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The Beach / Thursday Afternoon

Azula arrived on the beach early and began to warm up. Her discussion with Professor Skywalker about lightning made her curious about her capacity to summon it. More than anything lightning would be the best indicator on her state of mind.

She took a deep breath and cleared her mind of everything. Lightning needed a calm, precise mind free of emotion. She began the circular motion to summon lightning. Felt opposing energies course through her body and knew almost immediately something was wrong.

The opposing energies didn't want to be guided.

Just like it had been during the Agni Kai, it hurt to bend lightning. Pain lanced up and down her body and Azula gritted her teeth, too stubborn to stop and knowing if she did the energy would explode inside her. She completed the arc and lunged forward to stab at the sky. An unfocused, too powerful bolt of lightning raced to the clouds.

Dammit. That was close, a second longer and the lightning would have reached her heart.

After a few moments Azula straightened and scowled. This would not do. She sat on the sand and proceeded to meditate while she waited for Dinah.

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After lunch, Dinah headed for the beach, towel in hand, workout clothes and athletic shoes on. "Azula," she said as she got nearer, then stopped a few yards away, wary. Startling her seemed like a really bad idea just now.

Azula opened her eyes, the meditation helped regain her equilibrium. She stood-up and looked at Dinah.

"Dinah."

"Hey," she said, not really sure what to expect. "I brought the towel, like you said. Am I starting in the water this time?"

She smirked. "No, not at this time but I want to establish a few rules before we begin."

"Good idea," Dinah said, relaxing a little more. Their chat at the Culture Fair the day before had made her a bit more comfortable with Azula, but ground rules... ground rules would be good. "Go ahead."

"Since you're going to be my student there should be an element of trust between us. In this field I am your Sifu, your master and teacher. I will not do anything that would do you permanent harm and I will require you to follow my orders, no matter how strange you think it will be. I have a purpose for everything."

Azula had her hand up, ticking off the rules. "Second contract was the one you imposed: You required me not to use my Firebending, knives or display the loss of temper I displayed in our sparring. I have agreed to the requirements, I need you to agree to mine."

Wow, this was like dealing with Arthur, and his 'tell me who's a threat' and 'don't use magic on me' all over again. So Dinah gave it the same consideration she'd given Arthur's conditions, because better to bail here than to break a promise later.

"As long as you're not giving those orders just to laugh at me-- which I don't think you will," Dinah said slowly. "And you don't ask me to hurt anyone else, even if it is for training, we're good. I can abide by that."

"Good," Azula said. She went behind one of the rocks and appeared again carrying leg weights. The weights were 10 lbs each. "We're going to focus on your agility before we start on your powers. Put these on and we'll begin with stretching."

Gah. Okay. "Sure." Dinah sat down and put them on, feel the burn in her muscles already. Rough, but not unreasonable. And she'd already worked out her shoulders and arms for swordwork, so. Might as well balance it.

"Not too hard, is it?" Azula asked innocently. "I started at that weight when I was five."

This was gonna be a recurring theme, wasn't it? Dinah gave Azula a look, but refrained from saying Oh really? and started the stretches. Another way in which training with Arthur had been useful, it looked like. "You didn't fall over?" she had to ask, wondering.

"You had to when you start," she answered, not bothering to lie. Training was hard. "But I got over it. My brother on the other hand..."

Azula let that trail off and smirked.

"Copy my movements as I stretch."

Dinah had to smirk back at that mention of Zuzu-Zuko-Firelord, then nodded, and slowly copied Azula's movements. Helena would find this easy, probably, but that's what super-strength gave you. She'd just have to try harder.

Azula ended the sequence and stood, she placed her hands together, right first just below the open left palm and waited for Dinah to copy her

Dinah did, then corrected herself so she wasn't mirroring Azula, her eyebrows going up.

She nodded agreeably and then bowed to her. After that was done Azula stood straight, her face free of expression.

"~~Northern Shaolin Style Kung-fu~~ Firebending is a powerful and dynmic style, using hand and leg movements." Azula moved around, demonstrating, dropping into the horse stance and moving her arms around in a circular motion ending with both hands thrust forward. "We take our power from the breath. So how we breathe is important to us."

She straightened and clasped behind her continuing in a lecturing tone. "Firebending style can also be used by non-benders. We have many soldiers who lack the skill and adapt our style into a lethal hand-to-hand martial arts style. Our style emphasizes long range techniques, aggressive stances, quick retreats, kicking and leaping and whirling circular blocks. Flexibility and agility is utmost to us.

"It is why we shall start with improving your agility."

Some of that looked familiar; Barbara used a few stances in that style, from her chair. Dinah nodded, the blinked at "kicking and leaping" and looked down at the weights on her legs. Awww, maaaaan. Then back up at Azula. "Got it." Gulp.

How long was it going to take her to learn this? Eeep.

"Now," the neutral expression she used for lecturing broke into a mischievous grin. "Start running ten laps around the beach." Azula pointed to the starting point, "Start and end there. Ten laps in five minutes."

She looked at the stop watch she ~~handwavily~~ bought. She loved this world's technology. "Go!"

Hating on you, Azula, Dinah thought, and turned and started to run, legs pumping as she carefully jogged down the beach, putting on speed as she realized she was going too slow. Faster, faster, c'mon, faster!

Keeping one eye on the stopwatch she brought out a barrel filled with water balloons. The balloons had no water in them but red paint.

"It's already three minutes and forty-two seconds and you're still on your fifth lap! Faster!"

Dinah gritted her teeth and poured on the speed, finishing her fifth lap and powering into her sixth, waiting for the inevitable water balloon that Azula was going to throw.

And the water balloon went sailing straight for Dinah, if it would hit, it would explode in a lovely shade of red.

Dinah managed to dodge it, but still got splashed as the balloon hit the sand and sprayed the edge of her leg. "Paint?" Oh, she was just going for the most embarrassing possible, wasn't she?

"You said no fire or knife," Azula said, "how are you going to learn to dodge without them? I learned with fire, knives, arrows and boulders. You're getting it easy. My old sifu would cry to see me make a mockery of his training."

Or weep just because she appeared in front of him again.

"Now, faster!" No sooner did she say that, Azula let loose another balloon.

That one, Dinah didn't quite duck in time and it got her on the shoulder, red dripping down her arm as she glared at Azula and headed into her next lap. All the more so because Azula was being reasonable, and hey, no guns no knives no fire was good, but she couldn't have used water?

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