It was late in the afternoon when Luvi finally got a chance to do a bit of training. Technically most of her day had been training, but it wasn’t the sort that brought her joy. Rucking several miles in the morning followed by formation drills and then cleaning wasn’t exactly her idea of fun. Still, she got at least a few hours to do with as she pleased.
“You going out to train?” asked an eager looking private who bunked next to her.
“That I am,” Luvi replied with a small smile. She had fresh endurance runes placed on her body to give her much needed relief so that she could push her body just a little bit more. She’d managed to go the whole day without using runes up until now, so she felt she could afford the ether expenditure. She was dressed in casual attire but had her katana strapped to her side. On the opposite side of her hip she had a small pouch that contained some throwing weaponry that she wanted to practice with.
“Mind if I join?” piped up the private who was already dressed to train with his own sword at his side.
“Um, sure?” Luvi said as she gave him a questioning look. “Why do I get the feeling that you’ve been waiting for this moment?”
“Because I have been,” he enthused, “it’s no secret that you’re good at handling a blade. I thought that if I helped you with your training, you could give me some pointers.”
“I’m no teacher,” Luvi said dismissively, at first, but she was moved by how eager the boy looked. “But I suppose I could make an exception. I could use someone to spar with and practice some new moves.”
“Excellent!” he chirped as he hurried to the door to walk behind her.
They made their way out to the sectioned off area that was meant to be used for training. They weren’t the only ones out and about, so they found a nice quiet spot. “Let’s see what you can do,” she said, grabbing a couple wooden practice swords and tossing him one.
“Right, um, okay,” he said, catching it and adjusting his grip. He flourished it and came at Luvi with an aggressive overhead strike.
Luvi stepped forward to intercept the strike, raising her sword up to meet his. She kept her momentum moving forwards, allowing the boy’s sword to slide off her own as she passed by him. She then spun, bringing her sword around in a smooth arc that lightly tapped the boy on his back.
They squared off again, this time the boy went for a different angle of attack. The execution was different but the result was same, with his sword sliding off hers and ending with a counter attack. Luvi didn’t make it easy for him either – she would rapidly switch between one and two handed stances, blocking with one and striking with another. It was quite literally impossible for her to feel empathy when she was fighting so even though she knew she ought to go easy and she did manage to hold back to avoid injuring him… but she could only limit herself so much.
Luvi found that she enjoyed swapping between one and two hands. It was not something she thought she would be able to pull off against a strong opponent, but against someone weaker it was fairly easy to keep them guessing. She imagined that she could surprise them with a surprise punch with her free hand or even a secondary weapon.
“What am I supposed to do when you do that?” he asked after yet another failed attempt to strike her.
Luvi twirled the sword in her hand a few times then thought about how she would approach the problem. She wanted to say ‘just do better’ as it’d been years since she was at that level of competence and couldn’t remember an appropriate response. Eventually she said, “you could fight to not let me slide your blade off, or maybe try moving out of the way if you suspect an attack is coming.”
They tried a few more times but the boy didn’t improve by much. He was getting tired, too, so he stabbed his sword into the ground angrily. “You’re just too good,” he said after a few frustrated moments.
“I’m not doing anything especially difficult,” Luvi said indifferently, “practice a couple thousand times on your own and you’ll improve.”
“On my own?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s the point of all the sword forms they’ve been teaching you. Create your own and then your body will know what to do when the time comes. I think that’s enough teaching for today, I’ve got my own things I need to work on.” Luvi knew that all her advice basically boiled down to ‘practice until things get better’ but she hadn’t the experience to give him the help he needed.
The boy regained his determined expression and nodded to her. “I’ll do my best!” he said before shadow dueling with his imagination. Luvi turned her attention to an archery target and reached into her pouch, pulling out a handful of projectiles. Goku had gifted her some shuriken and kunai but she hadn’t practiced much with them as of yet.
She threw a couple shuriken at the target, finding that she could land hits on it every time, though she wanted to one day be able to hit the bullseye more reliably. That could wait, however, because she had other plans. After her warm-up round she tried holding a kunai in each hand and throwing them at the same time. She typically threw knife-like objects overhead, including kunai, but it didn’t feel natural to throw two of them at the same time in that fashion. She experimented with other ways, starting with hip throwing which didn’t feel right either.
The style that she thought fit best was to cross her arms in front of her and throw as she uncrossed. It felt most natural, if not the most efficient. Her accuracy took a hit when she threw multiple projectiles at the same time, but she was happy to be able to at least hit the target.
Gathering her weapons once more, she thought about other ways she might be able to improve. She imagined herself on a battlefield with enemies charging at her. She wouldn’t be able to stand still in that scenario… she would have to move.
“I’ll have to practice throwing while moving, then,” she concluded as she started jogging parallel to the target while throwing at it.
She imagined the target as an archer that she didn’t have time to end with her sword. She pictured an arrow flying towards her and she dove to the side, landing awkwardly as her body rolled several times. She tossed a shuriken as she rolled but when she finally came to a stop she had no idea where it’d gone.
The boy in his late teens came running over a minute later with the shuriken in hand. “I saw you doing a roll and you tossed this into the air.”
“Thanks,” Luvi said with an embarrassed blush, “I was trying something new.”
“Well, unless you meant to hit a bird, I think you need some work,” he teased. He was sweating and looked exhausted. No doubt he had been practicing this whole time.
“Even the best of us could use improvement,” she said as she got to her feet. “I find myself experimenting more and more nowadays. There’s little drills can offer me at this point and I’m fairly confident I can best most swordsmen this world has to offer. The only way I could win against the best is to be clever and to practice moves that they might not expect. If I’m dodging out of the way of an attack and can injure them at the same time? That would be excellent.”
“I see,” the boy said pensively. “it sounds like the training never stops.”
“It never does,” Luvi said with a wink. She then started strafing again, trying to pick up speed before going for another sideways roll. She completed it a little less haphazardly than the last time before strafing in the other direction. She rolled a couple more times before getting confident with the maneuver. Then, when she felt like she could actually make a good attempt at hitting the target, she tried throwing a kunai at it.
She still missed, but the weapon bumped off the edge of the target which was better than she thought would happen. She tried again and again until she’d thrown everything she had before collecting them all.
“We should be getting to bed,” said the tired looking teen when she returned.
“Hm?” she asked, looking into the sky to see that it was indeed getting dark. “Right you are. Thanks for keeping me company. This was… nice,” she said with another blush.
“Anytime,” the boy said with a grin as they went back inside.
