Lvl 8 Story

A storm was coming. He could taste it. It was in the smell on the wind, the taste of the air, the subtle pitch of the deck underneath him. It flowed around him in a caress, something he didn’t think people who didn’t know Capricious like he did could understand. A storm was a gift, a smile upon the world. It changed things up, broke the old things, let people do what they wanted.
Luckily, Aji was doing his second-favorite thing in the whole world. Well, maybe third favorite but since Dip had left he hadn’t been able to do the other one. Still, training with K’haa was great! It was like exercising or meditation but fun, and it meant he didn’t have to do the other things while he could train with his sensei.
Later, he’d get to do his favorite thing, and cook for everyone on the ship. Usually he got Gobby to help him, who was becoming a fine kitchen-claw even if she was always a little too nervous to do a really good job. He’d train her yet. From there, he’d serve it up to the crew members and pack the remainder into boxes. Some for the griffs on watch or doing the necessary maintenance tasks that always needed someone making sure they got done. Then the members of his party who didn’t show up.
Rip would most likely be down in her room doing… Rip things. He didn’t really get it. Sometimes she showed up for the dinner when she knew it was coming, but he suspected that she spent most of the journey feeling kind of sick. She was honestly kind of an awful seapony but she was at least getting better! He tried not to mention it. It made her kind of grumbly. Not Galley-angry, just grumbly.
Galley was… hard to deal with. He felt guilty about the way he had attacked her that one time, and the way that he always seemed to make her angry no matter what he did. It was like a pony who didn’t like sushi because they had ruined their palette, except the sushi was life. And what she needed was to drink a lot of water and spend a few hours without eating anything. Wait. Did that make sense? Aji decided it did.
Then Fire, who would probably be tuning her crossbow again, or maybe teaching one of the crew members the finer points of shooting one again. Aji didn’t think it was THAT hard, but they seemed to need a lot more practice than he did. Well, you shouldn’t think bad of ponies for taking the time they needed to learn something, even if it was easier for you than them. After all, pretty much everyone knew more than he did, even if he knew things deeper than they did.
Like Boss, the last stop on his nightly rounds. He was harder than anyone else, even Galley. Galley was hurt, hurt bad, but Reb was… It was like he hadn’t even ever been not hurt. If you did a nice thing for Fire, she remembered that nice things were a thing that you could do, and that made her happy, and she started to be a little bit nicer, little by little. But if you did a nice thing for Boss, he smelled angry. Even a little afraid. It was like he wanted people to act exactly in the way that he knew that they would, and anything else made him unhappy. Except that people just acting that way all the time also made him unhappy… Aji just wanted to help him be happy, but he didn’t know how.
K’haa was easy to make happy, though. They met at a time every day that wasn’t planned or decided upon. They both just kind of… knew it was time and then they met up. All K’haa wanted was for him to improve. They rarely spoke, because when K’haa did speak it was like having someone whisper in your ear when you didn’t know they were there, except it was ALWAYS like that. Aji didn’t know if it scared other people like it did him, but he just couldn’t stand it. Maybe K’haa knew that because instead he sent him things that were kind of like pictures, except they had ideas and even tiny bits of stories attached. And he bleated. They were very expressive bleats.
K’haa’s anticipation was sweet and spicy, a need for things to happen that Aji always got a little taste of whenever he was around the goat. There was a… thing hiding underneath K’haa’s normal way of thinking. Aji didn’t know what it was, but it was sour and bitter,  and sometimes it made him really angry. The things he was teaching Aji were kind of all about learning to use and control that kind of anger and the thing underneath it, but Aji didn’t exactly use it in the same way. Still, for both of them, it was about taking something inside of them and pushing it out to the world.
They bowed to each other and began. After Aji had learned the first few motions that were used in fighting, K’haa didn’t bother trying to explain or show the more advanced moves that he used. It was kind of a… thing. It was hard to explain and Aji had a very hard time putting it into words, especially because this kind of fighting wasn’t about thinking. It was like if you thought about it, you lost. It was deeper than that. You had to taste the move. You had to become that taste.
Aji was good at it. K’haa didn’t feel the need to explain that to him, but it was obvious with his exuberant smile as every day Aji figured something out, moved just a little bit further, did just a little bit better. Aji worked hard, and he was happy that K’haa was so happy to see him improve so quickly. There had been a lot of stuff like that… Aji was luck. He didn’t know how or why, but things were just kind of easy for him.
For a long time, that had just been enough. Things going well for him. When he had met Boss, he had realized it was a kind of magic and when he was just really really hoping that things would work out, he might have been doing magic. It come from something inside of him, like a glowing warmth that he had been given by Capricious so that he could follow his heart. And he touched it every now and then. Like when he was cooking!
Right now, he was having a hard time touching it, though. He knew that K’haa wanted him to use it. He didn’t know how he knew that, but it was clear. When he got closer, K’haa was happier and happier. But right now, it just wasn’t getting there.
A little bit of frustration flared through, its smell acrid and powerful, K’haa did his best not to let it out, especially considering that it really scared Aji whenever it did seep through, but it was just a part of the goat. He controlled it and channeled it, but you couldn’t ever completely remove something so vital from someone, and so K’haa couldn’t help but let it out. As he did, his strikes changed. Total and precise control remained a core part of his every action, but there was an extra force, like a second goat was assisting him with every action. Aji knew he wasn’t doing good enough.
And then a vision. The image of a river, still but rushing along. Serenity and power. The ideal of what Aji should be. As K’haa sent the image he relented for a moment, giving the fish a chance to process it. Aji pouted and fixed his eyes on K’haa. “You don’t fight like a river.”
His master considered that for a second and shrugged, sending Aji a second image. This one was a manticore. It stood careful, poised, in a stance ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. There was a sort of bestial energy, not entirely like K’haa’s constantly restrained anger, but not entirely unlike it either.There was an ideal behind the goat’s fighting style, one that wasn’t perfectly conveyable, but something he could hold to.
But… if you were supposed to find your own path, maybe he wasn’t supposed to be the river? That thought buzzed across Aji’s mind, and thoughts were dangerous. As K’haa restarted his assault, Aji’s response was slow, sloppy. And K’haa grew frustrated, meaning that his assault increased him ferocity until Aji’s eyes were wide as he performed every move he could manage in an attempt to stop the flurry of aggravated blows from his master.
There was no helping it. K’haa was just better. There was something vital to his motions as he moved in a blur of motion. He had touched that vital piece of himself that Aji couldn’t match, he moved his entire body into a single point of dangerous impact, and he had a clarity of purpose that Aji had only ever seen in Saba when she had found that moment of perfect creation within her cooking.
Finally, in a desperate attempt to hold off a blow, Aji reached deep and found a piece of himself that he wasn’t expecting, and he the muscle memory for a stirring motion attached itself to one of his basic fighting moves, and he effortlessly, accidentally locked K’haa’s blow, diverting the energy and stopping the blow. The goat bleated in surprise, with the barest hint of approval tastable in the undertones.
Then, something hit him. It was just like cooking. K’haa quickly snapped his hooves free and tried again, running through a series of strikes that Aji had never seen before, more evidence that his master had been holding back on him yet. But Aji had realized something important here, and he touched that place from before and as the goat descended upon him he used a set of skills that had long been relegated to the kitchen.
Cooking was about knowing the basics and training your senses to know when and what you were doing so that when an opportunity for brilliance presented itself you could take it. Cooking was about observation and breaking things down to their core components and then combining them into a beautiful, impossible mixture. Cooking was about repetition to the point of perfection. Cooking was about creation beyond thought.
Fighting was just like cooking.
Aji moved in ways that he had never considered and more importantly, ways he didn’t need to consider. Thinking was a liability and so he simply did them, anticipating K’haa’s movements before the goat even did them and heading them off with perfectly timed pressure and redirection. He touched that vital place and felt himself move fast, faster than he had ever considering and struck out three times in an impossible blur of motion.
One K’haa dodged with motion that was without motion, a shifting of his body that seemed to rotate the world with him. The second he used his hoof to block, but it set him off balance as his form wasn’t prepared for the sudden, intense pressure of the blow. And the third and final strike came for his chin and combined with the pressure of the second blow to knock him off his hooves.
They both collapsed. K’haa’s was short-lived, simply a stuning blow that he was quick to get back up from. Aji was covered in sweat, exhausted, and smiling wider than he ever had as he rested on the ground. He had never push the force out with such vigor, such power, and it felt good… but it would be a while before he could easily do it.
“Sushi style!” He said to his master cheerfully.
K’haa looked a little bit upset at this revelation. After all, it didn’t have the punch of ‘still river’ or ‘pouncing manticore’. But, he did relent upon the revelation that it had, after all, worked. He seemed pleased that Aji had managed to find that vital core, and helped the fish back to his hooves before bowing and heading away.
Just like that, the lesson was over. He always ended it after Aji had learned something, to give the fish time to stew it over. And Aji had definitely figured something out… it would be a while before he could fully even understand it himself, much less explain it.
But something was coming. He could taste it.