sixthiterationlogs | 006 ⻰ DOJO MINGLE

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006 ⻰ DOJO MINGLE

WHO: DANNY RAND
WHERE: HOUSE 54
WHEN: JANUARY 19TH
OPEN TO: EVERYONE. MINGLE
WARNINGS: FIGHTING & POSSIBLE INJURY

House 54 looked like any other house except for the rough wooden sign hanging outside on the front porch. It read 'CRANE DOJO' carved in crude letters with Chinese characters carved beneath it reading in tinier font 'Order of the Crane Mother'. Next to that sign was another. This one read 'OPEN' in large carved lettering and if you were to turn it over, you'd find that the other side read 'CLOSED'. If the sun was hanging in the sky, cloudy or clear, the Dojo was open.

The house had been mostly cleared over the months that Danny had lived there. He had installed a door heading upstairs to the living quarters. The kitchen hadn't changed much but the Dining room had been turned into a small medical area while the rest of the house had been emptied. The medical area had the couch that was once in the family room as well as a table and a bookshelf that was filled with what few medical supplies Danny had procured from the inn or the hospital. There was a folding door that looked like it closed off the space but it was currently opened and crumbled against the wall like a fan.

The large areas were separated into two sections with the stairway keeping them divided. The space off to the right of the front door was covered by grass matts that had been stuffed with the material from his mattress. It was firm and Danny would instruct anyone using this space to take off their shoes before stepping on the matts. The second space had the original wooden floors and looked as if it was cleaned regularly. There were three wooden practiced dummies lined along the far wall and a punching bag that was poorly made, filled with dirt and will break if it was punched too hard.

Random equipment could be found on a row of shelves near the stairs or in the closest beneath the stairs. There were several bo staffs, crudely made swords, a pillow meant to be used as a target and a few other odds and ends. Danny was collecting equipment but he didn't have a lot just yet.

Outside was a new addition to the Dojo. The two targets that were used for archery had been moved out of the way and in their place was an obstacle course. It was simple and nothing fancy. If you weren't careful it might be dismantled but it wasn't that bad. Luckily, no one had super human strength to tear his posts out of the ground.

Around the left side of the house had an area that was clearly used to chop wood with a small collection to keep the Dojo warm through winter. The archery targets were also stored there, covered by a sheet similar to the way the wood pile was covered. They could be set up but the only safe place would be a decent distance away from the Dojo. Danny didn't want those training on the obstacle course to become targets to anyone not yet proficient in bows, crossbows or throwing weapons.

The class schedule was still being ironed out but the first two hours after sunrise had the large empty spaces reserved for meditation. Danny wouldn't instruct unless asked but it was assumed that these two hours were the only designated 'quite time' for the Dojo. After the daily lunches at the inn was sparring and by far the most hectic time at the Dojo. Danny laid out the weapons and expected people to use what they wanted and share the space appropriately. He was slowly forming a schedule for classes but this was really the first time that Danny had tried to organize something like this and he had no idea what he was doing. He mostly trusted people to work it out and let him know if he needed to put out formal announcements.

CLASS SCHEDULE

DANNY RAND – Meditation, Martial Arts (Kunlunquan, Shaolinquan, Fujian White Crane, Judo, Aikido, Wing Chun, Ninjutsu, Muay Thai, Karate, Boxing), Martial Arts Weapons (Katanas, Nunchucks, Kama, Throwing Knifes and Stars, Tonfa, Staffs) & General Acrobatics/Stamina Training

NIDA NOMURA – Bo, Polearms & Pole Weapons, Tanbo & General Acrobatics

NATASHA ROMANOFF – Dance Lessons (Hand-to-hand & Actual Ballroom or Ballet Dancing)

BRIGITTE LINDSTORM – Clubs, Hammers, Mace, Baton, Flails, Shields & Boxing

OOC NOTES

[How do you sign up to teach a class?! Please comment here. Times will be loose so that no one gets caught up in silly semantics and we can just have fun! I would prefer for anyone who would like to teach a class to talk to me if they haven't spoken to Danny in game yet. He will need to meet those teaching at the Dojo just because he's a spaz who takes this very seriously.

Anyone is welcome to assume that Danny is teaching them hand-to-hand combat, just give me a heads up so that I know for future reference.

I will be updating the Dojo information on Danny's Sixth Iteration Information page though I might be a little behind. Please send me a PM if there is something there that it looks like I am missing and then it will be free for everyone to use. This post has been organizing a lot of this and getting it together so don't worry about telling me if I missed something.

There is also a notification at the inn on the bulletin board pointing anyone interested in training towards the Dojo.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Like he was at all someone who looked for accommodating in people. It just wasn't realistic. Still, once he's down only to his workout pants and tank-top he approaches her on the mat to look over the weight on her legs.

"Looks better but... If it's okay I want to put the heels of my hands against your shoulders for just half a moment. A bit of light pressure just to see if the stance is right. If it is, I won't be able to make you sway off balance. The bend in your knees and hips will absorb it naturally. Is that cool?"

First rule of things like this? Never ever touch without an okay from the person you're working with. Especially if they aren't your student.

"Go ahead," Sam said, although she was already trying to adjust on her own. Sam had a lot of weird places, but touch really wasn't one of them. Truth to tell, she sort of craved it. Probably some hangover from being passed around like a rotten salami as a baby, or some other shit.

...rotten salami? Where the fuck had that come from?

She really needed to try getting some sleep.

"So," she said, to take her mind off of the painful simile, "is this the sort of skill you picked up in mercenary school?"

"Yep," Nida agrees as he raises his hands to push as he indicated. And there is enough hold in her stance that he nods his approval. "Been combat training since I was ten, polearms specifically since twelve. I'm assuming you're learning under Danny?"

Different styles entirely. Which he was willing to take in stride and minimize his corrections for her. Mostly because Danny's style boggled the mind. But they'd had their out and out about that already, leaving Nida untouched in their sparring. At least he'd proven he was effective.

"Kinda," Sam said, bouncing on her knees a little bit, just to get a sense of the pressure and weight. "I'm not sure it was really planned, but he gave me the staff, so I figured I should use it."

Honestly, if Sam could have chose any weapon she wanted, she probably would have gone with a lightsaber. Not that they had lightsabers hanging around anywhere. But she thought it was badass. And it went with her aesthetic.

The Friar Tuck thing was...unexpected.

Although, the more she worked with it, the more she liked it. Being a vampire was dangerous enough. At least with a staff she had the option not to kill. Definitely something worth remembering.

You know, if she ever met the mysterious mustache men.

"I'll make sure not to try and poach you as one of my students then," Nida smiles as he backs up and circles around to further consider her stance. Yeah, seems mostly stable. Which is all you need. Good enough to stay on your feet in the beginning.

"He did go over safety stuff with you, right? I know it's not as flashy as a sword or things with blades, but one has to respect the damage a staff can do."

"It sure as hell would be effective against a vampire," she muttered, turning the staff horizontally and making a few stabbing motions forward, with all of her weight. In the back of her head, she could hear both Karen and Avery screaming at her not to make comments like that. But what the fuck did they know?

The better question, she supposed, was if their ghosts would ever abandon her.

She honestly wasn't sure what she wanted, there.

"I don't even know what you mean," Nida shrugs off her comment. From the bit of her tone that he catches, it has to do with her whole 'I'm a monster' thing. Which is silly.

"But it's important to have a care for how you fight with a staff. You can kill a man with that very easily."

She frowned down at the staff, playing a little with her grip. "You can knock someone out when you cause their head to snap to the side," she said. "Basic biology. It causes the brain to hit the side of the skull, triggering a blackout. I'm not sure I have the brute strength to do much more damage than that."

Maybe if she hit someone in the windpipe.

Someone mortal and squishy.

It was a myth, back home, that all vampires were super strong. That they could run like the wind. Turn into bats. Hear a heartbeat across the room.

Sam was lucky when she could pull the top off of a pickle jar.

Well there you go, Nida's smiling at her for the point.

"Very good. Most people see a staff and think that it's not as threatening as a bladed weapon. But you can do more than knock someone out with a strong blow. Caved skulls, torn off jaws, punctured lungs from fractured ribs... Pole weapons are about amplification of force and really? The laws of physics aren't something to fuck with. And the part most people don't get with all of that? You don't have to be strong to do it. The right from, the right awareness of your weapon and surroundings? You could kill someone with this, Sam. Brute strength doesn't figure in."

After all, a weapon like this is quite a bit more about force amplification through momentum and leverage. And that's something that most people don't understand the potential terror of.

"I don't doubt Danny can teach you all of that. I just want to be sure you understand that what you're holding is dangerous, even if it seems mundane. I had a training partner that was almost killed when he was thirteen because a girl maybe half your size didn't realize just what she was getting into. Respect the weapon, and it will serve you."

He knows. He's lived by the weapon long enough.

Well, that served Sam right, she supposed. She came to the Dojo and found herself surrounded by Jedi masters.

Not that she didn't appreciate the insight.

She just didn't enjoy feeling stupid. That pride was there. Whether she wanted to own up to it or not.

She tossed the staff up an inch or so and caught it in both hands, feeling the weight of it. A new kind of gravity. "I don't wanna kill anyone," she muttered. "That should probably go without saying but. I said it."

Hardly a jedi master, but if she wanted to see Nida cringe and develop a very serious eye twitch, she could mention it. He'd been learning about Star Wars and had very strong opinions about lightsabers.

"That's good," Nida assures her, this time his smile softening. "People that learn because they want too, those are the most terrifying ones of all. I don't think I've ever had a student in my classes who weren't a bit scared of that prospect. The good news is? Great fitness regimen to live with, staff training. Really increases flexibility and your situational awareness too. Great sense of spaces around you, distances, and even sort of a strange awareness of brooms."

Not even kidding, he's had to defend himself with a broom. It was hilarious.

Sam burst out laughing. That definitely wasn't something she'd seen coming, but she immediately appreciated it and appreciated Nida for bringing a little levity to the conversation. It was getting...heavy.

"Brooms," she said. She'd seen enough movies to get the basic picture. But all the same. "I'm going to have to hear that story."

And to push back on any objections, she stuck her staff on the ground and leaned against it, her head canted to one side like a cat's.

"Oh, you've got options. I've got a broom one, and then a far more entertaining one with a mop," he grinned as he shifted to lean against his own staff. With how easily he does it the move is clearly a usual one for him.

"The broom one involves me getting laughed at before I, yes I'm going to use the pun, swept the floor with them. The mop? Turned out to be cheap metal so it gets into a bit different shenanigans."

"I think mops are always funnier than brooms," she said. "Standard rule of comedy. Something about how comics think everything that's wet is hysterical."

Or maybe that was just dumb dudebros.

But she gestured for him to continue. "Please tell me that the metal broke and you ended up going after them with the two halves?"

"You'll be disappointed to know it wasn't wet," he said, a playfully dramatic tone to his voice. Oh pity, no dampness. "But really, the risk of being disarmed or having a staff damaged is interesting because it's easier to improvise things. Ended up in a fight in a Trabian restaurant once. Most of the place cleared out, the guys there had guns. Not exactly the fairest odds. Of course they were trying to capture me to interrogate, and shooting someone for a purpose other than killing isn't as easy if they have healing magic."

He made a gesture as if to say 'and of course you know what that means.'

She didn't...entirely know what that meant. But she had some sense of it. A few months before her abduction, she'd been in one of her first-ever gunfights. Unnerving. And she'd been clipped in the shoulder. It was the first time she'd ever had to heal herself and it had been a little shy of traumatic.

Of course, if Nida's world had guns, it did raise some more questions for her about the dragons. But she figured it was best not to ask. That seemed to be a weird territory for him and the other guy she'd met.

"Did you clean the floor with them?" she asked innocently.

"Sort of," Nida grinned. "I got knocked back into a broom closet, grabbed the mop. Worked for a bit to keep them at bay while I interspersed magic with it. Unfortunately the thing wasn't strong. Snapped down the middle. Which wasn't so bad because it fell into the domain of my secondary weapon."

So he did end up winning. It had just been hard.

A few dozen more cleaning and sweeping and mopping puns came to Sam's mind. But for everyone's sanity, she decided not to go there.

She could only shake her head.

"It sounds like one hell of a fucking balancing act," she said. "Weapons and magic at the same time. I guess you're used to it. But that feels like a lot of stuff going on all at once."

"Pretty standard to a SeeD," Nida shrugged off the suggestion that it was bad. Thing is, he didn't intend to play that up much. His spell work wasn't ever the greatest.

"I was trained to manage all of it since I was a kid."

She nodded, trying hard not to think of him as a rat-tailed Padawan in flowing robes. The struggle was real. But probably only for someone with Sam's capacity to love adventures in a galaxy far, far away.

In other words, a giant-ass nerd.

Thoughtfully, she frowned. "Is it hard here?" she asked. "Not having access to that power?" She could imagine it feeling like a whole sense was cut off. His ability to hear or smell or something like that.

Of course, she didn't miss her own Disciplines that much. Except maybe that latent ability to heal. She'd never been all that comfortable having mind control. It didn't seem fair.

Nida wasn't even from her world and was developing a fondness for adventures in a galaxy far, far away. The side effect of a best friend who is a nerd.

"A bit," Nida admits with a shrug as he backs off a step. "I mean..." Since he's now far enough away he takes the staff into two hands and starts spinning it rapidly. The staff was approaching a blur. "Look at this? I can't even do this as fast as I should. Or hit as strong. In my world, the kind of magic I had served not only as spells, but as bodily enhancements. The closest I've felt here comes from the green wristband. I can impart durability to people for a few minutes at a time. I used to have that sort of thing 'naturally.' Fought dragons, remember? Never wore armor."

Not as bad as having a sense cut off. But it is a bit like being sick for a very long time. Granted his memory isn't eroding away as well, so that was an advantage.

It still looked pretty impressive to Sam. Magic or no. But she figured there was no point to saying it. Either he already knew and was just demonstrating. Or it would just be a grain of salt in the wound.

Fuck, if she could ever twirl a staff that fast, she'd be fucking thrilled.

Of course, that was one advantage she had over pretty much everyone else. She had nothing but time.

At least, she assumed so. She'd shown signs of aging in her first year of being a prisoner. But since then, they'd stopped. Since they made her a vampire again.

"Sorry," she sighed, trying to focus on him and forget about her issues. "That's pretty much all I got. But. Sorry."

He knew it, he's demonstrating that his world is a bit interesting and different. And perhaps that he misses his power. This, though, she could learn.

"I'm adapting," Nida shrugged when she apologized. "I mean, I don't like that I lost the power, but at the same time, one has to wonder if magic makes the man and all of that. But this much?"

The staff stops twirling and he smiles at her. "This much you'll be able to do with practice. I know you will. I've just had ten years to learn it all. Like Danny's had forever. He'll teach you well."

She let out a less-than-ladylike snort. Even if time was on her side, she was a little skeptical. Her gaze fell on the staff and she lifted it, tossing it up and down lightly with one hand. "You know, I have no fucking clue why Danny picked this--of all possible weapons--for me. I've kinda learned not to ask too many questions from him. It always goes back to Kunlun-this and Kunlun-that and my eyes tend to glaze over." She rolled her eyes, but not without some affection. For all her jokes, she did, of course, care for Danny.

Which was weird. But she was getting used to it.

"My best guess is that he doesn't trust me with sharp objects."

"Easy to improvise?" Nida suggests with a shrug. "And you aren't dependent on the blacksmith making you a weapon if you have a staff."

Which, he knew, Tony wouldn't. They really needed someone to go take over the Northern forge to put out useful tools for self-defense.

006 ⻰ DOJO MINGLE

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