One 'Ell of a Combination - Amaya & Taien (NDE,R)

Another busy week at academy had wrapped up Amaya. She had barely gotten a break between the end of her exams and the start of new classes, and now she was getting a special lesson on top of it. Today was the day she was slated for training with the Vice-Commander of the Kido Corps. The two had met at a party last week where Taien had wooed Amaya with his mastery over Kido and charming personality. The kitsune’s flirting had apparently fallen on deaf ears, but she was promised an explanation of some advanced Kido mechanics. She didn’t know much about Taien’s abilities, but she knew from his rank alone that he was one of the best users of Kido in all of Seireitei.

She arrived at the Kido Corps barracks right on time. 10:30 on the dot. Not a second off. Despite the student’s showing, or lack thereof, at her Kendo examination, she was normally a fairly prompt individual. She didn’t enjoy wasting time that could be better spent on other things. Whether it was leisure or studying, there was always something better to do than showing up particularly early or late to a meeting. It also bothered her a good bit if others didn’t adhere to her standards of punctuality. It’s one thing to completely forget about a meeting – Amaya did that plenty – but it’s a completely different thing to show up 10 minutes late. That’s just disrespectful.

So Amaya had arrived on time, and she had done so without any special flair. Last time she was here, she had launched herself over the wall with a failed attempt of Shunpo. That was how she had met Taien. This time, she just entered through the front gates. Oh, and last time she was dressed in a nice sundress. This time, having come from her only class of the day, she was still in her academy robes. They were a simple garment, but they didn’t look too bad. Amaya had hers altered to be a bit more snug on her body. It was a minor change, but it let the outfit remain mildly attractive on her. Wearing this garb, the Kitsune sat down before her teacher-to-be.

”So, what’s on the agenda for today, Sensei?” Of course, because it was Amaya, that last word was said with as much of a seductive purr as she could manage. Taien probably wouldn’t do anything with it, but the interest was obviously there if he chose to act on it.

((We forgot to put it in the special condition, but Amaya is granted cinematic use of various low-level Kido that she’d be learning at academy for the purpose of this thread. Also, not counting reiatsu since it’s a non-combat situation.))

"Mmm, ready to start then, Amaya-San?"

”I can think of a few things I’m ready to start…”

Amaya was still doing her best to seduce Taien, but it seemed like the Vice-Commander’s mind was solely on business. A split second after Amaya acknowledged she was ready, Taien used his magical hacks to float away everything not essential for training… which was everything. Amaya really needed to get him to tell how he did that, but it seemed that was to be saved for later. "All right then! The first thing on today's agenda is relatively simple. To put it plainly, I need to see how far along you are with your Kidou practice and the like, so a demonstration would be nice. Whenever you're ready, Amaya-San.”

The kitsune stood up and began to do as she was told, but that was only a secondary objective. Her first priority now was to try and get Taien’s attention off training and onto something more fun. ”Right away, Taien-sensei.” Amaya’s first trick was a simple enough one: mental casting. She motioned as if she were blow a kiss to Taien, but at the same time, she fired off a low-level Bakudo. A harmless beam of red light shot out from her fingers and engulfed Taien. With his mastery of Kido he was easily able to identify it as Geki. Due to the overwhelming disparity in reiatsu strength, it held him for a mere fraction of a second, but mental casting was still likely to be impressive coming from an academy student.

There were more tricks in Amaya’s arsenal. Her skill with Kido was fairly strong for someone with her amount of experience, but it was still too little to do much with. Up next was a minor variation of Byakurai. This too was mentally casted, but that wasn’t what made it special. This spell was impressive because it was not the same as an ordinary Byakurai. Ordinarily, a Byakurai was a single straight line. You fired it, and it was done. That’s all there was to it. This Byakurai was not done so easily. Not only did Amaya maintain a continuous firing for a full second, but a twirl of her finger sent the beam out light out looking like a corkscrew rather than a straight line.

The final spell was merely a show of power. Amaya had shown her skill in mental casting, as well as her skill in manipulating Kido. Now she simply needed to show off the biggest boom she could make. To do that, it meant she needed the Kido they had been working on in class just this week. It wasn’t quite perfected yet, but that wasn’t the end of the world. As long as it exploded against a wall instead of in her face, it was good enough. "Ye lord! Mask of blood and flesh, all creation, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of Man! Inferno and pandemonium, the sea barrier surges, march on to the south! Hadou Number 31: Shakkaho!"

By using the incantation, Amaya was able to focus her energy well enough to control the 30s level Kido. It flew out from her hand and across the courtyard, eventually exploding against the far wall. With her base reiatsu strength being so weak, the final value of the blast was a measly 96. For an academy student, that was pretty damn good, but it was still less than 10% of the power Taien could muster without even trying. This meant the explosion wasn’t even strong enough to do more than scuff up the wall a bit. On one hand, this was great for the cleaning/repair crews as it didn’t really need any work done. On the other hand, it was kind of embarrassing if a Kido user couldn’t even blow up a wall whenever they wanted to.

"That a good enough demo to get started on something a bit more fun?"

Taien’s feedback was… disappointing. Some would see it as praise. He had said a first year academy student was better than those who believe Kido to be static and unchanging… but weren’t those just the people that dropped out of academy because they were failing Kido class? Seriously, Amaya was totally at the second level Taien was talking about. She didn’t even have a Zanpakuto yet. How was she supposed to think they were better than Kido before she had one? I mean, sure, there was plenty of room for Amaya to grow her skills. She couldn’t even use much about 30s level Kido at this point, but her progress with that they were teaching her thus far had her at the top of her class. How was she supposed to improve on that?

Surely Taien hadn’t intended this, but he’d actually managed to make Amaya rather somber. She tried to stay interested as Taien kept talking, but it was hard. It was obvious to anyone watching that Amaya had a huge crush on Taien, and he’d just stepped all over her confidence. That speech had taken the kitsune from up on Cloud Nine all the way down to the point of actual sadness. Considering how happy she normally was, it was rather impressive to get her feeling this down. The idea of Kido Fusion seemed cool and all, and Amaya did want to learn it, but it just wasn’t enough to get her mind off the general tone of Taien’s comments. If she wasn’t anything special, how was she going to learn a trick only used by the masters?

While that did mean her focus was no longer on getting in bed with Taien, it also meant that the suggestion to focus on the task at hand was unlikely to happen. Still, even feeling so glum, it was hard for Amaya not to enjoy the sensations she experienced from the Vice-Commander’s demonstration of Kido Fusion. Flying is kinda awesome. It’s like riding a jet ski. Have you ever seen someone not smile while riding a jet ski? Nope? Didn’t think so. Same goes for the first time someone flies. It’s almost impossible not to smile. On top of that, the feeling of the Kido against her was….interesting. It was kinda like swimming in pudding… not that Amaya had ever made that one happen before. She really needed to make that one a reality sometime.

Soon enough, Amaya was back to neutral at least. She was still far away from her normal levels of cheer, but she wasn’t as morose as a moment ago. That was a good thing for Taien. He had just brought out a bunch of mattresses to cushion Amaya if she fell, and the kitsune actually believed that was their purpose. If her emotions had been a bit more in either direction, she would’ve decided it was suggestive. Had she been as gloomy as a moment ago, she would have taken it as an insulting tease. That would’ve been the end of the training session right there. On the other hand, if Taien hadn’t knocked her down a few pegs, they’d probably both be on one of those mattresses already.

As it happened though, Amaya was unfazed by the mattresses. Instead, her attention was on the training, but it was elsewhere as well. Her mind was on her own inadequacy. This is what prevented her success. Her failure was aided by a lack of an explanation on how to actually fuse Kido together, but even with that, her chance of success on the first shot would’ve been slim. Without an explanation, Amaya’s best guess was to simply fire the Kido at each other at basically the same time. This was not fusion. This was simply two Kido at once. The result was easy to predict based on her plan. The timing wasn’t perfect. A sho from her right hand shot into her left hand, flinging it backwards. The Tsuzuri Raiden she cast had nothing to grab onto, save Amaya herself. She was electrocuted as a result. It wasn’t horribly painful since her Kido lacked a great deal of power, and this one was low class, but her hair and tail were amusingly poofy now.

”Okay… that hurt a bit. I think it’s safe to say I’m not going to figure this out without a step-by-step guide Taien.” Even Taien with his lack of negative emotions would notice the change in Amaya’s voice and the lack of a honorific. Though the Vice-Commander couldn’t feel negative emotions, he could notice the absence of positive ones. The kitsune’s tone was flat and nearly emotionless. If anything, it showed a hint of anger. There wasn’t a single trace of desire left to be found. Even someone like Taien would notice the difference, but the question that remained was how he would interpret it. Knowing the Vice-Commander, he was probably going to manage to get the wrong idea somehow.

Well… Amaya got what she asked for… and then a good bit more. Taien had a LOT that he had forgotten to say apparently. It was nice to hear that one of the things he’d failed to mention was her potential was good. Still, that was only her potential. It meant she could reach that, but it wasn’t a sure thing. What this really meant in her eyes was that she still had a lot of work to do. It wasn’t an insult or anything, but Amaya still didn’t quite see it as a compliment. The earlier blunder had ruined any real chance of Taien making this appear to be something beyond covering up what he had just said. It could’ve been worse… but it also could’ve gone a lot better.

The second thing that Taien hadn’t initially mentioned was how Kido Fusion actually worked. It was definitely impossible for Amaya, someone who wasn’t a technique master, to understand it intuitively. She needed a concrete explanation that she could break down and understand. That’s what she was given… kinda. It was definitely more than she had before, but Taien’s explanation wasn’t perfectly clear to someone who wasn’t already a master of the technique. I mean, let’s look at the techniques they were using. The first was Sho. This was an invisible blast of force. It didn’t really seem to have any kind of form at all, and finding an effect wasn’t much easier. The force itself was probably the effect, but that still left Amaya wondering what the form could be.

Tsuzuri Raiden wasn’t much better. The effect was pretty easy there. Amaya had just experienced it firsthand, so she was pretty sure the effect was a shock. On the other hand, the form was still almost impossible to figure out. Tsuzuri Raiden lacked anything resembling a distinct form. It was just a blob of energy at first… and it followed the properties of electricity after that. It could be sent down a conductor, or it could shock someone… but that was just the effect wasn’t it? It made electricity, and then it did things electricity does. To Amaya, that sounded like another technique that didn’t really have a form. So, she hadn’t managed to figure out the form for either technique… but she needed to at least try something. Taien wasn’t really saying much else anymore, so her only option was to go for it.

”Probably not ready… but I don’t really have a choice now do I?” With those words, Amaya began her best effort to try and combine the spells into one… but then she realized she didn’t even know what she was trying to do. What was the combined effect of a Tzusuri Raiden and a Sho? The former was the formation of electricity, and the latter was the creation of force… so she needed to make something behave like electricity and apply physical force at the same time. That sounded easy enough, right? Not really. Amaya was still basically clueless about this whole process, and she had no clue if she her intuition was right or not. The only real way to find out was to try it.

And so the kitsune gave it her best shot… but she had made a rather large mistake. She had tried to combine to effects, but it had no form. The result should be obvious enough based on what happened last time. Both effects simply exploded out. She was sent flying a few feet, and the poofyness on her hair and tail got a refresher. ”Okay… I still think I’m missing something here, but I think I at least know what it is this time. How exactly does that form thingy work?” She was making progress… but not a whole lot. She understood the theory a bit more, but the result wasn’t much better than the first time. Heck, it might even be worse. Amaya still had a long way to go on the road to mastering Kido Fusion.

With that explanation, everything just sort of clicked in Amaya’s brain. She had all the information that she needed, and that meant she could actually figure out what needed to be done. It all made sense now. A kido that seemed to lack a form didn’t lack it at all. The form just wasn’t solid. Tsuzuri Raiden was electricity, and thus the form of it behaved like that. It was in a constant state of flux, always looking for some way to move or flow. That was what Amaya hadn’t understood before. This time, when she attempted to cast the kido, her process was much different, as was the result. There were no more silly failures on this most basic combination, as she had grasped the basics of the process at long last.

She held the energy for a Sho on the tip of her finger, but didn’t just fire it out. Instead, she slowly dragged the force outwards, causing it to slowly snake downwards like an undercooked strand of pasta. Once it reached a satisfactory length, Amaya let it detach from her body and began to move this strand of force around. Her reiatsu strength wasn’t great enough for her to do anything truly impressive with this controlled force, so she simply tested it out in a way that one would only expect from someone like Amaya. She used the fusion as a hairbrush. Seriously though, her hair was still all poofy from the failed attempts, and her tail was a mess too. With the aid of Betsudoutai, she forced her hair back into place and smoothed out her tail a bit. It wasn’t perfect, since she had no mirror, but it was good enough to prove she could use that fusion properly.

The two of them continued on like this for quite some time, and not just hours. Their training took days, weeks, even months before it was completed. Kido Fusion was a complex art, and Amaya had only grasped the very basics of a highly complex usage of Kido. Even her first Betsudoutai was far from perfect. The form was awkward, and the manipulation of it took time to get used to. Eventually though, she grew to reach a point where there was little Taien could do to teach her until her power grew enough to begin trying out more powerful fusions. Amaya had a decent knack for Kido, and her skill continued to grow, but Taien could also only afford so much time for training sessions. Eventually, the training simply had to be considered done. Perhaps one day, when Amaya was stronger, they could get back together just to see what she could learn with the new tricks she picked up by then.