In a Vulture's Shadow

"Put a rusty nail in it!" Obsidian Knife chastised me as we drilled some rough-and-tumble skills for controlling the opponent's inside. My thumb stab to his ear drum wasn't yet weaponized enough for him. My grave error of affording my enemy a moment of safety would not go unpunished. He kicked at me as he further berated me and my Twinkie-flavored white-bread culture. I laughed in response but minded those bullwhip front kicks. His kicks were lightning-fast. He had a habit of obliterating an opponent's knees on the trajectory up to their nutsack with his rocket-powered foot. In addition, he could cover far more distance than you might guess by exploding forward off his back leg.  His kicking skills contained a wicked "rusty nail.: An opponent never has the luxury of safety. That is a commodity for which we are perpetually out of stock. Now, severe injury, maiming, permanent disfigurement, crippling, and, of course, straight-up death, on the other hand...well,...

Obsidian knife felt my hand speed was not up to snuff. To fix this, he gave me one simple directive. In the space of the next five minutes, I was to touch the tip of his nose no less than ten times.  He pointed to my hands and said, "You are an immobilizer; you latch on, rip, and shred, like your namesake (Gila Monster). You don't care if you must eventually let go or if your prey luckily wrenches free. The damage is done. You stalk it down and finish it."  "This is fine, but I don't want you to get too firmly stuck in that modality. You may one day need to stay fluid and detached physically and emotionally; let the cut and thrust of your knife be the fangs of a snake; hide your body behind it." He lunged and nicked me on my forearm with his knife.  "Blood makes for a great exclamation mark for the points of my teachings."  It was a smarting pain. The wound was topical and superficial, but the hot desert air and salt from my sweat mingling in my wo...