Chapter 28: The Flowing Fist
The air in the cavern grew thick with a new kind of tension. The days of internal focus and precise ki control were over. Moori's placid demeanor hardened into that of a drill instructor, his large, dark eyes missing nothing. Kakarot, for his part, shed his impatience like an old skin. This was a language he understood, movement, combat, application. The theoretical was giving way to the practical, and his entire being thrummed with a focused intensity.
"The foundation of our art is not in meeting force," Moori began, settling into a low, wide stance that seemed to root him to the very stone of the cavern. His hands were open, held in a fluid, ready position that was neither purely offensive nor defensive. "It is in understanding it. Redirecting it. Your Saiyan instinct is to block, to counter with greater force. You must unlearn this. Your first lesson is to receive."
He gestured for Kakarot to attack. Eagerly, the Saiyan lunged, a straight, powerful punch aimed at Moori's center, a textbook Saiyan opening move, designed to overwhelm immediately.
Moori did not block. As the fist neared his chest, his left hand moved, not to stop it, but to meet the outside of Kakarot's wrist. The contact was feather-light. At the same moment, Moori's body turned slightly, his right foot pivoting back. He didn't resist the punch; he guided it, adding his own subtle momentum to Kakarot's. The Saiyan's own power and weight were used against him, sending him stumbling past Moori, his punch hitting empty air.
Kakarot caught himself, whirling around with a snarl. "A trick!"
"It is physics," Moori corrected calmly, not dropping his stance. "Your power is immense, but it is a clumsy club. I used the club's own weight to unbalance the one who wields it. Again."
The pattern repeated for an entire day. Kakarot would attack with brutal, direct force. Moori would evade, redirect, unbalance. He never met strength with strength. He used Kakarot's momentum, his aggression, his very weight against him. Kakarot spent the day stumbling, crashing into walls, and landing hard on the stone floor, his frustration mounting with each humiliating fall.
"You are fighting me," Moori stated after Kakarot picked himself up from a particularly hard throw. "You must learn to fight with the energy of the attack. Feel my push. If I pull, you flow into the pull. If I push, you guide the push away. Stop resisting. Start listening with your body."
It was maddening. It went against every fiber of his Saiyan being. But Kakarot was, above all, a prodigy. Beneath the fury, his mind was working, analyzing, adapting. He began to see the patterns in Moori's movements, the subtle shifts in weight, the economy of motion.
On the second day, something clicked. As Moori moved to guide another punch, Kakarot didn't resist. He went with the motion, but he added his own spin, his own flow. Instead of being thrown, he used Moori's guiding force to launch himself into a spinning kick that nearly connected with the Namekian's head.
Moori had to actually lean back to avoid it, a flicker of surprise in his eyes. He nodded, a gesture of acknowledgment. "Better. You are beginning to listen."
The lessons grew more complex. Moori introduced the Flow Parry, a technique where the defender's arms moved in circular, almost hypnotic patterns, slapping aside strikes not with muscle, but with precise, kinetic redirection, leaving the attacker wide open. He taught the Unbalancing Step, a subtle foot sweep timed not to injure, but to disrupt an opponent's center of gravity at the exact moment of their attack.
Kakarot learned to stop planting his feet and bracing for impact. He learned to be light, to be mobile, to be like water around a rock. He began incorporating his ki control, not for blasts, but to enhance his movements a tiny, precise burst from his feet to accelerate a pivot, a contained flare in his palms to add a shocking jolt to a parry.
The women watched, their fear now mixed with a kind of horrified awe. The monster was not just getting stronger; he was getting smarter. More precise. More efficient. The chaotic, destructive power they feared was being honed into something far more deadly, a controlled, intelligent violence.
On the fifth day, Moori introduced an offensive technique. "The Spiral Hammer," he called it. It began not with a wild haymaker, but with a coiled, relaxed stance. The power was generated from the hips, a twisting, torquing motion that traveled up the spine, through the shoulder, and into the fist, which was driven forward in a tight, corkscrew motion. It was a punch that concentrated all of one's force into a devastating, armor-piercing point.
Kakarot practiced it for hours on a salvaged chunk of starship hull. His first attempts were too wild, the spiral motion awkward. But soon, the metal began to dent, not with a massive crater, but with a single, deep, perfectly circular impression. The sound changed from a loud *CLANG* to a sharper, more sinister *CRUNCH*.
The week was a grueling, relentless cycle of drill, practice, and sparring. Kakarot's body ached in new ways, his muscles learning unfamiliar patterns of movement. The brute was being refined into a martial artist. The sheer, raw power of a Saiyan was being fused with the ancient, flowing wisdom of Namek.
On the seventh day, they were in the middle of a high-speed sparring session. Kakarot was flowing around Moori's attacks, using a combination of Flow Parries and Unbalancing Steps, occasionally lashing out with a precise Spiral Hammer that forced the Namekian to genuinely defend. The air whistled with their movements. For a moment, it almost looked like a dance.
It was at that moment that a deep, resonant hum vibrated through the mountain, a sound that was utterly alien to the natural world.
Kakarot froze mid-punch. His head snapped upward, as if he could see through the rock. Every muscle in his body went rigid. The focused martial artist was gone, replaced by the alert, battle-hardened soldier.
The hum grew louder, deepening into a heavy, mechanical thrum that made the fine dust on the cavern floor tremble.
"What is that?" Kael asked, her voice tight with a fresh wave of fear.
Kakarot didn't look at her. His eyes were still fixed on the ceiling, his face a mask of cold recognition. "A ship. Frieza Force design. A Lodestar-class planetary assessor."
He lowered his gaze, his eyes meeting Moori's. The playful tension of the spar was gone, replaced by a grim, shared understanding.
"It's not a warship," Kakarot said, his voice low and flat. "It's the last one they send. The vultures. They do a final biosweep, a geological survey. They make sure the product is ready for sale." A cruel, tight smile stretched across his lips. It held no humor, only a predatory anticipation. "It means the new inhabitants are on their way. The auction is over. The new owners are coming to collect their property."
The training was over. The theory was about to be tested.
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