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Nobody to the right.
No one on her left.
That could only mean one thing.
"They're getting better at this."
The brazen beauty just narrowly countered the attack that came from behind, somersaulting over the attacker and landing gracefully on her feet. Her toes had barely touched the ground when another attack from a second opponent, quickly followed. Noriko countered this by using their momentum to send them careening into the first foe. Both were sent flying backwards and landed in a heap on the ground.
"Almost," Noriko laughed, "But not quite."
Across the way, the first to get up was the second attacker.
"How are we supposed to learn if we can't even get close!" The young boy whined. He wiped at the sweat on his face and adjusted the topknot of curly, brown hair on his head. Turning around, he helped his teammate- a girl of the same age- to a standing position.
She too, looked very exhausted and VERY done with training for today.
"Yeah Mama, we haven't had a real lesson in two weeks." The girl grumbled. There used to be a time when they could land attacks on their Mama, but neither of them had landed a single hit in days. Noriko had warned them that from this point on she would be treating these exercises like real fights (minus the fact of attacking them back), and they were now seeing a side of their Mama that they'd never experienced before.
"Satoshi, that WAS your chance to get close, but in a real fight you can't expect an opponent to actually let you hit them." Noriko looked over at the girl, "And Natasha, this IS the lesson. I already told the both of you that for the next few months you would be learning teamwork and real fight training."
Noriko walked over to her kids and patted them on their heads. "But let's call it a wrap for today. Tomorrow is the big event, so we'll pick back up on training in a few days. Sounds good?"
The two nodded eagerly. It was late in the evening and both were ready to eat and wind down. The trio went back inside to get washed up for dinner, and while Noriko prepared the food, the siblings set up the dining table, working together to make sure everything was in place.
A couple more minutes passed and then finally it was time to eat.
"Are we gonna call Papa tonight?" Tasha asked in between bites of food.
"Do you want to?"
The girl nodded. "Yes!"
"Well, we can give it a try. It's afternoon in Tokyo right now so he should have some time to talk."
Noriko turned her attention to Satoshi. "You should talk to Papa too. I know he misses hearing from you."
Her voice sounded calm, but on the inside, she was worried about her son. It was clear he idolized his father, but TJ seemed to always be at odds with Toshi whenever it came to communication. Anytime Toshinori called his family, or vice versa, TJ loathed talking to his Papa, and even refused to talk to him on many occasions. Noriko noted that the last time he'd been on good terms with his Dad was last summer's vacation in which Toshi came for a visit. After that, a change took place within TJ, and while Noriko had her suspicions as to what it was, she wanted to give TJ some time before taking the situation into her hands.
