off and they decided to take this opportunity to even the score...” Kisara began to recall almost immediately.

“Ok, so you remember the fight, but I mean... listen to you. You weren’t afraid of it!” Kit interrupted her.

“I was terrified, they were all bigger than me and at the time I didn’t have anything for training to fall back on. When they started hitting me I didn’t know what to do, so I curled up into a ball while they kicked me. They beat me up pretty bad... Renka saved me when she and a lifeguard found me,” Kisara continued.

“What’d you do next?” Kit asked her curiously.

“Went to Perrin, started learning martial arts, went back and kicked their asses... all three of them at once. Then some other asshole friend of theirs came at me and I beat him up  too... that was the sweetest feeling I’ve ever had after a fight, except of course when I finally manage to beat Renka... that’ll be the sweetest feeling then,” Renka shared with him.

“Incredible, ⅓ my age and still you were braver than I am,” Kit said with a shake of his head.

“I don’t know that I was incredible, and you missed the entire point of the story. I was terrified of them, even when I went back, but it had to be done. I took time, got some training, and when I went back things were different. Here you are now, getting some training, and no matter how things turn out they’ll be different. Win or lose... you’re not the same Kitachi Sunahama that you woke up as yesterday,” Kisara lectured him. “Real change is made on the inside, if you can change here and here,” Kisara said as she touched her free hand to both his head and then his chest, “then changing here will be easy,” she said as she squeezed his bicep.

“Here and here, huh?” Kit asked as he touched his head and his chest... he looked like he was thinking about something as he stood up and walked over into the corner, there was a quick ratcheting sound then he turned and it repeated. “Hit me!” Kit demanded of her.

Kisara just stood up with a smirk... she hadn’t expected that to happen, but she supposed it was as good a result as any. When she started hitting Kit she noticed he kept his eyes open more often, every now and then he would slip, but he kept his eyes open for over 90% of her hits (which was roughly 1000 in half an hour).

When it was time for dinner Renka came in to get them. “Kisara! What are you doing? I told you to be gentle and I come back to find you clobbering him ruthlessly,” Renka said as she dashed over to Kit and held him close to her, like he were a giant doll. She looked at Kisara with an angry face.

“It’s ok... I asked her to,” Kit told her shyly after a second.

“You be quiet, I’ll get to you in one second. Kisara?” Renka said, the way she did made it sound like she was their parent.

“He asked me to, as part of his training,” Kisara defended herself, her face was red like she was embarrassed.

“Kisara... corner,” Renka said sternly as she tilted her head toward another corner of the room. Kit had no idea what was going on. ~

“How is this going to help your cause?” Renka asked her sister.

“MY cause? I was just doing this because you told me to, and you’d make my life hell if I hadn’t done as you said,” Kisara answered.

“Kit is not going to fall in love with you while you bash him over the head with your fist... sometimes I swear you’re working against yourself,” Renka reminded her.

“I didn’t want him to go out with me in the first place,” Kisara tried to argue.

“Well you’re doing a pretty good job of ensuring that it never happens then,” Renka bit back.

“I... I just figured if I established myself as the better choice to help him with his training, if I made it so he trusted me with that much we could just sort of get closer through that,” Kisara lied to her. Renka looked taken aback for a moment as her brow furrowed.

“That... that’s not bad,” Renka was forced to admit.

“It’s not? I mean... of course it’s not,” Kisara answered. ~

For supper that night Renka had cooked up a stir fry for the lot of them, Hitomi seemed especially excited about that, which was a change of pace for Kit.

“Daisuke... could you hand me... the salt?” she asked him shyly, but as the other master lifted his hand to reach for it she snuck her fork out and took a forkful of it and stuffed it in her mouth. She really liked the stir fry enough that after she had finished she used her fork to scoop up the sauce and then stuck in her mouth like a lollipop. Kit had to laugh at that, despite the fact that she was young and beautiful, it struck him that she didn’t seem to act her age half the time.

“Uh... I need a bit of help with my paperwork,” Kit told them as they were eating.

“What can we do for you Kit?” the elder asked him.

“Well... it’s about... my guardian. The form asks for my guardian but I don’t know what to put down,” Kit told them nervously.

“What do you put down for your guardian on the school paperwork?” Perrin asked him evenly.

“I always put my dad’s name in there, but I don’t know how to contact him... I haven’t seen or heard from him since our mom passed away... so I was wondering if I could list one of you as my guardian,” Kit explained.

“I’m sorry, Kit, but you’ll have to list at least your father’s name, as long as he’s alive he’s your guardian in the legal system. You can list us as your emergency contacts and your home, but as far as the guardian is concerned... it’s still him,” Perrin explained to him. Kit got this somewhat disappointed look on his face. There was an awkward silence as Kit filled out something rather reluctantly that ended up being filled in by the TV, which so far had been part of the background noise.

“... and coming up after the break Battle Network Legend and fight coverage coordinator Jaxon Davenport will drop by the studio to give us a preview of this season along with some of his insights as to who will make the cut and who won’t in the student division this year, hear his thoughts on various fighters, including the Kazumi sisters, right here after the break,” the Battle Network’s news anchor said as the cut to a picture of a ferret with a friendly smile a wave sitting on a couch before they went to a commercial.

“So... Jaxon’s running the cameras for them now, no wonder I haven’t seen him in the fights lately, it’s been forever since we seen him around here,” Daisuke commented for a moment.

“Ayano, don’t you have homework?” Kit asked his sister quietly as he turned to her.

“I’ll get to it,” she said as she hopped down from the table and took off for her room.

“I’m going back out to train,” Kit said as he bowed out quietly.

“You really should stick around, Kit, Jaxon’s an experienced fighter, world-class even, and he has good eyes, his advice on your competitors could be invaluable,” Perrin called out to him.

“I’ll watch it later,” Kit told him over his shoulder as he headed out to the gym. ~

“I think I’ll have to talk to him later... it seems like he took that whole guardian thing pretty seriously,” Perrin mentioned as he took a spot over on the couch in front of the TV, the girls were gathering up the dishes to clean them.

“He did seem like he was kind of anxious to leave the room,” Kisara commented.

“I’ll say, he was in such a hurry he left his paperwork sitting on the table,” Renka mentioned as she pointed to it.

“I can’t believe they have Jaxon running the cameras nowadays, though it does explain why their fighting footage has improved so much lately... I still owe him for that time he knocked me out in the student division,” Daisuke told Hitomi.

“I lost three times,” she commented back.

“I’ll get Kit’s paperwork and take it to him,” Perrin said as he stood up and gathered the papers. He looked down at what was written so far. “Huh,” he said after a second, his head had snapped up to the door that Kit had just left through, his eyes like they were zeroing in on him through the wall.

“What?” Renka asked him. He quickly held the papers so that their back was to her.

“I just learned something interesting about Kit,” he answered her after a moment, but it seemed like his mind was preoccupied with something, and with that he turned and left for the gym.

“I wonder what that was all about,” Kisara mentioned as she shoved a plate into the sink.

“It must be something important, he’s gunna miss Jaxon’s interview,” Daisuke commented. ~

After the dishes were done and the interview was over, Renka and Kisara headed out to join Kit in the gym. When they walked in Kit was hitting the heavy bag, Perrin was standing there, watching him, throwing out advice, or giving him a new list of punches to throw. Daisuke and Hitomi came in behind the girls and they were just as surprised. Perrin Kazumi rarely even coached his nieces in their training anymore, yet there he was giving moves to Kit with this somewhat protective look on his face. He looked up as the others entered the room.

“Good you’re all here, it’s time to train, and you two have some serious work to attend to... his footwork is atrocious,” Perrin commented with a smile as he stood up and walked away. “If you ever need somebody to talk to about what we discussed, just let me know, but I really do think you should tell them,” Perrin told Kit as he stood up.

“Not yet... I don’t want this to change how they view me,” Kit told him dutifully, he had a fierce look in his eyes, he was motivated to resume his training. ~

“Alright, we have to straighten a few things out before we go any farther so we know where you need work and where you’re already pretty solid, so I want you to spar with Renka until you’re done... and when I say that I mean I want you going until you don’t think you can any more, we’ll have you playing both offense and defense, for now we’ll focus on boxing, so please Renka, don’t grapple, don’t kick,” Daisuke explained to them as they slid the gloves on.

“You want me to switch between offense and defense?” Renka tried to clarify.

“Well, I don’t want you to do too much, I mean I want you to fight like you normally would, but don’t completely close him out if you can try to leave him a few openings,” Hitomi instructed her.

“Don’t hold back on her Kit, she’s your senior by quite a bit,” Daisuke told him as they stood opposite each other.

“So... are you gunna ring a bell or do we just go at it?” Kit asked them.

“I’ll let him decide, he can throw the first punch and we’ll go from there,” Renka told them.

Kit approached her nervously as they both put their guard up, Renka looked at first like she were trying to remember the moves to a dance years after her last attempt, like this was unfamiliar. Kit realized then that it was they had placed some serious restraints on her, she was a ground fighter and a grappler by nature, asking her to fight him using only boxing was a difficult request to grant.

Sure enough after a second she seemed to figure out what she was doing. She took her stance and she seemed to float as she was moving about with a slight bounce in her step. She kept her feet moving, Kit had no clue what she was doing but he knew that he was going to learn that at some point. Kit stood his ground as she approached, she hit him a few times and he could swear she was trying to take his arms off, if she ever caught him in the head she’d have put him on the ground. One hit slipped past his guard and caught him in the ribs and he could feel them bruising over as her glove came away.

Kit could tell this wasn’t going well for him, so when she came in at one point he saw a small opening so he tried to catch her with a straight right, but at the last second she seemed to float around his fist, almost lazily.

“That’s enough so far, he’s got a long way to go, but Renka, I want you to take one of his hits for us, you can guard it if you’re able, but we need to see one last thing,” Daisuke commented to her.

Renka nodded as she looked at Kit for a moment, her guard up, she wasn’t going to try and dodge this one he could tell. He decided to try a straight right he wasn’t sure what they wanted to see, but he believed it would be how well he delivered the punch. So he came in a few feet and then let it fly. The result was about what he expected, Renka threw her guard in the way and caught the punch, in the process she back pedalled two steps, but her eyes were open pretty wide in a shocked look.

“Whoa!” Kisara said as her eyes opened wide.

“Thought so,” Hitomi shrugged.

“Still, even you have to admit that was more than you were expecting,” Daisuke told her.

“Maybe... a little bit,” she nodded.

“What’s going on?” Kit asked them suddenly, it was like everybody in the room saw something he didn’t.

“It’s good, but it makes things difficult. You’re more suited as a fighter to being a power hitter than a speed hitter. Renka managed to block your hit, but even so you transfered enough force that she had to take two steps back to stay on her feet, that’s pretty damn impressive when you think of it. The difficult part is that everybody here at the Kazumi dojo is more about speed than power,” Daisuke explained to Kit.

“I didn’t think Renka was hitting that much faster than me,” Kit told them.

“Because you’re thinking and seeing with the eyes of an outsider, for a punch, 1/10th of a second is the difference between a fast hit and a slow one. You have a lot of power, but you need help with your speed, technique, and pretty much everything else it looks like. We’ll take that into account and set you up properly,” Daisuke told him.

“So... is this a bad thing?” Kit asked them suddenly.

“I wouldn’t say that it’s a bad thing so much as it’s different. There is more than one way for people to fight. Most break down into two theories as far as attacks go, fast attacks are driven with the goal of creating flurries, whereas powerful punches try to inflict as much damage per hit as possible. Fast punches are harder to evade and so the boxer is usually forced to either block or take the hit, but they don’t do as much damage so they try to hit more often. Hard punches are easier to dodge, but are more punishing if they hit, this type of fighting is more about outlasting an enemy, getting to a point where they can’t move as quickly and then punishing them,” Hitomi explained it to him.

“So... now we focus on making me hit harder?” Kit asked them.

“What!? No!” Daisuke burst out. “Fighting doesn’t work like that kid, we can’t just focus on making you hit harder, if you never land a punch then it won’t matter how hard you hit. Instead we try to make you both faster and harder. The only real difference this makes is your natural affinity. There isn’t a fighter alive that made a career throwing only hard or only fast punches, everybody tries to mix it up to try and throw a person off. When we’re done you’ll be able to do both. You’ll still learn how to hit fast and how to hit hard, what this means is that you’re fastest hit will never be as fast as any of ours, but our hardest hit won’t ever have quite as much power as yours,” Daisuke spelled it all out for him.

“First we teach you how to move... Renka would have killed you, even in a boxing match because your movements are slow and stiff. I don’t want to say keep moving, because that’s not necessarily the way you should be fighting, instead stand more on the balls of your feet, put a bit of a bounce, shift from one foot to another, you saw how Renka was moving, if you could start moving like that then we can go from there,” Hitomi coached him slowly.

They spent the rest of that evening working on his footwork, trying to get him to move his feet properly, and by the end of the night he had made a little headway. “We’ll keep at it, no matter how quickly you pick it up, footwork is hard to figure out, but it is so essential to what we do, we have to drill this into you,” Daisuke told him as they were closing up his training for the night.

“If you get this, and keeping your eyes open, the rest of it will be easy,” Hitomi agreed. “... or not,” she added after a slight hesitation.

“Don’t forget, tomorrow is your weigh in, they’ll want to know a prefered fighting style, you know a main art or whatever to drill into you... any choices?” Daisuke asked him.

“Well... I like boxing as it is, I mean I know I’ll have to learn other stuff, but the thought of grappling and things like that make me slightly nervous... is boxing a martial art?” Kit asked them.

“Hell yeah, it is. It’s considered one of the most basic, but that doesn’t make it any less effective,” Daisuke answered.

Hitomi seemed to be in thought for a moment. “The last boxer who made any headway in the sport came from Basin City too... Jaxon Davenport... there will be many comparisons,” she told him after a moment.

“He took the student division world championship 5 times, and was a master class runner-up three years in a row. His career records were 127-13-3 as a master and 109-6-0 as a student... he set a world record for most fights in a single season with 26 and he still made the world championship in the end... a record that has stood for over 20 years now, so I suppose being compared to him as a fighter isn’t so bad,” Kit told them all.

“How do you know all that?” Renka asked him after a moment of astounded silence.

“Jaxon Davenport was my hero growing up,” Kit answered her after a moment.

With that Renka went back up the stairs to her room as Daisuke and Hitomi returned to the front building. At first Kisara just watched as Kit went back to hitting the heavy bag.

“Show it to me,” she told him after a while. They hadn’t said anything to each other since the others left so he didn’t know what she was talking about.

“What?” he asked her back as he kept working.

“I want you to try and hit me, I want to experience this power that Renka did,” Kisara told him.

“You heard the others, if you’re dodging around and stuff I can’t hit you, you move too fast,” Kit told her over his shoulder.

“I’ll hold still then,” Kisara answered him.

“I really don’t want to hit you... I didn’t want to hit Renka either, but they instructed me to,” Kit told her as he stopped working for a moment.

“Just once is fine, and I’m sure I’ll get my guard up, I just want to see for myself,” Kisara told him. Kit looked reluctant as he stood across from her for a moment, she put up her guard as they approached each other cautiously. His straight right came forward and it caught her guard with jarring force, she took went to take a step back, but for some reason she still felt off balance so she took a second step. His hits were heavier than any of the others in the dojo, but she realized that part of the reason she’d taken two steps was that she honestly hadn’t expected so much from him. “I understand it now though, part of the reason she was able to dodge so quickly wasn’t just that your punches aren’t as fast... you telegraph your strikes, she could read where you were striking,” Kisara told him.

“How do I fix that?” Kit asked her. Kisara just laughed for a moment.

“It’s not that easy, telegraphing is something that is subconscious, it’ll take a few weeks of training for you to stop doing it,” Kisara tried to explain. “Besides, you should take it easy tonight, you weigh in tomorrow and that’ll be a little tough on you,” she reminded him.

“I’ll be ok, besides I have to work hard to catch up to you two so I can fight in your class by the end of the season,” Kit told her with a laugh.

“As if... you could train for the rest of your life and I’d still be worlds better than you,” Kisara rolled her eyes at him.

“That may be so, but I’ll show you, by the end of this season, I’m going to make you admit that I’m a good fighter,” Kit told her.

“The only way I’ll ever say you’re a good fighter is if you can beat me,” she told him proudly.

“Then I guess I’ll just have to beat you,” he said with a laugh, he was laughing at how ridiculous the idea was.

“Not in this lifetime,” Kisara laughed with him, after a second the two of them went back to their training.

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