Simple defense moves won't cut it anymore

[Sawyer]

Sawyer had always seen movies about a normal person who was taught how to be an awesome fighter. Heck she had seen Karate Kid and The Mask of Zorro several times. She had just never thought she get the chance to go through the same experience. She some tricks that her adopted father had told her such as how to get out of a strong grip but the stakes in this battle were much higher. So she came told learn more skills before trying to learn how morph since the concept of changing into an animal still freaked her out a bit.

Sawyer wasn't expecting training to be easy or even initially fun. The Karate Kid movie had shown her that much. Plus, when she use to live in Chicago she remembered overhearing a kid who had just started karate complain that when he went on the first day it wasn't at all like the kung fu movies. However, Sawyer didn't care so long as each day of training would bring her closer to learning how to fight against those scum slugs and save her adoptive father. Now she just needed her teacher to arrive.

[Jullian]

Dimitra walked out of the back room, it was the closest thing she had accepted to an office when Seiya had offered her this back lines position, of the main training gym and into the harsh fluorescents of the main gym itself. The smell of sweat, cleaning products and the filtered, sterilized air of a spaceship greeted her upon entry. She smiled at the grunts, heavy breathing and sharp thwack of mats, the sounds of the crew members getting in their daily dose of exercise. A few were even taking advantage of the combat training equipment. The animorphs, after all, weren't the only ones who found themselves on the front lines. But while they often provided a convenient source of sparring partners, they were not, in the end, her responsibility. The girl standing in the middle of her gym was.

Dimitra sized her up quickly and the initial estimate she came up with was, small. Her newest student, Sawyer according to the file she'd received, was slim and relatively short. Relative, of course, to a Hork-Bajir and a significant portion of the human male population of the planet. Dimitra herself was about the same height and same size. It comforted her a bit. She had no doubt in her ability to handle her new responsibilities but she could admit that it may take her a few weeks to get into her stride. She was glad she was starting with someone of a similar body type. She wouldn't have to adjust her own fighting style that much to match this one.

Except for the morphing she thought with a purely mental frown of concentration. She had been given the morphing power and the morphs that came along with it. It was one of the main reasons she'd accepted the job, it was a fast track to being morph capable, a way to bypass the very training she was now partially responsible for doling out. She didn't want to be assigned to a faction but there were hints out there that their intelligence branch was moving towards a morph capable force as well and when Dimitra got back in the game she wanted the experience under her belt already instead of learning morphing in a time and place that would, undoubtedly, pose a threat to her continued existence. Unlike with the main force, the intelligence branch rarely had the luxury of pulling its operatives out of their stations and giving them the training that would have made their job a lot easier. It was something that needed to change and Cassie and Morgan were working on it. But competent intelligence officers were hard to come by. Dimitra was lucky to have gotten this assignment.

"Hello Sawyer," she said, her strong eastern European accent evident even in the few words. "I am the combat instructor. Dimitra," she said, holding out her hand. Americans seemed to be fond of such things.

[Sawyer]

"Hello Dimitra," Sawyer responded. "It's nice to meet you. So what type of combat will I be learning. They were kinda vague on the details of what to expect from the lessons." Sawyer was trying to analyze her teacher. She wasn't quite sure what to make of the woman quite yet.

Demitra may not have been tall and daunting at first glance but Sawyer knew that you should never judge a book by its cover. If this woman had been assigned to teach her combat than the odds were that Demitra knew a thing or two about how to fight. Sawyer felt even more nervous now because she felt like she didn't know what to expect even more so than before Demitra had arrived. Plus, she worried that she might disappoint Demitra or being made fun of for only knowing such simple defense moves. Sawyer tried to put on a smile to hide her nerves but she probably just ended up showing the nervousness she was feeling even more.

[Jullian]

Sawyer shook her hand and Dimitra had a moment when she wondered if she should take the chance to acquire the young recruit. It was an interesting thought to have, that they were quickly approaching an age when a handshake could not be given without caution, but the idea didn't trouble her. It would have been useful to take on another's face but not this particular face, or any of the other animorphs for that matter. Their identities were important to protect. Even if the yeerks didn't have access to the extensive databases humanity had acquired on itself, mostly because they had been destroyed in wave after wave of attacks, it was still not a good idea for the enemy to have your picture.

"It's good to meet you as well," she said with a confident, if only polite smile. She'd gone over the mess of papers and system entries that Nineteen had left her with. Since she knew the young woman she knew that Nineteen would have been as thorough in her training as possible. But that hadn't equated to thorough record keeping about her training techniques. Seiya had been able to fill her in on a bit more since he had access to her regular reports on recruit progress as the headmaster but Nineteen hadn't left her much to go on besides for the occasional funny story. It was both regrettable and freeing. It meant she was allowed to design her own curriculum.

"Well you don't have much time here so I'm not going to bother trying to turn you into a martial artist. If you want that training you can come back or find someone to study with on your base. My job is to teach you to fight. You have a couple of weapons at your disposal. First is your brain. Second is your morphing power and the animals that come with it. Third is your own body." Dimitra gave her a thumbs up and then wiggled the thumbs. "Don't underestimate them," she said before pulling out a dracon beam from the clip in her belt. She set the power to low and aimed it at the ground, all with one hand.

"You're going to learn how to operate these. You're also going to learn how to use a hand gun and maybe I'll let you play with something a bit bigger if we have time. You're not big and I don't have the time to give you the training to make up for it so if you get into a close combat fight I'd rather you have a weapon at hand. I'll give you a few last ditch moves though and hopefully they will keep you out of too much trouble." Dimitra smiled, warming up to the challenge and the job she'd been given. She hadn't expected to be in such a good mood but she was glad to get started. "Do you understand so far?"

[Sawyer]

"Yes I understand," Sawyer nodded. She probably should have expected that she would have to learn to use a weapon at some point. "Although I must warn you I've never used a gun before. Heck I never even played those first person shooter games with the plastic guns they had at the arcades." Of course in the back of her mind she hated the fact that it would need to be a gun because she had heard so many gun horror stories over the years. Also, the idea that she may have to kill at some point in this war would probably never full sit well with her.

However, she also knew that desperate times called for desperate measures. Still it wasn't the human hosts' fault that they are doing all these horrible things for the Yeerks. If only there was an easier way to purge the human controllers from the Yeerks that treated them like some robot. Unfortunately, since Yeerks basically never left their human hosts except apparently to go to the Yeerk pools to feed that was pretty much impossible. So that would mean that there would be several casualties on both sides before this war was over. Sawyer just prayed that her adopted father would not be on that list of casualties.

[Jullian]

"Well, we'll change that," Dimitra said, not giving much time to comfort or reassurance. She looked around at the few young crew members who were using the mats and pads to spar. There was one man using the punching bag while his friend held it. She tried to determine if there was anything she wanted to teach Sawyer about hand to hand.

"As for combat," she began, her eyes still on the rest of the gym and her mind working on her teaching plan, "I'll teach you a few holds, a few throws." Dimitra looked back at Sawyer. "How about we just get started eh? Start running around the perimeter of the mats."

[Sawyer]

"OK no problem," Sawyer nodded and she began to run. Running now that was something she was used to by now. She had been running ever since discovering that her adoptive father had a slug in his head controlling him. She had run in both the literal and metaphorical sense of the word. She ran and hid all those years in order to give herself the chance to one day fight.

Her long brown hair whipped behind her as she jogged around the gym's perimeter. The adrenaline pumping through her veins was surprisingly comforting. She couldn't understand why she would always overhear those high school kids complaining about having to run a mile during gym at school back before the Yeerk takeover. Running never seemed too bad to her but then again Sawyer probably usually kept herself in good shape. She continued to run and finished her second lap and then started her third.

[Jullian]

While Sawyer ran Dimitra began to stretch and loosen herself up. When she completed her third lap Dimitra yelled out for her to do a high knee stride and let her do that for two laps before allowing her to run again. She kept doing this, calling out various running exercises as the laps began to add up. Alternating, side-to-sides, skips. Eventually she called a halt to the running and led Sawyer in some stretching. She was pleased with the young woman's endurance so far. Granted, it hadn't been stretched but she had seen many do worse. A life of easy living and little exercise left some way below even average ability but she didn't have to worry about building that up with this one.

When they had finished the warm up Dimitra nodded her satisfaction. "Alright, as I said, I'm not going to try to turn you into a martial artists. But there a few things everyone should know. The first of them is how to fall properly, without hurting yourself, and, more importantly, how to get up quickly and keep going. Then we'll work on some basic holds and how to break them before moving on to basic weapon prep and I'll have you firing, at low intensity, by the end of class in about," Dimitra glanced over at the time display near the door to the gym, "an hour. Then you're free to go for today. Sound good?"

[Sawyer]

Sawyer could feel herself breathing heavier and heavier as she was instructed to do different types of techniques as she ran. The hardest lap she felt had been the one with the knee strides but at least she felt a bit more pepped. Sawyer took a moment to breathe as Demitra explained more about the objectives of today's lesson. Sawyer never knew that there was a correct way to fall in battle but clearly if Demitra was mentioning it then it was an important technique. She hadn't thought that she would get the chance to use the weapon today but she could sense that time was of the essence.

"Yes that sound's good to me" Sawyer finally answered. "So this learning how to fall properly is that a method of minimizing damage if I get it or a way to properly avoid being hit?" She thought she might as well learn as much as should could about these lessons before they began. It would probably help her to learn them faster. She just hoped she could get enough skill through a crash course of what some people spend years perfecting.

[Jullian]

Dimitra raised an eyebrow at the girl's technical language. She sounded like a student in a classroom who wanted to take notes. It wasn't that Dimitra didn't approve of her enthusiasm but she had yet to find someone who could learn the physical by learning the theory. But learning theory helped with learning a skill, they just had to be learned hand-in-hand, which was the difficulty of all skills teachers world over.

"I'll show you," Dimitra said, stepping so that she was next to Sawyer instead of facing her. She didn't want Sawyer to have to mirror her movements when her turn came. "First we're going to fall to the side since this is why will most likely happen to you most of the time. To learn how to do it properly pick a side, we'll start with the right one, and bring that leg off the ground." Dimitra demonstrated. "You never want to fall flat on anything, your back, your shoulders, whatever it is. You'll hurt yourself and, worse, you'll wind yourself and it will be harder to recover. You always want to try to roll."

Dimitra lowered herself down to the ground with most of her control intact. It was still a bit of a fall but not much of one. The back of her hip hit the mats first, then her lower side, ribs and finally her shoulder. Her arm was outstretched and pointed away from her body at about a 45 degree angle with her palm towards the ground. It was held that way so that as her shoulder hit the ground she tapped the mats lightly. "When you actually it the ground you want to slap the mats as hard as you can with your palm and your arm." Dimitra easily got up and she'd show Sawyer how to do that as well but she wanted her on the ground first. "If you slap the mat you'll leach the fall of force. Your arm will sting but better your arm absorb the force than you head. Keep your chin tucked in, you don't want your head to hit the ground at all. So, give it a try." Dimitra stepped back to give her some space.

[Sawyer]

Sawyer watched as Dimitra went to demonstrate the technique. Sawyer was confused as to why Dimitria stood out of her eye line to teach it to her but Sawyer just ignored that thought and listened to what Dimitra had to say. She closed her eyes so as to block out all other distractions and therefore be able to hear and concentrate on Dimitra better. As she listened to her teacher's words everything she was hearing seemed to make sense. She just hoped she would be able to learn how to do this when the time came.

Then Sawyer heard Dimitra say that it was her turn to try it. "Ok" Sawyer nodded and opened her eyes. She took a breath and let herself begin to fall as Dimitra had intructed. She did so slowly since she was nervous about doing it wrong and then hurting herself but she would try to slap her palm and arm on the mat like Dimitra said. As Sawyer went down she seemed to get the lower body relatively right but when she let her arm go it was slightly bent and she hit her funny bone. It wasn't injured but being the funny bone it did hurt like heck. Sawyer winced. "Sorry, I'll keep my arm straighter next time"

[Jullian]

"Also, try to keep your eyes open when I demonstrate something," Dimitra said lightly enough. It was a correction, nothing more, and would hopefully pass beneath notice for now. She had never served as a teacher of anything but she'd played student enough to know that any remark, if construed as a rebuke of some sort, would carry weight. Some students shrugged it off. They were stubborn and you actually had to beat things into their heads. But some took it badly, shut down completely and stopped trying for fear of doing something wrong and earning more criticism. Since she didn't know which type she had here she wanted to be careful on their first day. But they wouldn't get very far if Sawyer didn't watch what Dimitra was trying to show her.

"It's fine," she said, as Sawyer picked herself up. "Why don't you give it another try. It took me a while to learn the habit of this and, when you get good at it, you don't really need the slap except in really bad circumstances. Eventually you'll drop it and, just by landing and rolling the right way, you'll absorb most of the impact."

[Sawyer]

"Yeah that's probably a good idea," Sawyer nodded. She was glad that she hadn't completely messed up the technique cause she deprived herself of the visual knowledge. "Ok I'll try it again" Sawyer said and brushed off the dust on her pants. "I can't guarentee that I'll do it any better the second time though" She stretched out her arms a bit just in case and then tried the fall again.

This time she tried to keep her arm straighter. This time she didn't hit her funny bone but she forgot to slap the mat with her palm. "Well I guess that was an improvement" Sawyer sighed and got back up. Maybe her nerves were getting in the way. She wondered if other students had done better or worse than she was doing at this technique.

[Jullian]

"That was better," Dimitra said with a smile for the young animorph-to-be. "Try it again, then try doing the same thing on the other side." Dimitra left Sawyer to the exercise and walked over to the monitor on the wall. She kept an eye on Sawyer but she began bringing up a basic targeting program. The computer would project holographic targets in the air that it would mark as hit when a dracon beam's light interrupted them. She'd designed this one a couple of days ago when she'd heard she would have a student. She'd started working on a few more complicated ones as well. Eventually she wanted to create programs that would be a challenge for her and other experienced dracon wielders to use. Having a shooting range on board would not be the most terrible thing, especially when a good portion of the ship was devoted to training new soldiers.

"Fall a little faster now, more like you would if you were actually falling?" Dimitra called to Sawyer. She watched the young woman for a second to make sure she was getting it and then turned her attention back to the program. When she'd set it in and made sure it could be easily activated she walked back over to Sawyer.

"That's good for now," she said, calling a halt to the break-falls. "Now we'll do recoveries." Dimitra executed a side break-fall and then used the momentum from rolling to roll back towards her feet and stopped when she was sitting down, supporting herself with one arm.

"Now, from here," she said, holding the position, "you can recover in two ways and which one you use will depend on the situation you're in. If you're in a fight you'll want to do this one." Dimitra held her free hand in front of her face where it could block any blows that may come at her and brought the leg that was out under her and then back so that she ended up standing on two feet, with the front leg becoming the back one.

She returned to the sitting position skipping the break-fall and demonstrated the move again pointing to specifics. "So after you've fallen, rolled on your side and let your momentum roll you back you'll end up here." Dimitra had fallen to the right so she was sitting on her right side with her right leg extended. "You'll want your left leg to end up like this," she said moving her left leg into proper position, knee bent and leg pulled in to her body so that the flat of her foot was on the ground. Her right arm was planted behind her. If not for the surroundings and context of the class she looked like she could be lounging on the ground.

"It's important to keep this hand out," she said, waving her left hand. "You want it to protect your face so put it out and a little above your head height. If it is too close to your face it won't stop anything." Dimitra moved the hand closer and then demonstrated how easily the hand could get pushed back into her forehead, making it useless as a block. She moved it back out.

"So, you block with your left hand and plant with your right and then just stand up. Don't move forward because we're assuming there is an enemy there. Instead, bring your right leg back so that you are as protected as possible." She pulled her right leg back and stood up, ending up in the same position she'd been in before.

"Alright, you try."

[Sawyer]

As Sawyer kept trying the fall she could feel herself improving if only slightly. She was concentrating so much on her task she had forgotten Dimitra was even in the room that was until Dimitra either yelled out instructions or told her to stop. They were moving onto the next lesson now but from the demonstration Dimitra had given it looked even harder than the first technique. Still if she could get these techniques down she would serve a better chance of walking away from a fight. Sawyer nodded, "Ok then."

She decided she'd better start on the ground and then try and get up. She hadn't felt that she had mastered the break-fall well enough and she figured if she learned everything one small part at a time then she would be able to eventually put it all together. She got on the ground at Dimitra had done and tried do the first technique she had been shown. She put her hand in front her foot in the right position. It felt like a bit of an awkward position to be it but it was what Dimitra had instructed her to do. It took a couple tries but eventually she got on her feet.