Gathering Data: Fisticuffs Edition.[JT | R | Gail & Izanami]

[Gail Belrose]

((Please note that anything within <<…>> is Gail speaking in French. No clue whether or not this affects your character’s ability to understand it.))

A distinctive clacking of mechanical keys echoed across the modern décor of the corner office a coffee-fueled code monkey bashed away on her keyboard with reckless abandon. It’s a mech. It can take it. This day, like so many others, Gail was neck deep in a pile of code that only she could hope to understand. Yesterday she had made a mistake. She had solved a bug without commenting her code. If you’ve ever written code, you know exactly how many problems that causes when a different module calling the same function is broken as a result.

For those of you who don’t know what she was going through, just picture this scenario. Imagine that you are a plumber. Your job is a rather simple one, as you are employed by the city to keep the mains working. About 360 days a year, you have no problems. One of those rare days comes to pass that you actually have to fix something. You rush out to the scene, drop some C4 into the pipe, blow it up, and slam a new one in its place. After that, a road crew immediately repaves the area.

Just like that, all is well in our fictional plumber’s world. Except the part where that plumber never wrote down where the break was, and the next day they realize that there were other pipes on every side of it, and they used explosives for some reason. They have no clue where to even look, but they know that everyone is pretty damn broken. That was what Gail was going through. There were lines and lines of code, all calling functions she had named things like “stupidFuckingBug” and “reallyNeedCoffee.” Unethical devs would call this job security. She called it self-inflicted misery. There was no one to blame for this but herself, and she knew it. She was the sole dev on this project after all.

Right as she thought she was getting close to a solution, her office phone rang. <<”I thought I unplugged that…”>> Spoiler alert: she had unplugged it a month ago. <<”Never a good sign when technology breaks its own rules.”>> Begrudgingly, she hit Windows + D to minimize everything on both of her screens. Chances were, if the phone was ringing like that, the person making it ring could probably see her screen as well. Never hurts to avoid showing off sloppy code.

”Gail here. How’d you get it to do that? It’s definitely not plugged in.” Despite her genuine interest in the “how” this call was happening, the voice on the other end completely ignored her question. ”New orders rookie. We’ve got a motion capture studio set up in the gym. Another member is going to be stopping by today. Get some data on human against human combat. Use it to expand your program.” Needless to say, Gail was baffled. Until today, she honestly didn’t even think anyone really even knew she worked here, aside from whatever person was monitoring whether or not she was a Fullbringer yet.

It took her a few minutes to parse through everything, but she had plenty of time given that the person who had called her had also hung up immediately after they finished speaking. Now Gail was no soldier, so she wasn’t a fan of being ordered around, but she knew Xcution did have a military arm. Unsurprisingly, her not-so-gentle man caller had decided he could just order her around. She could totally disobey him if she wanted, but disobeying people who thought they ran the world was generally a bad idea. With absolutely no zeal for the task ahead, she polished off her coffee, binned it, and headed over to the stairs down to the gym.

Thankfully she kept a decent workout outfit at the office… but wait a tick, why was she the one who had to do this? Yeah, it was her research, but she wasn’t supposed to be a fighter. She was hired to be a programmer, right? Surely they could have gotten a second actual fighter for this purpose… unless they wanted data on her specifically. Of course that was it. She’d been with Xcution for nearly a whole year, and hadn’t magically obtained superpowers, so they were forcing a combat evaluation. Lovely. Ah well, she had already mentally committed. A good spar was probably a necessary break from staring at that code anyway.

After a quick trip down the stairs she popped into the locker room to get changed. A few moments later, she emerged into the repurposed space wearing a golden pair of booty shorts, a black sports bra, and a grayish-brown hoodie. The hoodie would get ditched once a warm-up was over, and the data capture was underway, as would her sneakers. Kicking someone in the face with shoes on was just rude. If nothing else, at least the outfit she had down here wasn’t going to have much on it to get in the way of good mocap data. Gail may be a code monkey for her day job, but she was also a decent martial artist, and quite a bit stronger and faster than most people gave her credit for.

All that was left was to figure out who she was supposed to be fighting.

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{Outfit Reference}

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{Stats and Skills}

Stats Strength - [80(160)] Points Speed - [80(120)] Points Spiritual Pressure - [10(5)] Points Reiatsu Strength - [10(5)] Points Light Aura - [50] Points Dark Aura - [50] Points Instinct - [95] Points Senses - [75] Points Energy sensory - [0] Points Healing Expertise - [0] Points Total SP: [350] Points

Skills [Northern Shaolin Kung Fu] {1} [Stealth] {1} [Battle Analysis] {1} [Hacking] {1} [Charisma] {1} [Calm Mind] {1}

[Izanami Midorikawa]

Training for TTP

The complete and total abyss of darkness that floated throughout space and time was all that consisted of Izanami Midorikawa's subconscious. The blonde beauty of a living weapon was doing as she always did just prior to dawn. She was asleep in the silver capsule in the center of the white room that one could refer to as her bedroom. The people of Xcution had created the room to store her while she needed to rest or when they didn't need her nothing else. Izanami wasn't the same as any other human on the planet all she was, was a weapon.

At the moment though her consciousness was actually deep within her own subconscious while she slept. The only thing it could be compared to happened to be a dream yet Izanami held no emotions nor any type of situation that she held onto. That was the reason why at the moment Izanami floated through the endlessly dark space that one could compare to space without any of the stars. There was no light. There was no sound. Lastly there was nothing around her, but darkness. All that she was, all that she is, nothing more than a weapon for the use of Satsujun.

"You're wrong. That man is nothing to us." Izanami suddenly heard the voice of someone else. The voice of someone younger much younger than herself. After the voice spoke though Izanami heard what sounded like a distant assortment of giggling and than everything changed. Suddenly the darkness was replaced by overbearing light and brightness. Izanami was forced to close her eyes for a moment and in that moment she realized that she was wet. Opening her eyes and standing up Izanami experienced something that had never happened before.

All around her she was water. She was standing in what looked to be a pond that was in the middle of a large forest. From what she could tell the trees around the pond were pine, but the size of them was immense. She couldn't even see that deep into the forest for the vegetation covered everything in green and brown. She didn't understand what was going on how this was happening and then she realized she was overlooking the most important question. How did someone else get into her subconscious?

Izanami turned around and looked all around her while standing in the pond. The water was up just passed her knees. This wasn't something that had ever happened which meant that whoever had spoken was causing it to happen. Izanami might not know what was going on, but she knew what she had to do. "You really are boring . . you know that right." Izanami turned around the voice was here again and this time it sounded as if it was right behind her. As she turned though her eyes actually experienced shock and widened in awe.

Standing there on the surface of the water was a girl with long blonde hair. Standing there only a few feet from her was herself. How was this happening though and what did it mean were unclear. Izanami didn't know what was going on and couldn't think of any reason for this type of thing to occur. "See you don't even talk unless one of them tell you too. Pathetic. I hate what you've made us become." Izanami was over this she didn't care she had an idea of how to wake up and when that happened she would report this to Yumi.

Moving her right hand up to her throat Izanami grabs ahold of the tags that held her name and rank. She was going to have to cut down this imposter. Whatever it was it was using her younger appearance to trick her. Izanami wouldn't fall for it and she would get out of this, this whatever this was. Calling on her Fullbring the massive claymore materialized and Izanami was ready to cut down the imposter. That was when the weight in her hand was gone though.

This couldn't be happened what did it mean for something like this to occur. The imposter was holding her Fullbring right to her chest and face with a smile while looking at her. Her Fullbring wasn't cutting her and somehow this imposter had taken it from her. "You need to remember what happened. What they did to us. WHAT HE DID TO US!" Suddenly a hand was put in motion and in the next moment the blade of Izanami's Fullbring cut clean through her skull. Then she was in her capsule thrown from her subconcious into the real world where she was covered in sweat.

15 Minutes Later . . . . .


Standing in the small white box that at the moment bombarded her with water Izanami stood washing away the sweat that had accumulated due to that experience in her subconscious. In all truth though Izanami knew two things and those were why she was in the shower. The first being that if the standard instructor or even Yumi had come to wake her after shortly after dawn and saw her covered in sweat than things could have gone badly. She had to get clean she had no choice, but to wash away the sweat in order to get rid of the evidence of what had just happened. As she thought that over now while standing in the shower though her pupils dilated.

She was thinking for her own well being. She for one reason or another was worried about what they would do if they learned about what had just gone inside of her mind. Izanami in all truth didn't understand what was going on right now or why she suddenly was thinking for herself. She could recall what had gone on inside of her subconscious and knew that whatever that thing was it had taken the form of what she looked like when she had been around eleven. However, it referred to itself as the both of them. That literally meant that whatever that entity had been it believed itself to be apart of Izanami. How did that make any sense though was unclear. She was Izanami and she had never experienced the majority of emotions.

That entity had been anger and it hadn't just been at one individual. It seemed angry at all of Xcution for the treatment that Izanami had been given. That made no sense either though. This was always how Izanami lived and nothing different had ever happened. So what was that entity talking about with Xcution? It had been angry at her though blaming her for the way she was now. She specifically said that she had allowed Xcution to turn her into what she was now. Izanami couldn't help, but think about such a thing and how it didn't make any sense to her.

She couldn't recall a time in her life that she wasn't the way that she was normally. She hadn't ever experienced emotion in any major way. The most that had ever happened to her were small bursts of emotion that could barely even be called such things and normally when that happened there were gone in less than a moment and Izanami would have to guess which type of emotion she had even experienced. The way that entity spoke though was like she had at one time been normal and Xcution made her like this.

That was when the image of a man and woman popped into her mind. Both of them looked scared for their lives and then after that she saw their bloody bodies on the ground cut up. That was when facts in her mind started to mesh together to form some sort of story to make sense of what this all meant. Those people must have been her parents and Satsujun the leader of Xcution the man that the entity in her mind had been most angry at must have killed them and taken her. So she was an experiment. Izanami for the first time felt hot rage flow throughout her veins as the need for Satsujun's death was engraved on her soul.

1 Hour Later . . . .

Once again in the training room that the male instructor that had already developed a strong sense of fear towards Izanami used to train her in. Training her though was more than likely the wrong way to address it. The man was to afraid of her for some reason that she didn't understand or really paid attention too. He was so afraid of her that he couldn't train with her. She didn't know if the man was even powerful yet his courage was certainly lacking. That was why this training consisted of Izanami being in this safe room locked inside with him on the outside.

She and whatever he had set for her to fight wouldn't be able to get out and hurt him. So far everything that she had fought had been dangerous animals that would be able to kill a normal human in an instant. Right now Izanami was standing with her Fullbring held in the grasp of her right hand with blood dropping off of its body onto the floor. The room was strained red from the massive amount of blood. Izanami herself was covered in blood and now would need to take another shower shortly.

In the training room on the floor carved up was an averaged sized elephant. To think that the instructor was so desperate to try and kill her that he'd set up this sort of thing to fight against her. He stood outside watching everything on the terminal that control the training room. He hadn't ever seen a trainee defeat an animal that should be unstoppable with the amount of drugs coursing through its veins that the elephant had been injected with. Now as the doors opened and Izanami stepped out covered and dripping with blood he knew what he had to do.

He was done putting up with Izanami and wasn't going to resort to using animals to kill her anymore. She had proven somehow that such a thing wasn't possible no matter what he tried. He sent Izanami back to her room to shower. While she was away getting washed and switching out her black leather clothing for another clean set the next round of training was being set up. A round that this instructor was praying would truly end his suffering. Whether or not he was right though was going to be decided soon.

30 Minutes Later . . . . .

Izanami was back in the training room now with her Fullbring in her right hand as she preferred for some reason. She didn't need it in her right hand she was just as skilled with using her left yet for some strange reason it felt more comfortable in her right. It had taken a bit longer to wash all of the blood from her body than she had actually thought. Her hair especially just seemed as if it wanted to be red and not the pale blonde that it naturally and always was.

That was when the doors to the training room began to close and Izanami knew that whatever she was about to fight would be released in the next few moments. That was when the door being closed suddenly stopped closing. In every training session this had never happened and because it was now Izanami turned and began to walk to the exit again. When she got out of the training room where the instructor normally stood watching everything on the monitor she saw someone else.

Standing there with a grin on her face was Yumi the member of Xcution that had been assigned to be her handler. She had been in charge of her in over five different assignments. The question was though why was she here right now? "Well Midori I got something special for you today. Let's leave this sorry excuse for the rest of the day." Yumi turned and began to walk through the halls. Izanami had caught the figure of her training instructor against the wall covered in blood.

1 Hour Later . . . .

Well it seemed that there was a new system that needed two individuals for the members of Xcution to get a thorough testing of it. Yumi somehow knew about it and had selected Izanami as one of the individuals. She had already explained that she would be sparring against another member of Xcution. She wasn't to use her Fullbring during this spar though unless she was given permission. Izanami was at the moment making his way through the locker room.

She wasn't really all that sure whether or not whoever she was suppose to be facing had already gone through here to get to the entrance of this new testing room. Yumi had just told her that the room was meant to scan them while they fought. She hadn't been given anymore information than that. Izanami took off her cloak and set it down on one of the benches in the locker room and then entered into the testing room. When she got in the room she saw another female that was wearing less than herself.

Izanami was wearing her normal attire that was all she actually had. She had multiple copies of it, but the attire was all replicas and she hadn't worn anything different since her training had started a few months ago. A black top that concealed the actual top of the matching skirt making it appear to be a short dress. Her arm bands which covered from her wrists down past her elbows. Her thigh highs starting at her ankles and reaching up to the mid section of her thighs. Without her cloak Izanami's pale white skin was revealed with her blonde hair and silver eyes which held no equal in terms of beauty. She simply looked at the blonde girl dress in the hoodie until something would start.

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{Outfit Reference}

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{Stats & Skills}Strength: 75 (94)
Speed: 100
Spiritual Pressure: 25 (19)
Reiatsu Strength: 25 (31)
Instincts: 100 (75)
Senses: 50
Energy Sensory: 50 (75)
Healing Expertise: 0
Light Aura: 0
Dark Aura: 100

Learning: 1
Movement: 2
Calm Mind: 2
Pain Tolerance: 2
Battle Analysis: 2
Weapon*Swords: 2
Martial Art*Taekwondo: 2

[Gail Belrose]

When Gail first walked out into the makeshift motion capture studio, she was relieved to see that she was the first one there. That meant she actually had a few minutes to examine the setup and fix everything that they did wrong. She had no clue who was in charge of configuring the room like this, but it definitely wasn’t her own handiwork. The motion capture cameras were placed haphazardly all over the place. Within a minute or two, she had them properly arranged into a more standard setup in the corners and medians of the open space. Whether this was actually for gathering useful data, or it was just to let the higher ups get information about her didn’t matter. If this researcher was in a room full of technology, she was going to ensure it was working properly.

From there, she looked around and quickly found the box that everything was hooked up to. ”They’re seriously trying to pull eight HD video streams onto a friggin entry level Dell laptop? Who the fuck thought this was a good idea!?” Of course, as she was shit talking some faceless IT grunt that had been ordered to set all this up, her fellow test subject had wandered into the area. Great first impression there Gail. Oddly though, there was no reaction. She had expected something, even just laughter. There was only silence. Well in that case…

”Give me just a minute to finish unfucking this setup. The genius that set this up doesn’t know the difference between a slide-rule and a server.” As she continued her verbal assault on the initial setup, she fixed it up even faster. Her fingers danced across the dull, cheap keyboard of the Inspiron notebook. Honestly it was rather impressive that such a shitty device even existed within such a powerful company. Regardless, it only took a moment for her have everything reconfigured. They had at least been smart enough to use networked cameras, so everything was easy to reconfigure without moving hardware around. By the time she was done, all the data was being stored server-side, and her beast of a workstation was handling the processing.

She slammed the lid of the laptop shut, rolled her shoulders with an audible crack, and turned to face her apparent sparring partner. ”Sorry about that. Can’t trust tier one techs as far as I can throw em.” She made her way over to the other woman in the gym and introduced herself properly. ”I’m Gail. Apparently I’m your sparring buddy for the day.” The researcher offered her right hand out for a fist bump, and took a good look at the person she was supposed to work with for the day.

Well… this was a weird feeling. They were almost disturbing close in appearance at first glance. It was like they were long lost sisters, though Gail was clearly the older of the two. This woman’s hair was a bit shorter than Gail’s was, but the style of the cut was pretty close. She also definitely lacked the muscle definition that the researcher had. Really, she was almost sickly looking from how skinny she was. The last major difference between Gail and this woman were there eyes. There wasn’t even the barest hint of silver in the researcher’s baby blues.

Whether she got any kind of acknowledgement or response or not, a moment later Gail had made her way over to the center of the cleared out area in the middle of the motion capture cameras. ”If you’re ready, why don’t we get warmed up?” While Gail had no hatred for violence or anything, she didn’t take much pleasure in this task simply due to how rude the order had been. To her, sparring was a fun hobby, not something she wanted to do at work. Gail was here to be a code monkey. She was a dev. Not even ops. Her job was to sit in a comfy office, drink pumpkin spice lattes, and figure out how to fix bugs.

Yet here she was, in a fighting stance, staring down a fellow employee, waiting to go punch each other. One further thought occurred to her. ”Oh, right. Not sure if anyone told you, but I’m a pretty normal human. If you could avoid superhuman strength, magic, or explosions, I’d really appreciate it.” Honestly, she had no clue what this other woman was capable of. If Xcution was actually after improvements to her simulation, then this other woman was probably at a roughly similar level of combat to Gail.

Chances were though, that that wasn’t what they were after. Gail was pretty sure that this entire thing was more a test for whether or not they could force her into developing a Fullbring more rapidly. If that was the case, then there were two possibilities for her opponent. On the one hand, she could be someone exactly like Gail: a human that supposedly had a good deal of latent power within them. On the other hand, if she wasn’t in the same boat, then the other woman was probably a good deal more powerful than Gail was. That was always how it worked right? Send someone strong to fight a weakling in hopes that the weakling rises up to the challenge.

Here’s hoping that Gail wasn’t about to embarrass herself too badly.

((Because of the changes to Xcution Ranks, Gail has been demoted to a one. Please see the updated stats below.))

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{Stats and Skills}

Stats Strength - [80(120)] Points Speed - [80(100)] Points Spiritual Pressure - [10(5)] Points Reiatsu Strength - [10(5)] Points Light Aura - [50] Points Dark Aura - [50] Points Instinct - [95] Points Senses - [75] Points Energy sensory - [0] Points Healing Expertise - [0] Points Total SP: [350] Points

Skills [Northern Shaolin Kung Fu] {1} [Stealth] {1} [Battle Analysis] {1} [Hacking] {1} [Charisma] {1} [Calm Mind] {1}

[Izanami Midorikawa]

The doors of the new motion capture training room opened and the first thing that Izanami was able to gather was the appearance of another individual already inside. Whoever this was there were only two likely options that Izanami could actually think of at this moment. The individual was on the floor trying to fix something about the room or at least that;s what it looked like. So it would be logical to assume that this individual was one of the people in Xcution that had built the motion capture system and designed this room. By that standing once she was done she would be on her way and Izanami would have to await the other individual meant to spar against her.

However, that option wasn't one that stayed inside of the empty shell many would deem a brain for to long. Izanami wasn't blind nor was she stupid when it came to much. While in truth she didn't understand alot of common sense such as effection or street smarts she did have a degree of knowledge even without being forced to learn. The female in the room right now whether she be one of the people in Xcution that helped build the room or deisgn the motion capture was still a probabily, but the option that she would be leaving seemed to be gone. She was dressed for combat and Izanami took that as a sign that the girl was her opponent for this afternoon.

That seemed to be confirmed by the girl a moment later when she turned towards Izanami and told her to give her a moment so that she could finish fixing a problem that someone else caused. She went into more detail, but Izanami had only been raised as a weapon and nothing more. The fact that she was even being allowed to interact with someone other than her instructors or her handler was something that hadn't ever hapened before. Imn truth she didn't understand why or know what Yumi was suppose to be getting out of this. That though caught her off guard. Izanami was thinking again about things that pretained to herself yet why. It was happening more and more and for some reason she didn't understand why. The only thing that made any kind of sense was that dream entity had done something to her.

While all of that was happening Izanami kept her eyes on the blonde on the other side of this motion capture room. She was typing away at her keyboard and simply seemed to be nose deep as if she was reading a book that had captured all of her interest. It was short lived though as she was finished within a minute or two. Shutting the laptop she had been working on and streching herself out prior to the spar was soemthing that Izanami could take as a sign that the actual reason she was here was going to start soon. The girl was over towards her now and offered her fist out towards her. Izanami stared at the hand with no emotion or expression on her face yet obviously not understanding what was the meaning of the girl's fist.

They were suppose to spar against one another so why was she holding out her hand? She could break it, but why would this girl want soemthing like that to happen before the actual sparring session? Izanami didn't understand and didn't have more time to ponder on it as the girl began to make her way to the center of the room. Izanami moved to the same location and stopped on the other side keeping the distance between the both of them roughly five feet. The girl had long blonde hair and wore short clothing that in all honesty made it inaffective to try and grab them. Throughout the majority of her battles lately her foes have had longer hair than herself though so this human wasn't much different in Izanami's silver eyes.

While all of this was happening Yumi was sitting in her own room watching the inner workings of the motion capture room on a laptop of her own. Sitting there on a couch with a coffee by her side and a donut in her left hand. There was nothing for her to really do right now besides watch Izanami. That was why she was here and why she had brought Izanami to this area. It was another test yet different from the previous ones. Izanami was being tested on how she would react to fighting against another human as well as an ally. This was vital information that Yumi had to collect and now would by the end of the sparring session.

It was then that the woman who already introduced herself as Gail stated that the two of them should get warmed up. Izanami wasn't really all that sure what she meant. Whenever she fought it was normally to the death. She hadn't been using her fullest power against any of her foes right from the start though for yet another strange reason that she didn't know. It just seemed like when she got into combat her attention was on her foe, but all she had been doing was constantly staying one or two steps ahead of them and not just finishing them off. She hadn't understood why and just left it alone.

Gail though got into what Izanami assumed to be her fighting stance. She was ready to begin at any moment when Gail spoke. It seemed that for the most part Gail considered herself a normal human. Izanami could sense Gail's reiatsu and knew that not only did she have virtually no amount within her, but the strength of it was almost nonexistent as well. Whether or not that made her normal though wasn't something that Izanami could understand. All Gail asked for was that Izanami would try to keep any superhuman strength or spiritual powers out of this spar. There wasn't any reason not to really so Izanami simply nodded her head forward once.

It was time for the spar between the two beautiful blonde bomshells to actually begin though and after she nodded Izanami moved forwards raising her right leg and kicking across aimed at Gail's left bicept. Izanami was the type of individual due to how she had been raised and treated that took things quite literally so as Gail had requested this first movement and kick were all preformed at the average speed and strength of a human. Izanami held roughly that of a human in peak condition, but she had been asked not to use such things. So her step had been at a speed of fifty while her kick was carrying with it that same amount of speed and strength as it was aimed to strike one of the major muscle sections of her sparring partner.

[Gail Belrose]

Well this was… weird. Not only did the other woman never open her mouth, but she barely even seemed to exist. It was almost like she wasn’t even there. She never even gave out her name. Just referring to her as “her” would get old though, so Gail decided that until she got an actual name, she was going to think of her as Princess Boringface. It wasn’t exactly the most intellectual response, but Gail had pretty much shifted out of “smart mode” by that point. Instead she was gearing up for a fight.

Really though, the Princess didn’t even know basic battle etiquette. She didn’t return Gail’s fist bump, and she just launched into an attack without a word. It wasn’t exactly a challenging attack to deal with either. It was a pretty standard right round kick, and it was done at a speed and strength of a normal human. Gail was by no means superhuman, but in almost every way possible, she was near the peak of human fitness. Though her sparring partner had made no real indication that she even knew how to speak, she at least seemed to understand the idea of a warmup. Maybe there was hope for her yet.

Without much effort Gail blocked the kick with her left arm. Given that the kick was already aimed there, that wasn’t exactly a challenge. Her right side had been in front, so the kick had come across Gail’s torso to aim for her back arm. It was a solid attack, but it left Princess open. In one fluid motion, Gail made three distinct movements. Her left arm went up and out. She took a shuffle step forward, and her right arm snapped around for a backfist aimed for her sparring partner’s head. Individually, the moves were nothing special. The timing and execution is what made them effective.

By moving her blocking arm up and out, she lifted Princess’s leg up out of her comfort zone. A leg being forced up to head height usually threw people off balance after all. It wouldn’t be that bad for her opponent, given that she was a Tae Kwon Do practitioner, but even a novice of Tae Kwon Do wouldn’t have gotten down perfect balance with kicks that high. With a step forward, the attacking leg would be forced even higher as Gail’s arm ran along the underside of her opponent’s limb. The shuffle step also got her into punching range. Even as she took that step, her arm extended out from being bent 90 degrees into a straight line. Though her fist wasn’t clenched, and her strength was held back to only 50, a backfist landing at the moment your step touches down is an annoying thing to get hit by.

Whether it actually hit or not, Gail followed up her first combined movement with a second one. Her right leg, still in front after the shuffle step, had gone right between Princess’s legs. In a sweeping movement, Gail pulled her right leg in a wide arc backwards. If successful, it would pull her opponent’s leg out from under her. Given the imbalance potentially caused by her method of blocking the first kick, the chances that this move would be avoided were considerably lower than normal. She’d have to do some sort of weird hop or something to pull it off.

That was the extent of Gail’s attack though. As she swept her right leg out, her hands went back to her neutral resting guard, with her left arm covering her core, and her right arm covering her head. An additional shuffle step was taken backwards, but that was just to give her ample time to react to a retaliatory attack. The whole sequence played out at only 50 strength and speed, so there was definitely a chance that Princess could amp things up and take an advantage that way. Still, even if she did, this was just a warm-up. Neither of them were supposed to have gone full tilt.

Besides, even if her opponent kicked it up a notch, Gail had used moves that didn’t really rely on their power. Her sequence had a good chance of success not because of speed or power, but because they exploited weaknesses of Tae Kwon Do. It was a kick based martial art, and one that Gail was rather familiar with. One of the trainers at her gym taught it, as the kicking portion of Tae Kwon Do left little to be desired. However, it fell short at punching range and grappling. Unless Princess had a different martial art up her sleeve, the advantage belonged to Gail at the closer ranges of hand to hand.

If her sequence worked though, or even if it didn’t, maybe she could get her opponent to show a bit more respect since it was clear that Gail wasn’t just some code monkey that had no clue how to fight. She was no expert, but she had casually trained in Northern Shaolin Kung Fu for years in college, and she was at the absolute peak of fitness for a normal human. While she was an utter joke before someone with true spiritual power, in human-tier combat, she was no pushover. Maybe if her opponent realized that, she’d do Gail the basic courtesy of at least giving Gail her name. As amusing as it was to think of her as Princess Boringface, a real name would be much better.

[Izanami Midorikawa]

The sparring match between the two beautiful blondes was underway and as the spar began the handler of Izanami sat on the couch watching it all from a normal camera and the motion capture system of the training room. So far even though the spar had just began the capture was working fine and from what she could see Izanami was holding back against the other member of Xcution. Yumi had heard the girl ask Izanami to not use any superhuman powers or attributes and now learned that Izanami actually was going on with doing such that.

The speed that Izanami had just moved forward, brought her leg up and then kicked all were far to slow to be her true speed. Yumi had seen Izanami not onlt during her actual training, but also in real combat against shinigami. There wasn't any doubt that she was holding back to the every basic of average human preformance. It was soemthing that Yumi felt was worth mentioning to Satsujun later so she wrote down how Izanami was interacting with this other girl on a sheet of paper. That wasn't the onmly thing to include though. For the moment Izanami also was engaging in hand to hand combat and wasn't materializing the body of her Fullbring.

It shouldn't come as a shcok that she would obey an order given to her by Yumi seeing as though that was something that had been literally programmed into her mind. Yumi knew of Izanami when she was younger and how she had started to rebel against her instructors and handlers. It had only been after Satsujun himself had stepped in that she had been overcome with fear and then disabled. After that it had been easy enough to get control over her once again. All it took was time for her to rest in a medically controlled coma while the scientists implanted memories.

Izanami knew nothing about it though and that's how it was suppose to stay with her never again gaining any sense of self. She was going to remain as a weapon until she was dull and broken and of no further use to Satsujun. That's why she had been born and that's why she would continue to live. Yumi didn't have any problem with that due to her loyality to Satsujun and because of that had brought Izanami here. It had been during her last battle with a Shinigami, but Yumi had sensed what felt like emotion emitting from Izanami. She couldn't sense it now, but she needed to make sure she wasn't reverting to how she had become when she was younger or else there would be bigger problems.

Izanami's kick was on target and while it did hit Gail's body the blonde human was ready for it and blocked it. She at the same time went into her own offensive measure and started an assault against Izanami. Raising her left arm while pushing it to try and raise Izanami's leg upwards and throw her off balance was something very intelligent that many simple minded individuals wouldn't come up with at the spur of a moment such as this. However, Izanami wasn't normal either. The next phase of Gail's assault began and it was only due to Izanami's incredibly calm mind and knowledge of combat that altered her to what was going on at that moment.

While her right leg was being forced upwards she could see not only that Gail's arm was changing it's angle and would likely strike in a moment towards her torso she also took note that Gail's leg entered into her guard. So Gail was going to attack in a multitude of ways. It was good to see that she was moving at only the average human speed as well though. What was going to happen though wasn't something that Izanami was going to allow if she could help it. She had been trained to always find an opening and always emerge victories even in training it was no different.

Izanami's right leg went to work just as it was being raised up and backwards. The muscles in her leg were flexed and Izanami using her strength brought her leg downwards. However, Gail was using her own strength to raise Izanami's leg so in that moment Izanami also hopped up off the floor with her left leg causing her right leg to raise her upwards even more and support her for a breif moment. Gail's hand was extending outwards and Izanami saw what was going to happen and went along anyway. In that next moment she was punched in the stomach and sent backwards.

However, as she was hit her left leg was just in place and would deliver a high kick to the bottom of Gail's chin. It would more or less be the same as an uppercut yet delivered with Izanami's left foot. The blonde emotionless member of Xcution landed on her feet about three feet away from Gail afterwards. She didn't wait for anything else to happen though as she then rushed Gail once more. This time it was more or less the same attack however Izanami kicked with her left leg and aimed towards the side of Gail's ribs. This was all if she managed to get back onto her feet though if she continued to stay on the ground Izanami would stay where she had landed awaiting an attack.

[Gail Belrose]

In the heat of combat amidst an exchange of blows, sometimes the bigger picture tends to wash away. That can be said for anything ranging from a vast army against army bloodbath all the way to a fistfight between two people. That seems to be what have happened to Princess. Let’s recap the exchange so far. Princess threw a right round kick at Gail. The researcher had blocked with her left arm. A shuffle step forward was then paired with a simultaneous upper block with the left arm to throw her opponent of a balance, and a right backfist to bring the pain. Furthermore, the shuffle step had ended up with Gail’s right leg in front of her still, and it was right between her opponent’s legs.

With that context in mind, Gail’s seemingly mute opponent attempted a truly bizarre move. Princess had attempted to hop up off the floor and kick the researcher with her right leg. It sounded like a good plan at first, but that’s where the context was so important. The first and most glaring issue with all of this wasn’t even anything Gail had done. Rather, the major factor that doomed this attack was the first kick that was thrown. See, the thing with round kicks is that they rely on rotation to be effective. That’s kinda their thing.

Of course, that rotation comes from a pivot with the foot left on the ground. A proper round kick ends with the pivoted foot pointed towards the target. Given that it’s typically one of the first three kicks taught in Tae Kwon Do along with front kicks and side kicks, it was no surprise that Princess could do a basic round kick properly. Unfortunately, that meant that her leg that was still on the ground faced the wrong direction to even attempt a sweeping kick upwards. It didn’t prevent her, however, from getting a little bit of air.

That failed to make things much better for Princess. See, kicking people is actually kinda tricky. Depending on the kick, it either works through momentum, pushing off something, or rotation. Round kicks work off rotation pretty well, hence the pivot. Front kicks and side kicks are good examples of a kick that works by pushing off something. Their power comes largely from pushing off the ground and driving your foot forward. Flying kicks are a good example of using momentum to your advantage, since all your energy goes through your foot and into whatever you hit.

Because Princess had gone airborne with her pivoted foot faced toes away from Gail, she had literally no good method to execute a kick. With her heel faced towards Gail, and in midair, there was only one real type of kick that could even theoretically be delivered: a back kick. She could transition it into a side kick if she twisted a bit, but either way, it was a thrusting type kick. Even if her leg faced the right way to try a sweeping uppercut kick, that kind of kick would have had to go through both Gail’s right leg and arm to reach her face anyway.

So what would a back kick accomplish? Not much either. A back kick was in the same grouping as side kicks and front kicks. Typically they got their power from pushing off with your non-kicking leg, but a flying kick could work off of momentum alone. Princess had neither a leg to push off with nor any momentum to work with. Even with any other issue ignored, a back kick had no chance of being an effective attack in that position. Heck, even if everything but her right leg behind aloft was ignored, she was in no position to throw a kick. For anyone, but especially for a novice, there was simply no way to perform an effective kick, let alone one that would get past both Gail's right limbs and hit Gail in the chin.

The end result was rather poor for Princess, but since they were just warming up, all that would be bruised was her pride. She did get a bit of a lift off, and by virtue of that, Gail’s backfist hit a guarding arm instead of anything substantial. Gail’s follow up leg sweep obviously missed her then-airborne opponent, but it did keep her clear of the hopelessly flailing attempt at a counter-attack intended to hit her in the head. At the end of that exchange, Gail was still safely on her feet, but her opponent had both legs airborne from trying to kick with both legs. That made it a bit harder to land gracefully, but she did manage to avoid just dropping onto the floor somehow.

Regardless of what had happened with that sequence of events, her opponent came right back at her. She had apparently learned a bit from that last clash. Her kick was a side kick this time, rather than a round kick, and it was aimed lower. It only took a few inches of difference to get out of the range where Gail could effectively scoop it up and use that defense she had done the first time. With her standard fighting stance of right side in front, and front arm guarding her core, defending against the kick could have been as simple as just bracing for the impact.

This was Gail though. As the kick came in, she stepped out and around it with a sweep forward from her left leg. As she finished up the movement, an open palmed shove with her left hand pushed out with the hope of knocking her opponent’s kicking leg a bit off to the side. It was a simple move meant to knock her opponent off balance a bit and nothing more. However, given that this too was all done at the strength and speed of an average human, it probably wasn’t all that effective. Instinctively, her right arm was raised to cover her face, but it still left a big opening on her left. Though Gail had internally mocked the sloppy form of her opponent’s second kick, her defense here had been about as bad. Though she would be unlikely to admit it, she too was naught but a novice in her martial art. She still had her fair share of bad ideas in combat.

[Izanami Midorikawa]

Izanami saw that this other girl was more than capable of actually handling herself when it came to combat whether or not she felt so herself. She had been able to handle herself in close combat against Izanami even if it was only for a moment and the both of them would have to go about it again. The two of them would continue to clash it seemed until one of them made a mistake. Izanami was ready to move back into the fray against the girl and strike her however just as she started to move she heard something in the room.

It was at that point that something went wrong with the motion capture technology that was applied all over the room suddenly seemed to break. There was the sound of something overheating and a lot of technology suddenly fraying within the walls of the room. Something horrible had to actually happen because Izanami saw that sparks were starting to appear from one section of the wall. The room wasn't a place to stay anymore and she knew that this sparring session was over.

Izanami turned away from the girl and started to make her way towards the door of the room. Yumi was already up from the couch that she had been sitting on. She had realized something was wrong when the laptop that had the motion capture technology implied on it went blank. She no longer could see anything on it which meant that the spar was going on for no true reason. So for that reason she suddenly appeared to both of the girls as the door opened.

"Well it seems that the technology has collapsed. Gail thank you for coming today, but Izanami and myself will have to say farewell for now. The motion capture isn't working now and it will take some time until it's fixed. Thank you for coming though and good luck on increasing your prowess." Yumi turned to Izanami then and motioned her hand towards the door. "Let's go Midori it's time we move to your new assignment." Izanami simply nodded her head acknowledging what Yumi said as she followed her from that point out of the building.

[Amagai Kuchiki]

78 paragraphs, divided up to 390 TP each.

Izanami get's TTP, Gail please list what type of TP you want in future training threads.