Dorian took a single step back and turned his head with the force of the slash to absorb and minimize the impact of her second strike. He'd swayed away from the first, but had assumed they were strictly sparring on a physical level. His old C.O. in Bogota would have beaten him to a pulp for forgetting that valuable lesson.

He rubbed his cheek, frowning. This was the reason he never bought into being some kind of amazing prodigy like how his unit commander in the Order had tried to make him. Dorian never liked that too-proud man. His commander in Bogota never exalted him, but rather pushed him to work harder and do more.

"Good. But still sloppy as ever." Dorian shot back with a wink. It was something he'd teased her about since they'd met in the Order. To this day he still wasn't entirely sure how she took his prodding, though he had a good idea. He liked how she could use her Advent ability so easily in sync with her physical capabilities, but still thought she should try to avoid using them, at least during training.

"If you'd been grounded rather than airborne, you could have knocked me back further. Again."

This time he meant to make it a real round. After waiting for her to give the nod that she was ready, he launched a flurry of simple strikes meant to drive her straight back out of the circle. She knew how to block and how to strike, but he wanted to see if she if she did what came naturally to someone not familiar with a weapon: the subconscious tendency to give ground in order to preserve safety. If it posed a problem it was the first thing he meant to tackle and train out of her in this round.

She did something a bit unexpected even for her as she started to dance with her feet and use one hand to fully control and guide the tip of the spear while the other hand did most of the movement itself. This allowed her to move the tip fluidly to parry each and every move with unusual accuracy. The act itself was a complete and total fluke on her part as she had blinked and had an entire obvious moment of surprise. She had however stepped backwards so that this would have worked. She knew that would cost her in the long run due to the rules he had put on their match but she didn't have much of a choice. If she hadn't given that one step she would have been deflecting him with where her hand was setting and that thought did not please her in the slightest.

"I'll show you!" she said with a smile at his prodding tease while doing her little dance. Though the surprise on her face was still obvious.

She had continued to parry him and refused to move her front foot back even an inch. She started to remember the days in the Order and grinned like a giddy school girl as she got back into the spirit of the blade. Putting her back foot forward again to regain that lost step from earlier as she started to press in on him this time. Stabbing forward swiftly and consecutively from differing angles and positions. The switch from Defense to Offense was a normal one for any being, but it required timing. She wasn't sure if she had done the right timing or not, but she was sure she was doing the right thing.

Dorian saw Sharu's thoughts by watching her eyes. Her timing was textbook perfect, but unfortunately textbook was predictable. Dorian maneuvered for a few heartbeats before hooking a hand behind Sharu's lead hand and pulling on it to distract her. With a measured step, he moved in and kicked her stomach, so that he could stop her advance and force her back. He meant follow up with a another set of attacks, and this time he steadily walked forward with solid, sure footing. They'd soon be at the edge of the circle, and he was happy to see she didn't need to do a lot of review.

"Better! Don't telegraph your strikes." Dorian said as he continued his advance. His sword hilt wasn't too far away behind her, either. He adjusted his maneuvers to guide her back toward it to see if he could trip her up.

She blinked as his words confused her and in that moment he had got her. She fell to her butt with a thud and groaned at her incompetance. She swiftly recovered though as she positioned herself on one hand, palm down, and spun while pushing up into a jump over Dorian to land behind him just barely within the ring and tried to kick the back of his shin while attempting t smack his head with the flat side of the spear, which wouldn't do anything more than either leave a nice lump or knock him off balance even further, her moves were fast but she figured Dorian was a excellent fighter and would use talent to keep up with her. She was beginning to enjoy herself now and it was obvious on her face as she smiled.

"We're not done yet are we Dorian?" she chided playfully sometime during all of this.

Dorian fellt Sharu's foot connect with his calf and pulled his leg forward with the strike, minimizing any discomfort she might have inflicted. Knowing that an additional strike with her weapon would come for either his head or his body, he hinged at the knee of his supporting leg and dipped his body back into a lopsided bridge with his left hand. He knew he'd anticipated correctly as he felt her weapon breeze by. It was a good move on Sharu's part.

"Getting tired?" He teased back from his awkward position. He didn't wait for an answer and instead counterattacked, pivoting on his hand to plant his right foot on the ground. The solid support and movement would naturally give him momentum for a sweeping kick with his left leg, minimzing effort but maximizing effect.

"Not even close!" she said with a laugh as she hopped over his sweeping leg and while landing made for a doubled cross slash downwards at him having disconnected her spear into two weapons. She made sure that it was the flat of the blades that would connect however, since she obviously didn't want to hurt Dorian badly. She actually started to wonder why neither of them had thought to bring sparring weapons so they could go all out during training, ah but, she summarized quickly, that also ment they both had to use quite a bit of restraint on their attacks. Clever clever Dorian, always making a lesson 10 fold instead of one by one. Whether she had managed to get him with he cross down attack or not she had stepped back for a bit of breathing room while at the same time making sure she didn't cross out of the ring, which was getting rather difficult since the ring was small and she was used to having room for maximum mobility.

"Don't tell me your getting tired and you want me to yield first from fatigue to avoid injuring your pride!" she mocked teasingly with a laugh at him as she took her two weapon stance. one for attack one for defense. Since the short spear had slightly longer range she would use it for attack and the blade for defense.

Dorian blocked her double strike with a slanted blade to divert some of the power behind the strikes, but he didn't plan to give Sharu much time for breathing room. He still had quite a bit of steam left in him as he just kept pushing his body. Almost immediately after she had finished speaking, he pressed forward again with a flurry of attacks meant to drive her back.

"You talk too much." He taunted as he pressed Sharu. He planned to use his strikes to guide her path in a continuous circle around the ring and wear her down to find an opening in her defense. It was a nifty tactic he learned and never hesitated to utilize or teach. It was because of that tactic Dorian had learned never to give ground without maintaining control. To lose control was to lose the battle.

"There are some considerable weaknesses to dual-wielding, though." Dorian added as they fought. He was, ironically, capitalizing on one of them at this moment. He wasn't aware if Sharu knew or not, however, but either way they'd be talking about it when they finished. With enough training, as he'd been forced to do with his own Tsuriai Joukai Ken Tsuki, all of the weaknesses could be minimized or even eliminated.

Instead of doing the normal thing and giving ground while defending she stubbornly planted both feet and kept matching blow for blow with him while even trying to poke lightly at his gut a couple times when she managed the chance. It would hurt a lil but wouldn't cause any real injury. His words did ring true in a sense though, She was always the longer winded of the two, but giving her status and her power she didn't usually have it effect her fighting. This kind of training though was definitely pushing on her limits though since he is trying to make her not use her power. Th battle was still young and it kept getting more and more intresting at very turn.

"heh.. You mean besides the fact its easier to find a pattern if I don't conciously force myself to attack randomly?" she said as she did indeed start attacking in a random fashion. Sometimes the blades would come at opposite directions, sometimes the same, others different angles, there was no pattern no actual planning. She knew this too had a weakness but for anyone besides Dorian it was MUCH harder to exploit due to its intense and chaotic nature. She continued matching each of his blows while trying to poke at him now and again just to se if she could get him.

Dorian was surprised that she considered a pattern to be a weakness. Patterns could be a compelling strength if a combatant knew when to switch them up. He was, however, impressed that Sharu had managed to last as long as she did while keeping her ground, then launched a series of attacks. Her attacks were chaotic enough, meaning that she knew one of the strengths to the form. T

he fact that she could handle the weapons independently of each other was good to see, as well. He was forced to duck and weave and dance away from her reach, watching her body sharply to ascertain what path her body intended to send each strike and plan out where he wanted to take her while dodging or parrying the odd stab here and there. It was a lengthy process, but his training held true and he never lost control of his backward path. Wherever she cut him off he merely reversed his mapping and continued from there.

After a short period of time, he read a dual-sided strike and met it accordingly with a two handed strike straight upward with the intention of throwing her weight off just enough to enable him to begin an attack.

"With two blades you can't put your full weight into a block and two-handed strikes are impossible. This results in a weakening of defensive capabilities and offensive stability and power." Dorian stated as he demonstrated with harder strikes than he'd previously been giving in a swift arcing pattern back and forth around her body, displaying how they naturally gave a bit more than when she had only one weapon wielded by both hands. She recovered very quickly so that she could deliver attacks that were difficult to predict, but he met them and never gave up his offensive intention. "You sacrifice strength and stability in order to gain speed and mobility."

His muscles were starting to burn from exertion, and he thought to himself that he'd better get around to his point with the next exchange. There was a specific reason he'd made this circle ragarding her dual-wielding style, but he'd only explained half of it. In order to get to explaining the other half, he couldn't give up the offensive. He was at an impasse, and so he simply trucked on to see it through.

She nodded as he spoke and smiled. "Yes but it also makes it a lot easier to score a slight hit on your opponent." she said as she blurred her left arm and made a light harmless graze on his shirt to prove a point. "but your right it is much weaker in strength."

She kept up her random attack pattern but she slowly started to slow down jst a little bit as faitgue began to hit her. "Crap" she thought to herself. "If this keeps up he'll win by pure endurance." her mind laughed at the thought but she shrugged and continued as furiously as she could, matching him blow for blow the best she could manage til one attack caused her to cross parry. Ending her offensive and putting her and defense since she was holding his blade back with both of hers.

"Ahh.. crap." she muttered as she realized she had err'd in cross parrying. it may have stopped the blade but it gave offense to him a well. she couldn't go into offensive mode while like this.