CH34: UNIQUE FIGHTING STYLE

This is a passion work. So, I would really appreciate it if you leave behind a review when you're done reading.

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CH34: UNIQUE FIGHTING STYLE

Korede woke up and found himself in an unfamiliar room. He was lying on a futon bed placed on a tatami mat. The room was sparsely furnished so Korede assumed it was a guest room in the Hanzo residence. There were only a small desk and chair to the right of the room as well as a small wardrobe to the left of the room.

'Talk about a minimalistic style.' Korede thought.

He was about to stand up when he felt his body ache. He recalled the just concluded a 'spar' and shook his head.

[How do you feel after fighting a Will user?] the Symbiote asked.

'Sore and a little demoralised.' Korede replied in his mind. The Symbiote burst into laughter but Korede ignored it and continued, 'I used all of my strengths but I still couldn't get him to take me seriously. He only used basic techniques of downward slash, side sweep, block, and parry throughout the fight. Yet, he still defeated me with ease.'

The Symbiote wanted to tell the youth something but decided against it after some thought. Korede's current mood wasn't bad for his future development. So, the Symbiote swallowed the words it was about to say.

After moping for a while, Korede got up and stretched his body to relieve some of the soreness and aches. He noticed the movements were easier to pull off but didn't think much of it. He was about to put his limiters back on when the Symbiote said,

[I wouldn't advise you do that. It's doing more harm than good, trust me. As for the cons of not using your limiters, I'll have a solution for you soon. For now, get used to accessing your full potential.]

'Ok' Korede accepted the advice.

He had already decided to trust the Symbiote, so he was willing to take its advice. Besides, without the limiters, he felt 'free'. As for the increase in food intake that came with not using his limiters, he had the means to pay for that. While he was in a coma, the army continued to pay him. So, he had accumulated a bit of money. If it was just to pay for food, he had more than enough.

Now done with his stretches, he felt his t-shirt was sweaty and sticky so he decided to remove it. He looked around and found his small luggage bag with his folded shirt on top of it. He removed the sweaty T-shirt and picked up the folded shirt. He was about to put it on when he heard a knock at the door before it opened.

When Miyako Hanzo opened the door and she saw Korede's bare torso, shock flashed through her eyes. It wasn't caused by seeing Korede's well-toned muscles and lean body. It, after all, wasn't her first time seeing a male's bare upper body especially since she was a member of SDF. The shock was caused by the number of scars on Korede's torso. Korede seemed to have read her mind as he shrugged his shoulder.

"I came to check up on you. I didn't expect that you would be awake yet. Sorry." Miyako apologised for barging into the room.

"No problem. I don't mind." Korede responded with a smile. He wore his shirt. This time, he buttoned up the shirt.

"Since you're awake, you should come to eat something." Miyako said as she walked out of the room. Korede nodded and followed her.

The two made their way through the corridor and soon arrived at the living room. Since the entire house followed a traditional theme style, Korede was a little surprised when he saw that the living room was designed a modern theme style.

When the two walked in, Kola Balogun and Hattori Hanzo were discussing something. The old man looked a little surprised when seeing Korede walk in.

"When your brother predicted that you'd already be awake, I didn't believe it. That final strike should have kept you in bed for at least half a day. It has just been two hours" Hattori said.

Korede merely smiled, only for his stomach to grumble. The old man noticed it and smiled, "It looks like it was your hunger that woke you up."

Korede didn't bother to deny it. He just wanted to eat. Miyako was already unpacking take-out noddles on the dining table.

"I hope you don't mind. Your brother said you are a large eater. This was the only thing I could get you in the right amount at such short notice that isn't too strange to you." She said

"I don't mind. Sorry to bother you." Korede said.

Miyako patted his arm, "You don't have to be so polite. Can you use chopsticks?"

Korede laughed, "Yes, I can."

Knowing that he was coming to Japan, Korede had learnt how to use chopsticks in the previous week. He might not be able to use it dexterously, he could at least eat with it. Miyako watched as Korede opened his disposable chopsticks and started eating. Though she was sceptical as to whether he could finish all of the food, after confirming that he could indeed use chopsticks, she joined Kola and her grandfather as they discussed the two's tour in Mozambique.

After an hour, Miyako heard Korede clearing the table. She turned to look at him and was shocked. Korede had finished all of the food. The food was enough to feed six people. She wondered how he was able to stomach everything down. Just watching someone eat this much could make one lose their appetite, not to mention the person eating. This was the reason why Kola encouraged the Hanzos to eat before Korede woke up.

Seeing Korede done with his meal, Hattori called for him to join them. Miyako stood up and replaced him in clearing the table. When Korede sat down, the old man said, "Kola told me about your physique and how much you consume. To be honest, I thought he was exaggerating. Even after seeing it for myself, I still can't believe it. Where did all the food go?"

Korede didn't know what to say. He could only smile wryly. Not only did he have to provide for himself, but he also had to obtain enough energy for the bottomless pit that called itself a Symbiote.

[Host, since things are already like this anyway, can you ask for more?] the Symbiote 'pleaded'. Korede ignored it resolutely causing it to laugh.

On the other side, Kola laughed out loud.

'This old man is funny once you get to know him. That shows where Miyako's personality came from.' Kola thought.

"Come, let's talk about our spar. Your fighting style was interesting. How did you come about it?" The old man asked.

"It's a long story." Korede replied.

Old man Hattori nodded his head. He topped up his teacup and reclined on his seat, adopting the posture of someone about to listen to a story. When Korede looked at Kola, he found his brother had already adopted the same posture. Left with no choice, Korede started his narration

"Since I could remember, my family had been training me to be a soldier. The training naturally included hand-to-hand combat. I was mostly trained in Krav Maga. However, I didn't like the style. Not for any particular reason, it just didn't click with me. So, I started looking for a style that did.

During the time of one of the festivals at our family's village manor, youths coming of age were taught a type of wrestling style called Gidigbo. It was to be used to compete in a martial event during the festival. I fell in love with the style. So, after the event, I asked the family elder that taught the martial art to us about it. The old man sighed and lamented.

According to him, Gidigbo was an ancient fighting style of our tribe. It was also the favourite fighting style of our family's past warriors. Unfortunately, during the colonial wars, most of its practitioners died out without passing it on to the next generation. Now, only its basic techniques exist. The fighting style had been reduced to a festival event just to make sure it didn't die out completely. So, I regretfully had to give up on the style."

At this point, Hattori sighed. A lot of great martial arts had died out exactly for the same reason. Korede continued,

"It wasn't until medical school where a professor gave us an assignment that I rekindled my interest in the style. The assignment was to research different modern fighting styles and determine the type of trauma they were likely to cause. It was then I came across fighting styles that combine more than one fighting style together. So I got the idea of incorporating different fighting styles to mark up the basic Gidigbo style.

At first, I learnt amateur wrestling and I was able to incorporate its techniques into my Gidigbo. However, a lot of its techniques didn't click with me so I didn't incorporate much of them and so my Gidigbo still felt incomplete. Eventually, I decided to learn the grappling styles of Aikido, Sambo, MMA grappling, and Jujitsu. It was hard to find a dojo for the first two in my country so I had to use online videos to learn them, as a result, what I learnt barely scratched the surface. As for the last two, it was easy to find teachers in my family. Luckily, I was able to incorporate the fundamental principles and techniques of the styles into my Gidigbo after a lot of hard work. Ironically, it was then that I discovered that what I had could no longer be called Gidigbo but a fighting style uniquely mine."

Korede paused to catch his breath, only to realise that his two audiences were fully engrossed. Even Miyako had joined at some point. So he quickly continued, "With this realisation, I decided to commit fully and extend my reach to striking styles. I learnt different striking fighting styles and incorporated them into my unique style. I went further to use my knowledge of human anatomy and physiology to refine the style. Where to hit? How to hit? Where to grapple? How to block? The weaknesses and strengths of the human body. All of these were used to refine my fighting style."

Both Hanzo grandfather and granddaughter looked at Korede in disbelief when he was done. Kola smiled as he also had such an expression when he first found out about Korede's fighting style. Although the explanation was simple, it was not easy to combine multiple fighting styles into one. Most people would end up just using multiple styles.

Hattori Hanzo replayed the spar in his head. A lot of things started to make sense. He looked at Korede and said, "Each type of martial art such as Grappling styles and Striking styles have other subtypes under them which are vastly different. From our fight, I'm guessing you are using a single style to bridge between the different subtypes."

Korede smiled widely. There was finally someone who was able to understand what he did without him having to explain.

"Yes, I did. For grappling, I used the basic Gidigbo as the base. Gidigbo was designed to be a 'Grappling' style from its origin. So it was easy to incorporate any grappling style whether they are from the pinning, locking, or throwing subtypes. However, it wasn't easy to use it as a base for the striking style. So, I did for striking styles what I did for grappling styles. I found a fighting style that I could use as a base and incorporated other fighting styles into it."

"Let me guess. You used Jeet Kune Do" The old man interjected.

"Yes, I did. Jeet Kune Do was originally a technique that combined majorly two striking styles. Boxing and Kung Fu. It also has some kicking techniques. To be honest, I didn't learn much about the style. The little I did learn made me feel the style was too biased towards speed while strength and stamina were lacking.

So with it as a base, I incorporated fighting styles that made full use of one's bodyweight to generate a large amount of power as well as emphasising stamina. I chose Boxing, Kick-boxing, Krav Maga and Taekwondo.

Although it wasn't easy, leveraging my physique I was able to produce strikes that had the insane speed of Jeet Kune Do along with the power and stamina of the other styles without any significant reduction in any attribute. Rather than a reduction in attributes, the combined style gives a boost to each attribute. For example, with speed from Jeet Kune Do, I can use boxing principles to produce a much stronger punch with less effort meaning that I spend less energy and have more stamina.

Another advantage of using Jeet Kune Do is that most people, at least in Nigeria, don't know the style. So when I use it, they think I'm using a southpaw stance and are caught off guard. (1)"

'No wonder I thought his southpaw stance was weird. Since he was using Jeet Kune Do, the jabbing right hand is the stronger hand unlike in boxing where you jab with the weaker hand.' Hattori thought(2).

Korede continued, "Well, it doesn't matter if they figure it out since I'm almost perfectly ambidextrous. After going through the rigours of my family's training regimen, there's practically no difference between my left and right hands."

After being surprised by this youth so many times today, Hattori had built up a tolerance. He had decided that no matter what Korede told him, he would not be surprised. Hence, he wasn't surprised when he said he was perfectly ambidextrous. The keyword here is 'perfectly'.

Seeing the youth was done speaking, Hattori asked, "So why didn't your link your Grappling style and Striking style? During the fight, I noticed you were using them separately as if using two different styles."

Korede scratched his cheeks with his finger as he replied, "I couldn't find a way to bridge the two together in a manner that clicked with me. So I left them separate for now.

Hattori nodded in understanding as he thought, 'I see. This kid is an intuitive type fighter.'

He asked, "Why didn't you learn Karate?"

Korede hesitated to answer.

From their fight, he knew the old man was a Karate master. The last thing he wanted was to say something that would piss the old man off thereby losing his chance to learn Swordsmanship and possibly about Will from him.

Noticing his hesitation, Hattori said with a faint smile, "Speak freely. I won't mind whatever you say as long as it's the truth."

Left with no choice, Korede replied, "I tried to learn it but decided to give it up because it didn't click with me. All the teachers I met kept emphasising rigid execution of techniques. I couldn't even change even the slightest movements to suit me. I felt confined. Also, most of the techniques are long-ranged and impractical in a fight(3) (4)

The old man smiled and looked at his granddaughter who said, "That's because you were learning Japanese Karate, not the original Okinawan Karate!"

[A.N: Please, don't forget to leave a review of the work to encourage me. Your opinion matters to me.]

AUTHOR'S NOTE/RAMBLINGS

1 Southpaw is the boxing stance where the left hand is the dominant hand. Jeet Kune Do style looks like a Southpaw stance but the right hand is the dominant hand.

2 Just to clear this out. Whether in boxing's Southpaw stance or Jeet Kune Do, the jabbing hand is the right hand for both. However, since the right hand is the dominant hand in the Jeet Kune Do stance, the right-handed jab here will be stronger and faster. Hence, why the old man thought it was weird. When Korede switched to a 'Southpaw' stance, or so he thought, he had expected the right hand to be weaker than his left but it wasn't so because Korede was using Jeet Kune Do principles.

3 In hand-to-hand combat, the range is measured with one's arm. Short-range is within a person's arm length while long-range is outside of a person's arm length.

4 Not an expert on the matter but I was told most fights are short-ranged. Almost no opponent will give you the chance to use long-ranged techniques in a real fight. Only in combat sports are long-range techniques practical. They aren't in real-life combat.

[A.N: Please, don't forget to leave a review of the work to encourage me. Your opinion matters to me.]