The next day I woke up feeling fine, no muscle pains or weakness.

You’re a lifesaver Sanctum. I know I don’t give a lot of attention to you but you really are a great choom you know? You’ve glued me back together and really opened my way forward. Is there anything I can do for you? Like maybe some metals I can eat or something? I don’t really know what nanites like.

[Sanctum does not possess desires in a way that humans would consider them as wants. Sanctum only has goals and means. If a goal or mean would to be translated into a human considered desire then it would be considered helpful if User could enter into non-lethal combat with another human to judge the synergistic functions of your Abilities.]

That’s not even a want Sanctum, I was going to do that at some point anyway, Marchand recommended the same thing. Hm… There’s still about two days until the netrunning job starts. Maybe I can spend today heading over to the gym and getting someone to knock me around that ring and then I can recover the next day.

I pulled on a vest and a jacket, pulled the holster from my rig and slipped it into the threaded plastic belt on my pants so I could go to the gym without lugging the full storage rig. Filling up my gym bag with water bottles and towels was easy with them both being in the kitchen boxes.

Mom was still asleep so I headed out and went downstairs to visit the doctors on the way out. Dr. Wood answered the door looking the same as ever and invited me in so I walked in carrying my duffel bag.

“Do you sleep? You always seem ready to go when I see you.” I said as I sat on the waiting room chair as she grabbed a mug of coffee from the side table.

“Yeah, of course. But not much these days either way, I get by with maybe four hours on a good day. Two hours twice on a bad day, it really depends on the emergencies and how much sleep I can get without insomnia stealing it all.” She said.

“That’s rough, so I won’t bother you much today but I’ve got some chrome I want to get fitted soon. Do you think you can fit me in? It’s a braincase and a pair of eyes.”

“Like today? Yeah, we can fit you in later if it’s just those two pieces. It’s both pieces going in fresh right? Replacing the flesh and not an old cyberware? Sometimes taking out cheap cyberware and getting the newer models in cleanly without bleeding can take a bit longer than fresh flesh.”

“You can do it today? I don’t know if I can get it fit today. I’ve got a job in two days.”

“For a braincase and some eyes you’ll only need a few hours to recover as long as you’re not expecting to get punched in the face too hard. The eyes will barely need any recovery with the only healing needed being two small patches in your head and the braincase will mostly just be a single line of synthskin to heal and some bone glue to dry. Everything else will be handled by touch fixes using tiny amounts of expensive healing catalysts. Very standard for operator surgeries where they don’t have time to wait around to heal.”

“That’s pretty nova, I knew that cyberware went in quick but that’s way faster than I thought it’d be.”

“You still pay for the speed, common installation surgery takes a weeks or so. Operators around here expect faster, so we do it faster with better tech. Not as good as the stuff Mrs. Marchand got out to safe you before, but certainly better than the local rippers.”

“Right, well I’m going to head to the gym for the morning. I’ll head back here in the afternoon I guess, what time do you want me here?”

“We don’t have anything lined up today with Marchand’s two big teams being out of town so come by whenever and we won’t make you wait long. Today was mostly going to be inventory and admin work. Just make sure you don’t have too much swelling on your head and no broken skull bones or the surgery is off until those are healed.”

“I’ll be careful, no worries.”

I got up and headed out of the clinic as Dr. Wood turned around and started looking through a little pile of shards on her desk and then plugging one into the big vid screen on the wall that then showed an x-ray of someone without much cyberware. No idea who though.

Heading out of the street I noticed Noe was smoking on the balcony again and waved, she waved back and that was that.

The streets were quite lively given it was early in the morning with music blaring and a little dance square set out on the side of the road with a few people casually dancing about while holding drinks.

They were speaking Russian and what I think was Spanish though so I only got a few words off the crowd as I passed, seemed to be a party for someone that lived nearby.

There were morning food carts selling breakfast at various levels of healthiness and edibility. I grabbed a quick bagel thing covered with white balls that turned out to be hard yogurt flavored things.

The bagel itself was a bit soggy in the middle though so it wasn’t as nice as it could be. I kept heading along the streets, making my way through the crowds as best I could with my short size.

I arrived at the gym again to find the gangers outside were different and armed with a carbine I didn’t recognize and a steel bat. They gave a me a glance but like last time didn’t think much of me and went back to casually keeping watch of the street.

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Heading in I pinged the desk and paid the aura to use the place and walked right through the empty exercise hall to the fighting area. There was the ring and all around it were punch bags of various shapes, sizes and weights along with different testing machines for punches and kicks. There was even a static boxing machine that would throw punches at you to block, basically the top half of a borg without a head and fully programmable so you could either get hit hard or soft, slow or fast. A bit lump of medical grade cyberware turned into a robot punch machine.

I considered starting on the bags and getting into the rhythm a little but that wasn’t what I was here to do really. I was here to get hit and see what the abilities could do. I walked up to the shortest static boxer and set it to the shortest setting which was still a slight bit too tall so I set the angle on the settings to a few degrees down so it was more aiming for my chin and chest than my forehead.

I set it to one hit every three seconds and set the power to low, I was here to block hits properly and test abilities, not practice getting my jaw dislocated.

Stepping back as the machine started pulling itself into a ready pose I limbered myself up a little and watched as the machine threw out a smooth punch, then it reset and used the momentum to throw out another punch before repeating. It obviously had perfect form and even with the slow tempo it had a great weight shifting power behind each punch.

Before I lost the nerve I stepped in with my bare hands clenched and tried to divert the punch coming at me, the machine was only medical grade cyberware so it shouldn’t be stronger than a normal fitness adult and the hands had gray synthskin over them to offer the normal amount of cushion but as a ten year old kid, getting hit by an adult was really devastating. It would be very difficult to actually deal with an attack straight on, I’d have to get a proper deflection off.

The timer from the last punch ended as the machine was still rocking back it’s shoulders and it swept into the next punch forwards without slowing. I watching the exposed white cybermuscles shifting as the arm began to straighten, turn and swing in towards me.

Then I felt a slight rush of warmth on the back of my neck spread across my head and back as time slowed to a crawl, less of a slow motion and more of simply seeing more of what was happening.

Like instead of tracking it with my eyes I was looking at each part of the fist, each part of the arm extend, each part of the machine as a whole move.

My arms moved almost on their own, or perhaps they really did move on their own as it felt quite odd for each sensation to be stretched out over seemingly seconds as opposed to instantly happening. Like a finger prod and removal instead of a sudden pin prick.

With both arms held up I pushed into machine and used my shoulder to knock the cyberarm to the side before finishing the motion by slamming my arms sideways into the cyberarm as well on the wrist near the elbow, causing the arm to not only miss but also swing totally wide before it could retract. I then pulled myself back from inside the guard of the machine and brought my guard back up to cover my head. The entire movement took about four seconds for me but at every moment I felt my flesh struggle to catch up to my motions, it felt like I was leaving myself behind as I moved.

The machine quickly recovered it’s guard and used smoothly used that momentum to launch it’s next strike.

This one caused the same slow down, the same sense of distance from the situation. The details of everything happening seeming clear and obvious despite not having much time to look around or think.

The machine’s punch came drifting in and I pivoted into it and pressed my guard against the inside of it’s wrist and used my torso and legs to quickly drive it wide before it could get a full flex of motion behind it. Again I took a half step back and reset my guard, feeling like I was a wet sheet blowing around in the wind all the while as what I guessed were self inflicted G forces tugged on my soft body.

It seemed it was fine to move quickly but the human body wasn’t made to move like that, or at least mine wasn’t. It’s wasn’t car crash levels of sudden movement and stopping but it certainly jostled my meat suit around as I tried to get enough force behind each defensive effort to keep the machine from landing a clean strike.

Lighter objects need to move quicker to move heavier ones and this was the result, I guessed. I’d need to deal with the discomfort if I wanted to be able to shift the strength of an adult. Maybe when I was an adult too I could slow down and deal with stuff with equal speed but that was a way off.

The next punch came in and I focused on trying to knock aside the fist instead of the arm to see if I could overpower the forearm without the leverage of hitting the middle or base. I had to use just one of my right arm with the weight of my left arm behind it. It felt weird going in and it was likely my KD ability telling me not to do that as I fought against the urge to follow the instinct the ability had instilled. The punch was robbed of a bit of speed and hit my shoulder at a steep angle which left it very ineffective but it still managed to knock me totally off my footing and center of gravity.

By the time the next punch came in from the machine I was barely settled again and only just about got my guard up and secure by the time I had to basically step the side to get enough leverage to push the punch down and away from me but it left my arms rattled just with that.

Before the machine could pull back and throw another punch I quickly pressed the big red stop button on the machine and watched, panting a little, as the machine stopped instantly and smoothly arranged itself back into it’s standing idle stance.

My arms were covered in a few red patches but with otherwise fine, the machine was hardly throwing the hardest punches an adult could throw, never mind the highest the machine could throw. But it still managed to knock me totally off rhythm the moment I slipped up and in an actual fight I’d have likely died there or at least put myself on the downward slope to that. You don’t often get second chances in a fight, you just eventually expose a weakness and your opponent just breaks you with it, after that it was rare to make a comeback. This wasn’t sports where some rules would widen the field a little to give you some options, the hostile would just come at you as soon as they saw their chance and that was it.

So the AA slow time ability was working fine and seemed to not have some kind of cool off period, I wondered if I could cook my synapses by pumping all this adrenaline over and over but Sanctum would likely warn me if I was going to.

KD and AAB were both working fine, KD giving me basically instinctual knowledge of how to not take a hit too hard and how to mitigate a hit I was going to take from attacking or deflecting too. AAB was a bit weird, in this situation it seemed to get my body moving the very instant I needed to get moving even before I’d made a decision on my approach… Maybe it was using instincts from KD to make the defensive strikes and I was just following them manually when I caught up?

I’d need to train more to know.

I switched the machine back on with the same settings and spent some time knocking it’s punches wide with each attack, practicing the motions of hitting inside it’s attacks and moving in and out of it’s zone of control. I wondered if a fighter would really let me get in close like this but the machine was static and couldn’t do footwork so I’d just have to practice like this for now.