It's a cumulative effort, for sure. I was thinking more of unique experience that would uniquely benefit the former Hatman. Since he already had a taste of what Chiaki is capable of via her headband, he might take to the rest more quickly.





It *is* kind of silly for a highly trained Samurai to be completely disarmed as easily as losing their sword somehow. This is usually true of medieval European and Middle Eastern warriors though.

But as a secondary explanation, and I took this from many documentaries about trained Samurai, is that they are primarily trained in discipline and martial arts, and the sword becomes secondary. It was done that way for a reason - because there simply weren't enough steel swords for everyone. So they had apprentices not fully trained who went into battle with just their training and a fragile wooden sword.

Following that tradition, Chiaki trained first with only herself, then a stick of bamboo, then a wooden sword. The steel sword was actually a graduation present of sorts - the master's way of saying he can teach her no more. By then, the techniques were well engrained in her mind and body, and she could handle the sword like it's an extra limb. She carries it with her not for security, but because it's a badge of honor.

As an aside, Keiko would have received the same sort of training, only at one point there's a deviation where Keiko is taught to rely on her body and multiple deadly accessories rather than a single sword. Keiko could handle a sword too; but she doesn't carry a belief in it, like Chiaki does.





Chiaki's fighting style is highly defensive and "energy efficient". She is not strong, but she's agile, so she uses her opponent's strength and her own patience against them. She will always start that way, so that her opponent will become angry and lose control, and also begin to tire, before she finally strikes.

For instance with undead zombies, she probably observed that they were strong but fragile, slow but relentless, and that they tended to come at her in clusters. So the most efficient way to destroy them is cause them to become tangled with each other to the point of ineffectiveness, and then cut them down.

The point to this is Jay has always had either a powerful hat within reach, or a Legionnaire a relatively short distance away. Now he has no hats, and no backup, and lots of enemies who want vengeance; next time he's in Hell's Bathroom alone, and he runs into a street gang he once rounded up and sent to jail, he's in real trouble. He may have a fighting chance, but they're going to wear him down quickly.

So the part Chiaki can teach him is not more effective fighting, but how to retreat effectively, and how to conserve energy so when he finally does fight back, it'll have the maximum effect. He'll be facing worn-down opponents with full energy and reflexes. She would teach him it's not about superiority, it's about the appearance of it. It unnerves an group of opponents when you've given each of them a head injury without hardly moving or breaking a sweat.








In either case, she could remind him too much of something he doesn't want to think about, or she could be a familiar and friendly face. And there won't be much clue to which until she tries to talk to him.





I pulled out all the stops. The page timeout has been dramatically increased, the HTML completion has been re-checked, and the pages are now gzip compressed (meaning they transfer over the net connection faster because they're smaller, and then are de-compressed at the other end).

If all that doesn't work, next is traceroute logs and an email to Support.