Description: Zach has questions. Frei has answers, more questions, and most importantly: Cookies!
The YFCC is a place that sees a lot of people during the course of the day. Some of them are regulars, others are just passing through on their journey of life. Others still have made the Center a more long term stop, helping others out while they accomplish other goals.
Zach would be one of those last. Others know that he is a fighter, but unlike some of the other fighters who work in this place, he teaches no classes. He does not even fight on the premesis as far as anyone can tell; he seems... content to be a handyman, janitor, or one of those people who simply does the things that need doing.
Today, however, Zach is here for lessons from what most would think would be the most unlikely source if they knew anything about the young man. Frei, however, may be the best source for the information Zach is looking for. The monk may know more than Zach realizes if the older man knew why Glen was seeking him out in the first place. Zach noticed Frei around a lot more than usual of late, so maybe he'll find what he was looking for...
One can probably blame Mizuki for it, indirectly, but the monk's presence around the YFCC of late has been greater than usual, almost as if he's waiting for something bad to happen. This is probably because... he's waiting for something bad to happen. 'What if he goes after one of the children?' That question was already haunting his mind, then Hotaru goes a little berserk... let's just say that it's making him nervous. And since the YFCC is, in fact, his only 'job'... well, it's easy to spend a lot of time there.
Of course, as with the last time something like this happened, a number of the support staff are currently abusing his nervous energy to get things done that they would never get done. Payroll's done a week early this month; the bulletin board was stripped of old posters and then rearranged (according to color, size, and how awesome the graphic on the front is); cookies have been made every day and set out on the front desk (today's flavor: white chocolate macadamia). It's not as if it bugs the monk to do it, either; it gives him something to busy his fingers and take his mind off his problems.
As it is right now, though, he's slumped listlessly over the reception desk, next to three massive plates of cookies and one large glass of milk (skim), into which a hand will occasionally dunk a cookie a few times before it is consumed with gusto. Don't put out cookies midday, nobody's going to eat them!
Maiko, a young Seijyun girl in one of Frei's tai chi classes, walks by and teases him: "You're going to get fat, Frei."
For his part, the monk simply shrugs and chows down. "So was Buddha."
"That he was," Zach answers as he overhears the two people. He grins a bit, scooping up a cookie to look at it. Mmmm. Cookies. Zach takes a bite, before showing the whole thing in his mouth. He makes a pleased sound, but waits to swallow before speaking, however. Talking with your mouthful is rude, after all.
He swallows the mouthful of cookie before looking at Frei for a moment. He frowns slightly; he may not be psychic per se, but he recognizes the signs of nervous energy well enough. "I was going to bug you for a favor, but I need to ask first," Zach says, the concern apparent on his face. "You doing okay?"
First comes the o_- of 'do I know you?', then the ._. of 'I do know you', as Frei finishes chewing the cookie and tilts his head to the side to look at the newcomer. Maiko walks away, needing to get dressed and back on campus before lunch break is over. "Hm, have we met?" the monk murmurs, trying to piece it together. It may just be that being in the YFCC spurs that memory a little, since he's fought two people with 'that power' in the same place, and while Zach was one, Alma was the other. "Oh, right, you're that kid I had a Neo League fight with in St. Petersburg..."
There's a rustle of cloth as the monk sits up straight, and then drains some of the milk in his glass. Nervous energy? Maybe, but some of it's expended, and the rest... Frei's unwilling, at best, to draw random strangers into a problem that, he feels, is already 5 people bigger than it ever should have been. "I've been better," he admits, honest to a fault, "but everyone has their up and down days. What kind of favor?"
"Yeah, we did," Zach says. "You kicked my butt. Name's Zach. Zach Glen." He fidgets a bit. "I know this is going to sound... odd and all, but..." Zach shoves his hands in his pockets, looking around for a moment. He swallows, then swallows his pride.
"I'd like some lessons," Zach says in a low voice.
Zach's comment comes as Frei has a cookie already in his mouth and his hand about to move away; what results is a brief moment of surprise where the monk's expression registers it, except for his mouth, which is currently keeping a cookie from dropping onto the desk. Thus he says nothing for a moment or two, then bites through the cookie and pulls the remainder away with one hand at the last second, setting it on the desk in front of him. He didn't expect to hear that today, at all... and especially not from someone who, having fought, he knows full well doesn't use chi. He isn't sure WHAT it is, but... it's not what *Frei* uses, for sure. Perhaps a form of chi Frei knows nothing about, but...
For a second, visions of his recent lesson with Kentou flicker into his mind, and he winces involuntarily. It ended up a success, but it was such a big risk. And Kentou's involvement in Frei's personal problems was a direct result of his knowing Hotaru, too...
But dismissing things out of hand would be rude, and besides, there's got to be more to the situation than just a request, so Frei chews thoughtfully for a moment, then swallows. "Uh, well... what type of lessons?" he asks first. If he wants to learn tai chi, after all, that'll be another thing entirely. Of course, all you need to do for that is enroll.
Zach frowns a bit. "This is going to sound..." Zach groans before continuing, "I'm not sure how it's gonna sound... Maybe I should start from the top."
Zach fidgets before shoving his hands in his pockets. "I have this friend, who's a really good fighter. She is, in a lot of ways, responsible for what progress I've made in controlling the power that I have. I fought her again, not too long ago to see how I had progressed, but..." Zach's frown deepens, "She kicked the crap out of me. It wasn't even close."
Zach starts to pace a bit. "I don't have a problem getting beaten in matches. Happens more often than not." Zach stops and looks at Frei, "But I'm more worried about her. She went from cheerful and supportive to..." Zach shakes his head. "Angry, I think. Cold and angry. She said there was too much of a gap between us. It just... seemed off. She left me to bleed out in the ring at the end of her fight."
Zach gets to his point, "I want to learn how to take the damage chi can inflict. Resist it better, I guess. Maybe if I give her a better fight she'll stop and think about things," Zach says softly, looking confused. "I dunno."
Oh.
If he has any degree of surprise at the news that this was sparked by someone else getting a near-fatal beatdown, he doesn't show it at all. Zach doesn't mention her by name, but given recent events it doesn't take a genius to think that this might be Hotaru. That Zach appears to have recovered physically, at least, is a relief. And the *reason* for the request certainly makes sense enough, but...
Suddenly aware of the long pause he took to think things over, the monk shuts his eyes for a second and takes a long, slow breath before opening them. "I'm sorry to hear that," is the best he can manage, and it is indeed the truth. "But... well. For one, I don't think beating this woman up is going to help. Not if she's in the state you described, anyway. Two... haaaa. How to put this."
Needing a second to think it over, the monk takes a bite of another cookie, chewing thoughtfully, before he turns back to Zach. The truth is usually the way to go. "I don't know what that energy of yours is, though you're not the first person I've met with a similar ability. But it's not chi, and that's all I know. There's... a few things I could suggest to help you, but most of them involve focusing your *own* chi. You know what I mean?"
Zach looks a bit crestfallen at this. He stares at the floor. "Yeah," he croaks, "I understand."
He looks up at Frei, his cheeks a bit red. "And maybe fighting won't fix the problem, but all I have is a hammer." Zach illustrates his point by bringing up a softball-sized sphere in his palm before snuffing it out with a clenched fist. "So problems tend to look a lot like nails." Zach reins himself in for a moment.
"She's the first friend that I have had in four years, sir. It... hurts to see her like this. I need to do something." Apparently out of nowhere, the cookie trays start to rattle, shifting their load around rather rapidly. For now, however, they are still on the table.
He can hear Kentou and Jiro in that statement, but somehow that actually makes Frei feel a little bit better for it. After all, in his mind, the only thing that's going to ever change anyone's mind is being around people who have faith in them. "I don't know a lot about your situation," he says carefully, leaning back in his chair a bit, "So I can't really say what would be a good idea or not. I usually tell people to trust their instincts." He pauses, then shrugs. "Lately I had a run-in with someone who... had something to prove. But the best thing I could do was to let her work it out, even if it meant I went home pretty bruised afterwards." His meeting with Ayame, and the girl's intense need to get something out of her system... that could have gone better.
If Frei notices the rattling, he doesn't show it in his expression. However, he does find the need to comment on it. "The key to controlling any sort of power, though, in my mind, is to be in control of your emotions. Which isn't to say you shouldn't feel things fully when they strike you, but... emotions are an extension of your 'will', as it were. And in terms of power, or at least spiritual power, well... strong power responds to a strong will."
Zach hears the sound of the trays rattling. He can't figure out what is making that noise, for some reason. It takes a moment before Zach's mind links what Frei is saying to the sound he is hearing. He looks down at the table, troubled for a moment.
He knows a warning sign when he sees it.
Zach closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath. He repeats this once or twice as he runs his mind through a couple of exercises he has figured out on his own. The trays slow down, then finally stop. When Zach opens his eyes, he looks a bit embarrassed on account of his actions. "Sorry about that," Zach says barely above a whisper.
Frei simply shrugs; he's a creature of emotions and intuition, himself, so he doesn't necessarily judge others when they act according to the same. He smiles faintly at Zach, then closes his eyes and takes another long breath, hunching up his shoulders and then dropping them. "Maybe I can help you after all. I don't claim to be an expert, but I think what you lack is focus. When we fought, you were using a strong power, but it was... chaotic, in a way. Though in the end your first thoughts were for others, and not yourself, which is important."
There's a pause, and Frei chews on his thumb for a moment, looking off into the distance away from Zach. There, again, is that constant feeling of doubt he gets when someone wants to 'learn' from him... the idea that what he's going to tell the person isn't going to work, or will be rejected, or end up being 100% wrong. It's the curse of someone who tries to see all viewpoints as relevant; if you don't place a value on one thing over another, then you can lose faith that what you believe is true and right.
Shaking his head, he turns back to Zach and sprawls forward on the desk again a little bonelessly, tracing the handyman's movements with his green-eyed gaze. "Tell me something. Somebody... lunges at you with a fist, and it's surrounded in chi. What do you do? To defend yourself, I mean. Imagine you can't get out of the way; you have to take the hit somehow. What's going through your mind?"
Zach thinks back. He doesn't have to go very far. He remembers Hotaru striking his chest with that red chi-spike. His own hand reaches up to that same spot on his chest, rubbing it softly, almost subconsciously.
"That I need to get something between me and that fist, because it's gonna hurt real bad if I don't," Zach replies honestly.
The red-haired head bobs a nod or two at that statement, as if he were expecting it, and he was. After all, if Zach's a fighter, then he has a fighter's impulses when it comes to behavior. "That makes sense. You want to avoid being hit at all, and if you can't, you want to minimize how much contact someone's going to make with you to hurt you." Although his expertise with actual technical fighting isn't as great as his facility with chi, he is a bit of an expert at fighting on the defensive.
Getting up, the monk stretches his arms over his head, making an arch by locking his fingers. He's warming to the subject, at least; something else to think about for a bit. "Now, here's my second question. What is it you're going to put between you and that fist?"
"Something solid, preferrably," Zach says as he thinks it through. "Like a table or something." Zach considers for a moment.
"Some times, though, I can kinda blast them away from me with my own energy. It still hurts, because I can't quite do it fast enough to get clear, though."
Zach tucks his hands in his pocket, also rising to the challenge a bit. If nothing else, it takes his mind off of Hotaru for a bit. "Barring any of that, I try to brace up. Get my arms in front of it. Doesn't hurt =quite= as bad then."
"Right. Because... well." He pauses, then reaches down and pulls the remaining few cookies off of one plate, then puts them on another nearly full plate. "Chi is just energy, like anything else." He holds up the plate with one hand and, rather suddenly, sweeps the other hand at it; a wave of orange-gold light splashes from his palm and hits the plate, "splashing" against it and flickering out to all sides. The plate looks relatively unharmed... but the energy didn't pass through the plate, either. "You can't just blast it through a solid object. So just like putting your arm in the way of a kick stops the kick from hitting something vital, you can cut down on a chi attack's potential for pain by putting something between you and it."
The monk sets down the plate and picks up another cooking, chewing on it thoughtfully. Zach said one other useful thing, though, and he wants to capitalize on it before the handyman forgets he said it. "And sometimes striking before they strike you works too, right? That's what you mean, 'blast them away with your own energy', I think. But there's a third possibility I don't think you've considered yet." He holds his hands apart near his chest, palms facing inward. The same gold light flickers around one hand... but then silver coalesces around the other. The effect is pronounced; between his inward-facing palms, silver and gold dance around each other in a chaotic swirl. "Energy doesn't just affect solid matter, right? Fire interacts with cold, electricity interacts with the air... this is 'yin' interacting with 'yang', though that's a little abstract." As quick as they came, the glows vanish. "Do you see what I mean?"
"So... use energy to cancel out energy?" Zach asks slowly after watching the display with narrowed eyes. He did not want to miss what Frei was doing, evne if he is not very good at perceiving chi.
Sitting back down, the monk nods. "It's one possibility. It's not always the *best* one. Sometimes just getting the heck out of the way or taking the hit on the forearm is smarter. But the best way to fight back against energy that's trying to hurt you is... energy itself." Picking up his glass of milk, Frei drains the rest of it and finishes off the cookie he had just started eating. They really are surprisingly good; he can't make actual food worth a damn, but he has surprising talent when it comes to baking or making sweets and desserts.
Closing his eyes, Frei leans back in his chair. "But when I said you might need to improve your focus... well, that's another thing. There's still chi in your body, did you know that? Even though you seem to have this 'other' power instead." He pauses, opening one eye. "I've never met someone who can do both. My guess is whatever this other power is, you're not wired to influence ambient chi that's all around us... but without some degree of chi, you'd be a lifeless corpse."
Zach looks surprised at Frei's proclamation for a moment, but thinks about it for a moment. He did a fair amount of reading on the Suiryuu about such things.
"That... makes sense in a way," Zach says finally. "Though I wonder why it is someone couldn't use both," Zach says musingly. "Maybe noone's tried hard enough?"
The question earns another shrug from Frei, who in fact hasn't spent a lot of time thinking about the issue. It might disconcert Zach to know that many of the monk's theories, he makes up on the spot... though they're informed by a prodigious amount of experience and intuition that is, usually, on the mark. "Maybe. In my opinion, trying to do both... well. Have you ever heard the proverb, 'the hunter who chases two hares captures neither'? Better to focus on one thing. But you never know... maybe it'd be worth it to try it someday."
Waving a hand in the air dismissively, he continues. "Anyhow. Think about that. Whatever energy that power of yours is, it does interact with chi. They're not the same, but they're close enough. The trick, of course, is to make it second nature. I imagine it's easier for people who already use chi, because... well, they're used to influencing that power, so extending their aura... the field that separates your personal, internal chi from the ambient chi of the world... is second nature after a while."
Zach tilts his head to the side as he digests this bit of information. He opens his mouth, about ready to ask the most obvious of questions, but thinks better of it. Frei has already admitted he knows little about Psycho Power.
He mulls this over a bit more. "That... makes sense," Zach declares again. "Though I would wager that I would be better served talking to someone like Alma for tips on that, right?"
"Mmm. Maybe." Truth be told, Frei's experience with people who have that unquantifiable energy is actually quite limited. In fact, other than Alma and Zach, the list seems to include one young girl who hasn't been seen in Southtown in some time... and that's it. "He's certainly the closest at hand. But he's also a very busy individual. You never know, though, he might find the time. He's like that." The thought gives Frei a moment of brief amusement, and he smiles a bit before absently munching on another cookie.
Leaning back even further in the chair, he looks at Zach from the side. "Hopefully that information is of some use to you. Just be patient and try to think about how to use it to your advantage. Everything takes time, after all."
Zach nods deeply, the look on his face communicating that he understands that last point very clearly from personal experience.
"Thank you, sir." Zach finally says, the concern creeping back into his voice. In some ways, he is at something of a loss. The session has answered some questions, but raised a lot more. He is still not certain what he can do to help Hotaru. "I just hope I can help Hotaru before she does something really bad." Like kill someone.
Log created on 11:31:47 02/27/2008 by Zach, and last modified on 14:18:03 02/27/2008.