Welcome to Gaia! ::

The door creaks open as Kusari glided into the room. "Good afternoon Foust, I am Captain Korosu." He shut the door behind him, looking out to see that he wasn't followed. "My squad," he cut himself off and restarted, "Our squad has a reputation for doing the logical rather than the reasonable or the fair, and it is with that prerogative that I have selected you as my vice captain. The next few weeks will be hell, but you seat will be secure until I am done, then you will be earning your spot." He began to remove his haori. "Shinigami focus on four arts. Kido, Hakuda, Zenjutsu, and Shunpo. You are hardly trained in any of these. This is good for me as a captain in that I can shape you to my own mold to create a man worthy of taking on my duties in my absence, but it is inevitably up to you who you desire to be." He turned sat on the ground, laying his haori down as he folded it, then placing it to his side he continued. "One of the finer points of strategy is knowing that combat is a giant game of rock, paper, scissor. The man casting kido can be dodged by shunpo. The shunpo user is worthless against a Hakuda master. The Hakuda master is nothing if he cannot put his pride aside an pick up a blade, and the sword master cannot pass a kido users barrier. All these things must be kept in the back of your mind." He smiled lightly, it resembled the face of a murderer after interrogation, awkward and creepy, the stuff of nightmares.

"I am afraid I am only a student of Hakuda, but I can teach you kido and shunpo, and there is no better zanjutsu teacher in all of soul society then myself, but we will take it one step at a time."



((Its up to you what you want to learn, there is a list of guild zanjutsu on the main forum and I'd prefer zanjutsu and/or shunpo seeing as kido training is time consuming.

"Shunpo is easy enough to learn, I had to learn it with my gauntlets on, but back then I only had one." He stood and walked to the door. "There is more room outside, it would be wise to train for shunpo out there." He stepped outside into the night, it was chilly, but bearable. He did a left face and began speaking as he saw Foust at the door. "Shunpo is on o the most basic shinigami arts. The objective is not to be the fastest, but to be faster than you were before. Though in the realm on shunpo, I will teach you what my former captain taught me. Before you learn to run, you must learn to walk." He paused for a moment before adding, "On air. Lets begin." Kusari stood up as straight as he could and began to take deep breaths. "Reach far back into your mind and focus your breathing. You are a Death God now. The planes of the horizontal no longer restrict you. Welcome to the world of the vertical." His sentances were each separated by a moment of breathing. "Now imagine yourself floating. Imagine yourself walking up an invisible stairway. Imagine that are flying."

Kusari smiled as the young pup fell to the ground. "Very well then. Why don't we try and maintain our focus." The Captain noted that he would need to break Foust of his constant need of approval. "If you believe that you did well, then you did well. If you believe that you need to improve, then such is the case. I myself have never been satisfied by my own abilities, there is always room to improve on everything." He broke away from the meditative stance and looked to Foust. "Although, I never told you to actually step forward. Listening is key."
Kusari stepped forward and tugged at the quick strap on his right gauntlet, then the left, and as he lowered his arms, both hit the ground sending a cloud of dirt upwards.
"Now we move on to running." He paused again as he stretched. "The point of shunpo running is to be fast, which means that you will need momentum. To much momentum and you trip, to little and your fall backwards. Just remember to constantly balance yourself as you run, nobody ever perfects it instantly, you usually begin with short burst and build up to full sprints and so on. Run down to the end of the clearing and back. " This was a trick Kusari played on his shunpo trainees in squad thirteen. He taught them to run, but not how to turn or stop, the results were not only funny, but taught the arrogant a lesson as they assumed they knew how to turn, only to see their feet flying above their own heads.


((Its okay with shunpo, but when you get into zenjutsu, remember that it takes a while to master.))

Kusari smiled, disappearing and reappearing beside Foust in a single shunpo. "Why? I said turn, not stop." He looked down at Foust and sighed, "I was hoping you would figure it out on your own, but that seems to be asking a little much right now, so we will blame the cold I suppose." He picked up a rock and began tossing it up and down. "A great man named Sir Isaac Newton wrote what we call the laws of motion. The first being that an object in motion will stay in motion until interrupted by an external force. His second law is that force equals mass times acceleration, and his final infamous law is that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." He was silent a moment before saying, "You got cocky, so I gave you a choice to either prove yourself worthy of being cocky, or to be taught a lesson. Thats the third law. You ran and didn't bother to slow down before stopping yourself via gravity, the first rule, which sent you pummeling into the ground and caused you pain, which is an application of the second law. Do you follow me?" He took the rock and threw it at the ground. The moist earth opened and caved around it. "That is what you were doing." He pick up the rock and tossed it upwards, catching it again. "That is what needs to be done." He looked at the lost look in the boys eyes, and knowing very well that he had been vague, he elaborated. "As the Rock goes down it continues to gain speed, so when it hits the ground the additional force pushed it into the dirt, but as it travels upwards it is slowed by gravity ever so slowly before reaching its peak and returning at a faster rate."
Kusari began to wander back towards the building, picking up his gauntlets and replacing them as he shouted back. "And if that doesn't do it for you, slow down about two thirds of the way down in order to stop, but turning is a completely different realm." He entered the building and put on his coat, fanning his long hair out over the top of it before returning towards the door. "I will leave the rest of your training to you, and you can show me what you have learned when you believe you are ready to learn the Rook Style, but you would do best to begin with another style, seeing as Rook, mainly the White Rook, is extremely dependent on your ability to move quickly."

"Oh, ok! I understand now. Thank you for the explanation, too." Foust said now understanding shunpo better. He was now anxious to try again and show his captain that he can do it. When seeing his captain ready to leave, Foust felt he let his captain down. Foust said while looking at his captain in the eyes,"Your leaving already? Well I will continue training hard and will get better at this in no time, you'll see."

Then Foust began to get ready to start his own training without his captain. He said to himself,"I have to show Captain Korosu that I can do this, I just have to." He jumped up onto the air with complete focus and almost perfect balance. Now he was thinking about what his captain said about stoping. He said with an exhale," Just slow down two-third of the way." Foust focused on getting to the end of the clearing again, but this time he was sure he would stop.

He started to run and as he started he already had great speed. Every step seemed perfect and his balance was great. He was now determined to do this right. As his speed reached its peak the clearing seemed to be getting closer fast. About two-thirds of the way he slowed down. The clearing came and he had slowed down, but was not ready to stop. No this time he was wanting to turn like the captain told him to in the first place. At the end of the clearing he started to turn to the right while slowed down at the time. Turning more and more to the right he managed to be turned completey around facing where he started from. Now he just had to get back.

Foust was starting to pick up more speed to get down there faster. He was going as fast as he did to get down to the end. This time he had to actually stop. The starting point wasn't far away anymore, just a third away when Foust started to slow down. Finally he got to the starting point and stopped a little bit behind it and said," Wow! I did it. I finally did it." Foust was happy that he had finally completed his task. He wasn't finished training, though. He managed to do it once, and needs to do it a few more times. Then he will be able to show his captain his accomplishments.

After a quick break, Foust looked around to see if anyone was in sight of him. Seeing that no one was around, he began to focus. His mind was made up. He was going to release his sword, but lower his spiritual pressure so that no one would sense it. This was a secret that only a few peopl knew of.

Foust quickly unsheathed his sword, that was at his left side, with his right hand. He put his left hand on the handle under his right hand, and began to focus. Hiding his spiritual pressure was going to be hard, but Foust felt he could do it. He needed to, for he didn't think it would be ok to release it in the open, but no one was around at the time.

Looking at his zanpactou, Foust said," Hehe, release Arana." With those few words, his sword's blade had electricity running down it. Then, it split into two identical swords, that had a weird blade. The blade had a empty space in the middle of it all the way to the tip. In this space there was electricity flowing down it repeatidly. Foust now felt lighter, stronger, and faster.

He jumped upward onto the air at a decent pace, and with that one jump he was near the height he was when he fell. Foust started to run around on the air wildly. He was running extremely fast and basically iin circles. This seemed easy to him now that he had done it a few times. Quikly he stopped to look around. He noticed he was running so much that he had no idea he drifted away from where he started from. While running back he made sure his spiritual pressure was low and hardly noticable.

Upon arriving to his destination, Foust thought of an idea. He imagined that an opponent was in front of him. With the enemy in front of him, he would run up to them and start running around the enemy in a circle. While doing so, he would go faster and faster with his new speed. Shunpo was about speed, and that is something Foust definately has. As for balance and focus, he felt he had that down pat as well. As he ran around his imaginary opponent, he would count to see how many time he went completely around. Although, from a distance, it would be rather hard to keep up with where he was at, considering Foust's speed. If Foust was Fighting a captain they would be able to deal with easily, but regular soul reapers wouldn't normally, unless they were a leiutenant.

Instantly, Foust stopped and jumped to the ground. He landed firmly on his right foot first, then put his left on the ground. While starting to laugh he said," Haha! I can't believe I was up all night training. The sun is starting to rise, so I have been here a while. I wander where Captain Korosu is." Deep inside, Foust wanted to better himself more and more, for he wanted to make his captain proud. He lookedat his dual swords,Arana, and said," I am grateful for your help, Arana." Foust put the swords together as they started to form the sealed form. He held the sword in his right hand, and stared at it with amazement. Then he sheathed his sword and fell backwards to the ground, unintentionally, and fell to sleep. This happened due to him using so much energy running around and not taking the propper break needed for rest.

(Your getting close man, keep it up.)