"Come to my side, Miss Qin... for all its worth you put up a honorable and worthy fight tonight. I was not lying when I feel I have some things to give you."

She nodded and went towards her opponent, making a brief detour to pick up her bag. She didn't even consider trying to escape; not only was there clear evidence that such an effort would be futile, but she had agreed to this contest. That she'd thought she had no real choice didn't matter; all evidence suggested that she was wrong and he'd have let her go if she'd refused the match.

"Since you lost, I cannot give you my family scrolls, or at least teach you about them. But what I will give you is the rudimentary basics on how you can strengthen yourself with your ki as well some basic stances of my family martial arts, the Wolf Fang Fist. I also included some advanced kempo and other beginner manuals of the few martial arts out there."

"Thank you," she said honestly as she accepted the books; while the price was more than she'd have willingly paid, the information in them could give her just a bit of a chance against some of the monsters here. Besides, they weren't even part of the original deal she'd agreed to, but a bonus.

"Although you are in a way... my servant for the night, I will not force you to call me Master, since I do not wish to demean you any more that you already feel. You may if you wish to of course, but I do not insist upon it. Call me Edward, or whatever it is you are most comfortable with."

As she carefully put the books into her bag, she silently thanked him for that small mercy; while he'd earned her respect as an honorable opponent, she wouldn't have been comfortable referring to him as her master, even for a relatively short time.

"Now… let's begin with something. I need you to remove your clothing for me, except your underwear. Can you do that?"

She nodded again, removing her t-shirt, shorts, sneakers, and socks. All of them except the sneakers went into the bag; it was a bit crowded, but not too badly. She then turned to face him, standing in her white sports bra and panties. "Very well, what now? If it involves walking somewhere else, I'd prefer to put my sneakers back on first, if that's alright with you."

Edward smiled at her as she dutifully complied with his requests and then said. "Sure, why not... I am bringing you to a small grove of trees near where I live. It's not too far from here, and we are less likely to be interrupted, as I plan to train you in a number of things while we are there."

He waited for her to don her sneakers before saying. "Are we ready to depart, Miss Qin?"

She didn't like the sound of his plan to train her in a number of things, which she had no doubt would not be martial arts, but she would endure whatever they were.

It took her almost no time to slip her sneakers on; she only slipped the laces inside the sneakers, rather than tie them, since she expected she'd have to take them off again once they reached their destination.

"Are we ready to depart, Miss Qin?"

"I'm ready. Lead on."

Edward just smiled and said. "Oh, and just in case you were wondering about it... I will teach you in practical application some of the basic stances you need to do in order to utilize the books I gave you earlier."

He then walked with her deeper into the forest, until they reached a small open clearing surrounded by trees, and then said. "We have arrived."

She breathed an almost inaudible sigh of relief at the news that he intended to teach her some of the basic stances of his martial arts style; while she was sure he'd have his way with her, at least it wouldn't be all night, and the training might come in handy sooner or later. She couldn't guess what his motives for helping her as much as he had might be, she wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

He led her to a clearing she'd been unaware of, due to its distance from both the campus and the paths through the forest, before announcing they'd arrived. She set her bag down and began to slip her sneakers off again; whatever his immediate plans, she doubted she'd be needing them right now. "What do you want me to do now?" she asked as she set the sneakers down by the bag.

"First things first... the Wolf Fang Fist is a style used by were wolves. That means in it essentially that combines speed, and power as well as quick reactions." Edward said in his teaching mode. "While it is normally more powerful for males like me, female wolves usually focus more on speed as it is more of their forte."

He then stood in front of her and then said. "Follow my stance, and try to keep up. I will go slow, so don't worry that you will miss a move." HE said as he spread his legs, one bent to the side and the other stretched out, and his hands were bent slightly, and elbows tucked in mimicking a paw.

"This is the basic opening stance of the Wolf Fang FIst."

His quick explanation of the style's origins answered one question she'd had since he'd confirmed that he wasn't human. So, he's a werewolf. Why do I keep meeting wolf monsters? It also told her that there would almost certainly be stances and techniques that she wouldn't ever be able to do, since they'd be designed for completely different bodies. Not that those were likely to be coming up at this point; Edward was still in his human form and wasn't likely to forget that she was only a human.

The basic stance was simple enough, even though the hand and arm positions were somewhat strange for her. Even without her bout with him, she'd have been able to tell how flexible the position was, allowing for a number of easy offensive and defensive shifts she could think of off the top of her head. She waited to see what came next.

He looked at her and noticed that she had slight difficulty in mimicking his stance, but he nodded and said. "Well that is a good try, and since you are not able to mimick my stance fully, I won't force you to, since it is quite understandable."

He then said. "One of the next things I need you to do is speed training... and for Wolf Fang Fist practitioners means you have to be ready by moving and getting ready to dodge by using footwork that involves you bouncing or hopping slightly on the balls of your feet. The rule is simple for this beginning of your training. I will take thirty pine cones, and fling them at you with a powered down version of Rakansen. All you need to do is to dodge twenty of them with the footwork that I told you earlier. If you get hit by more than ten cones, you would endure a penalty of my choosing. Are we clear on this?"

She wasn't sure just what 'rakansen' was, though she guessed it was either the move he'd used to defeat her or his 'lust aura'. She was sure that it wasn't going to be dangerous, though; that would go against his goals.

She took a couple of practice bounces to be sure she could manage it properly from this stance. Most likely, he'll start out slower but get faster as he gets a better idea of how I try to dodge. Fortunately, it shouldn't be hard to keep my eyes on him while I dodge. "Yeah, we're clear." She had a pretty good idea what sort of penalty he had in mind, but she'd do her best to avoid it. "I'm ready when you are."

He nodded and said. "Well, just to explain it to you, Rakansen is a Chinese projectile weapon art, much similar to what the ninja in Japan use when it comes to Shuriken and Kunai... very deadly when it is used for assassination in the right hands."

He paused for a moment, and then said. "But for this first round, I want to test you first, so even if you get hit by all ten cones that I am using now, it is still alright. I am going to give you three free rounds of practice, before I start the real thing. Are you ready... then here I go."

He then took ten pine cones, and then swiftly flicked two pine cones in the direction of her hands, followed by another two in the direction of her legs, the cones moving rapidly, though slower in speed in comparison to a bullet, and he watched if she is able to dodge them.

He apparently realized that she might not know what rakansen was, since he explained it, revealing it to be nothing like she'd thought. I suppose I should've been able to work that out; I do know the language. Guess that's what happens when my focus was on Japanese martial arts.

He chose to test her abilities before the actual training that would incur his penalties; it seemed he was very serious about actually training her. She might have been able to trick him into going a bit easier on her in the actual training by deliberately letting him hit her a few times, but he'd probably notice she wasn't trying hard enough, and she wasn't the sort to throw a competition like this anyway.

Despite what she'd expected, he started out rather quickly. The two aimed at her hands were easily avoided by moving her arms. The other two were a different matter, as she had no experience with dodging projectiles. She managed to shift out of the way of the first, but couldn't follow up quickly enough to avoid getting grazed by the second. She did manage to keep her eyes on her opponent, though, watching for the next missiles.

Edward smiled and nodded as he noticed the way she dodged and said. "Very good for your first time, Miss Qin, though you should probably add a little bounce to those feet and trust your reflexes when you are dodging these projectiles. Here we go, you have six more cones to dodge until the end of the first practice round."

He then took two more cones, and flicked them towards her legs, followed by another two towards her chest, and the final two towards her head in rapid succession, still maintaining the same speed of strength as the first four cones that he flicked towards her earlier.

His advice about adding bounce to her feet helped, as she was able to avoid the next two projectiles aimed at her legs, although not by much. She attempted to twist out of the way of the next two, but slightly misjudged their paths, allowing one to strike her breast. Without missing a beat, she ducked under the last two, still maintaining a stance that would have allowed her to act if there'd been a followup attack.

As the last pinecones landed somewhere behind her, she straightened up and got back into the basic stance, awaiting his next move. She didn't know whether he was going to go into the next practice round right away or offer more advice first; either way, she'd be ready. She also had no illusions that she'd have an easy time once they got past the practice rounds. While avoiding eight out of ten was a pretty good rate, each pair had been aimed at the same general area; things would get harder when that was no longer true.

Edward nodded and said. "Impressive... you dodged most of the cones. Looks like the tips I gave you are working, Miss Qin. Let's start the next practice round shall we? For this round, I want you to apply the tips that I gave you and what you experienced in this round. Oh, and you will be dodging twenty cones this time, and I will make them fly faster at you. So be ready, alright? Here we go."

He then took five cones, and then flicked them at her with slightly more power and speed, targeting her chest, face as well as her knees and her right shoulder. He then took the next five and flicked them at her, giving a little reprieve to her as he targeted her left shoulder, her arms and her feet next.

As she'd expected, the second round was quite a bit harder. With less time to react and more projectiles to react to, she had to rely on her reflexes even more than before. Unfortunately, her reflexes didn't always agree with the rules of the exercise; her reaction to the projectile flying at her face was to bring up her arm defensively. Admittedly, it was a quite successful block, but it was still a hit. She managed to twist out of the path of the one aimed at her chest, but was again not quite quick enough to avoid both of the ones aimed at her knees, and she'd dodged into the path of the fifth one.

She barely had time to return to the basic stance before the second set came at her. A slight sidestep took her out of the path of the first pinecone, but left her unable to move enough to avoid the one aimed at her left arm without moving back into the first one's path or more firmly into the path of the one targeting her right arm. A slightly sloppy skipping move managed to get her over the last two.

Four hits so far. I'll have to get better at predicting his moves pretty quickly if I want to have any chance in the real test. She snapped back into the stance, ready for the next wave of missiles.