"Stand far apart and wait for acknowledgement. Sometimes there's an officiator. Sometimes, leaving the arena or being knocked prone is considered a loss, too."

She stands near one edge of the arena. "Ready, senior?"

Rebecca nods, and focuses, waiting for motion.

Wen fights low to the ground, well aware that when you're in midair, you can't (usually) dodge. Lunging motions and sudden changes in direction. Aggressive strikes, many of them aimed at the neck or joints.

Rebecca can change direction on a dime mid-air, but right now, she's pretending she can't. It's a skill she's reasonably adept at: she plays the grounded Brute in Protectorate trainings as often as not, because it's more useful for trainees to pick up.

Her fighting style is fast, deliberate, and forceful. When she defends, it's in a way that deflects momentum and leverage more than damage: her flesh is invincible; her footing is not. When she attacks, the philosophy is similar: she fights not to injure, but to seize control. Grabs, sweeps, and sledgehammer blows that catch her opponents at the precisely wrong moment and angle.

She alternates: playing it safe as she analyzes her enemy's moves, then bursts of complex, blinding offense that, when successful, end with her target caught in an unbreakable grapple. Alternating, but not predictable. She rotates her strategy when least expected, as if she can read your mind, and her moves are never exactly the same. Sometimes you think you have her matched blow for blow, and surely she has to go back on the defensive or overextend, when she abruptly blazes mid-stride into yet a new sequence that has you striking a retreat in an instant.

She leaps back and holds up one hand suddenly.

"You're good at this! A bit hesitant, I would say if anything. The longer a fight goes on the more chances you have to fuck up! And I think you've learned on human opponents in human form much more than I have... So..."

She is a five-foot-long fox now. She nods gravely, tail a-wag.

Then comes the ankle biting.

Rebecca is indeed relatively much less adept at kicking twisty, fast-moving shapes at shin level. But she learns quickly. The seconds she takes to analyze are even more marked in their effect now, her aptitude improving by leaps every time she stops dodging and resumes trying to punt a fox. She can feel Lightfoot at work, now, pronouncedly, compensating for her lack in this variant of footwork.

It's—sort of fun, actually. Nothing quite like what she's done before.

Wen's flaw is that she's too aggressive- Too often committing early and eagerly into a prepared trap, even when she expects something to come along and cause issues. She accepts the possibility of counter-blows in order to land her own attacks, preferring momentum and heavy strikes over almost all else.

She finally 'wins' the first bout by unexpectedly shifting back and striking with a punch, getting lucky with her timing.

"Match!" And offer her hand to pull Rebecca back up. "I feel like I'm learning a lot, not that I could put it all into words. That's the trouble, usually."

She was expecting a resizing trick to come up somewhere, but it doesn't actually help her predict the timing and avoid getting struck.

"So it goes with experience," she says. "I've fought smaller nonhumanoids before, but they were usually not intelligent, without much strategy. That was interesting."

"Glad to hear it. Good match. That thing with the- When you feinted like you were going for my tail so I moved it but then kicked me, that was especially good. Any particular things you noticed about my style? And at this point you trade advice, might settle any bets, or be challenged to another round."

She begins stretching, wincing slightly around her leg.

"You're quite aggressive. It's a high variance strategy, does well enough in a spar if you moderate it in a more serious fight, but also—you commit easily, which makes you more predictable. I actually baited you a few times with the same trick, though I didn't make it obvious."

And she describes her thought process and how she reformulated the trap each time.

She bows again.

"An excellent exchange of pointers. If someone is being rude about it- Just using a thin excuse to bully you, or acting arrogant, it usually becomes obvious before now."

Return bow.

"You didn't pull out all your tricks. No qi techniques, so on. Is that usual, or just for this spar?"

"I was also simulating a lower level foe. He won't have external qi techniques- Blasts of energy, earth shaping- Unless he's really quite good. Maybe one in fifty do, at his level. Might have something to use on himself."

So just strong and fast. That makes it easier.

"That's less than I expected. Another, or shall we go in?"

"I feel like I should give you more meridian work lessons, amd then we cultivate together."

"Let's."

When helping Rebecca feel the flow and start pushing it in basic cycles, Wen looks confused for a while.

"...Did you... Grab anything like you grabbed me?" Ears flick demonstratively. "There's something... I'm not quite sure what it is."

"Two people who tried to sell me poisons outside. They were pale, and sort of snake-like? I didn't think it did anything. I was just trying to see if it worked."

"Well. They're your mysterious powers. I think I remember something about only copying the good stuff? But... Not my body. Can you try... Hmm. I should feed you a poison and see how this new thing reacts. It might be a poison body physique?"

"The powers are guaranteed to not copy any drawbacks, which is aligned according to what I would personally consider a drawback... but I should be concerned about even beneficial traits attracting attention.

"We can do that, though I'm already immune to poisons, multiply over due to different powers; are we expecting something more interesting to happen?"

"Might absorb 'em to feed you qi, like gluttony cultivators."

"That's... interesting. Is there any impact on my work now?"

"If it's that, maybe not. But I don't recognize it, nor the people you mentioned. I can sort of smell them, but again not a smell I know. If it's that, at least we'll know. If it's something else, we might be passing up a chance, or a chance to look for it, you know?"