Interwoven ✔️

33~ Ready, Fight

"When facing an opponent the first thing you need to do is size up your opponent. Figure out their weak spots. And quickly, before you attack."

It was all I could do to remain standing as Yoongi circled me. My lungs felt like they were literally bleeding and it hurt to inhale.

I'd met the orange Marked trainer early afternoon. We were in a private training room in the center on the second floor, above the main training rooms. The entire first hour he'd made me run or perform reps of different exercises with no break.

Apparently Jimin had put together a brief training plan early this morning and sent it to Yoongi. So the beating my muscles were getting with all the exercising and exertion was partly Jimin's fault.

Now, my entire body was shrieking, so I didn't know if I was excited or scared that we were now actually going to go over basic physical combat skills.

"The weakest spots on the human body are the base of the skull..." Yoongi tapped the back of my neck. "... your trachea, and your solar plexus." He tapped each part as listed. "As those are weak spots on your opponent, it's also your weak spots."

I resisted the urge to wipe away the drops of sweat sliding down my temples. I was going to take a very long shower after this.

"Jiyeon."

Yikes. I snapped to attention. Even though Yoongi hadn't lifted his voice a decibel, the warning tone in his voice was as if he'd roared at me.

He was standing in front of me again, looking at me with unyielding intensity. "You need to focus. Next time you space out it's ten pushups. Then double the next. Got it?"

I quickly nodded, attention now zeroed entirely in on him. Holy carp, if this was him being easy I didn't want to know how he was when he was in full geared trainer mode.

"Good." Yoongi nodded once and launched back into his disquisition.

As I was a tad bit shorter than the average height, it meant I was pretty well matched for opponents both smaller and larger. I'd have to build a lot more agility to match the speed of smaller opponents, though, as well as agility to twist around larger opponents.

"Generally if your opponent is tall, they rely on brute strength," Yoongi told me. "For those guys you want to stay low and deal swift blows. Focus on the groin, kneecaps, and bladder areas. You're going to be going through a lot of body building exercises to build the power you'll need behind your strikes."

"What happens if I'm fighting an Outworlder?"

Yoongi set me with an unflinching look. "Then you'd be dead."

I shuddered at his bluntness. I mean, I guess I appreciated his honesty.

"Not even the humans who tried combating against the Outworlders when they initially landed on Earth could best us. It's just as you said. We can morph into anything in just the blink of an eye," Yoongi continued. "You humans are no match against us."

"What about Outworlder against Outworlder? How do you guys fight each other?"

"You're getting off topic," he replied shortly. He paused and then exhaled. "Naturally, Outworlders train entirely differently for battles against each other. It's a much more...tedious kind of training. Especially for us exclusives."

I stiffened. Exclusives. The few times I'd tried looking up Outworlder classifications, specifically for exclusives, no viable results came up. And Yoongi had said 'us exclusives'. That meant he was 'exclusive' just like Jimin. I briefly wondered if all seven Outworlders I'd met last night were exclusives.