Before he’d even set foot in the coliseum. Jay knew what Eye of the storm felt like. It was why he knew the technique was right for him.

On Earth, sports psychologists called it the Individual Zone of Optimal Functioning. Jay knew it as the flow state.

The Zone.

Occasionally, only in the closest of fights, time slowed to a crawl and Jay saw everything. He could see the micro adjustments in his opponent’s eyes. Telegraphing their targets and highlighting their weaknesses. A piece of paper saying, “HIT ME!” taped in the tiniest of blind spots. He could make out every movement from miles away, and spot opportunities before they even arose.

Jay didn’t need to ask himself where to start, he’d already warmed up.

Jay had already struggled to harmonise sitting cross legged and breathing once today. Initially, he’d thought that was because thunder didn’t just sit still and breathe. That was correct, but the issue was much deeper.

Although Jay often meditated. It wasn’t him. He wasn’t a meditator, he was an athlete, a boxer, a fighter. That wasn’t his way. He didn’t sit just still and breathe, he fought.

Jay shifted around the ring, eyes open, adding data to his mental model of the entire room. His focus kept being drawn to the bottled lightning at the corner of the ring. Most of the time, the bottle looked empty. But occasionally a flash of light crept out and reminded Jay what was caged inside. An infinite bolt of energy that couldn’t be tamed.

He wondered how it was ever captured. He marvelled at the power contained within the bottle. Not inside the bottle, within. How was it able to handle the pure chaos in motion that was electricity.

Jay’s focus strayed from the bottle and returned to his own body. Others may be able to harmonise outside it, but this was his way. Even in his career as a boxer, Jay focused on understanding his body as a foundation to everything he learned.

Jay knew his destination: Eye of the storm. He knew which direction to look: within. Now he needed to forge a path.

His muscles were key to understanding the might of thunder strike. His mind would be key to understanding the finesse of Eye of the storm. Jay's mind needed a more complex way of transferring information than simply expanding and contracting.

Moments ago, Jay marvelled at the bottle’s power over the electricity within. But his central nervous system did the exact same thing.

Electrical signals controlled Jay's reactions, his movements, even his thoughts. Jay wondered how he could ever control electricity, but his neurons already could.

Jay started shadow boxing once more. This time he didn’t focus on the muscles making the action, but the nerves controlling it.

Visualising himself as the eye of the storm was never going to work for Jay. It was far too abstract. Instead, he focused on a smaller scale. A more human scale. Trying to imagine the messages firing through his neurons.

For each movement, Jay focused on what he told the muscle to do.

This was easier said than done however, by the time Jay had focused on an action, it was already complete. The signal travelled faster than he could think.

He switched gears.

Instead of focusing on his movements, he imagined an opponent in front of him. Jay conjured an imaginary opponent, and began to box shadows. Perhaps reaction instead of action held the key to unlocking his neurons.

Shadows coalesced inside his mind’s eye. They formed into a muscular man, over a head shorter than Jay. There were no details in his shadowy foe’s face, but Jay could tell by the way he stood and the heaviness in his steps that it was modelled off his last opponent.

Jay raised his fists at Shadow Akira and prepared to fight.

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Zero point two seconds.

Zero point two seconds is the average time it takes for the human brain to receive information, think about it, and react.

Of course, Jay's reaction time was slightly faster. Seventeen years of training had that effect. But it still wasn’t zero.

Why?

The question floated around Jay's head as he parried and dodged Shadow Akira's imaginary punches.

The signal only travelled from his eyes, to his brain, to the rest of his body. A one metre journey, two metres at most.

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Electricity should be faster than that.

Jay bobbed and weaved, parried and punched, slowly slipping into the flow of the fight. He danced around his ring, familiar steps he’d taken hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of times before.

To execute these steps, Jay didn’t even need to focus.

Which was great, because he was already fully focused on focusing.

He delved deeper into the dance. The duet of give and pull that all fighters instinctually followed.

Jay sank further into the flow state, becoming almost an observer to his own actions. His movements slowed; it looked like he was dragging his arms through molasses. Jay screamed at them. Go faster! Even if he was fighting shadows, the boxer inside him couldn’t bear to get hit.

But they didn’t go faster. They couldn’t.

Shadow Akira slowed to a crawl too. Jay's eyes feasted on the information available to him.

Eyes: Staring directly at Jay, not giving anything away.

Shoulders: Tensed, preparing a punch?

Core: Semi-relaxed, definitely on the offensive.

Legs: Right foot forward, southpaw stance, most likely to lead with a right jab.

Right foot: All weight planted on the front foot, definitely going to lead with the jab, watch out for the right shoulder.

Right shoulder: Every fibre tensed, compressed, ready to unload any time now…

In a fraction of a fraction of a second, Jay's eyes scanned his opponent and converted all this into a signal to the brain.

Why?

Jay had no need for this information.

He’d been in this situation millions of times before, he didn’t need to think or strategize. He needed to wait for his opponent to commit to a movement. Then, when he was at the point of no return, neutralise the attack and counter.

No.

Too much.

Of course that’s what he was going to do, he’d practiced it his whole life. Why did he need to tell himself that?

The message didn’t need to be complex, Jay's eyes only needed to tell his brain one word.

Wait.

Jay's eyes stared at his near-static opponent. Judging by how much he’d moved; mere milliseconds had passed. To Jay's eyes it was an eternity.

Let loose from the tethers of informing the brain, Jay's eyes were free. Free to drink in all the details of this surroundings. Free to absorb the world around him. Not that there was much in the way of sightseeing. A gravel floor and blue-grey walls were hardly a feast for the eyes, but Jay's eyes took what they were given.

Shadow Akira was barely moving. Jay's eyes could see ahead, they could see the multiple directions he could move in, but there was no need to tell the brain anything yet. They would wait until Shadow Akira committed before deciding.

While they waited, they looked around the ring.

Jay's attention landed on the lightning in a bottle. The only thing moving at a normal speed. Even now, when the universe inched forward at a snail’s pace. Electricity was fast beyond comprehension.

Speed incarnate.

The bolt bounced around the bottle. But occasionally, for a moment indescribable merely in fractions of a second. Jay would catch a glimpse of the electricity outside its cage.

Was it really a cage?

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A string of muscle popped in shadow Akira's right shoulder, wrestling Jay's attention back to the fight. He was right. It was a right jab.

Still no need to act. Wait until the point of no return.

Fibre by fibre, Shadow Akira's arm slowly expanded. Jay's eyes focused on their motion, just as he’d obsessed over his own just hours earlier.

Wait.

Akira’s fist moved closer, abandoning guard duty, on the attack.

Wait.

When the punch was an eighth of the way towards Jay's face, it had built up enough momentum that it couldn’t be stopped. No matter the will of its wielder.

Jay's optic nerve sent a single message through to the central nervous system. It didn’t need detail, experience would fill in the gaps. The eyes didn’t need to see anymore, that would only waste the brains time.

To save time, to cut into the once unassailable barrier the human body limited him to. Jay's eyes told his brain the only words it needed to hear.

Right jab.

Go.

Jay's brain received the signal. It had no details, but it didn’t need them. It knew a right jab was incoming, and it knew it had to react now. That was all it needed. Jay's feet knew what to do to avoid a right jab, so did his legs and torso. His arms sure as hell knew what punch to throw as well. Jay didn’t need to give specific instructions. He needed to be fast.

Right jab.

React.

To an observer, it would have looked like an ordinary exchange. A fighter may have noticed Jay moving less than normal before the jab. An observant fighter may have noticed that Jay was in a great position to react to a right jab before it even came. But nothing else.

Because anyone observing would take zero point two seconds to react.

Jay's lead leg slid forward as the right jab advanced. Since Jay was orthodox, his right hand was initially out of range. The lead foot solved that problem.

His rear foot twisted, corkscrewing into the gravel.

Jay's left jab matched his opponents, but the jab wasn’t merely an offensive weapon. Jay swept his jab outwards, crashing it into his opponent’s fist. Neutralising them both, and blowing shadow Akira's guard wide open.

His right fist had the easiest job of them all. A right hook, uppercut, or overhand, demanded at least some coordination. An arc might seem simple, but to hit the target, the puncher had to heavily manipulate the punch’s trajectory.

The right straight, however. It earned its name.

Jay's right fist was only heading in one direction.

In the zero point two seconds it would have taken Jay to react, he’d already formulated a plan and was halfway through acting on it.

In the zero point four seconds it would have taken Jay's opponent to react to his reaction, Jay had already embedded a fist full of denatured steel into his forehead.

Jay followed through his punch, the Conquerors fists dispelling the shadowy remains of his opponent into nothingness.

When he crashed back down to reality, Jay realised the insanity of what he’d just done. A maniacal grin erupted across his face. This wasn’t mere damage, like having a powerful punch was. This was mastery over the human body.

And it was only week one.

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Jay began to feel dizzy and nauseous, maybe he had pushed too hard?

He tried to walk towards the nearest wall, to find something to rest against.

But then the whole room tilted sideways. By the time Jay figured out it wasn’t the room, but him, his head had already slammed into the gravel. The consciousness he’d just wrestled for control over now forcibly taken from his body.