The rest of the summer flew by. Having my friends around cheered me up and I felt less lonely. I had more to look forward to each day, besides work and teaching Kung Fu. I did get to sleep in most days, but I made a point to go in to work with dad at least two times a week to work on my own projects. I made James another couple of Batarangs and I decided to make myself a more conventional set of throwing knives. I also made a set for Eva. Now we could all practice together and it never hurt to have another skill. Besides the knives, I designed and made a few pieces of jewelry. When I had enough pieces, I would bring them to a local artist that I knew and she would sell them for me, in exchange for a commission on each sale.

In preparation for the upcoming school year, I spent a few afternoons researching another five local publicly traded companies and visited them to see what information I could get. I made sure to keep any confidential information and lists of passwords that I obtained from these trips in the backpack that I always kept in R1. Towards the end of the summer, I also revisited the first five companies to see if there was anything new and exciting going on.

Throughout the summer, I’d been keeping up with daily field training. I didn’t try to discover anything new with the field, as I wanted to get much stronger with what I could do first. Practice consisted mainly of holding two fields at once, with one of them turned on, and trying to hold the two fields for longer each day and farther out each day. I’d started out with being able to hold the extended field out to a maximum range of two and half feet for only a few seconds and over the rest of the summer I’d been able to increase that maximum distance to over ten feet for half an hour. I was spending over four hours a day holding the two fields and I usually took short naps in between practice sessions. The best thing about practicing with the two fields was that holding only one field turned on was now a simple matter and didn’t require any concentration at all. When I’d taken that first trip out to Sun Energy Systems, I had to hurry because I was only able to hold the field for a little over an hour. When I took trips out now, I didn’t have to consider the time at all. I’d could hold that single field on for over eight hours now without feeling any strain.

Another way that I practiced was by integrating the field into my Kung Fu training. This training wasn’t about increasing my strength in holding the field. Instead it focused on coordinating the field into my attacks and my defense. It had more to do with timing and control. For instance, I practiced coming out of R1 into reality just in time to kick the punching bag. I had to drop the field at just right moment for the kick to hit the bag with maximum force. If I turned off the field too early, an opponent could see and block the kick. If I turned it off too late, then I’d be solidifying inside the punching bag and the field would push me out. When I mastered that, I started working on multiple hits, going into R1 after each hit as quickly as I could. I wanted a potential opponent to only see a flicker of a person between each hit.

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One of my favorite things to practice was hitting the bag, shifting to R1, moving over and then coming back into reality to deliver an attack from behind my opponent.

When I got better at that, I started again, but with weapons. This is where things got really interesting. Just as I was able to keep my backpack, in R1, on my body, I could hold a weapon in R1, while my body was in reality. That means that with proper timing, I could knock out an opponent from a few feet away with an invisible staff or I could slice an opponent with an invisible sword. Of course, the opponent would be able to see the weapon at the last second, as I brought it into reality, but by then it would be way too late.

I felt kind of stupid that it took me almost a month to realize that if I could be in reality and hold a weapon in R1, then I should be able to be in R1 and hold a weapon in reality. I took a staff with me into R1 and then I turned off the staff’s field, instead of turning off my field. It was surreal watching in the mirror as a staff appeared out of thin air and proceeded to move in complex patterns all by itself. I soon started turning the staff’s field on and off, coinciding with each hit, and all I saw in the mirror were flashes of the staff. I liked this technique much better, because no one could touch me in R1 or identify me and they couldn’t tell where the next hit was coming from. In a real fight, this would devastate an opponent.

Of course, I did all this when Uncle Magnum wasn’t around. Previously, it would have been much harder to get alone time in the studio, but with the advent of Maggie, Uncle Magnum was leading a much more exciting social life. When the summer ended, their afternoon dates would disappear, and I would only get time on the weekends to practice alone. It was nice while it lasted and I took full advantage of the it, even ditching the Monday/Wednesday Yoga class to have the extra training time. I kept the Zumba though. It was too much fun to stop.