Kitaro felt, for the most part, trapped inside of himself on the voyage to Saobody. He was shaken up by how close of a call it was with Ursa Akuma. He needed to make himself more than what he already was and the only way to do that was with the raw elbow grease that came to make things like that happen. Kitaro never wanted to need to go into a rage made out of fire and blood against a group of giant bats, or feel the pressure and/or claws of bears tearing at his back and sides again. He needed to make himself better and that was what he was going to do. He had a Shichibukai on the ship with him, but just as the Shichibukai had his own secret weaknesses, Kitaro had his own personal desires for strength on the journey into Saobody. But how...

During the several days that they had, Kitaro decided he would spend his days in a more restful state and then his nights he would do some extensive and fast paced training to allow him the maximized use of his time and energy. It would be the best way to handle training without exerting himself during the day, depriving himself of sleep, or otherwise impairing him on or after the boat trip. It was just natural to Kitaro that he would make the most of the time that he had, plus he was ferrying a Shichibukai. If ever there was a time for him that would have been safe for Kitaro to pass with training it would be right then. Free of Navy intervention and with someone powerful enough to be considered a warlord of the sea vested in the same direct and short term interests as he, actually making it to Saobody alive.

So Kitaro began his training on the first night while the crew slept and the Sea Snake made it's way through the waters. Standing at the back of his ship and wishing that he would have been capable of making it more than what it was. It was quickly being outgrown and if Kitaro were to ever get his full contingent of slaves again, he would have to get a new ship or vastly expand on this on...Sort of like how he was planning on vastly expanding on his own skillset. Of which he had to stop putting off and work on at some point.

Kitaro rose from his cabin and walked out onto the deck, toward the rear of the ship and drew his blade. Titandachi, another relic that needed updating...Something sentimental, which is something that Kitaro tended to actively try to avoid making an attachment too. But as he looked over the blade, he recalled all of the victories that it had put him through. And with that he recalled his most recent, the battle with the demon bear Ursa Akuma, to which he entered his mind in the best way that he could and relived the battle. Experiencing the bear once more coming at him, against him, and used the deck of the ship as the new battlefield. Keeping his eyes closed, relying on his senses and his knowledge of the ship itself to stay clear of others that may awaken and arrive on the temporary training deck that Kitaro had established and to avoid damaging the ship itself.

In his mind, the gentle swaying of the Sea Snake rocking in the waters was calming, he allowed his body to get used to the gentle nature of it all and then invisioned the bear coming at him, attacking him. It came at him from above and Kitaro side stepped with a full on jumping leap, taking care not to awaken the sleeping passengers by landing lightly on the balls of his feet and rolling mostly with his momentum across the top of the deck, rather than crashing into it and letting his body carry him further. After a graceful roll, he raised his closed eyes to see the bear roaring at him and a shockwave expanding in all directions at him. The distance was making it harder to evade due to the spreading nature of the shockwave, but twas as a double edged sword as the expanding wave would lower the overall power of the shockwave. Kitaro knew, Kitaro knew how to deal with it.

Jumping backward to land on the edge of his own deck, a hair's breadthy away from falling into the sea, his foot partially over the edge of the deck, Kitaro raised his blade and swung it forward while walking forward. Having gone as far backward as possible to ensure the wave was at it's weakest before making his move to block it. The swoosh of wind that Titandachi made in the wind was different in his mind. His mind and soul had been transported to the deck of a ship where the demon bear Ursa Akuma had been let loose. The sound of his blade slicing through nothing but thin air was more like the sound of a twang of metal, as if his sword had been struck like the strings of an instrument by the great bear's shockwave roar. Kitaro had to defeat it to escape the PTSD reality that he had invented for himself in the depth of his imagination.

The bear charged at him, pawing the whole way, striking out with it's paws and shooting shockwaves that were destroying the ship, his ship around him, and so Kitaro had to react. Not being able to fully save his ship just drilled in the need for this training as he leaped to the side, then leaped back again, slowly making his way toward the demonic bear by dodging his shockwave paw strikes while it charged it's way toward him as well. The two met with a great clash of Titanium against bear claw. At this point, so powerful was the near-hallucinagenic experience Kitaro was having that the blade of Titandachi stopped abruptly midair and vibrated in his hands due to the pressure and strength that he was applying strictly to his own grip of the weapon. In his mind, the bear's claws bearing down on him overpoweringly as he pushed back desperately, losing ground.

A moment later after the heart wrenching intensity of the clash, Kitaro broke the engagement by dropping his blade a mere centimeter and using the brief moment that it took for the bear's claws to drop to match the gap to pull away with his great speed. So much speed that Kitaro actually required a full 180 degree spin of his body to maintain his balance and not fall on his ass on the deck of his own ship in a fit of insanity fighting a dead demon bear. Kitaro did not have time to recoil however as the bear was already basically on top of him. The time it had taken him to get his bearings from his turn had given the demonic monster enough time to move from the position that Kitaro had left him in, falling at the deck of his ship, to catch up to him in the mere moments. These were the moments that Kitaro lived for entirely.

As the demonic monster came down on him once more, this time with his mouth open, his teeth bared, and it's face slobbering spit all over Kitaro in an un-avoidable spray. Kitaro met it with his own blade again. He was stronger on the offense than on the defense and so his sword was able to clash against the teeth of the demon to keep them at bay long enough for Kitaro to kick off from the ground and leap back as the bear's entire body crashed into the deck. It was a fight in which Kitaro was physically, nearly entirely, on the back foot about it. It was becoming more and more enjoyable and Kitaro was becoming less and less capable of separating himself from the delusions of his closed eyes and inner mind. His battlefield awareness was entirely focused upon that of the demon bear in his mind.

After Kitaro kicked backward the bear continued it's charge toward him, this time swinging both paws full of claws at him simultaneously as he had done before during their actual confrontation. It was no matter, however, as Kitaro had originally defeated this technique using Prism Ray. However, whatever part of him was still connected to the reality of the world around him knew that he could not start activating and screaming out his technique names and blasting beams of light and projecting furthered versions of his air compressed blade in all directions while on the deck of a ship full of sleeping people. His hope had been onot to reveal his training sessions to them in the first place. So, in response to it this time, Kitaro pushed foward, going onto the inside of the swing, directly up against the bear demon himself. Ursa Akuma and Kitaro, within inches of each other's chest and face, the near 5,000 pound beast and Kitaro directly compared.

Kitaro swung his blade forward and felt the warm and hot spray of blade as a result of his dashing forward cut. Titandachi had been drawn after all and when he charged forward to meet against the bear physicaly and with his direct physical prowess against the beast's he had done so with sword in hand. Slashing against the monster's chest and experiencing the spray of blood that had come from it. While he was virtually without water on him of any kind, let alone blood, Kitaro found himself feeling and experiencing the blood of the bast. Hearing the roar of the injured monster so vividly that his entire body shook with the force of it, the beast releasing a shockwave into the air directly upwards and the sound waves that were contained within Kitaro's mind blasting out the windows of his ship. He could hear the glass shattering, he could feel the beast within him and the demon outside of him.

Knowing that the demon, Ursa Akuma, could not be fell so easy Kitaro went into a wild frenzy of slashing and hacking at the monster. Stabbing into where it's heart should be, slashing against it's chest, hacking at it's shoulders and arms. The only reason he had been able to defeat it before was due to creating weakspots as a counter to the monster's initial charge. So Kitaro was going to make those weak spots himself with hacking and slashing with his own Titanium and strong metal weaponry as well as arms flexing at their fullest capacity. In his mind his body was covered with blood. In reality his sword would move in swift and crisp movements, stopping randomly in the air as if a mime had trapped him within an invisble box and he had gone mad with rage trying to escape from the mime's illusions. But as Kitaro hacked and slashed, as Kitaro felt the warmth of the blood gushing over his body, he only got himself deeepr into his delusions.

The demon bear did not just allow for Kitaro to continue smashing against him and slicing into him and stabbing all throughout him. The bear's paws soon began to close inward to try and crush Kitaro from behind and against the blood gushing chest of the demonic monster that Kitaro's mind had created for him. It would not be that easy however, as he was the one dreaming he was aware of the attack, though in his mind it was from the sound of the wooshing coming in toward him, the powerful movement of the bear's claws creating a shockwave on it's own. It was then that Kitaro's awareness of the true weakness of Ursa Akuma came to his mind. It was a beast and it was capable of damaging itself.

So, Kitaro ducked under the bear's claws, falling as fast as he could before kicking from the ground with his knees already in a spring-like position from his immediate duck, his feet kicking against the ground and his body launching him backward at a near 45 degree angle ultimately sending him back to the original position that the bear's claws had attacked him from. Of course, the bear's shockwave creating crush attempt on Kitaro had smashed into the bear's chest and while it drew more blood, the monster was already back at attacking Kitaro.

The bear had attacked in the same way, but Kitaro knew that he was going to end up dead if he tried the same thing again. Or at least dead in his own mental hallucinagenic state brought on by the vivid post traumatic stress of the events that happened to him on Gubo. This time there was no Flounder to blame. Only his own skills with his blade against the raw power of the bear that he was facing up against. So when the bear came in from both sides at once again, Kitaro slipped his body under one of the great paws, rising up and striking at the elbow of the bear to push the attack farther in to make the bear's claws strike against his own chest again, the other claw falling in striking against the arm of the bear that Kitaro had redirected with the butt end of his katana.

Kitaro's plan was working as the bear was slowing down, one of his arms was injured but his rage had taken farther. Being enraged even more the bear roared at Kitaro once more who's mind hardly even registered that there were others on the ship anymore as he swung his blade downward against the sound of the desperate and angry roar of the bear. Slicing into the wind and giving Kitaro a tunnel of calmer air to physically move his way through while the bear was roaring. Kitaro was aiming for getting his sword into his throat, as the weakness of all bears that he had faced so far had been the mouth of them, including this demon.

When Kitaro got close however, the bear's teeth gripped down on Kitaro's blade. In the real world outside of his mind he simply slowed down in his leaping attack and fell back onto the ground as any normal man would, but in his hallucination of the bear, the bear gripped his blade within it's teeth and lowered him down before wrenching at his sword, trying to disarm him with the raw power of it's strength. Kitaro went flying along with the blade, kicking off the ground to maintain his hold on the blade, following where the momentum of the bear's teeth throw had taken them both. When finally reaching the end of the momentum of being thrown, Kitaro slashed forward again. Putting all of his strength into taking advantage of the blade already being positioned within the mouth of the bear.

As the blade wrenched forward, Kitaro would only move about a foot forward in the real world, but in his mind the foot of movement was carving a bloody path back into the bear. As it's claws reached up trying to claw at Kitaro, his sword fell to meet the claws, clashing them whenever they found the strength to raise and slashing at the throat, chest, and head of the bear while it struggled to breathe against the damages that Kitaro was inflicting on it's throat. Thus began a hacking and slashing fiasco that would appear from anyone who would happen to be an onlooker as a furious attack against the air itself. Against the very concept of air, though in the closed eyes of Kitaro the bear was suffering the death of a thousand cuts as Kitaro continued to slice and slash into the very concept of the bear in his mind. A profound thought that was entering his mind at this point, the reality of what he was truly fighting here.

The bear was dying though, but his mind still possessed the beast within it and it made a single last desperate attempt at Kitaro. Rising both of it's claws at once and attempting to throw Kitaro off by swinging it's feet underneath him. But Kitaro was ready, he barely even thought about what he was doing, leaping over the bear, maintaining his sword in perfect position where it was in the air slightly above the deck of the ship, and landing on the balls of his feet on the other side of where his mind was painting the bear before him. Landing gracefully on the balls of his feet and beginning hacking at the arms and shoulders of the bear to make sure it was disarmed, in the most literal and visceral sense of the word.

As Kitaro felt the bear's presence dwindle in his mind as he hacked away at it, it brought sudden realization for the true purpose that his mind had set him on this task. It brought him reason in his subconscious mind that he had wanted to come out and train at night. It had never had anything to do with the Shichibukai on his ship, it had never had anything to do with the safety that it afforded him, it had nothing to do with how hard fought the match was against Ursa Akuma in the first place. No, Kitaro's reason for fighting his battle against the demon on his own ship's deck faded from his mind as his eyes opened. Both in his mind and physically, as he realized that he had been battling his own anxiety. His own stress, his own mind to banish the demonic bear's presence. He had done so physically, but it had left his mark mentally and emotionally. With the violent slaying of the bear in that mental battleground, Kitaro knew that he had defeated his post traumatic stress, that he was finally free of the damned bears. Demonic, beastly, normal, or otherwise.

WC: 3,005