[Open] Observing Growth

Naka was pleased to see Jacob getting so revved up and wondered how Konishi felt about it. Though he had interrupted the two earlier, he wasn't really expecting it to happen with him. 'Oh irony, how cruel a mistress' He thought to himself.
"I'll be happy to introduce you guys to my students and friends down there.<Welcome back>." He said, nodding to Konishi and speaking in Japanese. With that he headed down to Zachary, Damien, and Katsuo.

"Gentlemen, this is Konishi Shimamura-Miller san and Jacob Cunningham san. Mr. Cunningham is a teacher here, and Miss Shimamura-Miller is a student. They will be accompanying us today." He explained.
"It'll be helpful I suppose. We're all getting too used to each others' fighting styles. From the way they move I'm assuming they are untrained." Zachary Korios responded.
"Zachary Dono, you used your hearing to listen in on their conversation." Damien Kusanagi responded.
"Yeah he did dipshit, but he stopped listening when he invited them to join us. Seriously, learn to read context clues." Katsuo Igarashi responded further, sneering at Damien.
"I'm unaware of social conventions involving the use of supernatural powers and entities and the nature of their beginning and ending features when my scanners cannot detect the circumstances by which they have decided to constrain themselves by."
"See that! That is the reason people don't sit down and have coffee with you!" Katsuo responded.
"Both of you, that's enough. Our guests may have a bad opinion of us if this continues."
"Hai, Zachary Dono." Damien responded.
"Wordy kiss ass mother f***er." Katsuo muttered under his breath, turning away.

"They are a bit eccentric, but they're all good people. Also Korios San, you're correct, we'll be instructing in addition to training. I think I'll have you spar with Mr. Cunningham, I will spar with Miss Shimamura-Miller." Nakata said, first to the new comers and then to his group.
"As long as neither of you have a problem with that." He said with a smile.

Konishi gave a polite nod in return when he welcomed her back from... getting dressed. When she was introduced to the three students, Konishi only smiled lightly when hearing their banter between themselves.

They were an eccentric mix of people. At first she seemed perplexed that one of them was listening in on their conversation, no bad opinions of them developed. They weren't terrible, they weren't bad. She just thought they were slightly odd, but wasn't everyone like that?

"I think I am happy with that arrangement." She said, her mouth forming a smile. "<Though, Mr. Ishikawa, I'm surprised you picked me as your sparring partner.>"

She looked towards Mr. Cunningham. Truthfully, she was surprised. Mr. Cunningham may have been older, but his body still looked like it was in good health - in fact, fantastic shape. She stopped looking at his body and to Ishikawa again, smiling gently. She wasn't expecting him to reach this kind of decision. She thought him and Mr. Cunningham were more evenly matched in terms of strength (from what she could assess) and size.

She guessed the true results would have to be figured out by actually testing out their abilities against each other. Though she knew nothing of what she wanted to do. Nor did she know why the uniform materialised for her was an Aikido one. Perhaps it was to do with the principle of using the other opponent's force. It didn't seem like it was in line with how she used her powers, but physically as a person, she was small and slight. Anything she would forcefully do wouldn't be very powerful.

"<Well? How will we go about this?>"

Nakata looked to Konishi as she spoke, noting that she was using japanese, though he couldn't quite put a finger on the dialect.
"<We can start with your pure offense. I'd like to see how you attack and defend so that I can get some idea of where you stand>" He responded using a kansai dialect. He thought of something in hind sight from his sparring matches with Zachary. Hopefully he had the sense to not use his trademark fighting style against an untrained opponent. Nakata himself would have to make a point of following the same advice. Do would have been cheap against an untrained fighter.
"<Let's start with you attacking me.>" He suggested.

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Zachary slid his foot back and began taking the stance for Houzuki Ryujin, the style his master had created, but decided against it. Using that wouldn't have been in good taste, not unless his opponent pushed him there.
" Well let's see where you stand thus far." He stated, taking a Hapkido stance, hunched forward with the left arm hanging low with a closed fist, the right arm crossing his body with an open palm facing his opponent and standing sideways with the left side toward Jacob.
" <let's play.>" He said in Japanese, using a Kanto dialect so it sounded more playful if one didn't already speak Japanese and had been going off of just the tone.

His intentions were the same as Nakata's, but his methods in training were much like his master's. Adapt during combat and find what you need to push your student to overcome his weaknesses. In this case that weakness was experience and he knew just how to push that, it was funny to see someone standing in the same shoes he had been standing in about ten years ago. He felt fulfilled in this, it was time to put his lessons about teaching to use.

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Damien and Katsuo needed no introductions or word play, not that Damien would have been well suited for that anyway. It became obvious who the aggressive fighter was when Damien lunged forward, immediately aiming for Katsuo's face with a well placed elbow, Katsuo easily ducked out of the way, spinning as he avoided the blow and aiming a hard hit for his opponent's torso, only to be met with a low arm block, followed by a solid punch to his jaw, but as the punch connected Katsuo griped the arm that had struck him and used the momentum from the punch and his training to turn, throwing Damien several feet and causing him to land with a floor denting thud as if a shot-put had been throw.
"<Your reactive throws have improved, though you're still lacking in defensive positioning. In addition, you seem to be having some sort of performance issue which I can only ascertain to be caused by reaction to the crowd around us.>" Damien said in Japanese, half taunting, but only because the words that he spoke, while infuriating, were true.

Katsuo hadn't been used to fighting with a crowd watching. One or two people was one thing, but this sort of environment made him feel as though he held back. That put him at a disadvantage because of Damien's emotion suppressors.
<" First off, f*** you. And secondly-"> Katsuo responded, also in Japanese, though he cut himself off as he moved at deadly speed, landing a solid punch on Damien's chin as his shin came out of nowhere to land a solid blow on the side of his neck barely a second after the punch and an elbow smashed down onto Damien's forehead. Blood/chi pool at 9/10

Other than the forced body movements because of the force of the attacks, Damien seemed unscathed by the blows. Cuts in the skin healed seemed to knit themselves shut as he regained his balance. Meanwhile, Katsuo's eyes glowed red as he took his stance, this time a boxing stance while Damien took his usual open handed stance.
"and secondly I'm working through it." Katsuo said in english.

Konishi's Japanese had no dialect. It was just pure, formal Tokyo-style Japanese, with no clear distinction on differences in how she said things. To be honest, she thought Nakata's Kansai accent was a little funny, but she still took him seriously. She had no idea how she should even start with attacking him, and that was a rather serious matter. If she could use her nails, she felt she wouldn't have such of a hard time deciding.

She felt that he would be able to block all her punches easily, and maybe her kicks too. That was probably the point. She couldn't do anything physically with ease. Since this was training in Martial Arts, she couldn't use a dirty but efficient self-defence tactic like a swift kick to the groin.

Konishi exhaled and moved in for a punch, making sure her thumb was on the outside of her hand.

Nakata watched her movements carefully, so when she went to throw her punch he simply watched as her putting up no defense as her punch closed in and observed her form. It wasn't bad, especially for a new combatant. As the blow connected he measured the force behind it, unsure of how to assess it at first, but after years of training he ignored the reflex to close his eyes as he recovered from the hit. The problem was that she wasn't using her body weight to empower her strikes.
"Strength isn't the only way to strengthen your blows, twist with your body and push off with the corresponding foot in the direction you want the punch to go. There are many techniques, but at this stage follow through is important." He explained in English.
"<Come again.>"

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Zack was less philosophical about his teaching methods. Nakata had been trained before hand by an instructor, then by an Angel, then by Yakuza, then by gods more or less. Each one had instilled patience and deliberation. Zachary had been trained by werewolves, vampires, military operations directors. His methods, like his teachers was that of practice making perfect, and practice meant demonstrating.

With those facts distilled beneath his calm exterior, he leaned back, hugging the arm that was hanging low to his body and then leaning into the arm as it passed him before stepping passed him and delivering a kick, aimed for his calf.
"If your eyes show your target, if your toes point toward your choice of movement, if your muscles flash where you are aiming your punch, and if you don't prepare for all eventualities, you will fall. Your clothes demonstrate the power of your legs, savate is the kicking martial art of France. Sambo is Russian and developed from Japanese Judo and incorporated greco roman wrestling, striking, choke holds, and so on and so forth." He explained, switching to a Judo stance and preparing his example.

This time he stood forward, making his attack first. He lanced forward, keeping his eyes locked on Jacob's, keeping his torso straight and locking down his muscle movements until the exact moment of the strike to keep his attack from being flashed. At the last second he launched a knife hand strike aimed for Jacob's throat. If he didn't manage to block in time he would stop short,if the did block, the next step would be to grab the blocking arm and pull to take him off balance and then pull in the opposite direction as he tried to regain his footing. If he managed to somehow block that, he would be impressed, he thought, chuckling internally.

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Damien and Katsuo went full swing. Blow for blow they were more or less evenly matched. Some of the students had even gathered together to watch. It was almost like a movie, reverse elbow from Katsuo, block and thumb grab from Damien, wrist lock break from Katsuo followed by a flying knee aimed for the face from Katsuo which connected at the same time as Damien's solar plexus strike. It was almost artistic. Each fighter making connections and causing damage, each fighter soaking the damage so that only a little got through and it healed quickly. The only evident edge was that Damien was healing the damage much faster while Katsuo would have to expend chi if he wanted to heal, thus why Katsuo had gotten ready to use a Qiao to make it so that he would take even less damage.
They weren't exchanging dialogue anymore, they were at the height of their fighter high.

Konishi nodded once. All she had to do was follow through in the movement of her body. Still, it was not something she was used to doing. Konishi was okay physically, but she was better at team sports like volleyball and netball. She was never one for solo sports.

At first she was distracted, and looked over tot how Mr. Cunningham was doing with Zachary. She then understood why they were paired up like this, and why Ishikawa was her sparring partner. Zachary's explanation was more relentless, but his demonstration was even more so, as he lunged to strike Mr. Cunningham with an open palmed attack. She diverted her eyes before it came to close to the other teacher, and then focused on her training with Ishikawa. Her gaze sharpened and she moved her feet before the movement transferred through her arms, making for a much stronger hit.

"<How was that? Was it better?>"

It was a great improvement from her leaden stance before, but Konishi had a long way to go in terms of learning about how to spar and how to fight.

((Haha I don't do fighting threads often. So I'm learning how to write them too, I suppose!))