Chaos Training Squad 4 (Reno/Kori/Trevor/Argus)

Having been dragged out of a bar nearly without his permission by Ika Mazi, Reno Kitsugi had found himself once again in the power of having responsibilities. He had agreed to Ika's plan to make the Humans get stronger, and now he was apparently going to act on it. It had been two weeks since the Tokyo Incident, and Ika had still just been gathering people without spending so much as an hour making them any stronger. Determined to do it himself because it was the original plan, Reno has therefore decided that all of them must be trained personally by Reno into better sharper thinking machines of violence. He was well aware that he had limited information for each individual to work with, but he did know each one's basic strengths and a weaknesses, so at worst he still knew exactly how to fight each one even if the method he would be forced to improvise changed on the fly. The only true "challenge" was making sure Reno did not accidentally kill one of them. While he could hold back easily enough some of these humans weren't as tough as others, and they tend to do that whole "protect the weak thing" despite injuries..

Luckily short of actual death, Reno could feasibly heal their wounds himself. So that was less of a real problem. He was currently leaned against the west wall of the training arena's huge empty room of a steel box. With the door into the room being right next to him. He was waiting for the currently scheduled team to come and do their time of training.

Kori, had pretty bad eye sight but didn't seem to care much due to her heightened other senses, Trevor, on the other hand, seemed like a well trained soldier and probably wasn't going to need to have his privilege checked before he would begin to learn new tricks. On the third coin Reno was almost unsure if he should even try to train this Argus guy because as far as Reno was aware he was fully physically blind unlike the mostly bat-like blind Kori. After giving it a thought though, none of the current group possessed a sound based ability outside of Argus himself who was likely immune to it anyways. So whatever means he did employ to make himself a combatant must compensate enough for his blindness.

Reno had been waiting 7 minutes, only 2 away from the training's scheduled time. He was rather hoping they'd be so excited that they'd show up earlier and they'd already have begun warm-ups... but no dice. They could still arrive on time but there wouldn't be any point in not waiting for the full two minutes at that point. Just in case someone arrived at the last second.

Click-clacking and leaf crunching, a four-footed trot and a pair of worn sneakers feel around the trunks of trees. Kori wasn’t one to respond to strange messages from people, however when the mention of spirit energy became clear, she knew she had to oblige— if only to discover more about where and how her powers came to be.

A silver-grey coated Afghan hound entered the clearing first, head up and alert of strangers, but mostly focused on the wellbeing of his owner. Balthazar led Kori before the black-headed man, that much they could tell in the general blobs. He was about her height, just taller. The woman squinted against the light, a reflex as she could tell by the shimmering sharpness that this man was not… well, human.

“Hello-!” She offered a small wave and adjusted the leather harness of her guide slightly to her side, so that she could stand a respectable distance from the stranger. As she often aims to be, Kori was only a few minutes early to counter any setbacks. As for her attire, she wore a comfortable hoodie with a Nirvana album graphic on top of leggings and a fitted shirt, and sneakers. She guessed there would be some physical exertion, though maybe not as much as mental.

The whisper of the wind through the trees of Aokigahara was a relaxing sound, interrupted every so often by the soft tapping of a white staff on the ground and trees and a light whistling. Akira Chime, better known as Argus, Cabinet Intelligence Officer in the National Counterintelligence Center of Naicho, was wandering in search of a meeting place he'd been contacted about. Spiritual activity was something that was monitored on the fringe of everything in the international community, and was often viewed as a theory come up with while smoking a crack pipe. The last people to truly study such things were the Nazis and America's Central Intelligence Agency, the latter of which hid most of it behind smoke and mirrors. Thus, for a member of the Japanese government's version of the infamous organization to have received a note tied to a brick through his office window about such affairs was an odd thing, one that was intriguing to the young man.

So, here he was, in a tailored black suit with his usual blindfold tucked away in his pocket. No need for it since the sun was just breaking through the canopy, and there was no risk of him looking up into it. It showed the thin white line connecting temple to temple across the nose, barely there if one looked close, and a pair of lavender eyes that were pale and unfocused. It was a miracle that he'd managed to keep them, but there'd been just enough damage to the organs that he'd seen nothing but darkness since he was a child.

Finally piecing together where he was supposed to meet with the other two were, he picked up his staff and rested it across his shoulders, walking in casually not a moment late. Looking in the direction of both of them with a wide grin, his mental map telling him exactly what he was "seeing" the ninteen year-old spoke up with a cheery voice. "I'm glad to see I wasn't late! The name's Akira. It's nice to meet you both!"

Sitting in Fujikawaguchiko's literal only bar, slumped against the wall, was a man in a long black coat topped with fur. He was currently trying to stay awake as he listened to the otherwise empty bar's only conversation.

"Did you see that bloke the other day? Damn near bought us out. Only reason he didn't is apparently it wouldn't even get him drunk." A fat man sipped at a tankard in front of him, talking to a thin man in a hat.

"Interesting. Did he have an 'aura'?"

"Not that I could detect. Just looked like a really pissed off bloke."

At this point, the man had unfortunately sobered up enough to glance at the clock on the wall; it was fuzzy, and hard to read, but he was pretty sure he still had multiple hours before the event was scheduled to begin. 'Training' with the new boss, apparently. Trevor wasn't drunk enough for this, and decided to stand up and drunkenly walk his ass over to the counter, nearly collapsing into it when he finally arrived.

"You alright mate? You've been here nearly a day already."

"Nah, 've only been -hic- here a few 'ours." The bartender laughed slightly, which made Trevor shoot him an inquisitive, clearly drunken look.

"Sir, you've been here for 18 hours straight, asleep in that corner for a majority of it. We've just been trying not to disturb you."

Trevor blinked rapidly. Eighteen hours? That didn't sound right... by his count, it had only been four hours since his fight with that Hollow.... oh. He'd fallen asleep. The damn bar didn't have any windows, so he hadn't noticed. Why did this bar suck so much?

"Eighteen hours?" He had clearly sobered up largely already. He glanced back to the clock once again, its image much more clear now that he was closer and more sober, and he could see that he was not in fact several hours safe, but in fact very likely going to be late as it currently stood.

Trevor ran out of the bar as far as he could, fully sobered up unfortunately, which he cursed as he ran, chased by the angry patrons and barkeep that he hadn't paid his tab. Trevor promised he'd pay them next time he was in town, and ran off into Aokigahara Forest.

It took him a further two hours of traveling to find the damn base in the forest, and if he was right that it had been about two hours, he was approximately fifteen minutes late to the training. He hoped they'd already started instead of waiting for him, and walked in sheepishly, completely sober despite reeking of alcohol.

"Sorry I'm late. Name's Trevor. God I hope I'm right about what day it is." He bowed slightly, taking off his coat and dropping it next to the floor to reveal an ornate dress shirt lined with gold embellishments and symbols on it. His trusty whip and shortsword were at his hips, and he stood at attention like a good soldier, awaiting orders. He really really hoped he was only fifteen minutes late.

Reno grunted as the two cripples managed to find the box of a training ground and enter, though he was slightly annoyed that the blind one had entered, said his name, and didn't seem to remember or care that his eyes broke, while the other crippled girl had a fucking dog, yet had glasses, meaning her eyes WEREN'T broken fully, and did NOT introduce herself.

he sighed as he just kept waiting, he'd just nod to them, "Get ready with warm ups. I don't care how. Push ups. Jumping Jacks. ...living." he added the last one as a snarky comment that he didn't expect much of anything out of them, but moved on regardless of comment, "We're still one short though.."

Queue the man of the hour fifteen minutes later, with his two cripple allies already, hopefully, warmed up by now since they showed up on TIME. A luxury he would not be giving to Trevor since the guy couldn't even be damned to show up on time.

He did the whole good soldier routine and even introduced himself, BONUS he didn't seem to be a cripple! Wait.. scratch that. He smelled like Reno. For humans that counts as being a useless cripple. Shaking his head and just deciding to not care, he pulled his hands out of his pockets for the first time all day and stood in front of the three of them.

"You are here for training. You have decided being a regular smuck who gets occassionally eaten by a ghost is dumb and have began taking steps towards elevating yourself beyond mere snacks. That means the only thing you care about for the next 24 hours is me."

He drew a really old and beat up Katana out of a similarly old and forgotten looking sheathe and tapped the ground next to him with it's tip so even the cripples would start noticing it. Whether they needed him to or not didn't matter.

"The rules are simple. You do not stop. You do not hold back. You will fight as though you are not walking out of this box alive without the effort."

Suddenly the entire training "box" would feel like it was full of water because Reno had, at this point, stopped holding his spiritual pressure in check to signify that not only was he ready, the clock had started.

"Begin"

Oh. Kori could do all but keep a tight-lipped smile at their ‘host’’s behaviour, the angry harsh tones running rivers under her skin. Hmm, okay. She could do this. The slight vibrations of the katana disturbing the ground made Balthazar alert, the dog noticing hostility even if it was for training purposes. Kori placed a firm hand down on the dog’s head and briefly instructed him to stay close.

As the spiritual pressure pressed on Kori, she reflexively drew her hands up, falling into a familiar stance as she and her dog took careful, guided steps back the way she came to gather distance. The talisman paper slotted between her forefinger and thumb perfectly, slid from her sleeve. She was ready to defend, sure… but would it make more sense to be offensive? This is training after all. The harsh instructor has made it clear.

She whips the talisman paper towards Reno, landing it nearby and explode with a lower power, enough to loosen the ground and throw dust and dirt up so she can further prepare a defensive stance.

Tilting his head to the side and blinking at the gruff-sounding voice coming from the strongest individual present, who he assumed was the one in charge of the training that was about to happen, Akira hummed slightly and began stretching, rolling his walking stick off of his shoulders and leaning it against a wall before taking off his suit jacket and tossing it over to the side to reveal a large handgun holstered under one arm, a cylinder attached that was rather distinctive as a silencer. Flexing out his fingers, he grabbed the white stick and knocked it against the tree a few times while pulsing out a bit of spiritual energy. The feedback just reinforced the images in his head, the rustling of trees outside helping solidify the shapes that he was picking up on and adding them to the landscape he was building. A girl and her dog to his side doing their own thing, and a middle-aged man that "looked" like he'd seen much better days, and was grumpy about it at least from his stance.

The next man to arrive was fifteen minutes late and smelled like a damned brewery, and in that time Akira had had enough time to take personal stock of his own loadout and finish his preparations, making sure the forest air wouldn't make the leather holster stick or snag, his extra magazines were loaded, and that the seamless connection hiding his sword in his cane was nice and loosened for a quick response. He was a professional, and it showed. It was also a point of professional pride that his nose wrinkled in displeasure at the "good soldier's" behavior. He'd showed up late, probably still drunk, and was likely about to get all of them punished. If any of the units he'd worked with internationally in his two years as a federal agent had acted like that, there'd have been a court martial.

The whisper of worn steel across old wood caught his attention, his face snapping to the new sound even as it tapped against the ground, further enhancing the image in his head as the area seemed to pulse with power, making it feel as if he were attempting to breath at the bottom of a lake. The dog seemed to be reacting to the threat, and Argus heard rustling paper coming from the girl, feeling the flash of energy as she sent it out. Drawing his handgun, the sharper image provided by the attached speaker system starting to take shape, he dove into a classic combat roll to their newfound enemy's flank and fired a single round just as the talisman went off, aimed for where he sensed center mass was. The bark of the .45 was softened to a soft crack, likely not even audible over the explosion occurring next to their tutor. The round, if it hit anything, would impact with the force of one of those beams that the bigger Hollows fired off, whether that was hitting it's intended target, blocked, or striking the wall behind him.

Stepping to the side and continuing to circle around the arena, the teen let off a soft exhale, the suppressor steaming from the end. Those modified rounds took a lot out of him, but the man said that he wanted everything. So, clutching his walking stick in a reverse grip ready to draw, and holding his MK23 in his dominant hand, the agent prepared to continue.

Abilities Used:

"You are here for training." Yeah, otherwise he'd still be drinking? "You have decided being a regular smuck who gets occasionally eaten by a ghost is dumb and have began taking steps towards elevating yourself beyond mere snacks." Trevor used to fight fucking monsters on a daily basis, and his family has been fighting the "Hollow" threat for generations. He'd even served time in the military and was back to being treated like a fucking private.

"That means the only thing you care about for the next 24 hours is me." Trevor watched as Reno drew an old beat up Katana and tapped the ground with it. He understood that to be in the benefit of the two people training with him, which was when Trevor realized that both of them were blind.

What fucking mastermind thought it would be a good idea to pair the literal veteran with a literal blind fed and a blind bitch with a bitch. Regardless of whether or not the dog was female, it was still the property of a blind bitch that Trevor was far from happy to be working with. He drew his shortsword and armed himself with his whip in his other hand, giving it a loud crack just before Reno started speaking again.

"The rules are simple. You do not stop. You do not hold back. You will fight as thought you are not walking out of this box alive without the effort." Trevor braced himself, waiting for the gun to go off, so to speak. He gripped his shortsword tightly, reverse-style in his main hand, and gripped his whip with his off hand even tighter. Luckily he was completely ambidextrous, but he always considered good ol' righty to be the main hand anyway.

Then, Reno stopped holding back his spiritual pressure. Immediately, Trevor dropped to his knees, barely holding himself up as he vomited a large amount of alcohol and stomach acid, as there wasn't much else to puke up. He was already sober, unfortunately, so it mostly just burned and tasted like shit. He spit again, into the current pile, still struggling to keep his face out of said pile, unable to even look up at Reno or his comrades. It was like the entire weight of the ocean was currently pressed upon his everything; he'd encountered and slain more Hollows than he cared to count, but none of them had possessed an aura like this. Compared to what he was currently feeling, Reno before had absolutely no aura at all. How the hell did he do that?

"Begin." It was a command, and Trevor had originally wanted to respond immediately like a good soldier, but he was currently still trying to pick himself up off the ground, or at least not end up eating his own vomit. Trevor could hear the sounds of movement, followed by the familiar click of a silenced handgun almost simultaneously followed by a minor explosion with dust being sent everywhere, including Trevor's face and mouth, which was open. He didn't even know who created the explosion, so he didn't know who to blame. As he couldn't lift up his head, he couldn't look around to see what was going on; he could, however, understand, that an explosion meant one of his comrades had likely done something in some manner towards Reno.

And that just pissed Trevor off. Here he was, barely able to keep himself off the floor, and both of the cripples was managing to move just fine in this immense aura. Trevor couldn't be sure who had done what just yet, but knew that he was still struggling on the ground when both of them were carelessly moving to fight their opponent. He gritted his teeth, slammed his fist into the ground, and pushed himself up into a stumble before he caught himself and managed to stay standing. Through gritted teeth, with a raspier voice than moments prior, Trevor would speak again.

"I'm not even going to QUESTION how you assholes are moving right now," he wiped spit from his mouth and cracked his whip again, having acclimated to the pressure at last, breathing raggedly despite having done nothing so far, "but I'll be DAMNED if I'm going to get shown up by two blind assholes and a dog." Trevor gripped his weapons tightly once more, flicking the whip towards Reno Kitsugi with the intent of leaving a heavy mark across his chest, in an attempt to see where Reno's toughness fell on his family's scale. If it did nothing, then Trevor needed to up his attack; if it nearly killed him, then all of this was for show.... and Trevor really doubted that.

The woman pulled out some paper and as it landed near Reno, who was just lazily watching the other guy dive roll to the side with a gun, it exploded with a low power causing a smoke screen effect around Reno. Unaffected by the eyesight hindrance because none of these amateurs were even trying to conceal themselves at the moment he simply kept track of them with spiritual pressure sensing and slapped the bullet to the side with his old zanpaktou. He didn't need to know whether it was a real bullet, or even have heard the gun go off itself, which he didn't because of the earlier explosion near him, however he still knew the guy had a gun due to watching him make sure it was in working order earlier and even knew about the silencer and because of his sensing he was well aware that the guy had pulled the trigger of his gun while it was aimed at Reno. Therefore: bullet slap. Under normal circumstances that bullet would have likely been harder to deal with, as Reno noted it was quicker and much more powerful than any firearm ammunition he knew about on the living world, but the vast gap between him and Argus' power rendered the potency of the shot worthless. Sure Argus might kill a Gillian with that shot, if it was as strong as Argus or weaker, but Reno was so far beyond the limits of a Gillian it wasn't a threat to him.

So far he'd been shot at one whole time by Argus and had a relatively harmless dust-producing explosion by Kori. On the bright side, Trevor had finally managed to pick himself up off the ground, so that was good. He spouted something about how the other two weren't on the ground like he was, and admittedly Reno hadn't considered the implications of that. He hadn't even consciously 'noticed' Trevor being so pathetic. That was worth a slap; he'd make a tally and make sure the debt was paid by the end of training session. Trevor finally made a move of his own... and it was a straight-forward completely unimpressive whip attack.

Reno thought of grabbing it and using it to yoink Trevor over to him so he could proceed to slap him and pay the tally now but that would likely knock the man out and ruin the point of training. So instead he just side stepped the attack entirely.

At this point he figured showing how weak their initial assault was had been accomplished, as they were likely going to figure out that they needed to try "much" harder, which meant now it was time to drive home how badly they needed to get stronger by doing a little attacking of his own. After giving it a moment of thought, he decided the best way to do so without murdering them outright and began doing so.

For the beginner who had no combat experience Reno devised a test of her reflexes and used Hadou 1: Sho in order to send an almost invisible force at her which, if it made contact with her, would likely send her backwards until she hit the wall of the steel box they were training in. At the exact same time, using his pointer finger on the hand wielding his zanpaktou, he pointed at Argus and traced a triangle in the air at blurred speeds before launching Bakudo 30: Shitotsu Sansen at him. This created three "beak-shaped" energy spikes that would try to hit Argus and immobilize him if they connected.

Under regular conditions using two kidou at once weakened the Kidou used and because Reno had not said a word this entire time that also meant they were furthered weakened. However this was intentional as it allowed a high-class fighter like Reno to pressure his trainees without accidentally causing issues and severe damage. So while anyone near Reno's capabilities would probably not be threatened by what he had done.. it was still a problem for these guys.

That left Reno making sure Mr. Whipboy got his due. Reno shunpo'd to simply disappear and reappear in front of the man before dramatically raising his sword arm as if he was going to cut the man in half with it before kicking him directly in the nuts. It was "obviously" held back enough to not actually bust his balls or kill him or anything "Drastic" but since it was "still" the man's precious jewels it was likely still going to be super bad for him if he didn't do something to keep Reno's foot away from his groin.

Kori was quick enough to send a paper blast, sure, however the ramifications of her instructor's spiritual pressure sent her staggering as she fought to keep her body upright. The man next to her profusely threw up, she could tell by the retching sound and for a second she was grateful her sight was so shit she had permanent censor blinders on. Though, those thoughts were quickly replaced by an all at once blossom of pain that shot down her body, one that bloomed from the centre of her chest when the Hadou 1: Sho's force was thrown at her. She staggered back with a cough and thrust her cane down into the soft muddy ground. Using that force she arced to the side with the help of her cane, however a definite crack was heard and a second later her walking cane snapped in two.

It didn't support the sudden weight she threw at it, and for that she stumbled and righted herself with a burst of kicked up dirt and grass stains on her sneakers. The woman gasped and squinted, willing her spirit sight to properly locate her opponent as a glow of baby blue enveloped her hands.

Fitted neatly in her palms as a lithe bow, light and small-- however the glowing arrow that materialized in the knocking point shimmered with its solid reishi energy. Her face was cast aglow with the Spirit Arrow, milky eyes unseeing but focused, red hair wild but out of the way. Crouched down to keep herself steady, she drew her hand back, wrist trembling with the tautness of the string fighting to stay straight and unwilling to bend. At this rate, there was a chance her arrow would fly off-kilter, but she trusted the cero speed would be fast enough to throw Reno off for just a moment.

The string slipped through her fingers and she cursed under her breath. Not caring to watch if it landed or not, Kori pushed herself off the ground. All she needed to do was to catch her breath as she with Balthazar yipping warily ran a few feet away from the other two suffering assaults, hoping this would allow her time to prepare a stronger talisman.