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"There is one major problem with the way you fight," Korin says, examining the battlefield in front of them. "Your actions are way too obvious. For example, assume the stance you do for your blade attack."

Anton obeys and readies himself, not entirely sure if he should actually fire a full powered one or not. He can at least fire off one without much weight behind it.

"You see, here is one problem. The moment you adopt this pose it'll become impossible for anyone to not know what you're doing. And all anyone has to do to dodge your attack is have someone watch your arm. The moment you throw your arm forward you send out your attack, right? Therefore, anyone well trained cannot be hit by it. The way you move each action can only have one attack. Take this attack for instance," he says, forming a large ball of water in front of him. It's far smaller than Anton knows he can make but it is a demonstration and not meant to actually harm anything. "Okay, so say you're fighting against me. What am I going to do with this attack as it is?"

"I don't know? Throw it at someone?"

"Well that is one possibility, yes. But from here I can make a vertical or horizontal blade to send forth, I can grab and pull it to create sheathe of water around me, I can raise it up into the sky to case rain and I can simply push it down to make the ground soggy. I can even get my feet involved for a few tricks I know of. The important part of it is that you cannot tell what I'm going to do. Meaning they can't approach me as easily. So there's two things I really want you to practice. First, try and find a neutral stance for your ability. A way to hold your wind magic in a solitary location that you can do what you want. Another thing I think you would do well to learn is to make your blade by spinning. If you spin away from your neutral, they won't be able to tell if you're about to grab it and throw it like a blade or spin it around to make a tornado. Your accuracy will drop, but it will make you far less easy to counter in the long run. We'll have a match later today. Since you're still getting used to how we do things you'll be sitting on the sidelines. For this next match to further illustrate my point I want you to only watch me and the backlines of the other team. Don't think of it so much of strategy. What I want you to do is watch us and try and see if you can guess what attack we're about to do. We'll go over the recordings as well the next day. And when we aren't doing anything, watch the frontlines. Try and get a feel for how they want to move and what they're going to do as well."

Anton shrugs, not really liking being told that he's been doing things wrong but as it is practice, he can at least try and see if he can even manage to pull off what they're talking about. He's never seen a support or a Frontline ever have to try and maintain a neutral ability stance. But then again a Frontline's abilities are far more often going to be of a much more subtle nature than anything else. But the act of trying to make a neutral stance is far harder than Korin tried to make it out to seem. Well in some regards. He can sort of cloak himself in wind, which would allow him to quickly throw out a burst of wind, or spin it into a little tornado, but the air blade itself is not something he can figure out how to get an easy transition to. The one is just generating a force and pushing it where he wanted. The blade requires him to mold the wind around his hands and compress them into a blade. And unlike the ball of water Korin's holding, trying to hold wind in such a regard is far more inefficient. Trying to do an analog with his own element would cause him to run out of power long before he was able to really get all that much done.

"Don't think my element can work like that. Wind wants to move, not be kept contained to my will. It's far better for me to just empower and steer it than try and directly control it. I don't think I can do what you ask."

"Well that is what you will need to figure out. But there are plenty of ways it can be accomplished. But it is necessary to learn and it should be something you are comfortable with. I want you to take your time and figure out what works for you. Though in the mean time I guess we can switch over to working on your accuracy and see how quickly you can adjust to new situations. Now I know full-well that there are some limitations to your element. But I'm going to stand over there for the moment and I'm going to throw some attacks at you and the nearby area. I want you to use your element to hit each attack I throw out. Feel free to make your blade if you want, that's probably your best attack. Don't worry about how strong it has to be, I won't be putting much of anything in mine either and I care more about you being able to respond quickly and accurately than how strong you can make them. We can work on how quick you build things up later on and we still need to make sure you still have enough juice left so that we can run some plays and strategize with you later on."

Anton grins at the statement and readies his stance for his blade attack and puts the thinnest amount of air between his hands. If strength isn't that much of an issue then he really doesn't have to worry about harming anyone and he can instead also practice at the rarely useful act of putting as little power as is necessary to make the attack. Ideally he could then try and expand it to be as large as he wants with as little power to keep it have a form. The point of such tactics is to bait out an attack, force them to burn themselves out a bit on something that cannot actually harm anything. And yet, even still, the task was almost beyond his capabilities. Because it wasn't so much of just having to guess where the other was throwing it as Korin was just keeping his very neutral stance and the balls of water would fly out in seemingly random directions, but also they wouldn't fly in straight lines, meaning that Anton was having to predict how Korin was going to have them move as he wasn't all that good at adjusting these blades mid-flight.

Eventually, though Korin stops releasing the attacks and the rest of the team starts getting together to work on running plays. And much of this is half Anton having to learn their signals and what to do for each request and a bit for them getting to know the timing and speed of some of his attacks. Which he definitely appreciated for what it was worth. And he got quite a bit out of them. But eventually they had to switch over and instead work on some drills for their own match and so Anton was left to continuing to practice by himself. And since he didn't want to massive effect their drill with some of his larger spells he worked on how he could potentially do that neutral stance thing. That and working on his control. He goes and finds a target dummy off to the side and practices his blade on it. Going as weak as he could he throws attacks at it and sees how close he can get to hitting the exact same spot, occasionally changing where he's standing and where he's aiming. Once he starts getting the tingling sensation in his hands he stops. There's no reason to get even close to burning himself out. They're still running drills but as he isn't so much needed anymore for this training session he informs the rest of his team and walks to the entrance so he can drop off his outfit where he can easily pick it up again once back in his human body. They were fine enough and it also then gave him the opportunity to watch their drills from the monitors in the locker room and try and learn them from that manner as well.

When they got to their next game, Anton didn't really want to do the assignment that was given to him. It wasn't the way his mind naturally wanted to work. To him, knowing what would be the best course of action at any given time was more important than knowing whether or not they were going to do any particular action. If anything, it would be far more efficient to just assume everyone at this level would always be doing the logically correct move all the time. But at the same time he wasn't so arrogant to think he had nothing to learn from someone who had spent years at the professional level. Even though the Royals never really won anything major, they were usually considered a very strong team, just not the best team. And there's nothing to say that he can't observe strategy, only that he pay attention to what they are most likely going to do. From the reports their Backline is a fire user, which puts his own team at an advantage. So it'll be interesting for him to also see how that fire user tries to compensate for that handicap. As there really no need for an alternate to be dressed and ready Anton had gone to a special box so that he could watch the game. The box wasn't too outrageous, though it did allow him to not have to hear any of the boos of fans. The main point of the box is that people from the teams can go and watch both sides evenly without any concern of them cheating. It's designed so that no signal can get out, meaning no communication can be made to the team. It's aided by also having them have personal displays they can use to see any part of everything, but on a twenty-second delay. Which suited him just fine for his homework assignment from Korin. As he can just move things around and watch everything and not have to worry about any accusations of cheating or seeming like he's doing anything suspicious.

Of course, he's not here by himself. The alternate in the other team is also here. Being polite Anton gives him a passive wave, though is mostly just ignored exchange. It's clear they don't really care about the game itself. If it wasn't for the fact that there are some press in here as well as other trainers and staff relevant to the team Anton wouldn't be surprised if they had brought a book or a game. They seem more interested in trying to flirt with the reporters and stadium staff than pay attention to the game at all. rolls his eyes at the person but at least means they likely won't be a distraction. But one can never improve beyond their station if they don't go about trying to actually put in all of the effort.

When the match actually starts he can quickly see what it is that Korin was talking about. Though they don't have any means of seeing each other, both Korin and the fire user seem to have this sort of neutral casting stance where they have their own power ready to grab and use at any given time but don't really look like they're doing much of anything. In fact it almost looks like both are completely disinterested in the game when not spontaneously throwing out some form of an attack. Of course as the match goes on he starts to get the impression that the two backlines are playing a game of chess against each other. Despite knowing what the best action should be in any situation, Anton finds that Korin and the fire user almost never actually do them. It's almost to the extent that they're playing a completely separate game than what he's watching, trying to misdirect and confuse each other more than anything. There are some moments where one will throw an attack out that either barely misses an ally or opens up space for absolutely nothing. Of course both have the skill necessary to be able to hit or not hit what they wanted. And from all this Anton is starting to get a good idea of what Korin was talking about.

Because the Backlines are the most visible, what they do is the most telling for what the team is doing. For these two at least the game is less about trying to help their team or disrupt the enemy as disguise the moments when they do help the team as being just another random attack. And yet neither waste any energy. Being at the disadvantage as he is the fire user almost never tries to go in a straight up contest of ability. When Korin attacks, he does something else in another part of the arena. But none of them are particularly large or flashy, which makes Anton feel a bit childish for having tried to get the attention by burning through all his power. But for them, it's playing for the long game. He doesn't really know why he didn't see something like this beforehand. Probably because the maneuvering and mind games isn't what the news and television likes to focus on, instead showing how the frontlines are maneuvering and the conflicts they're having with each other and in the past he was always just trying to figure out what they were doing and how to counter it, rather than why they were doing things.

Eventually, though, despite trying to see if he can tell what each person is going to do just by their appearance eventually his mind falls back to his normal routine of analyzing the strategy, watching the movements of both sides and seeing how they are trying to position their players to try and get the advantage. Just because their team was at a significant disadvantage did not mean that it was a guarantee to go in one direction. No one would get to this level of play without being able to work around their own weaknesses. Even just watching Anton can think of a few ways in which the fire user could end up giving his team the upper hand.