To Wield What is Forged

Ashitaka struck at the empty air over and over again. With each strike, the kunai at the end of his Scorpion Tail flexed the weapon so that its tip was about 15 degrees lower than the angle at which he held it. At first he used the repetitive overhand strikes prescribed in the book on Kendo he got from the Academy's library, but after about an hour of this he shifted first to vertical, then diagonal strikes. When he felt he'd put enough effort into offense, he changed course and started practicing his parries. Since his weapon was not significantly different from its source in this manner, they were much easier for him to perform. Still, once he got his forms down, he went to find a training dummy so he could practice whipping the "blade" around quickly without accidentally injuring himself with the modified tip of his weapon.


[Training Kendo: 151/150 words.]

The next day, he decided that he was going to try something a little bit more fancy: the Moonlight technique. In all fairness, Ashitaka didn't like it at all, considering that it involved embedding one's weapon into the ground and he personally felt that was counterproductive. After some thought and practice, he decided that it was similar to pole-vaulting, and the flexible nature of the one he currently held actually contributed a lot to his ability to perform it. Consequently, it took significantly less effort than he was expecting to get a solid flow of his momentum going and was able to deliver a powerful kick without compromising his defense. The real challenge was getting his timing down so that he could deliver a proper attack rather than just catapulting whatever part of his body happened to be the furthest in the direction of travel into his target. Upon landing, he realized that he could continue using his momentum to bring his Scorpion Tail back into the fray with even more force than he'd be capable of with ordinary strikes. He liked this slight modification so much that he spent the rest of his day training it as though it was always part of the original technique.

[Training Moonlight: 210/150 words.]