Completed [Anthonius Fighters' Pits] Disconnection.

[Archailist]

25th of Summer, 514.

Continued from here.

Perhaps it was the simple fact that he'd spent countless bells working in the Training Grounds, sparring with numerous knights as well as his own, that made him wish for the simple comforts of the Fighters Pits. One would think that fighting for so often would make the squirrel rather search for somewhere with a lot less fighting, but that wasn't even an option. He needed to get better - that was all that mattered. Not eating, not sleeping, nothing. Spending all of his time with the knights was good, but.. once he'd done it for so long, he found himself wishing for something to break the routine. Especially when his patron knight consistently had to move the squirrel between various other knights of other fields and abilities because Ser Iros was having a lot of trouble with Archailist. It was enough that even Arch was noticing it, during their sessions of combat every morning. Ser Iros became frustrated much quicker during the sessions, although he tried to play it off as something else entirely. Occasionally, he would have Weaponsmasters working with him - and other times, it would just be other knights and squires that could be pulled from their training for short sparring sessions.

All of it was because his patron was, unfortunately, completely clueless to the culture and the ways of the Pycon. He knew nothing about the unarmed combat they specialized in, or the weapons they used. There was nothing they could do but fight, over and over again, in the hopes that Arch would be able to figure out better ways to use his weapon. But the entire thing was just a giant hit-or-miss. It wasn't training in the same sense as many other squires were getting, because they had weapons and skills that were common with their patrons - and they had at least something remotely similar between them that could be used to advance to knighthood. The Akalak was a fantastic rider and teacher of riding, that was true. But he was not a good fighter in the same sense. He could swing a Lakan, and he could jab with a spear, but neither of these things could often hit the small squirrel because one was far too short and the other was far too long. Stabs were pushed aside and swings were ducked underneath. In the end, it just came down to feet, over and over. And Archailist was tired of feet.

Which was why he often found himself returning to the Fighters Pit whenever he had a spare bell or two. To train with Hammer Fist - one of the few Pycon in the entire city that could be considered a true fighting Pycon. Street Rat was hardly a fighter in any sense, although he had his uses when it bubbled down to trying to find a bit of extra information here and there on certain matters. And as far as he'd seen, there were few to no other Pycon squires. He'd heard of one or two, but that was about it. And that meant that the one person he could always return to, would always be the one he'd return to. The Pycon that held the key to his rise through the ranks, to become the Grandmaster of the Syliran Knights. The Pycon was already standing there, leaning against the edge of the courtyard as usual. Both of her stubby arms were folded neatly over what constituted for the Pycon's chest and the usual scowl draped over her slightly crooked face. Since they'd been seeing each-other since the beginning of the season, there was little surprise that Fist was quick to notice the squirrel.

"Here for more lessons, I'm guessing?" He nodded, and she held out one stubby hand. Already all-too-familiar with the routine, he placed a deposit of five Gold Miza's, which were quickly pocketed somewhere. He'd never known where and he'd never needed to ask. "Good. We'll start straight away, then."

[Archailist]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

The immediate area surrounding Fist was more than enough for their training to occur, so they only needed to step away from the wall before they began. And instead of the usual training with their fists, consistently, there was something new Fist wished to show him. She gestured to one of her paws, as clay begun to push out of the stubby little nub. Soon enough, the clay around the edges had pulled back to form a needle-like tip. And as she pulled away more clay from the edges and pushed it into the center, it continued to grow longer and longer. It looked dangerous.. and indeed, just to prove it, she suddenly lurched forwards and stabbed it for Arch's stomach faster than he could have possibly reacted. It sunk in deep - deep enough for the tip and a good portion of the length to emerge out the other side of his body, impaling him. Thankfully it was only mildly uncomfortable. But when the grey Pycon pulled back, it revealed a perfect circle drawn right through his body. The spear had done its job.. and there was little doubt in the squirrels mind that if it could penetrate his main body of clay so easily, it could do the same to human flesh or Dhani scales. It was again, one of those occasions that terrified the squirrel to no end.

"Sometimes you can't use brute force and you need to make something sharp. Your clay can be made into spikes or blades. I want you to try it." He couldn't believe it - he'd tried it before, with his claws, to make them sharper.. but he'd never actually tried to manipulate whole body parts into the deadly shapes that Fist seemed to create with ease. "Concentrate on your clay. Make your paw into a spike, just as I did. Focus on making the tip as sharp as possible." He nodded, but he felt nervous. Reshaping his body had never been a particularly well-used trait, although he supposed that it should change very soon. He'd only explored a bare few opportunities - with his claws, and reshaping his body into the shapes of other animals. He'd used it in subtle ways, to shift the center of gravity in his body and allow balance to take place where there should not have been balance - with the possibility of shifting these various things while in the air or making sharp turns, and therefore making them much quicker. That was it.

Now, though, it was different. He couldn't exactly close his eyes but he could shut off his sight for a moment, which was the Pycon equivalent of closing his eyes. He could feel the clay that made up his arm, all of it up to the wrist and beyond, but for now - he only focused on the arm itself. The clay inside it begun to shift, as separate parts of it moved in different directions.. forming channels as the edges begun to push upwards, and the top portions moved inside and down to the elbow, and then pushed out. The fingers quickly dissipated and the wrist ballooned out, as a spike formed from approximately where the middle finger had once been. The narrower the tip became, the more concentration had to be put into the clay.. and the squirrel didn't get very far before he had to stop to take a breath and focus on the world around him again. And there it was - where his hand had once been, a spike. Long, tapered, but pretty blunt.

It didn't look much like Fists. Hers had been much sharper, much more tapered, and much more.. structurally sound. His was slightly crude, with little bits of clay here and there pushing out of the spike and making it look slightly disfigured. In a lot of ways, it was, though. There were various different parts that needed some minor tune-ups, but this was his first time trying out a brand new portion of Py-Ken he'd never even knew existed, so he supposed he could be forgiven for making a few minor errors. However, deep down and even that second, he knew that Fist would not be sharing the same opinion as he did. Oh, he could wish, but it wouldn't come true. Not even if he had a shooting star.

[Archailist]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

Unfortunately, the spine was not even acceptable for Fist. One of her stubby arms suddenly pushed firmly against the tip of the spine, and slowly collapsed the whole thing, inch by inch. It wasn't long before the needle-like tip was reduced to a flat top. "It's not enough being sharp, of course. It has to be strong as well." Of course - he should have known that. All he could do was reform his hand for now, though. It barely took any time at all, compared to how much work had gone into pushing out the strange shape out of what had once been a hand. Apparently, though, they weren't quite through with their training yet. Not at all done with the manipulation of the body. As Fist was about to demonstrate. "You need to work on manipulating parts of your body to suit them for combat. Being a squirrel is good, but having four arms is better. You don't know what they're going to throw at you, and you can't let them know what you're going to throw at them. Now, ready yourself."

He'd grown to quickly dread those words, because it meant that they were going to have another sparring session. It meant that she was going to beat him up, and he was going to understand the perks of what she was explaining, specifically because she was beating him up with it. It was a good method of teaching, if one could pull it off correctly. As it turned out, Fist was one of those people that could. As soon as they'd covered a suitable distance and created a nice gap between the two of them, Fist reeled around and charged straight for Arch, with her body already beginning to take on a new form while she ran. It was absolutely unbelievable, watching the deformed face he'd seen so often on the big palm of her head disappearing to be replaced with a sea of changing clay. The arm became a more humanoid shape - although it was only humanoid, not really very human. Mainly because it seemed to have four arms - two coming out of where the shoulders would be. Or where the armpits would be. He wasn't quite sure himself.

What he did know was that this was suddenly becoming a very dangerous game. He could barely defend himself when presented with two arms - how on earth was he supposed to compare with four growing abruptly out of nowhere? Well, he was about to find out, as one of the fists suddenly swung for his chest. It was a fast swing but he managed to just about jump to the side.. and straight into a hook around from the opposite arm. Then two quick jabs from the lower two arms, and two more from the upper. Blows rained down on the Pycons chest and stomach, primarily on the torso as usual, with enough force to dent and rupture parts of his clay to the point that he could barely hold himself up, and a solid two-footed kick threw him back off his feet and onto the ground. The lower set of arms had quickly turned into feet, with the fingers forming into toes and the palm becoming the sole of the foot to allow this to happen. Even the joints had changed positions.

And once again, the squirrel found himself in an all-too-familiar position. The same one he'd been in during their first fight, if he remembered correctly. Staring up at the sky, dazed and confused, while his body begun to reform and recover from the sheer brutality he'd met for the umpteenth time at the hand.. or many hands.. of Fist. Once his clay had filled in the various craters littering his body, and his arms had mostly reformed themselves from the lumps they'd been reduced to, the squirrel rose to his feet again and sighed, shaking his head to work off some of the little stars dancing merrily around his head like a little crown. "You have a lot to work on. You can make extra limbs, and you can make blades. Or you can make extra limbs with blades. Even as the grey Pycon spoke, changes were being made. The arms slumped back inside her body as the fingers on the two remaining arms thickened and melted together to form needle-like portions that looked strong enough to actually cut someone. Then they split and became blunt fingers as the other two arms returned, apparently taking excess clay from where the blades had once been and pushing them into the muscle too.

And then, more clay was taken from deeper inside her body before running along the finger-tips and pushing out as thin blades. Making four arms, each tipped with a sharp blade. He couldn't believe it, and literally gawked at the sight for several long ticks. He didn't even care that his jaw hung wide open - at least Fist wasn't the comedic type, otherwise she would have begun laughing at that point. As it was, she let the other two arms and the four blades dissolve back into her body - to become part of goodness-knew-what-else she had growing inside there. How on earth could she have so much clay inside her body, and yet when it moved elsewhere, punching her still seemed to do nothing? Was it just the squirrel, or was it a secret that Fist held?

[Archailist]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

He knew what was coming next, before she'd even begun to speak. "You want me to make a new pair of arms, don't you." If there was any surprise to be shown at his mastery of prediction, the other Pycon showed absolutely none of it - she just wanted him to get a move on and nodded swiftly. Well, he didn't come this far to not comply. Although making spikes was one thing - creating an entire new pair of arms was another one entirely. He had to draw clay out of his existing arms, and a large quantity from his tail and legs too. They felt, and when he turned around to look at them, they looked a lot more deflated than usual. Especially the tail. Although his focus wasn't there - it was in the new arms that he was slowly beginning to form. Although it was a much slower process than before. Instead of just changing the shape of something, he was making something completely new. And he knew he had absolutely no chance of doing it as fast as Fist had done merely moments earlier. He had to work on each and every individual part of the new limbs.

First, nubs formed underneath his arms, around where his armpits would have once been. He tried to shift them and make them a little farther from the upper arms to give them some more mobility, but at the same time, he didn't want them beginning around half-way down his torso, so he tried to keep them moderately high while he continued to push out the stubs, and form some semblance of arms. When he finally made it up to where the elbow joints would be, he wiggled the arms up and down to make sure that the joints around the new shoulder were usable. They were, thank goodness. They felt strange and new because his mind wasn't used to controlling his clay in such a way.. it felt oddly unnatural. But he pressed on regardless, and begun to form the forearms. Clay was beginning to run thin, and he had to draw more from the rest of his body reserves in order to compensate. After the arms were made, he'd be able to draw at least some of the clay out of them as well.

Right now, he needed all of it though. The wrists were soon passed, and then it was just the fingers. For this part, he needed the use of his first set of hands to actually try to pluck and sculpt where his mind could not help. But, it worked. Eventually, he had a whole new pair of hands under the first ones. A whole new set of arms. They were strange and alien to him, but he used them nonetheless. Immediately he pulled a bit of clay out of them to make up the rest of his body, but there was definitely a problem - as in, if he wanted to harden his clay, he'd have to take even more clay out of his body to put into those fists. He had no clue how Fist had managed to move the clay around her body so fast - or indeed, how much clay Fist even had inside of her, given how fast she seemed to be able to push it around her body that it seemed a near instantaneous transmission - but he knew it would not be an option for him.

"Now you need to practice with them as well. Not just with extra sets of arms. You need to learn how to form these new parts quickly. If the battle comes, you won't have five chimes to wait as you grow a new pair of arms. You'll have ticks or less." He knew that much. But heck, he was only a beginner in the entire discipline, so he knew he'd need to train and work on using the new sets of limbs if he was ever going to get to a point that he could punch with the same ferocity as Fist. And of course, to practice with them, he'd have to begin fighting Fist yet again. Perhaps using the new fists would make the whole thing a little bit easier.. or controlling the new sets of limbs, on top of the current amount he already sported, would just make it that bit harder. In total, the squirrel now had to try and control seven different limbs.. at once.. in a fight.

[Archailist]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

This time, Fist did not need to say anything at all. She simply turned and walked back to the same spot they'd begun at before, and turned as she prepared himself. The squirrel, likewise, was left to prepare for the battle. Not that he really could do that much. Perhaps if the squirrel could stand up for himself a little better, he might have been able to last longer in the fights and they could have spent more time doing those, rather than the other smaller tasks. He knew that one day, he may be able to overcome or at least match the other clay figure in terms of their outlandish abilities in Pycon-against-Pycon, but for now it was just humiliating to fight over and over against the same opponent, even if it was trying with new and different things. Even if they were giving him so many new possibilities to explore. He knew that eventually he'd have to repeatedly begin attacking using a whole range of different styles. Although that would also be a fair while away from where they currently stood. After all, he didn't know that much about Fist's past, but he knew that it most likely was very long and involved a lot of fighting if she could be so proficient in so may different disciplines of combat.

When they finally drew together once again, the squirrel took no quarter. He launched a fist straight for Fist, but the other Pycon had already pushed more clay into her stubby little hand and pushed the attack aside at the wrist, before it had a chance to connect. She didn't even absorb the hit or jump aside to stop it - she just brushed it aside with a single hand, as if it was nothing. And the second, third and fourth attacks went along relatively the same way. He tried punching, over and over, with mostly the two 'natural' paws and occasionally jabbing with the other two, but even he could see that the attacks that came out were weak - they had little strength in them, and his fists had very little clay pushed into them. He could almost feel them squishing as they were casually thrown aside and left there. And once all of the attacks were out of the way, the other Pycon took little time to riddle the squirrels body once again with sudden, hard slams of both of her stubby little paws into his stomach and chest.

At least, being used to the blows by now, he managed to step away after a few had thwacked into his chest, thoroughly disfiguring it with little craters left behind. He didn't have time to concentrate and reform them, so he rushed ahead anyway and swung once again with two fists at the same time, both on one side of his body. Both of them missed, as the other Pycon leaned to the side and sent a hard jab straight up and into the squirrels chin. It was hard enough to rattle his nexus - and the first time the other Pycon had actually made an attack aimed directly for his head. The next one came for the head too - Fist suddenly swerved as her entire upper body moved down, and brought her lower body up in order to try and land a two-footed kick straight on his head. And it worked - the thing didn't even give him an opportunity to fly backwards through the air this time. He was just stamped straight against the floor, before the feet quickly moved off again. Thankfully before they squished the nexus completely and killed him.

"You were slow. You need to take more clay out of your tail - get rid of the tail if you need to - and put more into your arms to make them function. You need to stop thinking about your primary boy, and start thinking about transforming it in new ways to make it more effective for battle." It was sound, jarring advice. He'd have to keep it in consideration for the next battle they had together. "This time, I won't hold back. Get ready." Wait, what?

[Archailist]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

As Fist turned, he couldn't help but stare at her for a few long, hard moments. She was holding back, this entire time? What makes her think I can possibly stand up to her when she's at full force then? He could only take her meanings as literal, because she wouldn't even be one to joke about such things. But he did have one thing to say before they did begin. "Please don't aim for my head any more?" He got no reply, which made the squirrel feel even more nervous, but he turned anyway and begun to prepare himself. The first thing he did was remove those damn secondary arms - he wouldn't be able to use those effectively for a while but he sure as heck wasn't going to start using them at that moment, when she was going to go full power on him. Most of the clay ended up going to his torso, where it could quickly be moved to any other spot in his body, if he so wished. And that gave a lot more freedom.

Meanwhile, Fist seemed to be doing nothing at all to her body - yet. He knew now, that as soon as the fight begun, she'd change.. but for that moment, there was absolutely no movement. Like a psychological war-game just before the fight. Goodness, she was more cunning than he'd ever imagined. Just thinking about how much she knew more than him, made the squirrel nervous. Even after he'd worked out her plan. Or as much of it as he was ever going to. He needed to focus on himself, not on her, though! He needed to make sure he was calm.. that he didn't get ahead of himself. He wasn't going to lose, he wasn't going to lose.. he wasn't going to die, and he wasn't going to lose. If he repeated those facts over enough times in his head, he might actually be able to make them come true. All he needed were a few spoonfuls of pixie dust and Harameus himself sitting on his shoulder.

Damn it all. "Begin." Wait, what? He'd barely had time to straighten himself up again before the grey Pycon lurched forwards, sprinted the few steps between herself and the squirrel, and slammed a fist straight into his gut. He was getting used to getting punched there. But then something else happened - a kick came to his knee, and it nearly toppled the squirrel over. At the same time, the opposite hand whirled around and smacked on the opposite shoulder, throwing him straight down into the ground on his side. Now that one was new. At least she had the decency afterwards, when noticing that her opponent wasn't getting up again, to turn around and walk away so that he could be given some time to rise up to his feet and shake off the feelings of utter humiliation. He'd not even been able to move. The female had moved faster than he could have blinked, striking suddenly and leaving again without trouble.

Even as she stood there, waiting, she looked as if she'd barely exerted anything on the poor squirrel. He was just in complete shock. "Alright. We need to work on your speed a little. But for now, we're done for the day. I'll see you again later, most likely." She didn't move anywhere else but it was clear that the training session was through. If she was disappointed or excited with the progress they'd made that day, she showed absolutely no sign of it and the squirrel took that as a compliment, whichever way it was going. Once his clay had returned to the rest of his body, rather than bunched up around the fresh craters and scrapes across his squirrely frame, he wobbled slowly out of the Pits once again. Ready for a nice lie down back in the Dorms.

[Radiant]

Archailist :

Experience

Skill	XP Earned
Observation	+2 XP
Py-ken	+4 XP
Acrobatics	+1 XP
Endurance	+3 XP
Meditation	+1 XP
Tactics	+1 XP

Lores

Lore Earned

Py-Ken: Clay Spears And Spikes

Py-Ken: Growing New Limbs

Tactics: Knowing How To Distribute Clay Density As Effective Weapons

Loots

-5 GM for lesson fee

+5 Shield Points

Notes :

Wooo! Another awesome fight solo, Arch! Well-done!

Enjoy your grades!

My radiance is not bright enough?

If you have any questions or concerns regarding your grade, beam me a PM and we can work it out.