Penny’s backyard is pretty spacious for a place in the city, which suits my purposes. If I’m gonna teach this girl how to maneuver, it’ll help to have space in which to do so. "Alright, out here with me," I say, leading Alice to the center of the yard. "We'll start with getting a baseline. Gimme the best punch you've got." I raise a palm in front of me at shoulder height.

She doesn’t move a muscle. "Just… punch you?"

"Yeah, hard as you can. Come on, we don’t have a lot of time here."

“I- Alright.” She pulls her fist back and swings it into my palm, which doesn't move a millimeter.

"Awful form. You swing like a stage fighter, no weight behind it. Best thing I can say is at least you didn't wrap your fingers around your thumb."

“Makes sense, I can't say I've ever thrown a punch as an adult."

"It shows. Alright, first of all, here's your starting pose," I reach out to grab her shoulders and position her properly. "Shoulders square, fists close to your chest, just below shoulder height. Pulling back behind your shoulder like that is something they do on tv to make the motion read well, it’s not how you actually punch. Are you right or left handed?”

“Right.”

“Then move your left foot forward a little,” I say, kicking the back of her heel lightly to nudge the foot into place. “Keep that center of gravity low. Try moving around a little, get a feel for the positioning.” She does so, and does a passable job keeping her stance low. “Feel how much steadier that is than just standing normally?”

“I guess so? I’m not quite sure what you mean.”

I give her a light shove on the shoulder, and she staggers back a bit but doesn’t lose her balance. “It means I’ll have to work for it if I wanna knock you down. Now, the actual punch. Extend your fist straight forward, and as you do so, twist it. Then, pull it right back where it is now.” I demonstrate for her as I say this, slowly miming a punch with one arm. “Do it now, slowly.” She follows my example, gradually extending her right arm and pulling it back into its initial position. “Good. That’s one half of it. The other half is your lower body. You wanna take a step forward with your front foot, and carry that motion into the punch.”

“What?”

I nudge her left foot again with my toe. “This foot. You take a short step forward with it, and punch while you’re doing that. A good punch should carry your full body weight behind it. Not that you have that much to work with, but it’s better than nothing.” She looks down at her feet, takes a step forward with her left foot, then throws a punch a second later with her right arm. "Not quite. It's all one motion. Watch." I drop into a slight crouch, and throw a strong jab at the air in front of me. "See? A single action, from the foot, up the spine, down the arm. Try again." She gives it another shot. It’s still not great, but at least she’s not doing them separately anymore, and she even managed to keep the arm movement pretty clean. She catches on pretty quick.

I let her practice punching my hands for a bit until she seems to have a decent handle on basic jabs. "Alright, that's not bad. Of course, an actual opponent isn't just gonna let you stand and swing like that. You're gonna have to stay mobile. Take a swing at my face, I'll show you what I mean." She hesitates. "Relax, I'm not gonna hit back. I just wanna demonstrate."

She aims a strike at my head, and to her credit it's not a bad one for someone who just learned to throw a punch. I easily sway out of the path of her fist. She takes a few more swings, none of which come close. "Pay attention to what my legs are doing here. Footwork is a huge part of close quarters combat." I let her keep missing for a while before interrupting her. “Alright, let’s see if you’ve picked anything up. Try to avoid getting hit.”

I’m not about to really try to hit her, of course. Instead I drop into a basic stance and take a fairly slow, well-telegraphed swing. The idea is to see what she’s capable of, not to beat the shit out of her. Once again, she impresses me by actually managing to avoid taking any knocks. Right now I’m approximating an untrained, regular human’s attempt at a punch, and she’s dealing with that just fine, so I speed up a little. She continues to weave around my jabs, though she’s starting to rack up more near misses. Time for a real test.

Her dodging pattern is easy to identify, she tends to go for the outside of whatever arm I’m shooting with. I slow down a bit, letting her build a rhythm, then throw a punch with my right arm, aiming to the right of her head rather than straight for it. Sure enough, she dodges straight into my fist. It connects with a solid thwack and she lets out a yelp, staggering back as blood starts running from her nose. “Not a bad performance, but you’re a bit too predictable. You need to mix up how and where you’re dodging.” She doesn’t reply, too busy trying to deal with her nosebleed. “I guess we’d better get that taken care of. Come on, let’s go find Penny.” She nods and stands up.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“You’re picking this stuff up pretty fast,” I remark as we make our way through the house.

Alice shrugs. “I’ve always been a quick study. Information just kinda sticks in my head.”

"Well, I'm not about to complain."

We start to make our way down the hallway. It's longer than it should be, given the dimensions of the yard and its relative position to the kitchen. I had my suspicions there was something amiss here spatially. We're walking for a while before Alice clears her throat.

"So… earlier, that stuff you were saying about my halo. Did you mean that?"

"I don't make a lot of jokes."

"Sure, I got that impression… But I mean, can you really just… get rid of it?"

"Yeah. It's what I did."

"But… you've definitely still got one, I saw it last night."

"What makes you think that's the one I've always had? I got rid of my last one. Made this one myself."

"You made it? What does that even mean?"

I shoot her a sideways glance. “The hell do you think it means?”

“But, like… I thought only gods coul-”

“Please. You know as well as I do that they’re just people. If they can do it, so can we, with enough dedication.”

She’s silent for a while after that, and I focus on navigating the house. I think I've started going in circles at some point. Like most magically augmented spaces, it doesn't exactly make sense. When you’re fitting more room into a space than you should, it becomes necessary to fold it over itself in at times unintuitive ways. Of course, this can make it hard to find your way. Nothing to panic over, mind. Worse comes to worst, I'm sure Penny can find us in short order. It's irritating, though.

Alice's voice abruptly breaks the silence. "So how'd you do it?"

"What?"

"Get rid of your halo. How'd you do it?"

"Oh. I decided to."

"... That's it?"

"Basically? It's not stronger than you are, Alice. Nobody's quite cracked actual mind control. The best they can do is make it hurt to disobey. You can just deal with that pain if you're set on it."

"So you just… stopped listening to it?"

"Yeah. Hurt like hell, for a long time, but eventually it just burned itself out."”

“And that was it?”

“Like I said, it’s not stronger than you are.” We both fall silent again, wandering the halls a while longer. Eventually, the kitchen we initially entered this maze from comes into view in front of us.

“What the hell?” Alice turns her head toward me. “How did we end up back here?”

“I thought you’d have noticed by now. There’s some kind of spatial augmentation on the house, it doesn’t quite fit together like you’d expect. It’s a lot bigger on the inside, for one.”

“I… Guess I was a bit distracted.”

“Hm. Well, why don’t you take a seat. I’ll find Penny and bring her back here.” She nods and sits down at the table, ineffectually wiping at the blood that’s starting to dry around her mouth. “Shouldn’t be long, I hope.”

I enter the deceptively large hallway again, but this time rather than wandering off, I descend the nearby staircase. It leads out into what looks like some kind of workshop, in which dolls rush around all over the place. With a quick scan of the area, I locate Penny and Jackie in short order, sitting at a workbench in the corner. “Penny?”

She looks over with a start. “Oh! Victoria. Do you need something?”

“Broke Alice’s nose sparring. She could use a quick mend.”

“Ah, I… Yes, I see. Where is she?”

“Kitchen table.”

“How has it been going with her? You’re not being too hard on her, are you?”

“Nah, I’ve only hit her once and I held back a lot. She’s actually coming along pretty decently, I didn’t expect her to pick it up as fast as she is.”

“Well, I suppose that’s good. Anything that helps her chances of coming back safe.”

I follow her back upstairs, and as soon as she finishes patching up Alice, we get back to practicing.