Nicky flew gracefully like an arrow, and then tumbled across the mat.
"That was a hell of a throw," Seven-League Strider said.
"It's a shame I'm gay and hate sports," Lisa added. "Otherwise I could say 'touchdown' without being bothered by people thinking I want to watch the fucking Superb Owl with them."
I was a damn good general-purpose psychic, on par with Valiant and Doctor Skinner. But sometimes, you needed a specialist, and Seven-League Strider was that specialist. Seven-League Strider was a short Chinese man, garbed as a Shaolin warrior-monk; he had, in fact, studied there in his youth, when his power awakened.
Seven-League Strider's power was, ultimately, pretty simple: he could make martial arts training far more effective. Training for himself, so that he could stay in as perfect shape as was possible for him, and also so that he could pick up a new martial art and, with only a month or so of practice, become just as good with it as someone who'd spent a decade of their life studying it; but also, more often, training for others, who would learn those martial arts he'd learned, and probably a bit better- Seven-League Strider had more black belts than a crocodile had teeth, and had encountered all sorts of teaching styles that he'd also learned from and refined on his own.
"I didn't know you were that strong," Nicky said, picking herself back up and politely ignoring Lisa's bitter comment about people liking football.
"It's a new development," I said. "Akane's work with the transformation tech. I'm just barely over the line of superhumanly strong. That, and you were making yourself weigh less so that you could be more maneuverable, and your attempt to correct that by giving yourself more mass mid-throw just made you fly even farther- you wanna go even more weightless when you're trying to slow down."
"Ah, shit, right," Nicky said. "Fuck, that's embarrassing. Not just because I've had a rocket scientist for a roommate for like four years-"
"Wait, what?" Seven-League Strider asked, blinking.
"Akane Sakurai has a bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering," I said.
"-but because I grew up with Mythbusters, and I remember that goddamn helium football episode they did," Nicky said. "And the conclusion was, helium footballs are worse than air-filled footballs, because heavier projectiles fly farther because they have more momentum."
"Kind of," Seven-League Strider said. "It's more that there's a particular amount of force at a certain speed that any given human body is capable of producing. Heavier projectiles have more inertia, to be certain, but remember- force is mass by acceleration. The best-performing projectile will be in a sweet spot of mass, where the mass is low enough that the available force/speed is sufficient to accelerate it to that speed, but no lower, to minimize the effect of aerodynamic drag on the projectile's speed. Or, to summarize: the best projectile is the heaviest one you can get up to speed, and no heavier."
"Ahhhh," Nicky said, nodding.
"At any rate," Seven-League Strider said, clapping his hands together once, then rubbing them in anticipation. "Judo practice is almost over. Three more spars, then we move on to Kali. Nicky, you first."
Seven-League Strider's life story was, in all honesty, a rather interesting one. He'd been born in Shenzhen, and grew up unusually sickly and frail; his father, in an attempt to remedy this, instilled a great sense of health-consciousness in the boy, who grew up doing pretty much everything that 1980s-era Chinese culture considered to be "taking care of your body" pretty much religiously. And among those measures taken was the study of martial arts, because it turns out that making a habit of exercising with partners is good for your health and fitness.
For about fifteen years, Li Bai was just yet another kid in Shenzhen who was particularly into martial arts. Then his parents moved across the country to Zhengzhou, the seat of the Henan province... and barely a stone's throw from the Shaolin Temple, where he became a disciple.
Of course, the Temple's training regimen was a great deal heavier than the ones he'd grown up with, and something within him broke. Very, very fortunately for him, however... his powers awakened, and he actually recovered, rather than simply being yet another person who was not, in fact, hardcore enough for the Shaolin Temple.
He began to soak up instruction like a sponge, greedily inhaling every scrap of knowledge that the masters would teach him, and shot up in esteem from 'the sickly kid who keeps coming in last' to 'the greatest disciple we've ever had.' But then... after five years, Li Bai- who'd picked up the nickname Steps Of The Giant, except in Mandarin and not English- grew disillusioned with the Temple.
So he left.
These days, he lived in Texas, and spent most of his time working at a training center out in the Hill Country, where a whole shitload of power-modifying superscience had been invested into making an absolutely massive training hall that projected his power throughout the entire building, without even requiring him to be there the entire time- only an hour a day was necessary to keep the power-capacitors operational. He spent more time there than that, however, because of the simple fact that he enjoyed training in martial arts, and his training center tended to attract a ton of masters looking to expand their repertoires, hone their craft, and/or teach new students in the best possible environment for it.
And now, because of me, Valiant had Seven-League Strider coming up to North Austin every day for two hours (we'd eased back on our training schedule to something closer to sustainable in the long term) of one-on-one (well, one-on-three) training with myself, Nicky, and Lisa, because we needed to get trained up fast, and our schedules couldn't afford the travel time it'd take for us to go to him- apparently, while there did exist heroes who could teleport, and even superscientists capable of building teleporters, they were not even remotely a practical solution to our problem.
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It was a shame that Seven-League Strider's name was metaphorical- the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and his power is the seven-league boots of legend that make a single metaphorical step cover twenty one metaphorical miles. It was not the ability to literally cover twenty one miles in a single step.
No, he got to sit in traffic like everyone else, and rant to himself the whole time about how these stupid backwards Americans don't know what a fucking train is.
I was very certain to ensure that, when he did arrive, it was to some high-quality hospitality, because good fucking lord do I not want this man mad at me for the two hours every day he was here.
"Fuck!"
Because, while our training room had been upgraded with Lisa's spirit magic such that injury simply wasn't possible in here, it 100% did not prevent us from feeling pain.
"God damn," I said, watching as Lisa slowly peeled off of the wall and landed on the mats with a thump. I'd been convinced that, just because Lisa's war form was incompatible with conventional martial arts, did not mean that she had no reason to learn them anyways. It just meant that her training would take twice as long, because she'd have to adapt what she'd learned to war form.
At some point.
"Next, please," Seven-League Strider said.
Nicky's spar with him went a little better, but still ended with her on the floor, just... y'know, after longer than Lisa managed to last.
"Alright, final round," Strider said, turning to face me.
This was where things would get interesting. See, Seven-League Strider had more black belts than a crocodile had teeth, but that was only really possible because he simply did not spend that much time on any given martial art. He learned all of the techniques to a passable level, which was where the standard for "black belt" was generally set, and then he moved on to the next one, and didn't really revisit the last one. Sure, he did in fact train other people in various martial arts personally, and Judo was particularly popular as far as martial arts went, but, I was still relatively confident that Seven-League Strider was only around, like... first degree or so.
I had, before coming to this world, held a third degree black belt in Judo.
Victory was not guaranteed. It was never guaranteed, but against Seven-League Strider, I wouldn't put my chances above, like, sixty percent. I was good, but so was he, and whereas I had the advantage of being superhumanly strong, he wasn't that far behind, and he'd done a hell of a lot more cross-training than I had.
We circled each other like boxers, watching for an opening. If you've never seen a Judo match before, they look a lot different than you'd expect a fight to look, even though Judo is supposed to be fairly effective as far as "techniques for hurting another person who is trying to stop you from hurting them" go. This is because Judo isn't a striking art, nor is it a grappling art. It's a throwing art. Judo isn't about breaking someone's ribs with your foot, or about dislocating someone's shoulder, it's about giving someone a concussion with the help of the floor.
And the first step of doing that is to grab the other guy by their shirt. Seven-League Strider's shirt had nice and voluminous sleeves, but not much in the way of lapel; this made some conventional judo grips easy to pull off, and others... less so. I, meanwhile, was wearing my usual unbuttoned trenchcoat, which was, effectively, a taunt and a dare to other Judoka- "look at me, I'm so easy to grab, if you think you're man enough."
That being said, my coat, while seeming like a lot of material to grab, was actually a little deceptive, and had tighter sleeves than was normal for a judogi, making it hard to get a good sleeve grip, leaving you with pretty much only my lapels to grab conveniently. Strider still got hold of my sleeve near the cuff, but I was able to break that grip pretty easily, and moved that hand up and above his arm, grabbing his sleeve near the shoulder.
He feinted an osoto gari before attempting a hiza guruma- that is, he aimed and angled himself like he was going to swing his right leg out and around my left leg, to try to sweep my left leg from behind and throw me over his hip, before moving into his real technique, attempting to swing his left leg into my right leg to throw me in completely the opposite direction.
I managed to keep my footing, turning my knee at just the right angle to keep him from getting his foot around to the backside, and moved my hand from his shoulder down the back of his shirt, before collapsing my legs and yanking him off-balance, adjusting mid-fall to flip him up and over me, slamming into the mats with a thunderous, meaty thwap. A textbook sumi gaeshi, and it just... worked.
"Thank you," I said, as I stood back up. He must've done that on purpose.
Strider had slightly more of a challenge, having not fallen on purpose with the luxury of keeping his feet on the floor, but that just meant it took him a second longer.
"You're good at this," Seven-League Strider said, nodding appreciatively. "I'll have to hit the mats if I want to give you a proper challenge with Judo."
"You don't need to coddle my ego," I said, shaking my head. "Martial training and skill isn't going to do much in the final fight with Skinner. This is just... something to do, to be ready for the next crisis, and to feel like we're currently doing something about this one. Let's go again, except this time without letting me win."
"...You... are aware that I didn't let you win, right?" Strider said carefully. "You have two degrees, twenty pounds, and six inches on me. You did, in fact, win that round fair and square. But, if you're looking for a rematch..."
I sighed. "Sorry, just... I'm kinda on edge, and the training isn't quite enough to distract me. Let's go again. Who knows, if I'm this distracted, maybe you'll win."
"I am more than willing to beat the distraction out of you like a dusty carpet," Strider declared.
"I'll hold you to that," I said, before I rushed at him.