sixthiterationlogs | 003 ⻰ EYE OF THE TIGER [OPEN]

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003 ⻰ EYE OF THE TIGER [OPEN]

WHO: Danny Rand

theimmortalweapon
WHERE: Between Inn & House 48 + @ House 48
WHEN: First Half of October
OPEN TO: EVERYONE
WARNINGS: N/A

DOJO; HOUSE 54 ⻰ Early Oct

Rose and Danny had spent a few weeks looking at all of the available houses before finding one that they both approved of; then they had to get Elena's approval. This led them to House 54. It had to be cleaned but that didn't take that long. Danny called in a few favors and he had the help of his two beautiful housemates. It was nice to live with people again, even if the Elena-Rose tag team was intimidating a times.

With the house mostly cleaned, Danny poured all of his remaining energy into getting the first floor set up as a Dojo. The kitchen would remain untouched and usable. The dining room connected to that will be left mostly untouched; with the couch from the family room pushed against the far wall to be used as a make-shift infirmary for anyone who manages to injure themselves. Danny didn't think it was going to happen but he figured it would appease anyone who was a doctor, i.e. Claire, to know that some precautions had been taken. The last two large rooms would be cleared; one room was to be used for sparring, meditation and Danny's lessons while the other room was to be set up with punching bags and practice dummies.

It's a very large undertaking and that didn't even include the obstacle course Rose wanted to put outside or the targets Danny wanted to set up so he, and anyone else, could learn archery. There was a lot to do but at least they had all the time in the world.

Danny could be found at different stages of his projects throughout the month: attempting to use the cushion from his bed to pad the sparring room floor, cleaning (which was a task that was never truly complete), staring at the area around the house to figure out how they were going to set things up outside, grumbling about wanting his I-pod back, swinging sticks to see if he can use them as practice swords, making an open & closed sign for the front door and a handful of other tasks where it was impossible to tell what Danny was trying to do.

A few days into the project, Danny sent out a text for help and would be on the lookout for anyone who was eager to lend a hand or interested in training.

TRICK OR TREAT; LIAR LIAR ⻰ Oct 12th

Danny was cutting a path from the inn to his house when he stumbled across a sizable green melon. It was perfectly grown and he couldn't pass up the chance for something delicious and fresh. Honey dew was common enough, or maybe a seed had dropped while people were working at the garden that was near the inn?

It made perfect sense for it to be there.

Except that it didn't.

The moment that Danny touched the melon it vanished in a puff of white smoke. He coughed and waved the offending air away before looking down at the empty ground. "What?" A block of ice settled in the pit of his stomach chilling him through. "This is awesome." He paused again, looking confused. It absolutely wasn't awesome, it was awful. Danny had no idea what he was saying.

"I'm perfectly fine. " His hand briefly pulled over his mouth. "Fuck." He swore loudly and kicked at the ground. He had no idea what was going on and for the next hour he was going to have a hard time communicating with people.

WILD CARD

[ooc: This is Danny's post for all of October so if you want anything for this month please let me know! I am totally doing the bingo with him so we can always select something fun from that too. Danny is Hunter Green Scrubs; which is very fitting. Hit me up though!

mizuyoko I am happy to write any starters too.

Equipment in the Dojo will be sparse and non-existent for a while, it will be reasonable and based on threads Danny has with people or handwaved talking. The list of all equipment will be on his Sixth Iteration information post HERE and it is important to note that he will not be making everything he thinks he's going to make because he doesn't know how to make most of these things. Please check the list if you'd like to write a thread in the Dojo, assume wooden floors and basic drywall unless noted.]

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Danny wiped his face and then tossed the towel over his shoulder. His light green eyes studied Bruce as he reached for a glass of water and took a healthy swing that nearly emptied the cup. He let Bruce get out everything he wanted to say before nodding his head in a quick bobbing motion. "You don't have to help for me to take you on as a student."

Teaching people was one of the few things that Danny could do and do well; having students chased away the anger he felt at being trapped and useless in some unknown world, with some unknown purpose.

"I'm Danny Rand. It's nice to meet you Bruce." He flashed a brief puppy-dog like smile. Danny could be severe and serious but there as an innocence to his features that didn't match the terrible scars that marked his sides and back or the weight in the light green hue of his eyes. "I've been meaning to go through the books but I haven't had time yet." Frank had told Danny about them though he still believed that reading how to do something and actually doing it, where two totally different things.

"It's fine really. Do what you can but I'll never ask for more than that." Danny wasn't really a physics kind of guy. "What kind of fighting do you want to learn? I can teach material arts but I can also teach a handful of weapons."

He didn't care for weapons but Danny knew that he was weird in that regard.

"It's nice to meet you too, Danny." Damn, he looked so young. Not that youth had anything to do with experience or skill, when it came down to it. Bruce was barely a teenager when he started his degrees, and Danny clearly held himself with confidence. It would be nice, to walk around with shoulders squared like that, ready to face a potential day of trouble. His own smile was small but genuine.

"The books are great, honestly it'll take awhile to get through all of them, but they're full of interesting facts. We could all stand to pick out a few." Bruce loved learning, so it took him no time at all to start, and they were helpful. More than any fiction would be, even if he enjoyed fiction reading too. "I think it's all part of the plan, though. Their plan." He gestured toward the sky, since he assumed the people in charge were watching them or something like that. He had a lot of theories, none fully proven, but this one he felt was reasonable to draw from. "A warning, maybe, of the skills we might need."

Defending himself too was going to be one of them, he knew that much. Bruce shrugged at the request, rubbing his hands together. "I think just martial arts or defensive fighting to start with? Maybe I'll graduate to weapons some day, but for now it seems kind of important to know how to throw a punch and/or not get easily tossed aside."

He'd never been a fan of learning for learnings sake but he had nothing against knowing useful skills. As it was, most of Danny's achievements were accomplished because of sheer stubbornness. He didn't always have a firm reason nor did he think things through but he'd do what it took to reach his end goal. His new goal was to start up the Dojo and find students and that was a more worthy use of his time than reading a bunch of books.

That and Danny didn't think that theory and practice were the same. You could know how to move and strike but if you didn't hon your skills it was useless knowledge.

"All forms have both defensive and offenses stances. Some forms are stronger in defense or offense or like Thai Chi; focus on using your opponent's strength against them. Speed and stances need to be learned and practiced daily or you'll have the theory but not be able to do anything with it." Danny studied Bruce carefully. Bruce didn't have a whole lot of muscle and he didn't hold himself like a fighter but he had potential.

Danny moved around the room and tossed his towel so that it draped over a chair that he had nowhere else to put. "You'll have to learn more than just fighting." A lot of people didn't seem to realize that. "If you can't remain calm during a fight then your anger can be used against you." This happened to Danny a lot. "Center yourself and you'll find strength."

He looked up at Bruce. "Still want to learn?"

Bruce stared at Danny for a few seconds and then laughed. He couldn't help it. It was one of the funniest things that had been said to him in awhile, and he knew that Danny had no idea why. It was rude and Bruce managed to stop himself so he could explain. "I'm sorry, there's, uh, an inside joke. I've spent a long time training to control my anger. I stayed at a Tibetan monastery for a time. It's where I learned my best breathing exercises and meditation techniques." Bruce spent the first five years of his exile trying to stay alive and hidden, but also trying to find ways to halt the Hulk while he looked for a cure.

"Part of why Frank told me to find you was because he said we both were too zen for him, or something like that." Bruce couldn't help sometimes echoing the lessons he learned in an effort to keep himself calm and others tool. His anxiety and nerves were all over the place, so he couldn't really find peace the way others could. The monks were kind and did their best, and with them he did manage to keep level for a time. But it was putting them in too much danger. He considered telling Danny the full story, but he was trying to avoid doing that with everyone he met. It felt like burdening them with knowledge, while at the same time, recognizing they had a right to know if the Hulk became a threat again.

"I definitely want to learn, if you'll teach me." He sighed. "Recently back home my friends and I were in a fight, and I couldn't do any good the way I am now." Bruce embarrassed Tony in front of the wizards because the Hulk wasn't able to fight, and he was useless in this form. "I did manage to win one, but only because I was in one of Tony's supersuits." And he was pretty sure Veronica was responsible for 95% of that; he got lucky and outsmarted the bad guy. "I don't want to hurt anyone, but I don't want to keep being a liability to the people I care about."

Danny's mouth cracked into a smile. "I spent the last fifteen years living in a monastery." Though the Monk's weren't what Danny would call kind. They had been cruel at times and firm and it had built him into the warrior that he was today. He didn't hate it but talking about the monastery was usually sobering, unless he was telling stories of the trouble he used to get into.

He scoffed and shook his head. "That sounds like Frank." Danny didn't really understand Frank but he also didn't really try. The guy was pleasant enough but Danny didn't think he was all there.

"Yeah. I have a few students. I don't mind taking more." That was the idea when he decided to put the Dojo together. "No supersuits and we'll start at the beginning. You're going to have to be patient. Basics are important." Though if he'd spent time in a monastery then he'll at least have the breathing part down which, for most people, was the hardest part to learn.

"I'm still getting this place together but we can start whenever you want too."

"Oh, wow. So the zen part really makes sense." Bruce more or less lived like a monk, so he might have found contentment in the one he visited, but he brought trouble to every door he walked through. The worst possible thing to bring to peaceful monks would be violence. "That must be an interesting story. You must have been what, eight?" Not that he's intentionally trying to pry, so to speak, but his curiosity often leads him down prying roads.

"Are you from the same world as us? As Frank and the Avengers?" He knew from day one that Frank was, since he spoke pretty up font about the team. And also about what the Hulk did to Harlem, so there was that. Danny kind of reminds him of the wizards, but with the martial arts he's more like a ninja. Who knows how many factions there are hidden on their planet? Probably a dozen more.

Bruce smiles, brightening, and his emotions have a way of playing over his face openly. Not so great for spy work, but great to emphasize how genuinely grateful he is. "Thank you. I promise I am both patient and a hard worker." Both very true. He prides himself on being a great student, and he was a great teacher too, once upon a time. "Also I'm about to turn fifty, so hopefully you can teach an old dog new tricks." Fifty is not over the hill, but he's realistic to know he won't be doing parkour like a twenty year old.

"I was twelve." Danny wasn't as young as he seemed though Bruce wasn't all that far off.

Somethings, Danny had trouble talking about. Other topics flowed easily from his mouth, like he'd talked about it 100 times before. The content didn't always determine how he open he was. It depended on the context. It was well known that he had disappeared when he was twelve. It was an easy fact. The details of the plan crash were more difficult and he'd avoid talking about that at all costs.

"Avengers? I'm not sure. I was still catching up with recent events when I was brought here." He ran his hand over the loose dirty brown girls. "You might know my father's company." If they were from the same place. "It's Rand Enterprises. They have business relations all over the world though I'm still learning about business." He sucked at it. "We handle things like drug research and development." Which he knew from when he was a kid, Danny had spent a lot of time playing in his father's office which was now his office.

Danny's mouth twisted into a rueful smile. "Trust me. I've had plenty of old geezers kick my ass." The monks were intense at the best of times. "I'm sure you can pick up on it. Do you want to start now? You can show me what you know." Even if it was just meditation and breathing, it'll give Danny a place to start.

Fifteen years ago. Rand Enterprises. Bruce is taken all the way back to a time when he wasn't the Hulk yet, when he was engaged to Betty and they were working on the super soldier project hoping to change the world. When Stark Industries and the man running it were far away names, and he mostly only saw brilliant minds like that, and Rand, from a respectful distance. It snaps all together at once. Bruce knows a lot about what the business used to do, but almost nothing about what it does now.

"Okay, yes, it is the same world. You're that Danny Rand. I didn't know you came back, but I don't actually know much about earth for the past few years, I was in space. And knew not that much before it too." He is out of the loop in every possible way. Bruce doesn't say anything so trite as I'm sorry about a loss that sorry couldn't possibly touch. He understands that well. Danny survived with the monks and became a martial artist expert. Stranger things have definitely happened.

Bruce chuckles and thinks about whether he can do that or not. Well, it's not like he's going to practice on his own and come back better. Like anything worth learning, it takes time. "Sure. I don't know much." Meditation and breathing, that he knows. He can become still and calm enough he might even impress Danny's monks. But that's not where he's starting. He hesitates, uncertain, and then gets into a slight defensive stanch, his fists up. It's more like how a boxer would stand than a martial artist, although he seems much more comfortable defensive than anything else. His hands ready to block, not to strike.

Danny listened and nodded. It sounded like they were both out of the loop which was fine. It meant that he didn't have to hear about the New York of his time or his near future. After Claire talking about it and then Jesse... he was done with thinking about it. He couldn't do anything while he was trapped here and that idol feeling only shifted to furry.

He stepped back and centered himself, bending his knees and holding out his arms in a firm stance. Light green eyes glinted in the soft light pouring through the large front windows.

"Attack me." Danny was done with talking.

He could see that Bruce's stance was defensive and he planned to strike at it, learn where it's weaknesses are, but he needed to know Bruce's limits first.

Bruce has been trying to keep details about the future of their planet quiet unless asked. He doesn't want the burden of such a huge loss and failure on the shoulders of everyone else. He, Tony, and Peter had to live through it, and that's at least one more person than he'd like. He also doesn't necessarily want to get into his own part of the Avengers since he's well aware that the Hulk has destroyed New York several times now. None of it's helpful, especially with the Hulk now gone and no longer a threat.

It's clear right away that he's not comfortable being the aggressor, but he knows he has to get out of that discomfort very quickly if he means what he says about training. He also has to stop worrying so much about impressing anyone, since he was honest how little he knows. Get over yourself, Banner.

Bruce telegraphs his punches before they come, an amateur without a doubt, striking at Danny. It is fast at least, with some real weight behind it, not slow and weak. He is bending his knees and shifting his weight evenly, so he could be a lot worse, but he's no real threat to speak of.

Danny waited and blocked his punches easily. He watched the way that Bruce moved, the steady shifting of his weight before striking. He went for obvious openings that Danny had left for him and Danny could spot the strike and block it appropriately.

His stance flowed and shifted Bruce's weight and strikes away but the fire stance and the fact that Bruce kept his center of gravity low allowed him to stay upright through the exchange.

Once Danny had a good read on the older man, Danny attacked. He shifted his weight back, took Bruce by the wrist and pulled him forward, pinning his chest to the mat and placing his knee between the man's shoulder blades. "You aren't too bad." He spoke as he released the pressure and stood.

"You have a good form but you need to focus on a proper stance. You're predictable. Here." He held out his hand to Bruce to help him to his feet and show him the starting position for the form that he had in mind.

Bruce was startled when Danny pulled him forward, and he gave no resistance to the push down and pin. In fact, there was a moment of genuine panic within him, solely because he still was afraid of the Hulk. It's irrational and will end some day, but his first concern is that the Hulk would see it as a threat and attack. Except that was not a fear now. Danny was safe. Bruce was the one who was pinned down and relatively helpless, and he didn't fight it.

He smiles faintly and takes Danny's hand, not sure if he's just being kind by saying he's not that bad, or being honest. He moved so fast, definitely like someone who had been doing it for a long time. And was young and healthy. Not that it mattered too much. Bruce was even softer in his 20s, before the Hulk forced him to be tough and learn to survive. He doesn't feel any pain from the sudden pinning, only slightly the breath was knocked from him.

"I'm predictable in all things," he says dryly, meaning it as a joke. A very true joke, but he enjoys making fun of himself. Bruce mimics Danny's stance down to the very point of his toes and angle of his feet. He's good at that, echoing someone else. Doing it on his own would take more adjustment. "It was nice of you to offer this to people. I've heard dangerous things do somethings happen here."

"That's the idea."

Danny wasn't a philanthropist. He had started up the Dojo for his own selfish reasons but it was a plus if others could benefit from it. The Dojo gave him something to focus on, a channel for his anger, and it helped him be productive. Fighting was the one thing that Danny knew he could do well and after mastering several martial arts styles he knew he could teach it too.

"When are you free to come back?" He reached for a bottle of water and took a long gulp before glancing back at Bruce. They had work to do but Danny had to focus on getting the Dojo in shape for students which meant scheduling everything in a somewhat coherent order.

"Same time next week?" It seemed like a good place to start, and with Danny still setting everything up. If they needed to added more lessons they could, but it was an option.

[figured could wrap here?]

"Sounds good. I'll be here."

Though Danny will likely be at the Dojo constantly in the next few months.

[Sounds good! It's a warp :D]

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003 ⻰ EYE OF THE TIGER [OPEN]

Dojo

Dojo

Dojo

lol can he control his anger

<3

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