Levin’s POV

“Alright, good roll! Keep it up!” Aerien said as she watched from across the room. This was great, we were finally training with Aerien again, and now we were in a real dojo-like room with matts all over the floor. She had said that Sagel had made it last night, and it looked great. She even apparently had him make a whole lot more weapons out of wood and had them hung up on the wall to be easily accessed at any time.

The one thing is, the first thing she had us do was a bunc of rolling on the ground.

“This is a style where you are thrown to the ground a lot.” She had said. “So, the first thing you need to know is how to hit the ground without being injured.” It made perfect sense, but this was not quite what he had in mind for Aerien’s training. He had hoped to learn some crazy new and much more interesting sword technique than what Sagel had them doing yesterday. It was quite the let-down to see they had to learn all this safety stuff first, but it did make sense.

“Alright, now go get your swords off the wall!” She told them, causing their ears to perk up. Was this going to be it!? Levin excitedly went to get his sword. Aerien was already standing next to the weapons wall with a sword in her own hands, meaning she was waiting right there for them after he and Rolwen got their own swords off the wall. “Now then,” she said, “we are going to practice rolling with a sword.” Levin just did stood there in disappointed shock as he saw her get down into the same familiar roll they had just been doing endlessly, except she was doing it with the sword held out to the side, hovering in the air.

“You are going to have to practice with this one in case you ever actually have to use a roll in battle. You are going to have your sword on you, and that is the single thing most likely to wind up getting in your way.”

“More rolling!?” Levin protested in annoyance.

“Yeah, is there a problem?” She responded on the spot.

“Well… that…” Levin began.

“We thought you might be teaching us some crazy ninja sword skills or something!” Rolwen spoke up for him.

“There are no ninja sword skills.” Aerien responded almost immediately.

“Yeah, but… you know what I mean…” Rolwen continued.

“Sagel is teaching you that right now.” Aerien told them. “Ninjutsu is the art of espionage. It specializes in infiltration and information gathering. There are no combat techniques involved in that. There is no martial art called ninjutsu. The ninja use the combat techniques of the locals, the ones that can produce the best cover story so that their identity will not be discovered. In feudal Japan, this was various forms of the samurai arts such as Taijutsu, Kenjutsu, and Jujutsu. In this world, it would be whatever fighting style Sagel has to teach. He knows several of the local styles that he has learned in his days. As such, he is going to be the best combat teacher if you really want to learn ninja combat techniques. I also plan to learn them myself.”

Huh, so it’s like that? Wait… “Sooo…” Levin began. “Wait, are you saying you really WERE a ninja back on Earth!?”

“Oh, yeah, I never told you, huh?” She responded rather casually.

“You said you had a dojo and everything!” Levin protested. “Was it like, some sort of secret ninja dojo or something!? Should you really be telling us this, or is it just because we’re all dead back on Earth so it doesn’t matter?”

“Nah, it was a historical recreation of various samurai style martial arts with some education on what ninjutsu was mixed in. The people who REALLY practiced ninjutsu in the modern day are all in the CIA or whatever the intelligence agencies of other countries are. If you hear about some of the things they teach there, it actually is the exact same things real ninja learned back in Japan.” Aerien cast it all off dismissively. “Actually, in that sense, you could say I’m really not a ninja at all. Maybe I was just as much of a fan idealizing the concept as you guys back in the day and so I decided to start learning it. Now that I have and I know what it’s about, I take it a little more seriously, but I know enough about it to realize I’m not a ninja at all. I’m just someone who knows some samurai martial arts and also knows what a ninja is.”

“Could we BE ninjas though!?” Levin asks.

“Well,” Aerien responded, “If anyone in our group is a real ninja, that would definitely be Sagel once again. Aparently, changelings are spies for the royal family here. So, he is literally this world’s equivalent of a ninja. If you REALLY want to go that route, I am certain you can learn the true ninja way from him.”

It is silent after her little speech, and then she looks over to Rolwen who had been quiet for a while. “Rolwen?” She called for his attention. “What do you think about all this?”

“Umm… I don’t know, what do you want to do so far as all of this goes?” He responds with a question of his own.

“Well, I don’t know. I think at this point my samurai combat skills will serve me a lot better than the whole ninjutsu thing since I’m a princess and all now. If anything, being a princess makes it impossible to be a proper ninja. About the only area that really overlaps is negotiation skills, and maybe having an exit plan in case of emergency. You shouldn’t base your decisions on me though.”

“I see…” Rolwen responds, looking very thoughtful about what Aerien just said.

“Anyway,” Aerien continues. “If you really want to learn some samurai arts, I will teach you once you learn to handle your swords better. A lot of it has to do with extremely precise movements, especially the hand to hand and unarmed Vs. sword stuff. You have come a very amazingly long way in terms of how well you are moving in just a few weeks, but you are still no where near ready for the kinds of things involved there. A little bit of beginner level taijutsu, which is what these rolling techniques are, is probably about the best you can handle right now. Your bodies simply are not developed enough yet.”

“So you WILL teach us then!?” Levin asks.

“Of course I’m going to teach you. It seems like the meditation attached to it is pretty high level, and it sounds like a good meditation technique goes a very long way in this world. You guys have got to learn that, and you’re going to have to learn taijutsu and jujutsu at the bare minimum in order to access it.”

Levin looked over to Rolwen, and he was looking back with a weak smile of excitement on his face. Levin imagined his own face must look either the same or maybe even more excited. He had to admit, even if he had been a girl in his previous life, there was always just something about ninjas. All this talk about samurai and ninjas got him a little excited. Also, maybe being a boy now was affecting how he was thinking a little. He could remember thinking ninjas were neat before, but he could not imagine himself ever getting THIS excited over actually being one.

-

Aerien’s POV

After setting the boys to work on their ukemi, specifically the forward and backward rolls I had shown them, I went to settle down in a corner and work on my own issues. My younger side had retreated back into our inner world, once again refusing to merge our consciousness as I had taken up the role of showing the boys what to do. There was something about her that had definitely changed, and it was looking more and more like I was going to have to see what exactly was going on.

I sat down and began the stationary form of my meditation, and soon I was back inside the chaotic realm of my spirit. Despite how expansive this space was, I did not have to spend any time looking for the younger half of my spirit. I wanted to find her when I entered this space, and therefore I materialized right beside her.

She was doing something rather curious when I found her. She was holding a hand straight out in front of her, and had a look of deep concentration on her face. There were repeated snapping and cracking sounds, like scored glass being snapped apart with two pairs of pliers, and a crystal-like dust was falling down from in front of her hand.

“Mmmm!” My younger half let out a very irritated groan when I arrived and threw her hands out to her sides, and then she turned to glare at me.

“Uhh, hey!” I greeted her. “What were you doing?”

“Arrrgh!” She growls at me again. “It doesn’t matter, it’s not working!”

I sighed and shook my head. It seemed she was frustrated with whatever it was, so I decided to just take a look into our shared memories and try to figure it out that way. It was… memories of Eirlathion teaching our mother how to form spell crystals in order to do magic. Oh yes! Gaerien also said that you need to make the spell crystals in order to cast any form of magic.

“Are you mad?” My younger half asks with a pout.

“Huh? Why would I be mad?” I ask her.

“I was trying make it so we could do magic, and you said you hated magic.”

“What do you mean?” I asked her.

“You told Gaerien! All the bad things happen because of magic in this world, so magic shouldn’t exist!”

“That, uhh…” I scratch my head, trying to think a little. “I guess I did say that, but I was angry at myself because of what almost happened to Gwilitphen before that, and because I had to be careful to avoid hurting mother in the same way.” She looks down and seems to be annoyed when she hears this. “So, is there something wrong?”

“I want to be able to do magic.” She says. “I just thought, you are all good with fighting and stuff, maybe I can be good at magic.”

I could sense this was somehow very important to her, to a point she was incredibly frustrated her attempts at making a spell crystal were failing. It was something important to the core of her very being. “You’re trying to differentiate yourself from me, aren’t you?” I asked her.

“I AM different!” She snaps. “You got mad at Gaerien yesterday saying we were the same, I don’t like that! I don’t like not being in the conversation and Sagel always talking to you! I want to be me!!!”

I did not even know how to respond to all of this. What was going on here anyway!? Ok, ok, well I should probably just keep a level head and deal with it one step at a time. Proximal issue, she is angry. She wants to be different, and she wants to specialize in magic in order to do it. Let’s just calm her down for now, I can figure out the rest of this later.

“Ok…” I say, staring blankly at her for a little while. “Ok, I can tell you are upset. How about… here, let me try to help you with the whole spell crystal thing. Normally it is supposed to take a while to accumulate the energy to make one, right?”

She did not respond to what I was saying, it doesn’t look like she was going to cooperate very well with this. So, back to the default method for figuring things out, searching our shared memories would probably be a more reliable method to figure out what she has already tried anyway.

…. “Hmmm… I think I see the problem.” I muse aloud. It’s a defect of our primary cultivation method. Whenever she tried to form a spell crystal the way that Eirlathion described, the energy only got sucked away by the void. So, she tried to just rush it and form a crystal all at once in a single session. Of course, that just produced an unstable crystal and it broke immediately.

“Ok, let me try.” I tell her. “I have access to more energy than you do, how about I pull a large amount of energy and keep it in one place so it doesn’t get sucked away, and then you can try to use it to make a crystal? Does that sound good?”

Once again, she doesn’t respond. However, the scowl on her face softens significantly.

“Ok, I am going to move my spirit apparition.” I tell her. Immediately afterward, the nearby blue giant reaches both its hands forward and cups them as though he is about to receive a eucharist for communion. In the meantime, the both of us are now encircled by those giant arms. So, all the power in this entire spirit system runs through this giant thing, so I ought to be able to divert a little bit of it now.

I focus on the idea of some of the power constantly running from the heaven’s chakra to the feet being gathered in the hands. Immediately, a white flame sparks up inside of the cupped hands, and it is very clear it is alive with spirit energy.

“Well, there we go. Focused spirit energy. I’m doing my best to make sure this doesn’t dissipate. You can go ahead and make your spell crystal from that.”

“Mmm..” She makes a very unsure sounding groan, but ultimately she chooses to approach the flame of focused spirit energy. She holds her hands in front of her once again, and there is an instant change in the flow of the energy in the giant’s hands. It condenses down, and begins to form into a perfectly clear octahedral prism. My younger half lets out a gasp of shock and joy, but that momentary elation quickly turns back into intense focus. “Don’t stop, I gotta make it stronger!” She says, and then immediately goes back to focusing with a look on her face that resembles a child who has gotten completely into coloring or building with blocks to the point they are actively annoyed by anything that attempts to pull their attention away from what they are doing.

She continued to pull spirit energy from the white flame, condensing it into the crystal, continually reinforcing it. Eventually, she backed away with a satisfied look on her face, looking back at me with pride. “It worked!” She cheered.

“That’s good.” I said. “Now, we just need to see if it can hold up without me isolating it like this.” A nervous look appeared on her face at this, and then she looked back at the crystal with an entirely different expression. I allowed the flame to die out, and then the giant blue hands pulled away. As soon as the hands that were supporting it were gone, the crystal began to fall down toward the void below.

“Nooo!” My younger self called out in a tone that almost seemed to be a whine. She immediately teleported herself into the crystal’s path and caught it with her mental energy. As I appeared next to her a moment later, she looked back at me with a sad expression. “It’s loosing power.” She moaned. “I can feel it draining.”

Well, that’s just great. That really hurt, to see someone trying so hard and then it all wound up as a failure in the end.

“Well…” I said cautiously. “I guess we need to come up with a different method.”

“Can’t you use the giant to hold it again?”

“I’m sorry, that won’t work. I have to put all of my focus into keeping the energy flowing without falling into the void. I would have to do nothing but stay here all the time just focusing on keeping the crystal suspended in order for it to work like that. I would never be able to come out. I still have Mister Eirlathion’s court case to judge. I am afraid this is just not going to work.”

“Mmm…” She lets out a sad grunt, and then in a gesture of resignation she allows the spell crystal to fall from her hands and plummet into the void below. I watch on along with her as it falls into the void, and then eventually begins cracking and breaking apart before finally sublimating back into energy as it is sucked in.

“Hey, it’s alright.” I said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Remember what Gaerien said back when we first told her about our meditation methods? This might have a heavy hand-to-hand combat component to focus the meditation, but this is DEFINITELY a mage’s meditation. That means there HAS to be ways to use magic somewhere in it. Almost everything else about it is completely different from the normal methods, so maybe there’s a way to use magic without any kind of spell crystals at all.”

“Mmm…” She grunts.

“It’s alright.” I told her. “You’ve just gotta experiment and see. Keep trying things until you figure it out.”

“What if Gaerien’s wrong?” She said.

“Hey, you can’t start thinking like that. You’ve gotta keep trying.”

“She was wrong before though! You said her method for moving the elements was wrong, so we had to do something different!”

“Yes,” I replied. “We are very very different. When Gaerien told us how to move the elements, she was talking as someone who has never actually had all the elements together in one spirit before. So, she just didn’t know. She ought to know what is and is not a mage’s meditation though, she has been alive a LOT longer than we have. So, there should be some magic somewhere in the meditation, especially with all these energies that keep flowing through us. We just need to figure out how it’s done. Okay? You just gotta keep trying different things until something works.”

“Mmmm…”

“Here, how about you go out and train the earth kata for a little while? Maybe the magic is in the katas. They are very different from the rest of the training and practice, and a lot more meditative too. Try doing the katas while trying to move energy and make something happen.”

“Mmmm…”

“Well, if you don’t want to try, then I will. You said you want to be the one doing magic, right? I’m going to do it first if you don’t get yourself out there and try to do something.”

“Mmmm…” She grunts again.

“Alright, fine. I’ll be outside in control of our body. You can pout in here all you like.”

With those words, I left and opened my eyes back in the training room. I was not ACTUALLY planning to try any spell-casting attempts. Not yet anyway. Maybe after the trial if my younger half doesn’t try anything first.

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Subscribers' comments of the chapter

"That's some half-assed reconciliation right there. I can only see this getting worse. Probably at the exact wrong time."

                  -Vorquel

"baka"

                 -meowingLexi

"ninja grandpa is on the job, perma-cosplaying as a loli magical girl."

                 -Roy

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Dang it Lexi! Why did you have to make such a short comment? It's throwing off the quote alignments here! :p

In other news, I think I am starting to suffer from too many characters and too much going on in this scenario. Despite the lack of action, this whole storyline has gotten REALLY involved! Lots of balls in the air in this juggling show here.