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[h3][color=C0392B]Rudolf Sagramore[/color][/h3]
[h2]&[/h2]
[color=#736AFF][b][h1]Ranbu no Izayoi[/h1][/b][/color]
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[color=c0392b]“Alright, first things first:”[/color]

It was all but immediately after Adrammelech’s stricken form had faded away on motes of dispersed aether that Rudolf made his approach, barely allowing his hands enough time to slick the hair out out of his eyes once the arm he’d dutifully wrenched downward onto was no more.

[color=c0392b]“Izayoi, what the [i]hell[/i] was that just now?”[/color]

His voice was rough. Eos and her healing winds dutifully swirled about him, and it seemed the tiny interplay between Cid and Izayoi had been as much reprieve as he was willing to take. In his head, the hotter the iron he struck the better— and there were few so molten as the image she had burned into his mind, in that fraction of a second.

If he had seen it, it could be done. If it could be done, there was [i]a way to do it.[/i] Braindead simple as truisms went, granted, but unfathomable boons when reordering perspective and limits.

[color=c0392b]“You [i]caught lightning[/i]. Right out of the sky.”[/color]

His sword had planted into the soft loam beneath the stormscarred grasses, offering an ample crutch to lean a little weight into while he stilled his breath. 

For her part, Izayoi barely had time to catch her breath before the boy was verbally upon her. She blinked as Rudolf approached, tilting her head. 

[color=#736AFF][b]"Yes, and…?"[/b][/color] Her tone indicated genuine surprise that Rudolf was confused. Considering just how long her master had spent drilling the technique into her head, often literally, she had figured it was far more vital of an arte than the boy was making it out to be.

[color=#736AFF][b]"...Can you not?"[/b][/color]

There was a beat, as his expression flattened. Opening his mouth, the deadpan timbre that trudged out of him proved the pages matched the cover.

[color=c0392b]“…No, obviously I can’t.”[/color]

She wasn’t bluffing, either, he realized— not that it was at all in her nature to be a churlish gadfly to begin with, but he still couldn’t help but feel [i]extra[/i] stung by the idea that she sincerely thought [i]he[/i] was strange for not knowing how to make light of Dhinas himself.

A slow exhale out the nose escaped, black mirth coiling somewhere in the back of his head where he couldn’t quite tell it to shut up.

[color=c0392b]“Materia is one thing, but to turn a bolt from the blue like that I thought impossible outside myth. Until two minutes ago.”[/color] he explained slowly, trying desperately to ignore the looming sensation of some punchline at his expense his imagination continued to forge. [color=c0392b]“I admit there are gaps in my training, [i]big[/i] ones, but—“[/color]

His fingertips flew to his temple, rubbing for a moment before jerking back down. As piecemeal as his training in Sagramore Village evidently was, he’d apparently picked up the way they talked with their hands when they were starting to get just a tiny bit worked up. Fat lot of good that did. Clearly, they were about to revisit the tail end of that talk they’d been having the night Izayoi had busied herself in the Hien Faction compound’s kitchenettes. Even agile raptors always came home to roost.

[color=c0392b]“Alright, if you thought I could, you definitely leapt in like you couldn’t leave me to it. I owe you one, obviously, but is it really that common? Who else do you know that could even react in time, let alone pull off that… [i]Raijingeki[/i], I think it was?”[/color]

[color=#736AFF][b]"Not [i]common[/i] per se, but the technique is not unknown among skilled swordsmen, regardless of school. Most who know would simply channel the levinbolt while on the ground and let it dissipate into the earth. I was taught to expand upon that. If Lord Hien has kept up on his training, I believe he ought to be capable of doing so as well."[/b][/color] 

She very carefully did not say anything about the attack’s name. As much as Izayoi enjoyed screaming oaths for all the world to hear, that was a convention of her own making. Her master had never named a single technique he’d imparted upon her, and she’d simply…made them up as a much younger woman. In hindsight, some were perhaps too grandiose, but better to let everyone believe that was simply the way of things. 

Izayoi studied Rudolf, considering for a moment. Actually, what was there to think about? Best he be taught, lest a stray bolt eliminate him from the field some day.

[color=#736AFF][b]"Would you like to learn?"[/b][/color] The question might as well not even have been one, for all the silent pressure Izayoi was exuding. Clearly, saying “no” wasn’t an option. At least, not one that would end well for Rudolf.

It was a lucky thing that he had already come to the same conclusion in the waning moments of their battle with the Capricorn— even bolstered by being of one mind with her, Rudolf had to internally note that this was likely as close as he’d ever gotten to feeling the pressure of standing across from the Ranbu with steel drawn.

In a way, not shrinking back from it was one of those small victories of progress that you only noticed after the fact. Changing your heart was a matter of inches and days.

[color=c0392b]“You won’t always be here to pull me out from under the hammer,”[/color] he affirmed, before glancing across the field to the rest of the Kirins, still dusting themselves off from the scuffle. Despite Chisato’s timely arrival to help buoy their ranks a bit… they were still running far thinner than in Osprey. [color=c0392b]“And I’m going to be putting myself in its path a lot more going forward. We’ve run low on people that can tie up space and attention, so I had better make sure I’ve got better plans for threats like those than ‘eat it and pray’.”[/color]

[i]We never did find out quite how your redirection idea with me would turn out. Turning to the death-seeker for tips to live, then, sure— I hope you know what you’re doing.[/i]

He didn’t rise to it.

[color=c0392b]“Please do. Knowing it would be invaluable.”[/color]

[i]And as well…[/i]

[color=c0392b]“I’d be kicking myself for not learning, anyway. The spectacle was really something from the ground.”[/color] he admitted sheepishly.

Izayoi resisted the urge to smirk at the last bit. Trust a young man’s urge for theatricality to override all else.

[color=#736AFF][b]"Very well, then. Give me a moment, and we can begin."[/b][/color]

___

Ten minutes later, Izayoi and Rudolf stood to the side of the clearing, the former having temporarily borrowed Galahad’s lightning materia for this task. 

[color=#736AFF][b]"We will begin with the basic technique: catching a bolt upon your blade and dispersing it into the ground. For many ‘talented swordsmen’, the technique ends here. I will be expecting more from you."[/b][/color] She slotted the lightning materia into one of her kote, flexing the gauntlet briefly before nodding to herself.

[color=c0392b]“Naturally.”[/color] 

He had known her barely an hour before witnessing how harsh a taskmaster she could be, after all.

[color=#736AFF][b]"The technique itself is simple to conceive. And more difficult to execute in the heat of the moment. Channel aether through your blade, and ensure it flows from hilt to tip. Strictly in that direction, lest you wish to redirect levin back down into your hands."[/b][/color] She waited patiently for Rudolf to familiarize himself with the concept before continuing on. 

That was to say, the moment Rudolf could prove himself adept at regulating an aetheric flow in his blade, she began blasting him with low-powered Thunder spells in intervals.

[color=#736AFF][b]"Raise your blade, boy!"[/b][/color] Izayoi cried out after the first bolt, giving him only a moment’s breather before the second. [color=#736AFF][b]"Catch the bolt upon your sword, and drive the flow of aether into the ground! Better yet, at me!"[/b][/color]

To paint it in broad strokes, the act of channeling aether was already well-known to Rudolf, even before he had contracted off his ties to Ithar and most everything the Mothercrystal held. Any warrior worth their salt in Edren at least knew how to imbue [i]one[/i] object with the spark of will and animus—

[color=c0392b]“!!”[/color]

That being the very same Izayoi now used to throw him right into the deep end of the theory: Materia. Fundamentally, it was the same act. The difference lied in the depth of intent; if he were to liken catalyzing materia to turning a key, then channeling aether like this was closer to clay upon a potter’s wheel. You had to actively guide it where you wanted it to go.

Determine the flow, as she said. It was highly dependent on your ability to visualize.

Gritting his teeth, he lifted his accursed blade, filling the voided steel as the lightning crashed in—

[i]Ah yes![/i] a certain someone crowed from inside him. [i]I love “safe” and “effective” training! Hey, you know what you’re doing, right? This psychopath isn’t going to give you another option,[/i]

And for a key moment, his current was disjointed, the prevailing image of “catching” the bolt alive in his instincts and filling the gaps where his focus on pushing aether [i]up[/i] had wavered.

He found his jaw locked as the bolts hit him, coaxing an even tighter squeeze on his hilt as the thunder burned the edges of his skin over. 

[color=c0392b]“Drew it in by mistake,”[/color] he breathed, when motor control calmed down. [color=c0392b]“Like absorbing impact.”[/color]

A click of the tongue, noting and trying to rectify the mental failure. Whether she waited for him or not, he readied himself again in short order with a curt nod.

In hindsight, perhaps going straight to electrocuting Rudolf after they’d just fought an Eidolon specializing in the element was an ill-conceived idea. Perhaps it would have been more prudent to wait until they’d recovered from battle wounds. But Izayoi knew no other way. Rudolf had more of a breather from mortal combat to training than she’d been given. 

So she allowed him the absolute privilege of five seconds in between casts of relatively weak Thunder spells.

[color=#736AFF][b]"Be glad I am bothering to use only weakened incantations!"[/b][/color] Izayoi barked after the next cast. [color=#736AFF][b]"My own instruction afforded me no such luxury!"[/b][/color]

[color=c0392b]“I can— [i]tell[/i]!”[/color] he shot back, letting aether surge into the dead steel anew. This time he was a hair too slow, and realized another mistake: waiting on it, tensing, bracing. Tightness in the body and tightness in the mind, his two longtime nemeses in any facet of the battlefield arts, were dulling his reaction. And perhaps more importantly, the flow of aether had to force its way through all that. When Izayoi did it, she had leapt forth to meet it. [color=c0392b]“Guess that means we all got a lesson in Osprey!”[/color]

[i]Hey. While you’re making small talk, let’s compartmentalize this before your nerves get angry again. I’ll pull some weight. Just focus on the catch and pitch.[/i]

Before Rudolf could raise a mental protest, he felt a channel in his soul open without his command, along the same leylines that had been burned in by blackflame seemingly dozens of times now. 

Izayoi’s kote flashed again. Another breath, and a bolt would be thudding into him. Less, in actuality, but when he truly needed to time his focus, instead of coiling like a spring—

He kept his eyes open, and exhaled as the flash became a golden gleam of thunder. Catch and pitch.

He moved. A steady font of aether flowed forth out of him, filling the sword as he brought it— and himself—into the lightning’s path. He had his terminology all wrong. He had to meet the bolt, not receive it.

There was a crash, and his eyes widened. In his hands, he could feel even the weakened spell thrumming along the trail his aether had blazed, a line of lightning as tall as he in his grasp, and—

[i]Congrats. We got a little bolt, you did it. It’s gotta [b]go[/b] somewhere. Before she fires another. She’s going to.[/i] the voice urged. His feet were returning to the earth; planting it where all lightning yearned to go would be a simple matter, quickly executed and intuitive as it got. It was easy to believe that many swordsmen who managed the initial feat stopped there—

But he had expectations to meet.

He swung downwards in her direction, in as unvarnished a strike as was ever thrown, and attempted to coax his aether further out than the tip of the gold-painted blade.

The strike was met by Izayoi’s own blade, a thin smile on its wielders face as she seemed impressed, despite herself. 

[color=#736AFF][b]"Two tries. Most impressive."[/b][/color] Izayoi allowed, before the hand that wasn’t holding her sword flexed, the next bolt that came down electrocuting both of them. 

When the dust cleared, Izayoi stayed standing, albeit with a slight twitch from residual electricity. 

[color=#736AFF][b]"Again. We’ll settle for being able to redirect a fully powered Thunder while delivering a competent strike, if possible. It isn’t as if I can coax a Thundara or Thundaga out of this materia, regardless."[/b][/color]

The training continued in this vein for some time, Izayoi gradually increasing the power behind her Thunder casts until she was reasonably confident that Rudolf was growing proficient enough with redirecting them that he wouldn’t miss too many and result in serious injury.

This, of course, was slow going— progress came incrementally, with great expense, and every inch fought for, even with the second voice in his head greasing the gears. Rudolf’s heart hardly leapt at the praise, given such asterisks had been attached, but was left in a bind as Izayoi kept slowly ratcheting up the intensity. He [i]wanted[/i] to properly wrest more control of the process back into his hands, now that they had widened the margins and he was getting used to the rhythm of it all, but his passenger wasn’t keen to budge on the matter.

And rightly so. A growing collection of mistakes, near misses, and immediate lessons was burned onto him as the hours dragged on, regardless of the directionality being more or less positive— the system they had developed was one that [i]worked[/i], and minimizing the accumulated damage fell to them when [i]this[/i] was how he was trained. Even cast against someone like his father, Izayoi as an instructor was brutal in the simplicity of her method— he could all but see the silhouette of that beast that had trained her upon it.

It was clear that a single eve wasn’t going to be all it took to truly get it down, especially knowing they were still in the relatively weak realm of Thunder, and not higher magic. At some point, he thought to ask about these things. He had stopped counting the passing minutes for a good while by now, only really aware that the light had sunk low.

[color=c0392b]“Your master,”[/color] he grunted, catching a moment between casts and ignoring the stinging of the burns on his skin, how wild and frayed his hair had surely become. [color=c0392b]“You said he didn’t downgrade the incantations— was [i]everything[/i] he taught like that? Throw you right into the fire?”[/color]

He had asked for this, so he wasn’t voicing a complaint— hard as it was, this was how she knew how to teach what he needed to learn. Rather, Rudolf found himself more just… curious. Looking for perspective. Better to sate that than dwell on his lingering dissatisfaction. Offloading crucial steps only got harder to ignore as he grew more and more taxed. Wasn’t so easy to argue against it at this point, but this only doubled the unearned feeling poisoning each success.

Another Thunder came crashing down on Rudolf.

[color=#736AFF][b]"If you’ve breath to speak, you’ve breath left enough to raise your sword."[/b][/color] Izayoi said flatly, echoing the very words her aforementioned master once told her. Gods, that had to have been…twenty years ago, now. 

[i]...Really, I’m in your head and I still have no clue what you were expecting besides that.[/i]

Nonetheless, when the dust cleared this time, Izayoi could be seen popping the Thunder materia out of her kote, handing it off to a passing-by Goug who proceeded to run it back to Galahad. Clearly, training was over for the day.

[color=#736AFF][b]"...He was a man who lived only for the sword and his hunts. If it had naught to do with either, he had no interest. He forged the girl that was to be a killer on a whim, so I’m told. Naught but idle chance after he slaughtered a group of bandits unfortunate enough to be in his way one moonless night after they’d ambushed a merchant’s caravan."[/b][/color]

With a grimace, Rudolf pulled the sword free from the earth as he coughed out his share of the dust cloud. Point made. Only now could he finally go slack… after a moment or two more of eyeing her, even after she had handed the materia away.

[color=c0392b]“Well, the first half sounds familiar enough.”[/color] he mused, [color=c0392b]“I can certainly say I’ve known my share of people that profess to love no more in the world than either of those.”[/color]

A whole village’s worth of them called as much their reasons for being. Had he not caught the glimpse of blonde when the reborn warrior’s helm had been split, Rudolf may have even floated the idea that this master of hers had once hailed from Sagramore. It’d have made for a pretty amusingly ironic reversal.

[color=c0392b]“But this goes beyond even them. Hell, I considered Istvan an uncompromising brute of a teacher, but he’s…much more meticulous.”[/color]

A long look at the greatsword, which had also borne witness to both in action, just as he did. Even moreso, as it had been given no reprieve from bearing the Thunder caught upon its blade.

[color=c0392b]“...A whim, on idle chance.”[/color] He raised a disbelieving eyebrow at the notion. Men of that cloth would tire of fostering the next generation without some more skin in the game. They’d [i]get bored[/i]. [color=c0392b]“How long did this flight of fancy have a hold of him? Building any depth of skill like this takes whole seasons, let alone what could carry you to the heights you achieved.”[/color]

[color=#736AFF][b]"I believe his decision was cemented when I did not plea with him to cease or relax his standards."[/b][/color] Izayoi shrugged as she sat cross-legged on the grass, pulling a waterskin out and taking a quick swig before tossing it to Rudolf.

Hearing more to this coming, Rudolf accepted the waterskin with a grateful nod and silently took a drink of his own, letting her talk as she would. 

[color=#736AFF][b]"He motivated my younger self at first by promising I would have the strength to never again become victimized as my family and I were against the bandits that slew them. It was effective."[/b][/color] A wry, bitter smirk crossed her face.

[color=#736AFF][b]"And he was correct. I only lost as I had before when I abandoned his teachings. Cast my strength and my blade away."[/b][/color] The mystrel reached for her sword, cracking an inch of steel out of the sheath to examine her reflection. 

As she stared into the face she saw in the steel, Rudolf in turn found himself examining her reaction. He’d caught himself doing the same thing many times by now. He wondered how similarly they may have beheld those reflections cast, for all the differences between them. Bitterness. Regret. There was a lot that was familiar.

[color=#736AFF][b]"Bafflingly enough, such a master of the katana wasn’t even Osprean. The man was eight feet tall, pale as snow, and blonde. My only reasonable assumption after fifteen years is that he was Skaelan. Possibly a renegade SEED, but Esben recalls no such master of the katana with his appearance."[/b][/color]

[color=c0392b]“Hm.”[/color] he grunted after a moment’s thought and digestion, wiping his lips as he handed the pouch back over. [color=c0392b]“Well, it’s said in the village that every person has a swordsmanship that agrees with them and a sword that will find their arm. If we go with the Skaelan Mercenary angle, perhaps he picked it up while just moving from job to job, or as a trophy from an unlucky swordsman he met on the way.”[/color] he ventured, shrugging his shoulders as he went about the conjecture for conjecture’s sake. 

He drew his knife from his hip, watching his own reflection appear and disappear in the moment between idle flips from blade, to hilt, to blade again. Working his dexterity after all the shocking, making sure everything was in order, keeping his hands busy while he mused— idiosyncratic, sure, but it felt fine. [color=c0392b]“Maybe he simply started making it up as he went along after getting ahold of a katana, just utilizing basic fundamental principles and a lot of battle experience to fill in the gaps. I hardly compare, of course, but that’s more or less what I’ve been getting up to when I’ve got to fight…. So far, at any rate.”[/color]

The blade caught. He looked tired, as always, in the steel. Liven up, Rudolf— You’re the greenhorn here.This much is what you’re supposed to handle.

He glanced back up, even as he laid his greatsword onto the ground before him, to inspect for damage he was certain he wouldn’t find. The baffling thing never cut, but it certainly hadn’t ever seemed too much worse for wear when he brought it out, either— even against the strikes of the Eidolons themselves.

[color=c0392b]“And you had your reasons for laying down the warrior’s life, I suppose.”[/color] he stated more than inquired. It’d feel presumptuous for someone like him to tell someone like her that she ‘shouldn’t blame herself’ or the like— that regrets weren’t worth having when she’d left herself unable to protect the people she loved most in all the world. ‘Well-meaning’ only ever counted for so much, when you confronted that pit through the middle of the soul. [color=c0392b]“More than a whim. At the very least, it seems to return to you quickly.”[/color]

[color=#736AFF][b]"There is little need to calm me down, boy."[/b][/color] Izayoi sighed tiredly, no real heat in her voice. [color=#736AFF][b]"Go. Take your rest. We will resume this training the next time we have an opportunity."[/b][/color]

[i]You may just not speak her language at all.[/i]

[color=c0392b]“What, being a sappy nineteen year old isn’t enough?”[/color]

A wry chuckle, a colorless smirk. He’d hardly meant it as such, but… what else could you do?

Dusting himself off, he nonetheless turned, beginning to amble away to the other side of camp, where Eliane had parked herself for the many maintenances her arsenal demanded. He held one hand up, waving as he went off towards anything but the rest she rightly urged.

[color=c0392b]“...Nah. Wouldn’t dream of it. Thank you for the lessons, Izayoi.”[/color]