"Oh, before we get started..." Fritz flicked his wrists as he released the longknives, and the spun end over end as they flew forward, but towards the ground at the same time. The blades dug into the silt at Ar's feet, even as Fritz drew a second pair of longknives, the ones on his hips.
"Someone as skilled as me can train with the real thing without hurting anyone. You're best off using training blades." Aratar frowned, glancing at the two blades that hadn't left his side since he'd been given them to train with.
"Then what are these?" Fritz snorted.
"You wear longknives...but clearly you're not used to them, otherwise you woulda noticed right away. Those are my custom creations...I call them 'conditioning blades'. They're half again as heavy as regular longknives." Aratar blinked.
"Pointy-ear, you've been exerting half again as much energy as me to move at the same pace as me. Those things are meant to condition your body and, once you get used to regular longknives, they should feel more like feathers in your hands...allowing your arms to move quicker. That was what you wanted, right? Quick, agile movement?" Aratar nodded and tossed the two to the side, taking up the two blades sticking hilt-first out of the soil, testing their weight. He was right, the felt a bit lighter.
He didn't have much time to figure things out, though, because Fritz came at him at a speed that made Aratar's head reel. His blades came up defensively, and he was almost shocked at how fast they moved. He parried the attack effortlessly even as he fell into a forward stance, shuffle-stepping backwards to gain some breathing room.
So fast...not just him, but me too!
Even though he was shuffle-stepping backwards, Fritz would have none of it. He kept advancing, a smirk on his face as he pressed Aratar. True to his word on the varying attack styles, his current method of attack was to consecutively attack. It felt like there was no break in the hail of knifeblade strikes that came at him. He moved his blade out to turn them aside with his blade, trying for all he was worth to keep up...but what surprised him the most was that the lighter blades were taking more getting used to then he thought. His arms were moving faster then he was used to, and his brain wasn't processing his ability to attack and defend at that speed, because it was used to fighting slower.
More and more ground, Aratar gave, and Fritz didn't let up in the slightest.
Then he saw it, during a parry.
He's favoring his left side. I might be able to open him up there... When the Vagaran came at him again, he heard a tone in the soldier's voice he hadn't before. An element of enjoyment. He seemed to take pleasure in toying with the novice knifeman.
"What's the matter, pointy-ear? You can't kill any orcs by just turning away their blade, and I guarantee you that you'll tire before they will if you turn it into a contest of stamina...you'd best figure out a way to go on the offensive or else you won't last five minutes on the battlefield!" Aratar growled quietly as he turned aside attack after attack, and kept relinquishing ground...a fact that was somewhat damaging on his ego, despite his clearcut knowledge that his teach had a lot more skill with these weapons than he.
I'm trying....if I can just get you to open up your left...
Then almost as though reading his mind, Fritz twisted his body to present his left side as he made a noticeably strong attack with his left hand. Aratar was careful not to reveal with his expression that he'd seen Fritz's opening, and the instant he saw it he turned an attack away and went on the attack, lunging forward with a heavy thrust to Fritz's ribs. The might be training blades, but the tip was still pointy and would hurt like a bitch.
Got you!
And then, Aratar was on his back, sucking wind.
"Wha...what...the...feth...?" Fritz held his blade up to Aratar's throat. He was grinning. Of course it was, it would make sense that such a bitter and hostile man would only enjoy himself torturing others.
"Not every opening is an opening, kid. It's called a feint. Get used to the idea. Most orcs probably ain't smart enough to use feints, but some of 'em are, and if you try to take advantage of the wrong opening, you're dead. Remember that." He took his blade away as Aratar caught his breath, his mind reeling as he tried to track how exactly he'd wound up on his back with the wind knocked out of him.
Oh right, the thrust. His lunge had left him seriously unprotected, and he had been going after a spot the enemy had wanted him to go after, and was expecting it. Such an obvious and ungaurded move couldn't have presented a better opportunity for Johannes Fritz. A quick kick to the back of his leading knee--where all his weight was--and he crumpled like a doll.
"Get up, panty-waist. We ain't done yet. Come at me again." Aratar, finally having stopped wheezing, stood and held his blades up in the customary stance...one in front pointed at his attacker, one held upwards with his arm drawn back, almost as though he were holding a drawn bow. Aratar's violet eyes carefully looked at Fritz, examining him as his mind raced.
He advanced quickly, his lead blade making a few quick light taps at his opponent's, trying to bait him into an attack. Normally Fritz wouldn't have fallen for it, but for whatever reason the soldier decided to be merciful and fight as though he were a fair bit less experienced then he was....not all fighters were as skilled as he, after all, and he wanted to let the boy know that ploys sometimes worked.
Intentionally taking the bait, he advanced with a slash that would have run from Aratar's left shoulder to right hip, but that was the distracting move. His second followed it up with a thrust, snapping his hips to alternate lead feet and put his power behind the move in an attempt to drive it into Aratar's gut. Aratar, noticing that Fritz had followed through, he parried the distraction blade, having expected the second attack to be the real one. It was not dissimilar to some of the later moves in the kata, after all. As the second attack came, Aratar side-stepped to his right, maintaining the parry,and for insurance parried the thrust away from him as well.
In an unexpected and unconventional move, Aratar advanced, parries still fully extended, and slid his blades up Fritz's, riding them almost like guides up towards the instructor, and executed a cross-slash, only at an angle. His right hand blade was across his body, inverted and facing his feet, his left a high parry. Simultaneously, the right downward-pointed blade came up for an upwards vertical slash, while the left high parry came down in a diagonal slash across Fritz's right shoulder to his left hip. The angled cross-slash hit skin and dug in, Fritz feeling the contact of the training blade knew that the move had been successful.
Not to say he couldn't have blocked it, but he wanted the kid to get a reward for doing decent. He wasn't
completely heartless, he just came across that way. It was his image.
Aratar, meanwhile, was absolutely blown away. His attack had worked. He'd struck a blow against
Fritz!
...wait. That's not right. I'm a beginner. There's no way that should have happened. He must have let me. He gazed at Fritz for a long moment scrutinizingly.
"What's wrong, kid? Your eyes stuck?" Aratar smiled congenially.
Oh well. I'll take a shallow victory over none at all.
"That smile pisses me off." Fritz came at Aratar, quicker and harder then he'd expected, and it was all the elf could do, even with his faster-than-he-could-process reactions, to deflect them all by instinct. Fritz really did look pissed, and it sent a small shiver of fear through Aratar.
No...can't be afraid...have to overcome fear...and weakness...overcome lack of skill and training...and there's only one way to do that...
"ILUVE
!" Aratar shouted in his natural tongue, and with an almost primal drive, throwing all his speed and power behind one of his kata moves. He parried Fritz's attack as he stepped into it, a thrust immediately following the parry. His first kata combo. Fritz parried the thrust, but was forced to backpedal to do so, opening p a few steps of distance between them and--more importantly--stopping Fritz's drive and forcing him to think a bit more calmly rather then openly attacking Aratar.
Iluve. The literal translation is 'everything', but there is a more commonly accepted slang for the word...guts.
He knew he had less skill, power, speed, accuracy, and experience than Fritz...but there was one thing he'd been training like the dickens since he'd first started practicing for an entire brightening without much of any rest, and that was guts. It had come through for him weather he liked it or not, and he would use it here. He would leave it all on the field. This was not a training fight. Fighting as though they were training had no meaning. Fighting as though he were fighting for his very life; fighting as though Fritz were trying to kill him and he had to kill or be killed...that was the only chance he had to win. He had to give it everything he had. It would take guts to win, because that was all he had to give.
Fritz came again, but with a bit more caution. Aratar quickly recognized that Fritz was approaching it with his soldier's training mentality. Aratar was too unskilled to be able to afford such a mentality and still survive. If he wanted to come through this successfully, he had to come at Fritz as though he intended to kill the Vagaran. In a huge, lunging move, he did a hard thrust with his lead blade, Fritz almost sighed as he parried it, moving in on the wide open Aratar. It connected an instant later that Ar's thrust had been way too light; too easy to parry.
FETH! the veteran cursed mentally, realizing it was his first true and honest mistake since they'd begun the spar, and if he wanted to not come through it with another point lost, he'd need to abort his attack. Now. Fritz retreated, pulling his blades down defensively, and Aratar was already on him. It had looked like all the mongrel elf's weight was on his front foot, but in reality it had been evenly distributed, as indicated by his too-light thrust. He did a reverse spin and his blades came quick and furious.
This was not a simultaneous attack like before, but a chain of successive moves. Fritz was stunned to notice the power and determination behind each strike, but not nearly as stunned when he realized that Aratar's movements, fluid as they were for a beginner, were pieces of the full kata, but mixed up. They were in varied order, but each piece of the kata was there. He was in full defensive mode, deflecting the moves each as they came as Aratar came at him in offensive mode, each two-step section of the kata coming in a different place then it normally did--and to mix it up, occasionally two pieces of the kata followed exactly as they did in practice, because Fritz would have expected him to mix it up, not chain them together in the order he was taught.
He was right, Fritz was blown away. He deflected all the moves, but he wasn't able to get an attack in edgewise, so furious was Aratar's assault of blades. Each blow came with a cry of effort and force from Aratar's throat, a clarion call of the heart he was putting into the spar.
No...he's not treating this like a spar...he's really trying to kill me... An unexpected wave of approval passed through Fritz. That had been the final lesson he'd wanted Fritz t learn, but he'd learned it unexpectedly fast.
Treat every fight as life or death, even if its not. You don't have enough skill to make the distinction yet. Every time you hold those blades, do it with the intention of killing your opponent, even if its practice or training. If you don't do that, then that practice and training is worthless, because it's not a display of your real ability, and without showing your real ability and evaluating it, how can you ever hope to get better?
Aratar maintained the assault for an extended period. A few minutes, in fact. Fritz had expected him to give up once he noticed it wasn't working, but he just
kept coming. More grudging approval escaped Fritz's thoughts. He was giving this everything he had. Obviously it wasn't enough to beat the experienced Bladesman, but to put that much effort behind it...to push his limited knowledge to such an extreme...
If this goes on, I might actually have to hurt him to win.
"STOP!" Fritz bellowed, and Aratar froze as he backpedaled, standing in a defensive stance, blades up. His chest was heaving and he looked exhausted, but there was a glint in his lavender eyes. One that Fritz knew well, because it was something every good fighter--every good
survivor--needed.
Determination. To win, to succeed, to survive....this Aratar had it clearly. Once he had some experience and skill behind him--assuming he survived that long--he could become someone quite dangerous.
I may need to look out for this one a while down the road... he hated the thought, but Aratar's remarkable improvement and quick learning of physical tasks might make him someone who could match the Bladesman somewhere on down the line.
"Alright, we're done." Aratar looked at him, confused.
"You're not completely worthless, pointy-ear." That was as close to approval as he figured he'd ever get from Fritz...but considering it was Fritz, he might as wel have slapped Ar on the back and laughed. He grinned and offered the training blades back to his instructor, who nodded and took them after sheathing his own.
"So I passed?" Fritz sighed.
"Do I gotta spell it out for you? You won't hurt yourself with your own knives now, and if you're really lucky and have a really stupid opponent, you might even manage to hurt them. So go. You need some live-fire combat under your belt before you're of any worth training further." Aratar nodded solemnly.
"Thank you." he said happily and with an air of seriousness.
"Go on, get outta here." Aratar nodded and turned, leaving the field.
OOC: Woo! Finally. mmkay, I know it's only five posts long, but hopefully you'll look at quality and length and not post count. Thanks. 