The New Winds

Dao had been passable in the training this morning, but hadn't wowed the instructor like he had hoped. He obviously needed further instruction.

Imagine his surprise when Utaku Oichi offered to show him a few pointers after he left the training ground.

So he found himself here, with a bokken at his hip, waiting for her splendiferousness to arrive.

"Hello Togashi-san. Are you ready to begin?"

"I think so, Utaku-sama." The boy replied, looking up at the exotically beautiful samurai and offering her a deep bow.

"I think I have the rough idea of it all, between today's lesson and it feels a bit like...meditative violence. Although I'm probably missing some finer understanding of it all."

"Meditative violence is an interesting term, though I would not wish to associate the two. Meditation is about finding peace, where Iaijutsu is about fighting."

"Is not the search to bring peace the noblest reason for violence, Utaku-sama?" Dao asks with genuine curiosity, as he settles into a comfortable stance.

"To bring violence even for peace, is still violence. Before our return to the Empire, the Unicorn forbid all bloodshed between members of the clan for example. But, we are now here, and Iaijutsu is the method the Empire respects. So we have learned and put our own beliefs into our stances."

With a nod, Dao silently acknowledges Oichi's position on intraclan bloodshed.

"Do some of your people still hold to your traditions?" He asked as he tried, and failed, to read any signs of weakness in his teacher's eyes.

"It would truly be a shame for them to be lost forever."

"Many do indeed."

Oichi maneuvers a little as she talks, shifting her stance as Dao observes her.

((Focus roll))

Dao struggles to hold focus as Oichi shifts languidly in front of his gaze.

D10 Focus with Oichi: 6d10o10k5+4 31

But he was a teenage boy, and she was a beautiful woman. He was definitely focused on something...

The woman smirks a little, over-emphasizing her languid movements, but keeping her guard.

((Strike, Kharmic))

Perhaps it was his intense focus on her hips, but Dao saw Oichi shift ever so slightly. On instinct his bokken flashed up and out...

D10 Oichi dueling STRIKE + stance: 6d10o10k5+4 39

The two of them strike at the same time, but where Dao goes to strike with the "blade", Oichi instead twists her blade in a way so the handle end strikes Dao, which if it were a real blade, would only leave a bruise and spill no blood.

Winded a little by the unconventional strike, Dao was confused. "An unusual technique, Utaku-sama. Even to my untrained eye."

He rubbed his abdomen where he had been struck. "Is that how you avoid spilling family blood?"

She nods.

"You have quite a skill, Togashi-san. "

Dao blushed under the praise and offered a bow of thanks.

"Utaku-sama is kind. I know I have much still to learn, but then that is the point of this exercise of Agasha-sama's, yes?"

"Indeed it is."

"And in the eyes of our sensei, has it been a successful enterprise? I have personally felt myself grow greatly in the short time I have been here."

"It has.Though, I wonder if any other group would have been as successful as this. Many of you are blessed in someway it seems."

Dao shrugs. "Perhaps the students were just a good match for...to the sensei?" He comments in a slight freudian slip.

"Those who go on from here to do well in the Topaz Championship will have much for which to thank the sensei of Hirotaka town."

“There is greatness for all of you in store. I even heard Agasha-Dana saying something about how this group would all make excellent Emerald Magistrates, depending on how the performance at Topaz goes.”

She slips back into her stance and does a few practice draws as they speak