{{T.R.A.I.N.I.N.G}}

[Ayu]

Mei Ling faced out over the still waters, her face perfectly impassive and serene. For about an hour, she hadn't moved a muscle. Her messy black hair blew in the strong wind. Eventually, her eyes opened.
She sighed and stood. Meditation was the hardest part of the training regime for the hyperactive girl, but the rest of it was both easy and fun. She performed a few simple stretches then got down to business. Her red and gold cheongsam flapped around her bare legs as she took the opening pose of the first set of moves.
Anyone coming along the lakeside at that moment would be surprised at what they saw. The petite twelve-year-old, harmless looking as she was, executed a perfect set of high kicks, rabbit punches and blocks to an invisible assailant. Hair and dress flying, she continued in a frightening flurry of flying kicks, punches and flips.
Finishing the training set by her master last time she was in China, she sat down on the grassy ground and sighed irritably. She wished that someone....anyone...in this stupid school could fight well. She needed to train with a real opponent! She leant back and yelled, "WHY NO PERSON IN STUPID COUNTRY KNOWING HOW FIGHT?"

[bryna]

"Because no person in stupid country wanting to look like a seagull wiv a broken wing flapping around in the mud?" Kate asked with a smirk, surfacing a few feet away and spitting out a mouthful of lake water. "Should gan down London way, jaw a bit wiv some of the mudlarks, fight proper 'steada..." She flapped around vaguely for a moment, only just rescuing herself from sinking, then dragged herself out of the cold water, shaking herself dry like a dog. "Take a butcher's at some'a me an' mine, tell me we can't fight."

Squatting down at the very edge of the water, she started to wring out her clothes, which weighed twice as much as they had when she got in, and glanced over at the Chinese girl. "Bin watchin' yer, though. I dun't fink as some'a them I've took down could stand up to that. Bain't no good 'gainst a knife, mind, but I can't say as it bain't canny good. Still, reckon I've seen better, me."

She shrugged, straightening up, and stretched. Undoing her hair from its straggly ponytail, she started wringing it out over her shoulder and combing through it with her fingers. A new surge of muddy lake water cascaded down her front, making her frown and pluck at the wet, muddy fabric. "Oh, bliddy 'ell. Mam'll kill me for that. Best remember as she told me, like; I bain't in London no more."

Her attention apparently drawn back to the Chinese girl, she sat down nearby with her bare feet dabbling in the icy water. "What were that, like? All the..." She mimicked Mae Ling meditating, then jumped up and flapped around some more. "Bliddy boxing wiv yer shadow, now, are yer? Who won?"

[Ayu]

Mei stared at the strange apparition in curious confusion. It jumped around like a stranded fish, had something of the look of a drowned rat, talked like nothing she'd ever heard and overall reminded her of a rather pathetic water demon she'd seen in a painting once. She caught only a few words, which left her no more the wiser as to what on Earth the other girl was talking about.
Clutching at straws, she replied slowly, "You to taking a butcher? Why you is wanting more meat? You is being too much hunger?" She tipped her head on one side and regarded Kate with a questioning look. "You have saying England or some other? I have not good England, and if you is wanting I understanding you, please to talking little more simpler." She hoped the strange girl was talking English, because she doubted that such a creature could speak Cantonese. On the other hand, it made learning the language even more of a daunting prospect.
However, when she heard 'Who won,' she brightened. There was a phrase she understood, although she lacked the words to explain. "For right fight, I always to win...I no have fight now. I..." She struggled for the word before plunging into the unknown once more. "...I training. Master have telling I must training." She pushed away the dark hair once more attacking her face and looked over to Kate. "You is having much water. You are to getting cold and..." She thought for a moment then mimed coughing. "That is no being good, I think."

[bryna]

Kate shrugged. "Bin mudlarkin' on the Thames in weather ten times worse. Bain't a problem. Oh, sorry, simpler." Sighing, she sat down again, pinched the bridge of her nose, and tried to remember her elocution.

After a minute, she nodded happily and said slowly and carefully, "I will not get ill. I 'ave - have - been in colder wa'er without ge'ing ill. And yep, I'm speakin' fricking English. What the hell else would I be speaking, Ancient Egyptian?" She snorted, flipping her dark hair behind her and fixing it back in a tight ponytail, then grinned as a thought appeared to occur to her.

"Hey, I can fight." she said thoughtfully, taking care to enunciate each word properly, as she was being taught. Grinning down at the younger girl as she stood up, she offered her hand. "Come on. You and me, have a proper fight? No shadowboxing? I've been itching for a decent match for weeks."

((Sorry. Cruddy post. Mea culpa.))

[Ayu]

It was still hard for Mei to understand the stunted consonants of Kate's accent, but, brow furrowed and biting her lip, she worked it out bit by bit. "I no knowing what sha-do bock-sing is being, but I knowing what to fight is being." She took the older girl's damp hand and jumped up lightly, stepping back to take up the traditional starting position of a duel.
"I no knowing persons in country can fighting good. You is knowing martial art, or you is scrabble like other Englander?" She emphasised the question with a raised eyebrow, a tip of the head. From Kate's very odd flapping performance she gathered that she was perhaps a little disdainful of the ancient forms Mei herself used, but...
Shaking the question from her mind, she bent into a neat bow. She might be considered rude and uncouth by her teachers and peers, but when it came to fighting, Mei was as tightly bound by ettiquette as anyone else.
((Not to worry. Short post is short.))

[bryna]

Kate smirked, nodded back, then lowered her head and charged, aiming to shove the younger girl back into the lake on contact. What she lacked in technique, she considered, was usually made up for by brute force and ignorance, and she certainly had a size advantage over Mei Ling. She shrugged, clenching her fists, and swung her foot around in a wide arc as she reached Mei, trying to sweep her legs out from under her.

It felt... good, to be back in the game. It wasn't that she hadn't fought since she came to Florence, so much as that she hadn't met her match. She hadn't been stretched, even if it was only because she hadn't picked the right opponents.

And she strongly suspected that, if she wasn't careful, this little Chinese girl could beat her into next week as hard as any of the men from London.

She didn't relish being laid out by a twelve-year-old, but she found, in a strange way, that she did almost miss scrapping with an opponent who could beat her. Although, if the silly girl kept on being so polite, then Kate reckoned it would be Mei, not her, who ended up on the ground with a split lip. There was a time and a place for etiquette, and a fight wasn't it.

"Not scrabble like other Englander. Kate Bassett scrabbles with the best of 'em." She smirked, lashing out at the smaller girl's jaw.

[Ayu]

Sharply spinning, Mei flipped lightly over Kate's swinging leg, twisting st the highest point of the move into a strange upside-down spinning kick. On landing, she bent over backwards with amazing flexibility to avoid the punch thrown at her.
Before her opponent could put her entirely on the defensive, she launched into a quick-fire attack, which carried an odd sort of deadly grace. A flurry of blows flew at Kate's stomach, chest, neck and face in quick succesion, rounded off with two neat kicks, one aimed at Kate's chin, the next at her knees.
Although Mei was good, she sensed that, if she was lucky, this could be a slight challenge. After all, they were only getting warmed up, and Kate had come close to catching her as she came up from her somersault. The diminutive Asian girl was, it had to be admitted, rather playing to her 'audience'. She guessed that Kate, like most others in this unfamiliar and, in her opinion, deeply inferior country, would have had little contact with traditional martial arts, so she was determined to showcase the most impressive parts of her repertoire.
"Can scrabbles with best of them, but no can scrabbles with best of we. China is having more good fight than England," she replied, her jaw set in determination.

[bryna]

Kate parried the blows swiftly, grinning as her fists flew and her body twisted, and only one or two of Mei's punches landed, their power reduced to the point where they did little harm. The first kick, though, caught her on the point of the chin, sending her head snapping back painfully; she leapt over the second without even thinking, and it caught her ankles. She was up almost before she fell, blood pounding in her ears and adrenaline pumping through her veins, and leaping back at Mei, elbow already en route to the smaller girl's nose and knee headed towards her belly.

She grinned, blood dribbling from her lip where her teeth had caught it, and shook back her dripping hair. "Well, I was going to let you off easy, but if you're gan'ta be like that..." she smirked, knowing full well that letting Mei off easy wasn't, and never had been, an option; fighting talk was second nature to her, and she didn't feel the need to have it make sense. Besides, her pride was up now, and she wasn't going to let Mei Ling get away with badmouthing England - even if Kate might agree at times.

Spinning to give her blows added power (should they land), she extended her leg in a way that covered most eventualities; if her knee reached Mei's stomach, it should act as a lever to flip the smaller girl around, and if not, it increased her chances of hitting at all. Not that she considered the possibilities in anything but the vaguest detail; she made that move because it was the natural move to make.

Kate's fighting style might not have been controlled or disciplined, but it was quick, dirty, and specifically designed for real fighting against a real opponent. Nobody would ever practise this style of fighting by the lake or test out their moves in front of a teacher. She was hoping that the pure instinctiveness of her fighting would give her something of an edge; the Chinese girl had a limited, albeit widely so, range of moves to draw on, while Kate would balk at nothing and didn't give a monkey's what it looked like. That was lucky, since it looked like precisely what it was, which is to say a mess of knees, elbows, and flying fists that was impossible to learn except by repeated and serious application.

The problem was, of course, that the application had never before been with someone who felt any other way. Kate was well used to defending against somebody who would go for the hair, the eyes, the ribs, or against somebody carrying a weapon of some sort, but such a focused, neat style as Mei's was very difficult to keep up with.

Still, she could move every bit as quickly, even if it was messily, and she had learnt from childhood not to pull her punches, not to let up even for a moment. She had been one of the best fighters in her patch in London, and she was damned if she was going to be beaten by a twelve-year-old!

[Ayu]

Mei stepped back swiftly as her hands flew out almost inhumanly fast, grabbing both arm and leg. As she did so, she swept her foot around under Kate's kick and swung it into the side of her leg, just over the ankle. Simultaneously, she yanked both her hands forwards and in the opposite direction, throwing everything vaguely resembling balance off for the older girl. All this happened in just over a second, leaving no time for defense.
Like the street fighter, Mei had been fighting for so long that the signals went from her eyes to her limbs, without asking her brain's permission. Since taking up the sport seven years ago, she had never missed a day's training, disregarding injuries, sickness and other such piffling matters. The moves, counter-moves, blocks and responses were absolutely hardwired into her, but unlike Kate, she'd experienced other kinds of fighting.
In the last two years, she'd encountered all the tricks in the book, as well as facing knives and on one memorable occasion Glaswegian Daggers (also known as broken bottles). She was no stranger to Western fighting, she was merely disdainful of it. It had no honour, no etiquette, no finesse. Even Western sword techniques were disappointingly slash-bang-wallop. She had no intention of allowing her finely-honed technique to fall prey to such an unrefined mess. The honour of her country was at stake.

[bryna]

Oh, come on. Do you honestly think I've never had that done to me before? Kate smirked even as she fell, bringing her leg out and around, her foot hooked to catch Mei around the back of the knee. It was a trick she had applied many times in the past, to good effect, but she didn't have time to see whether it would work this time; besides, she strongly suspected it wouldn't.

She crashed to the ground. It should have been painful, but Kate had taken enough falls that, even without realising it, she had shifted instantly into such a position that, not only did the landing not hurt, but she was already rolling back onto her feet as she hit the ground.

A martial artist might have flipped or vaulted back onto their feet; Kate did no such thing. She just rolled forwards and surged upwards, her shoulder between Mei's legs and her face turned away. No chance to pin her, no chance to hit her while she was down; she was used to fighting in the dirty underbelly of London, and she wasn't about to give her opponent such an easy advantage. Like a cat, she caught her balance almost immediately, reached out, and grabbed the first thing that came to hand, which happened to be a tree.

She shrugged, tugged downwards with all her considerable strength, and peeled away a stout branch. Smirking even wider, she took a wild swing at Mei's ribs, kicking out at groin height.

((No, I'm not Sueing; I promise all those things could happen ^.-
Sorry, I just thought it would be more interesting than:
Mei: *pins Kate*
Kate: *won't stop trying to unpin herself*))

[Ayu]

Mei stumbled at the trip and turned her fall smoothly into a flip, taking her out of the way of Kate's charge. The use of the stick took her by surprise. It was dirty and dishonourable, and she'd never dream of doing something like that. It was like her taking out her knives (which were, as always, firmly tucked into their holsters on the side of her legs. They were hidden by her skirt, which was how she got away with carrying them*)without warning. It was unfair.
Still, in a way, she was half expecting it. Westerners... She flipped back again, catching the stick between her bare ankles, knowing she could expect a bruise or a scrape from such an unforgiving manouver. However, such a dishonourable attack would certainly not go unpunished.
She flipped up, the upturning of her skirt revealing the throwing knives strapped to her shorts. "Is not to being fair, to fighting with stick sudden. Can fighting with stick if you asking.

*Although judging by the cbox...

[bryna]

Kate shrugged, resting the branch against one knee and pushing on the end so that the end between Mei's ankles flipped sideways and up. "Oh, sure, I'll just waste time askin' so you know what it is I'm doing. Yup, that's a mint way to win, in't it?" She shook her head despairingly. "Time and a place for that. Christ, why'd I give a monkey's about fighting fair? Anyways, bain't like you couldn't grab a stick yourself..."

She shrugged, glancing at the tree, and snapped the branch in half in one quick movement. "There. Don't be saying that bain't fair. You got your 'arf, I got mine, up the stakes, take to arms, and devil take the hindmost." Raising her half over her head, she swung it heavily towards Mei's head, spinning to add more force to the blow, and leapt back, breathing slowly and evenly.

"Let's see which is better fightin' proper, shall we?" she muttered under her breath, glaring at the other girl.

((Judging by the cbox what? Knives are allowed in school?))

[Ayu]

Mei glared. "To win is no to be all, I am thinking. Being more good to lose in honour than win by no honour." She truly believed that. She wasn't bound by a code of honour like Japanese samurai, where losing was the greatest dishonour. Her morals put fighting fair above winning, at least in a friendly bout.
She caught the short staff deftly, spinning it around her head to block the attack. The sticks connected with a strong shock that went through Mei's whole tiny body. She was far less experienced in fighting with weapons than without, since she preferred hand-to-hand, but she was reasonably competent in staff fighting. Not great, but reasonably competent.
She continued to spin the staff for a moment, then leapt into the air with the branch outstretched, prepared to drive it into Kate's stomach. If that failed, she would have the split-second needed for her tradmark move, dropping a strong kick onto her opponent's head. It seemed basically failsafe, especially since, her staff extending past her body, she should be able to block any last-minute attacks.

[bryna]

"Honour?" Kate snorted. "Honour ain't worth a pig's spit in the real world, hon. Winnin's what yer've got - yer win, or yer lose. Win, yez fine. Lose, yez... oof!" The staff collided hard with her stomach, before she had a chance to dodge, and she swore loudly; her weapon had flown out of her grasp, and she was left sprawling on the ground, gasping for breath.

It took her a couple of seconds to regain her breath - vital seconds, she knew, and cursed herself for losing them. But there were more important things at stake here. There was, for instance, her own honour. It might not be cut-and-dried like Mei's, and it might not be obvious to the casual observer, but Kate was, despite her derision, probably just as honourable as Mei. There were a few unspoken laws of the street - never stand to take an insult, never back down on anything, never leave a fight until you've won it - that Kate held to more firmly than she did to the law itself.

Never back down.

Never.

Ever.

Ever.

Surging to her feet, she held the branch out crossways in front of her, shifted her weight for a moment, and then simply lunged at the younger girl, arms spread to catch Mei's arms. She could see the lake's edge, not so far away. If she could give Mei a dunking, she decided, that would be close enough to winning.

Right? [/size]

[Ayu]

"Honour always is being good!" Mei sidestepped neatly and thwacked Kate around the back with her stick to help her on her way. "If stupid no-england girl is having no honour, how you is living? How you is knowing how to being good? How to living right? How you is fighting? How you is winning?"

She somersaulted back to catch her feet in Kate's back. "HOW YOU IS TO KNOWING WHAT YOU IS TO DOING?!?"