𝓑𝓻𝓾𝓽𝓾𝓼 ⋆ 𝘛𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘰𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘹 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳

𝙰𝙲𝚃 Ⅱ • 𝚂𝙲𝙴𝙽𝙴 Ⅱ

"For the eye sees not itself, but by reflection, by some other things."

-Act 1, Scene 2. (Julius Caeser)

"No, wrong again. Do it how I told you."

I groaned and adjusted my feet back to the position Technoblade had shown me. The pink-haired man looked me over carefully from where he stood about 3 feet away.

He crossed his arms across his chest and walked around me to rap my back with his knuckles.

"Stand straight, you'll hurt your back standing like that," he berated.

"How long are we going to go over fighting stances before we actually do anything?" I complained.

It was my first day of training, and so far I'd spent a total of 2 hours just being told how to hold my body. I was becoming quickly frustrated with this method of training, not really seeing the use in such thorough instruction.

Shouldn't I learn proper form while I practised actual fighting?

"Be quiet. If what you showed me yesterday is any indication, even the foundations of your knowledge are completely misinformed. I'm not going to be able to teach you any advanced techniques if you can't even do the basics correctly."

Giving in to his overbearing nature, I did as I was told and straightened my back as much as humanly possible. I pulled my right foot slightly back from my torso at a 45-degree angle and bent my knee. My left foot came forward and angled 25 degrees, my knee turned slightly inwards.

Now that my balance was good, I raised my arms slightly below my chin and held them close to my body with open fists. My left arm, I put forwards and a bit higher than my right. I bent my chin down but kept my gaze and my neck straight.

I kept the position and waited for my teacher to deliberate.

"Better. You're way too uptight, but that'll be fixed once you get more used to fighting."

I gave a sigh of relief and dropped my arms.

"Now, I know that you already have some experience with Jiu-Jitsu, but I don't think that would be a good starting point considering...uhm..." he trailed off, coughing awkwardly.

"Considering what?" I asked.

"Considering your sloppy stancing."

I frowned. All he knew was cynicism, huh?

"We'll start with some tai chi exercises to get your body used to the sort of movement and posture you'll need to maintain and then move on to some simple boxing," the pinkette drawled.

"When are we going to do sword fighting?" I questioned. It seemed to me like this training was going to take a long time for me to actually learn anything useful.