Fight Club Open Log! (Catch-All For the Month of Grasshopper)

[rieper]

This is an OPEN LOG for anyone to join. Make toplevels to your heart's content and tag around to each other freely. Whether your character is offering to teach or wanders in looking for someone to get them involved (or just to watch), this is a post for you! You may use this for any sort of open or even private threads if you so wish.

This log is for anyone who wants to participate in exercising, training, sparring, and teaching lessons. Some of the "classes" also involve things like yoga, meditation, and easier self defense mechanisms for anyone to learn. Magic users are also extremely encouraged to use the practice dummies and other facilities as well! After all, they also need to practice and also get used to having physical fighters near them as they spellcast. And vice versa. Plus, some people use both abilities in battle!

Basically, if you want to learn new skills that could be useful on missions, come take a peek!

For a basic set-up consider this: the new training gym has all sorts of useful equipment for physical fitness such as mats, soft hand held pads for training with, training dummies, some balancing beams and even a springboard. There are large blocks for making obstacle courses or creating a unique battlefield, and two climbing apparatus next to the wall. Many people are found here daily training, maintaining physical fitness, and teaching others how to handle combat in one fashion or another. Others come and go more sporadically but all are welcome and everyone (typically) shares everything with relative ease. Many of the usual suspects will help accommodate whoever asks for help. Generally, there is just a lot of activity and a busy but fluid schedule around all the equipment and space provided.

Various characters will be around to help answer questions icly if you like (I have 47 on offer for starters) and if you have any ooc questions or comments drop a line over here! An ic announcement was also made by 47 if your character needs an impetus for heading towards the gym. c:

And remember: you do you and have fun!!!

Comments

[nutkrusher]

The last mission, with its caverns full of monsters vulnerable to light and not much else, had impressed on Cassie the need to finally master throwing qi projectiles. Banging her tonfas together to make green sparks had been a stopgap solution, to put it charitably. So for the last several days, she's been working on focusing her energy to a point outside herself, just out of her reach.

Right now, it's manifesting as an ever-growing green ball of light extending from her fingertips. All she needs to do now is release it at the target dummy.

This has been the hard part.

[shutupnail]

Piccolo watched from a safe distance to the side where he could easily watch her and the practice dummy. He was impressed with her progress so far. Her flight was pretty good and the rest was coming along. But it was always harder to control energy after it manifested than to bring it together as she was now doing.

He tilted his head slightly as he watched her. Though his eyes were clearly locked on her and the energy ball forming just in front of her, it was his sixth sense that was truly doing the seeing right now. He watched her energy levels, the currents beneath the visible spectrum, sensed how she manipulated the energy in her tentative control.

He remained quiet. He wanted to watch this to its conclusion before giving his advice.

[nutkrusher]

Cassie gathers her strength and focus, trying to keep herself moving within herself. She pushes her hand forward, releasing a one-inch punch against the air. But the energy dissipates at the end of her hand.

She shuts her eyes and sighs.

"I feel like I'm close. Like I just need my energy to keep its direction and momentum."

[shutupnail]

Piccolo nodded in agreement, eying her critically, thoughtfully for a moment. "You're having less trouble forming the energy, which is good, but losing control of it afterwards." Just putting into words what they already knew. He was thinking as he went. "Maybe..."

There was really only one way to move the energy but the mind was a tricky device and the ways martial artists learned their techniques varied. A new train of thought was, sometimes, all that was needed.

"Don't think of the energy as an object you want to move with your mind, but rather as an extension of yourself. Try to think of it as an extra limb you want to move in a certain direction and concentrate on training that extra 'muscle' to do what you want it."

He wasn't sure if that thought technique would work for her but they wouldn't know until she tried it. The energy was another extension of herself so in theory it should work so long as her mind accepted it. Piccolo was used to telekinesis so he was used to moving things with his mind as if it were just another part of himself. Controlling the movement and flow of his energy had come naturally once he'd put the two pieces together in such a manner and now that was how he moved most of his homing blasts.

[nutkrusher]

Cassie nods. "Okay. Makes sense. Try that out."

Her voice is hurried, almost absent, as though she's dismissing what Piccolo is saying. She's not. Instead, she's concentrating. She'd felt almost in the zone, like a baseball player who's just on the verge of coming out of a slump and truly "seeing" the ball.

She keeps that focus, trying to incorporate what Piccolo had said. For about thirty seconds, she does nothing but breathe deeply. Her thoughts turn inward, starting first on her heartbeat, letting that be her only thought. That had always been where her father had told her to start in her earliest lessons. Feeling the life pumping through her, letting her energy be her focus. Letting her focus become her intent. Feeling her intent become inseparable from her action. Her fist the implement of her intent.

But it's not just the vessel for her energy, as she'd always thought. It's inseparable from it. Her qi is part of her, and always has been. She tries her best to train her mind on this oneness.

Smoothly and deliberately, she strikes again. This time, something is released from her hand. It's considerably smaller than the ball that forms in her hand, much of which still dissipates. But it makes it to the wall.

She pumps her fist and lets out a muffled "yessssss!" - a remarkably restrained celebration by her standards. Then she smiles and turns to Piccolo, seeking further feedback.

[shutupnail]

He was nodding in approval when she turned back to him though his expression was as hard as ever. It had worked. That was the important part.

But the next part was the hard part: repetition until it was mastered.

"It's a good start," he allowed. Compliments weren't his strong suit but he tried to encourage as much as possible since he knew he was considered a brutal teacher most of the time back home. That didn't always work best here.

Cassie was probably the easiest to go hard on though unfortunately for her.

"Now you need to keep that focus, practice it till you lose no energy whatsoever. Otherwise it's just a waste of energy when something so small won't take out an opponent."

He smiled then--though it was a fangy one that didn't convey anything particularly pleasant. "Then you can move on to the next step which is doing that while dodging and attacking." Which meant more fun for him in sparring sessions.

[nutkrusher]

Cassie nods. "Will do, sir."

She keeps her lips neutral, avoiding a smile. But the eagerness and brightness in her eyes is clear.

She shuts her eyes and prepares another blast.

[shutupnail]

He didn't miss the look in her eyes. If anything though it made him a little proud. It felt nostalgic, too. That sort of eagerness for fighting was shared by a fellowship of few but they could recognize it when they saw it.

It was sort of good to see it in someone else. Particularly someone he...admittedly...trusted. In the sense that her heart was in the right place. She was eager for battle but like himself and those warriors he called friends, it wasn't for something stupid or harmful. It was simply for the thrill of it.

And the occasional butt-kicking of some megalomaniac evil overlord that deserved it. No real harm in that.

Piccolo continued to watch her progress. Though admittedly he had half a mind to start attempting to distract her while she worked he figured a few more practice runs were well deserved. She was a good student, studious and eager. He could allow lenience a few times.

[nutkrusher]

Cassie continues practicing her blasts, working to establish the rhythm and timing. With each repetition, the time between attacks lessens, and the portion of the energy retained all the way through increases ever so slightly.

She won't object to being interrupted or surprised - she's used to such training, after all. But she certainly seems to be learning a lot through repetition at this point.