Hitting the stop button after twenty minutes I almost fell over. I was a bit dizzy and my arms were throbbing from taking so many defensive strikes and brushing attacks. I slumped in place and let them fall to my sides as I just stood there in front of the now stationary machine as I panted openly alone in the gym.
Or at least I thought I was alone. As I finished getting the ability to breath back into my body I turned to the side to get some water from my bag and towel down when I noticed the hairy guy from before was standing over at the desk watching me with a tall woman with him. The hairy guy was wearing a green tank top and shorts to show off his very hairy muscles but the lady was wearing a black full body leotard thing with a purple vest and shorts over the top. They both stood there quietly leaning over the desk watching the little kid get beat up.
“Hey, it’s you again. I didn’t get your name last time sorry. Thanks for the tips last time, sorry I haven’t been here much either. I’ve been working a lot.” I said to the hairy guy with a wave between gulps of life sustaining cold water from the aluminum bottles.
The hairy guy pulled up and walked over as I called out to him, the woman following behind a bit slower.
“No problem kid, I did say you wouldn’t get a lot out of structured exercise before you could put actual muscle on but here you are fighting pretty well. Especially for your size and age.” He said as he approached.
“What do you mean size and age? At least size or age. I’m not that small for a ten year old choom.” I said defensively, finishing one of my water bottles and sliding it back into my duffel bag.
“Oh wow, I thought you were just a small teenager or something. I take that back then you’re great at fighting for your age. You’ve got a good habit of getting into the reach and striking out at good points of impact to ruin your opponents arms over a fight. They won’t be fighting long when they can’t lift their arms anymore when they’ve been battered like that.” He said, surprised.
“I liked his speed, he barely hesitated and his strikes were very good. Footwork could use more motion and he didn’t build into a flurry once even when he had total zone control.” The woman said with her hands on her hips.
“I was just seeing if I could actually take on an adults attacks then, I wasn’t trying to see if I could actually attack back. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to even move a solid punch at all.” I said, lamely.
“Take an adult punch? This is your first time against the bots? Have you done any fighting before? Like at a gym or in the ring, even out on the street?” The guy asked, surprised.
“I’ve got into fights with other kids, older and younger at times. Mostly I’ve lost to be honest. I’ve never got into a fist fight with an actual adult though, it’s comes down to knives or guns then. But I’m guessing there’s going to be a time that I don’t have those, so I’m hoping to train to be able to do it.”
“Damn kid. You’re a natural at this then. That’s some preem work for your first time taking heavy blows, especially with a machine for the first time. I reckon you’d want to get yourself into the ring and train on people mostly though, you’ll develop all sorts of bad habits training on bots too much. They don’t move, they don’t grapple, they don’t flinch or fatigue or injure out. You’ll find yourself against a real opponent and find all your training not helping much.” The hairy guy said, walking over and patting the bot on the shoulder.
“Yeah, he’s right kid. You have to get used to spotting tells for weaknesses or fatigue, you need to spot the opponent favoring a limb from injury over the fight. Not to mention the importance of footwork and moving balance that you don’t get much of from bots. A real fight, even against borgs, can end quickly through simple decision fatigue. You’ve tired out your brain from trying to keep everything from the fight in mind from you and your opponent, making quick choices on the fly over and over. Even if it’s been less than four minutes.” The woman said walking up and standing in front of me and kneeling down to be eye level.
“Well, I’ll try to get some footwork training in then I guess. Not really sure what a sign of fatigue would be though, do they look tired? Breath harder? I’d guess you and they’d try to cover that up during the fight.” I said, drying off a little with one of my towels.
“There’s a lot of little clues to how your opponent is doing and a lot of combat training is learning ways to cover up your own weaknesses behind acting like you’re fine and can keep going. The better you look as the fight goes on the worse the enemy will feel, even if they are winning. Morale is a deadly thing to lose and even trained fighters can fall if they lose morale at the wrong moment in a fight. Your own mind can give up just for that split second, it just says “we can’t do this” and it’s all over.” She said before walking over to the ring and leaning on the stage.
“When I was in the AMDS we often had firefights that would last days as people would take pot shots at each other over a kill box that no one wanted to go into. Neither side willing to take the ground. The thing that won then wasn’t firepower or skills, it was not giving up the defense and keeping morale high enough to keep taking the shots that needed to be taken to stop the enemy advancing just often enough to tell the enemy we were doing just fine. We’d have the enemy evacuate the area or just surrender because they were too strung out and thought we would keep it up forever. We weren’t even far behind them, we’d spent days watching high caliber rounds plink off concrete inches from our heads, we’d lost people, we were just as done with it as they were. But morale wins the battle. Same in the ring, just quicker.” The hairy guy said as he leaned on the punching machine robot.
“I’ve never had a situation like that, most of my fights have been ambushes or just chaotic messes. That’s super interesting though, preem advice.” I said, thinking about it carefully.
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“Hey kid. Jump up over here. Let’s spar a bit in the ring. It’ll be fun.” The woman said as she pulled herself up backwards onto the stage of the ring and then climbed through the ropes and turned back around.
“Uh. Sure. But I don’t know how much I’m going to be able to do, this sparring is going to be very boring for you. I’ll probably be less interesting to punch than a bag.” I said, stepping up to the stage and pulling myself up it by the bottom rope and crawling under them.
“It’ll be fine kid, we’re all just working out here. Not trying to break records or skulls. Nothing to win, so just move around and try to do your best not to get knocked down.” The hairy guy said as he walked over to the ring and placed his arms on the stage.
Me and the lady stepped into the middle of the ring and I shook off the post adrenaline shakes.
“Do you need a break before we get going? My names Lilah by the way. I come here a lot.” She said, stretching her shoulders calmly.
“Nah I’ll be alright, just a little jittery. It’ll pass when I get moving again.” I said.
“Alright then, let’s start just moving around each other and we’ll see how your footwork is. Feel free to throw some punches if you feel like it, I’ve got the reach advantage so I’ll be able to react or strike first which would be a little mean for a spar. I’ll let you come to me and then counter if it feels natural, then you try to defend. Simple.” She said, getting onto the balls of her feet and shifting side to side before bringing her arms up in a defensive posture.
“Okay.” I said, copying her as best I could. “I’ll get moving then.”
We slowly started to move around each other, first clockwise and then back counter clockwise. The foot movement wasn’t simple but I found copying Lilah’s movements helped a lot as I smoothed out my pattern.
Hey Sanctum, can you keep my skill integration active at the moment? I want to keep my learning smooth here today.
[Acknowledged. Integrating Skills.]
[User profile updated.]
[Acquired Skill: Acrobatics. User Rating: Novice.]
[Acquired Skill: Athletics. User Rating: Novice.]
[Acquired Skill: Combat, Unarmed. User Rating: Novice.]
I nearly slipped as a shudder ran through me as the skills hit. It had been a while since I’d felt such a reaction for skills, maybe it was because I was already active and moving around so my brain was all lighting up and such?
“You okay there? What’s you’re name anyway? We can’t keep calling you kid.” Lilah said as I stumbled.
“I think he told me his name last time he was here but I forgot since then, I’m not good with names.” Hairy guy said.
“I can’t remember your name either if you told me so it’s fine. My name’s Mal, what’s yours?” I said, turning to the guy down on the floor by the ring.
“My name’s Ed, just Ed. My grandpa owns the gym and I keep an eye on it generally. I’m here most days but if I’m not here I’ll grab any messages at the desk. Otherwise the place looks after itself apart from the gangers outside who like to keep crazies and other gangs from coming in. Stop other gangs from making a habit of coming to the street if they can’t use the businesses.” Ed said, gesturing outside.
“So Mal, you ready to get back into it?” Lilah said.
“Huh? Oh yeah. Sorry. Let’s get back to it.” I said, a bit out of it from the integration still.
Getting back into position and back into bouncing around on the balls of my feet, Lilah joined me in circling around each other but this time it was a lot more smooth with my legs seeming to just shift the weight properly compared to before and I got breaths in between drops and rises properly even without conscious focus on the task, especially compared to earlier.
It felt more like a smooth process rather than a deliberate method. As I got around all the way to the other side of the circle me and Lilah were sketching out in the ring I dashed forward and swung a right straight while trying to keep my left up and central. I almost closed my eyes as I swung but a last second thought about it kept my eyes open.
My blow swung out to a somewhat surprised Lilah but she just batted my fist aside as I closed in before it could arrive at her chin. As she struck my wrist time slowed right down and I noted her left arm dropping and curling as her bicep tightened, she was going to counter with a left sweep or some sort of wide attack, maybe a low strike?
Letting my right arm be batted aside I shifted my weight further into her space and leaned forward as her left arm uncurled and began to sweep towards my right side and low, a strike to my ribs likely.
The KD ability didn’t communicate in words, it didn’t really communicate at all. I just felt that I couldn’t safely take that blow and from my current position I didn’t have good leverage to deflect it unless I was willing to throw my full weight against it and pull away from her with it. I wasn’t willing to give up my position now I was under her guard with both arms apart.
My right arm was still being knocked aside and I was trying to pull it back as quick as I could, my left arm was curled alongside my head though and now very close to her face. If I could uncurl it fast enough with the limited space I could disorient her with a direct strike to the chin, but I’d likely then take a mostly uncontrolled but fully deployed punch to the ribs for my efforts.
Instead I used the time I had to quickly pull myself down, I dropped as quickly as this slow period would let my body move and dropped my head down as I went, letting her punch graze harmlessly across the hairs of my head and then used every bit of strength I had to rise up and thrust my right fist straight into her chin for an clean uppercut.
Unfortunately I was either too slow or she was simply too fast because she’d managed to get her right arm back from knocking me left arm away and brought it in tight and fast to land a very nice blow to the side of my head, right above my cerebral implant.
But that wasn’t enough to stop my already deployed strike and even though I was disoriented and pained from the hit to the head, in the slow world I watched my right arm extend and catch her chin very nicely and also very painfully for both her and me.
Her head shot back and mine shot sideways, both in slow motion for me and she stepped back quickly but unsteadily where as I went down to the mat as my balance was simply gone and I couldn’t move my legs in the right directions despite seeing the floor very clearly in the slow world I was in.
As soon as I hit the floor the world started speeding up and by the time I turned over to look up everything was back to full speed.
I lay there propped up on my elbows breathing quickly as I looked up at Lilah who was looking down a me with a confused expression, then I looked over at Ed and he just looked surprised.
“That was preem Mal! You really got in there are rocked Liles!” Ed said before laughing.
“Mal that was great, amazing even. You got under my guard quickly and even avoided my counter. If I hadn’t pulled in my punch to get you out of my space then you would have got a clean hit on me. If you were an adult in the ring that pulled punch would likely just rattle you a little and left you with no issue, you’d have got a clean hit on me. You only went down at all because in that moment, you were a kid.” Lilah said as she walked over and offered me her hand to pull me up.