“I will begin,” Sheng said in a tart voice, “by telling you we are going about this in entirely the wrong way.”
I stared at him blankly. Florence opened her mouth as if she was going to object, but then she thought better of it and remained silent.
“To properly learn a martial art, one must spend years studying under a master of the discipline,” Sheng continued. “These studies involve repetition of physical movements and conditioning, yes, but they also teach mindset and morals. Strength of character comes before strength of body.”
I tilted my head and frowned at him. “If that’s all true, why are you teaching us?”
A ghost of a smile flickered across his mouth as he gestured with his head towards the wall behind us. I looked back and saw that Pausso was discussing something with Natu while Echo hung overhead, quietly listening. Skiploom and Snubbull both dozed on the ground nearby.
Right. Trainers had to be pure of heart to bond with a Pokemon, which surely meant we wouldn’t abuse a position of power. I was still skeptical about this era’s idea that all trainers had to be good guys; Violet and Olivine had taught me the world was more nuanced than that. But then again, even peak human strength couldn’t compare to the abilities of a properly trained Pokemon. If Florence or I ever tried to use martial arts to hurt others unjustly, our teams wouldn’t stand for it.
Sheng started pacing back and forth with his good eye forward, not looking directly at us. “I will assume you already have the proper moral structure to use that which I teach you wisely. I also know that you both already train to maintain your own physical fitness from my observations this morning.” I blinked, surprised. He had been watching us during training? “All of this means we can move directly to the skills you most wish to acquire: the art of physical offense and defense.”
He made a motion with his hand, and Wei stepped forward from the other side of the room. The apprentice bowed formally towards his uncle, then adjusted his feet so that his shoulders were hunched and his fists were up near his head. Hitmontop strolled over and settled into his own relaxed position in front of the man, and his tail idly swept back and forth as he waited. Both Wei and Hitmontop quickly bowed to each other, and I saw a brief smile flash across Wei’s face.
“There are many ways to approach the physical arts,” Sheng continued. “Most come from mimicking how Pokemon use their bodies to fight. I have studied in several of these arts, but for now we will focus on just one: the Way of the Hitmonkin.”
I didn’t see any kind of signal, but out of nowhere Wei and Hitmontop were moving fluidly. The Pokemon swept a leg out in an arc, but Wei had already lifted his own leg to block the kick against his shin. Now Wei punched out with his left fist, aiming directly for Hitmontop’s head, but the Pokemon easily deflected the move to the side with an arm and used the opening to throw his own punch from the side. I watched with rapt attention as they went back and forth like this, trading punches and kicks but always blocking or redirecting the movements before they could cause real damage.
“Hitmonchan, Hitmonlee, and Hitmontop each have their own specialized method of fighting,” Sheng said. He had moved to walk behind us, and I could practically feel his eyes on me as he walked by. “But they also share commonalities. All use fluid movement and extension of the limbs both to attack and to defend. Because their bodies are shaped like ours, we can mimic their motions and adapt them into our own styles.”
Hitmontop suddenly did a backflip that landed him on top of the point on his head. He spun on that point and a leg lashed out once, then twice, almost hitting Wei in the chest. But the man swiveled his body and blocked both kicks with an arm, then lashed out with a leg in an attempt to knock the Pokemon right off his point. Hitmontop must have seen him coming, because he rolled backwards and hopped back onto his feet. The two kept their distance from each other for a few moments, each of them bobbing back and forth on the tips of their feet as they considered the other.
“Enough,” Sheng told them, and they both stopped their movement and relaxed. Sheng turned to consider Florence and me. “I want to make a few things clear. First: what you just watched was not Hitmontop at his full power. A properly trained fighting majū will defeat even the best human warrior in almost every case, and when ranged and elemental moves are brought into consideration, no human stands a chance. Know your limits.”
I nodded gravely. I had expected that that was the case already, but it was good to get a reminder.
“Second: you will not be able to fight fluidly this way until you have practiced the basics for several months at least. I will give you the core tools to begin with, but it is up to you to ingrain the movements into your body until they become second nature. Just as a majū must practice their moveset every day, you must practice these movements every day.”
That made sense too. If I had learned anything from half a year of training, it was that nothing came easy. Hard work and dedication were necessary to see results.
“And third: punches and kicks look flashy, and you may find use for them occasionally. But they are not your strongest tools.” Sheng paused for emphasis and looked directly at each of us. “For a trainer, the arm and leg blocks must be prioritized above all else. When you find yourself under attack by a wild majū, what you most need is to buy time so your partner can come to your rescue. They will be far more capable of subduing an attacker than you are. Blocking and redirecting attacks will give you the ability to take a bad scenario and turn it into an opportunity.”
Okay, I was mildly annoyed by that one. Those kicks had looked really cool, and the whole reason why I was getting involved in martial arts in the first place was so Pausso and Echo wouldn’t constantly need to save me from bad situations. I wanted to hold my own in the team! But Sheng clearly knew what he was talking about, so it was in my best interest to listen.
“You understand?” Sheng’s eye lingered on Florence for a moment, and she slowly nodded. “Good. We begin with stances.”
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I immediately stood up straight and locked my knees, and Sheng sighed and shook his head. “No, no. The Way of the Hitmonkin is not of stiffness; it is of movement. You must be relaxed and prepared to move at any moment.” He stepped forward and started tapping parts of my body, and I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Hitmontop was doing the same thing to Florence a few feet away. “Shoulders down. Legs apart. No, not like that – you put one leg behind the other.” He gently pushed my left leg back and turned my shoulders so that I was angled slightly to the side. “Toes forward. Good. Now, fists up by your head. Tides, boy, you call that a fist?”
I moved my arm back down and looked at my balled-up hand. “Yes?” I said tentatively.
He grimaced and tapped my hand, getting me to release my grip. “Your thumb goes on the outside. Now curl your fingers in – tighter! That’s it. The thumb goes here, against the first two fingers. Better. Now, back up in position again.”
It took another minute, but eventually I settled into a stance that Sheng found acceptable. He then swapped with Hitmontop so he could check on Florence’s stance. The Pokemon looked me over and gently tapped my elbows until I pulled them in closer. Then he nodded in satisfaction.
“Good,” Sheng told the two of us. “Now drop the stance.”
I glanced over at Florence, confused, but she was entirely focused on Sheng. So I stepped back and stood like I normally would, taking a moment to scratch at the back of my head.
Sheng nodded and his eyes crinkled just slightly. “Back into stance.”
Oh, so that was the game he was playing. We were going to do this over and over again until we could switch to the stance immediately. I sighed and got back into position, and Hitmontop immediately tapped my back knee to force me back a little further.
It took me ten tries before I could get into the stance without any need for corrections. Florence got it done in eight, of course. After Sheng ran us through a few more rounds to make sure we could do it consistently we moved to the next stage of training: blocks.
“With all techniques, we start slow,” Sheng told us. “Moving slowly helps us ensure you do not learn a bad form. Better slow at first than mistaken forever!”
He called Wei forward to demonstrate, and the young man threw a punch toward Sheng’s face at an exaggeratedly slow rate. At the same slow rate, Sheng shifted his body so that he turned towards the punch. His right arm moved and connected with Wei’s arm, pushing it just a bit to the side. That bit was enough that the punch met empty air towards the side of Sheng’s head, not its intended target.
“Watch carefully,” he told us. Then he and Wei repeated the movement two more times. The second time they shifted angles, so Wei punched with his right arm and Sheng defended with his left. “You see how little effort this takes? By redirecting an attack, you reserve your own energy while making your opponent waste theirs. Do not act as a dam that tries to hold back water. Be the ever-changing banks of a river, melding the water to follow a new path of its own will.”
Then they had us try the same movements. First in thin air, which felt weird, then against a more experienced opponent. Hitmontop faced off against me while Tanaji joined us to be Florence’s partner. I watched out of the corner of my eye as he and Florence practiced. Tanaji clearly wasn’t as good at this as Sheng and Wei were, but he was still better at throwing a slow-motion punch than I was, and by a lot.
“Top!” the Pokemon across from me barked, and I looked forward just in time for Hitmontop to bump my nose with the edge of his fist. The fighter waggled a finger in my face before settling back into his stance. I sighed and got back to work.
We learned two other blocks in addition to the first – one that used both arms to hide the head, in case of overwhelming attack, and one that could stop a kick using your shin. I found the shin block really hard, mostly because balancing on just my back foot was difficult. Sheng just grunted at that and told me I ought to add some balance exercises into my daily routine. Anyway, with each block we started with extremely slow movements, then practiced using them at a normal rate once the experts had determined we weren’t making any mistakes.
Then it got more complicated.
“Arm left,” Sheng snapped. “Leg left. Arm right. Hide. Arm right. Arm left.”
With each snapped order I had to do the appropriate block. It was hard, especially when I had to switch between leg positions. And it didn’t help that whenever I looked over at Florence, she seemed to be following along easily.
She wasn’t looking at me at all. Was she really still mad about what I had said earlier? She was the one who kept going on about wanting to find her “true” partner. Besides –
“Head out of the clouds, boy!” Sheng said loudly. “Leg right. Leg left. Arm left. Arm left. Hide.”
Training the blocks took up most of the time in the session, but that time was worth it, because I was starting to feel confident in them (well, maybe not the leg blocks) by the end. Plus, we got to do the fun stuff in the last bit of the session.
“When you throw a punch, you do not only move your arm,” Sheng instructed. “You move your whole body. Watch my hips as I move. See how I rotate? That movement provides additional power to the punch itself.” I nodded quietly and watched the slow twisting of his arm as it moved from its guard position into a fully-extended punch. “By the end your fist should be facing outwards with the thumb underneath, and your knuckles should be in the outermost position. Hitting this way will give you maximal impact.”
Then we got to see a slow-motion kick. I hid a grin when Sheng called over Hitmontop to help him balance while his leg was extended. “With a kick, you also use your entire body. In this case, your down-foot must pivot to give the raised foot momentum. Watch.” I tried to take in everything at once as he slowly rotated until he was sideways and tilted a bit, his right foot moving up until it was splayed out in a line. “Note that snap at the end,” he said, gripping Hitmontop’s shoulder with one hand so he could repeat the final part of the motion, where the lower part of the leg snapped outward from the knee. “Combined with the rotation, that will give you real force behind the kick.”
We took perhaps ten minutes to practice the punch and then the kick, only in slow-motion. I couldn’t quite get the kick right (Sheng kept telling me to pivot, but I couldn’t get the motion to work fluidly), but I was happy with how my punch was developing. It made me feel powerful to move like this. It made me feel alive.
Then the first students for Sheng’s evening class started trickling into the building, and our time was up. I was sweaty, sore, and tired, but I was also excited. This was something I could actually do. I could practice these moves every morning, and eventually I would get good enough with them to protect myself, at least a little bit. Maybe I’d even be able to take a more assertive role if I ever wound up in a really bad situation without my team again.
Plus, there was an unexpected silver lining. Sheng’s training had given me a ton of ideas to try in my team’s training! All the focus on stances, and slow movement, and attacking with your whole body could definitely apply to Pokemon too. I could already envision how I would work with Pausso to improve the form of his Pound attack, and I was sure it would only take a little brainstorming to find ways that Echo could improve her flying tricks. Sure, I still liked special attacks best, but that was no reason to limit my team.
But all of that would have to wait. The rest of the group had gotten up and organized themselves near the door, and Isaac was motioning for Florence and me to follow them. It was time to start our stakeout.