If there is one thing that remains the same no matter where in the Section you go, it’s the gyms. I suspect it’s the same across the world. Gyms share three important features: harsh lights, heavy weights, and loud music. Everything beyond that is optional, and it’s those idiosyncrasies that tell you the most about the place you chose to work out.
I’ve been in clean gyms before. This isn’t a clean gym.
I’ve also been in hi-tech gyms. Calling this place Oldtech would be doing it a favor.
I’ve seen some fancy ones with gold-plated equipment. I’ve seen some that use logs for weights. In the villages, I even found one that floated on a sandbar near the beach. You could say I’ve been in a lot of gyms. I certainly would. But never before have I been in one where my hair has stood on end from the moment I walked through the door because every single set of beady eyes under those pasty lights was licking their chops at the thought of spilling the contents of my bank account right into theirs. Naïve kid from the overcity, I get it. I appreciate the attention. It’s a kind I’ve never quite managed to capture before. But the moment the locals see me strip off my shirt, tape up my hands, and throw a ki-powered punch at an innocent sandbag so hard it atomizes against the wall, those greedy eyes finally leave my JOY long enough to see the color of my hair, put two and two together, and suddenly decide there are a hundred better things to look at instead.
You could say I’m a little disappointed that none of them tried to pick a fight. I certainly might.
Around me, the Venter gym Ajax and I carefully selected for our training moves to a mechanical rhythm. Iron clangs like clockwork anvils as weights are racked and slammed. NeoPop thunders through the concrete with a bass rumble that would put earthquakes to shame, loosing trickles of silt from the ceiling every time the beat drops. Smoke from lighters obscures the off-white overheads. Neon lights flash through propped-open doors, splashing advertisements across the floor. It’s a moshpit of undercity energy. No climate control alleviates the sweltering heat. A grimy sheen of sweat covers every surface, constantly reapplied by the movements of muscled bodies. Every leather bench is cracked and crumbling. There’s no overcity leggings or tight-shirt posturing here. It’s genuine in a way not unlike the gym I call home. Just grimier, darker, and filled with people who would sooner shiv you than spot you for a lift.
Dynasty enforcers work out on singles or pairs in a section the gym’s other patrons smartly decided to leave unoccupied. Black and orange sellswords drift through to hit weights with peers for workouts between jobs. Others laugh loudly in groups outside the doors, picking fights for money or laughs from the passing Venters trying to dart along the towerside unnoticed. We’re deep in syndicate territory. Part of the reason Ajax and I decided to come here first, though not the entirety.
No, today we’re here to train.
In the middle of the chaos, surrounded by fighters and dark-clothed Venters slipping between the rows, four hundred pounds of dirty steel drills up and down above my chest with every breath I take. A pair of nonplussed eyes watches me hammer out the unending repetitions with no signs of slowing. My JOY tries to distract me with projections of statistical garbage about my oxygen intake and heart rate. The latter would be worryingly low for anything but an apex athlete, which I am. And I take a certain guilty satisfaction in reminding the knife-fingering Venters around us of that fact. I’m not using my JOY- never do when I lift- which leaves me open and vulnerable to anyone who wants to take a shot. That no one tries is a byproduct of my reputation and the hands that made it. Those hands rack the steel over my head with effortless ease. They don’t need a JOY to make the point. The deep clang of an obscene amount of weight coming to rest is enough warning. When I curl up from the bench and catch the sweat-stained shirt Ajax tosses my way, my frame towers over all but the genetic freaks and Modd-classed fighters with their abnormal bodies and animalistic traits. A powerful, laconic shadow follows me as I take to sitting atop the bar. Ajax curls his fingers around the steel as he leans forward beside me.
“Every one of these people wants to lynch us. Seems they’re not a fan of us from the overcity,” he murmurs. Sapphire eyes scan the depths of the gym with dangerous, half-lidded boredom. Sleepy curls escape his golden braid down its length. I’m taken aback by how pale he is in the smoky light, and how tan the Ajax I remember from my first year in uni used to be. He was fresh from the villages and the sun then, to be fair. But I know enough of his habits to know the blood-drained cast to his skin now doesn’t come from lack of sun. It’s the pallid frown on his lips. The too-large shirt hanging like a hospital shift from his shoulders. The time he’s been spending behind the bench this morning, rather than on it. That damned cough.
The sounds of the gym fade from my awareness as I look him over for the first time out of concern, not competition. It hits me on an instinctive level. I’m not my sister, but how could I have not seen it sooner? A flitting memory of my conversation with her from the last time Ajax kicked my ass on a fighting square drifts through the current of my thoughts. I was laughing. Joking that I should tire him out before we fought next, because it was the first weakness I’d seen in him so long. We only went fifteen rounds that day. Our usual wars last thirty, forty, fifty.
He was tired, as he is now. But the Ajax I know is never tired.
I swallow the guilty realization and bury it away before it can grow. He sees nothing of the pause on my face. Or if he does, he chalks it up to something else.
“Lynch you, maybe.” I snort out a short laugh. “I bet they would love me.”
“Everyone loves you in the overcity. Don’t make the mistake of conflating the two.”
He blinks and leans back, hiding a cough inside his elbow. Across the gym, a large stream screen changes from morning Metro Blockhouse drawl for a brief segment on the university leagues. The header scrolls on below a white-suited streamer and a visiting minor-league assassin: TOP PICKS ABSENT FROM LEAD-IN TOURNAMENT.
“Are you keeping up with it?” Ajax asks.
“Still planning on going.” I glance away from the stream to focus on retaping between my fingers. “Winter sends me updates. She’s doing a good job of keeping the team together.”
“Oh? I didn’t know she frequented your circles.”
I chuckle under my breath. “Third best duelist, third best martial artist. She might help run your club, but she swings by my gym pretty often, too.”
“Then she really is doing a better job than either of us.”
“I’m starting to realize that isn’t saying much.”
We share a laugh and sling our bags over our shoulders. Together, our gazes fall to the section of the gym dominated by black and orange. Syndicate criminals populate the public fighting squares there, leaving a few open in the center just to invite trouble. Ajax’s humor melts to a groan as he runs a hand through his hair.
“You really want to do this.”
“Are you even surprised at this point?”
“No,” he admits, leading the first step towards the squares. “You would pick a fight with a kitten if you thought it was being a bully.”
-
Side by side with my eternal rival, I wade through a smog of humanity’s most unscrupulous operators with the unwavering confidence of the warrior the streams call Showmaker. My attitude does double duty as disguise and writ of passage. I stride straight into the midst of the syndicate-taken fighting squares like the entire gym belongs to me. It might as well for how slowly the undercity brawlers react. They’re too preoccupied watching out for their own kind- the cutthroat, the greedy, the killers who take offense to anything. Real power goes right over their heads.
Five squares are behind me before they even realize I passed. They turn slowly. Doubfounded at my brazen entrance into their fold. Not quite realizing that I’m not one of the syndicate, not supposed to be here, and not even a native of the undercity at all. I own that confidence all the way to the raised platform of sandstone I’ve had my eyes on since the moment I walked into the gym. It’s the only fighting square that’s gone unfilled as an open challenge to the Venters, flaunting Dynasty’s control like the brazen displays of orange color. Dead in the center slot of a three-by-three grid. Polished spotlights tone it with a tanned glow. A perfect stage that’s just begging someone to come and take it. My approach is the chum that draws a dark wave of sharks in behind as they smell blood in the water.
Ajax tilts his head towards a nearby rack of training rings, devices that can cut a JOY’s output to an entirely simulative level. I dismiss the motion with a toss of my head and push on past a trio of oddjob fighters in mismatched streetwear smoking around front of the steps to the square. I make sure to accidentally bump one of them with my shoulder as I pass, knocking the lighter from his hands. His coat flairs as he whirls and reaches for an impractically oversized handblaster. I don’t even acknowledge the threat. Just wave two fingers in a dismissive salute as I carry right up the steps and into the spotlights. There’s a shout and the telltale click of a hammer priming right before the square’s repulsorfield flares up at Ajax’s command, replacing the clanking rhythm of the gym with a rippling, electrical silence. Translucent barriers of pure energy insulate us from the outside world while I manifest a simple aura of white ki.
A steadily growing crowd of squinting faces, serrated weapons, and citrine color begins to swell outside the repulsorfield. I forget them when I turn back to Ajax, closing myself off from the rest of the gym.
My fighting superior stretches pale and lean under the floodlights, saber dormant on the floor beside his feet. Today its stunning blade is shaped into a blunt metal rod. A tool for inflicting bruises, not mortal wounds. I appreciate the gesture. When I move to set my shoes on the side of the arena and throw a wink to the circling sharks, Ajax’s masterful footsteps pad to the center of the square. His blunt blade swishes through the air like a fan as he weaves a simple pattern against an imaginary opponent. The sound of carving air sends a familiar shiver down my spine.
Even without seeing it, my instincts have butted heads against his Lungracian stance enough to know the sound of its opening mantra by heart. We’ve fought too many times for Ajax to use anything less than the ninth form as an opening against me, but against freshman duelists who brazenly challenge him without realizing how small a fish they really are in the university sea, the stance’s first form takes no prisoners. It is a testing strike. A means to measure an opponent’s worth so Ajax can dissect them at their exact skill level. Giving a newbie too much respect is the same mistake as underestimating a powerful opponent. Both lose fights that shouldn’t be lost.
Four strikes lead the opening mantra, but it’s the footwork that kills. Egotistical first-years are so blinded by the speed of Ajax’s blade and how he cycles from capital fencing to village carving that they don’t realize the beauty of his attack isn’t in its speed or ferocity, but the gardener’s intelligence that backs it. The stylistic switch puts every unwary opponent on the back foot, and even if they manage to parry the first four cuts, Ajax always sheathes his blade after the fifth.
Our underground setting change nothing of his mastery. There is a reason he is better than I, and it is not because he is stronger. I watch with envy barely restrained as he effortlessly earns the respect of the Duelists in the hostile crowd in five seconds flat. His blunt blade spins into a backhand grip before he tucks it under his arm and begins fixing his ponytail.
“You could learn that form in a day,” he says, the voice rebounding off the opposite wall. “You learned how to fight it in a day. The technique itself is all muscle memory. Brute force. There’s nothing creative about it.”
“Doesn’t make it any less impressive.”
“Is it impressive?” he asks, turning his blunted blade over in the light. “I created that form to win my first duel. I was twelve. He was a fencer. Fifteen. Fresh from the capital, parents moved for work. I studied him the entire morning of the tournament rather than warm up with my classmates.” His thumb traces a crack in the metal, leaving nothing but smoothness behind. “When we fought, I met him as he expected. Two quick thrusts like a thin blade would. He smirked. He knew that game. He did not know the straight.”
The metal makes a dangerous slurping sound as it morphs into the heirloom katana Ajax showed me in the garden. “I finished it in three strikes. Two to open him up, and the third to end.”
I let out a low whistle. “Already cold-blooded at twelve.”
He turns with a chagrined memory of a smile on his face. “I’m sure you were doing the same. We’re different sides of the same coin. You strength, I skill. Always evenly matched. But you know what the Champion says.”
“Any difference in power can be overcome with sufficient skill.” I cross my arms, head bowed. “What he never says is that the reverse is true, too. Doesn’t matter how great a fighter you are if someone throws a gigaton ki blast at you. All humans melt the same.”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“And there’s the ki fighter’s practicality.”
“Is it a stereotype?”
“That the class supposedly devoted to manipulating the energy of living creatures is wasted on peacock displays of power and juicing up single attacks as much as possible?” His head tilts from side to side, braid shifting. “Fighting is an art. Is there art in a child throwing paint across a canvas?”
“You know, I just remembered why we never got along.”
“Because I always beat you?”
“Because you always find a way to make things philosophical.”
“I didn’t study Musashi just to forget him. Strategy is grown in the fields of wisdom.”
“I’d rather fight and figure it out on the fly.”
“And that’s why we lost to Prazen.” Nodding for me to square up, Ajax raises his blade in fencing form, feet shifting to a sideways stance. His offhand hangs empty and loose, not tensed for balance. Ready to convert his momentum in a thousand different directions.
I tip my head and he tips the rounded edge. It flicks back up right when I erase the distance between us with a burst of movement, initiating combat. Then it strikes. Two quick thrusts. Right shoulder, left shoulder. Opening up my middle line. Sheathing my hand in an unneeded barrier of ki to protect from a stunning shock that will not come today, I bat the first stab to the side and continue my storm, rotating through a side somersault that leaves his blade scraping the skin from my uncovered back as it passes. He’s already shifting styles, accelerating into that crashing, two-handed village style that he wields so infrequently these days. It’s risky, reckless, and powerful. Made for hacking, not trimming. A butcher would never have conquered our university. But there’s something to be said about returning to the comforting fun of our oldest habits.
My momentum carries me past Ajax’s side out of the Lungracian stance’s opening mantra in a flourish. I jam a foot against the ground and reverse directions, returning to circling. We cycle from the first form to the second in wordless harmony. His blade sweeps low this time, again in the controlled style of a capital fencer. I skip back and wait out the obvious defense. When I fought Ajax for the first time, it took me an entire week to realize nothing would change if I crashed into him over and over again expecting something new. It was one of the first true lessons I learned: how to take a large view of the small things, and how valuable patience can be.
The third form is an energetic accelerado drawn from the Cloudjumpers of Section R. His blade grows a second end as he slips right up against my side, whirling the weapon like a shielding engine turbine. Quick and loose footwork transitions to the fourth form and its long, spearlike lunges. Heavily village. The fifth and sixth bleed into each other, and by the time Ajax reaches the tenth, he’s only begun to flourish. Sweat mats us both. Fresh welts grow on my limbs and torso. Minor ki burns and scratches ride Ajax’s arms. Echoes of the other forms intertwine as he weaves their individual strengths into a masterpiece against me. Every evolution of his technique prunes another weakness, another gap, with logical brilliance and a wisdom that tells just how well he knows my particular flaws. His finale, the seventeenth form of the Lungracian stance, answers them all.
Reading a chain-lightning burst of triangular movement that I pull off so fast I’m almost chasing my own afterimage, Ajax pivots to face away from my final stop, closes his eyes to the zero-power flashbang that I literally just started practicing on vacation, no-look parries the back-to-back roundhouse kicks I thunder towards his head, and weaves through the six-point defense I instinctively cover myself with like a mercurial whip. His blunt blade ejects the air from my lungs with pinprick accuracy. He’s catching my hand before my mind finally processes the impact.
Panting from exertion, he disperses his blade just to clasp my hand with both of his, hauling me upright. It’s a monumental exertion given the weight difference between us. Nodding in thanks, I rest my hands on my knees and lean over to catch my breath, willing the air back into my battered chest.
“No beating that,” I mutter. “You’ve been studying me for four years. Anyone else would have bit on the second redirection. Or been hit by the flashbang. Or, you know, not been able to parry me without even looking.” My eyes trace the path our battle wrought across the square. “You knew exactly where I was going to be. Just like Prazen.”
“You weren’t truly drawing on your ki. If you were, you could have blown right through me at the end.”
“Doesn’t change the fundamentals.”
“Exactly. That’s what I was trying to bring up earlier, before you attacked.” Opening a projection and summoning his blade once more, Ajax melds the tip into a proper edge and nods for me to follow as he begins scratching the sandstone between us like stick and sand. “Not that I mind. You said you learned better by fighting, anyways. I found that funny considering how much you enjoy hearing yourself talk.”
“I get it, I get it. You won. Enough gloating.”
He smiles quietly. “I didn’t know where you were going to be, Mars. I deduced it through a logical examination of your personality and habits. Your flashbang practice blew through my blinds every night we spent at the champion’s estate- clever trick, changing the damage profile of your ki like that- and you always revert to kicks when you want to close out a match emphatically. Yet for all my analysis, you can still beat out my defenses with one good blow. You can come back from deficits no one should be able to through sheer determination. You,” he says, scratching the martial artist class’s centuries-old teardrop icon into the square, “win through heart. I find victory through the mind. Yet Prazen defeated us not because he is both of our styles, but because he is something else. He is experience.”
A new symbol appears above the icons representing our two classes. “Unlike my guessing, Prazen does know exactly where we will be, and he acts with certainty that gives him stopping power even you had a hard time matching,” Ajax says. “We have no idea how long he’s been fighting, nor the extent to which Shimano Heavy’s technology has augmented him, but I’m sure you’ve felt something like him before- only, from the other side. Do you often fight first-years at your gym?”
“More like I can’t stop them from challenging me. Everyone wants to.”
“And when you fight them, do you ever feel this pull to do something to counter them? Like your mind recalling an old memory and knowing that it will go well if you just strike a particular spot, move to a particular place?”
“Instincts, yeah.”
Ajax crouches down on his haunches. “Experience, not instincts. You’ve fought for so much longer in a competitive environment than those first-years that everything they do, you’ve encountered thousands if not tens of thousands of times before. Your mind, it accumulates those experiences. And when a younger fighter faces off against you, it recognizes similarities between your experience and the problem in front of you, then answers with that feeling of knowing. You strike that particular spot on a whim and they move right into it. And when you’re on the receiving end, it feels like…”
“…like they know exactly where you’re going to be,” I murmur, nodding along. “How does this help?”
“It tells us that we don’t have to change anything fundamental in our technique. We’re competent. Individually we threaten any minor league fighter. Together, we can take a major like Prazen. But doing so will mean making ourselves into something he’ll have no experience against.”
Gathering a palmful of white ki, I blast Ajax’s artwork into oblivion, clearing the way for my own drawings. Microconcentration compresses a cutting force of ki into the tip of my finger, then directs it downwards to etch my slapshod artwork into the sandstone. “Prazen fought us like individuals, and when we tried to link up, he just broke us apart and did it anyways. We had no cohesion and played right into his hands. I did, mostly. Split away so that we could take his focus in turns without tripping each other up. Clearly, that wasn’t the right approach.” I tap the superheated stone for emphasis. “We need to become unbreakable together if we’re going to win. Not switching in and out, but…”
“...in a simultaneous approach,” Ajax agrees, albeit reluctantly. “That kind of coordination isn’t something that can be developed intentionally, though. It’s the kind of bond that only partners who understand each other from surface to core have. Two people who almost cannot comprehend existing without the other. Like you and Jolie. Twin siblings who finish each others’ sentences.”
“And what about rivals?” I try. “I’ve been chasing your shadow for four years straight. If I even did manage to outrank you, I don’t even think I’d know what to do with myself. I’m so used to studying you, losing to you, picking myself back up, and doing it again week after week. It’s how I knew exactly when you were going to play defense in the skyscraper.”
“...and how I knew exactly when you were about to blow said defense to hell by overextending,” he agrees.
“So instead of bucking those impulses where we know what each other will do, what if we try listening to them instead?”
“It’s a tough pill to swallow. But, maybe.”
“If you think it’s tough for you, put yourself in my shoes. I don’t understand how you can stop and think while you fight.”
“That you don’t think at all never ceases to amaze me.”
“Where would we even start on this? I don’t know anything about swinging a sword, and you’ve never thrown a punch in your life.”
Ajax shrugs and releases the tension in his legs, fully sitting down from his crouch. His left foot bounces an offbeat rhythm against the distant rumbles of blown-out speakers. “We understand each other as patterns and habits, just from the wrong side. Like a mirrored image. It’ll take time to fix our vision. Gym hours, in other words. Which is something both of us are rather good at.” He sighs. “Still. However we practice, you’ll have to start picking up more of the slack.”
I don’t contest the assertion. I see how his stamina already sags under a weight I can’t see. How he still hasn’t stopped breathing hard even though we finished sparring minutes ago. He means I’m going to have to carry more of the weight between us. I will. I can carry more. For him, for Jolie, for Mori, and for everyone that the Shimanos’ goals threaten.
I will always carry more.
“Your ki might be the bridge,” Ajax says, noticing my quiet. He taps his golden hair. “It connects us here.” Then his chest. “And here. It takes a great deal of heart to push your ki to its limits. Yet it also takes a logical understanding of the toll to not burn out by reaching further than you’re truly capable of. Large or small, everyone has an apex that no amount of training can surpass. Even the strongest heart may be matched with a body that simply cannot keep up with its force of will. Because of that, one’s own limit may be the most important teacher a warrior can have. If you fight against it, you will burn out, and you will lose. But if you truly understand your capabilities, even if they are not mighty alone, you will have the empathy to look beyond yourself and rally even greater strength from the people around you.”
“That sounds… oddly familiar,” I admit.
He coughs out a laugh. “You said parts of it yourself in a presentation last year; one I’m sure your sister wrote for you.”
“It did sound a little on the wordy side.”
“A little too insightful, too.”
“Hey. I’m sitting right here, jackass.” I playfully roll my eyes. “You really think I couldn’t write something like that?”
“Couldn’t? No. Wouldn’t?” His mouth wrinkles to the side. “The others admire you too much to understand why you’re always training like there’s a fire behind you. I’m sure they have their own glossy theories for why, but I have my own, too: ki doesn’t come easily to you, and you have already neared your limit for it. Haven’t you?”
The question hangs unanswered.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Ajax quietly says, more sober even than our conversation in the garden. “In truth, it’s incredible that you cover it so well. You have the heart of a warrior with ten times your strength. I have always envied that about you. Any other ki fighter with a soul like yours would be an unstoppable force. That you cannot lean on it without danger is the peak of unfairness, yet you improve it all the same.” When I still say nothing, he glances over. “Am I wrong? It happened against Prazen. You toed that line too hard.”
I shrug and lean back, thinking of that heart-attack moment and the flood of energy it brought. “It was a long shot. A stupid one.”
“Tell me.”
“We were about to die, and I was the only one still standing. I knew I wasn’t enough on my own. So I tried to be something more. Someone had to, or we were going to die.” I shake my head. “I knew what I was doing. And yeah. It was stupid. It hit me with more power than I’ve ever drawn on at once in my life. But it also wasn’t mine to take. Even if I had ten more years of training, I’m not built like that.” I turn my hands over, looking at the palms. “Second-rate fighter, first-rate dreams.”
Ajax shakes his head, a wistful emotion growing on his face. “Come. Stand with me. I have something to show you.”
Rising side by side, we face the eastern repulsorfield, facing our imaginary enemy rather than each other. Dynasty brawlers trickle away from the steps of the fighting square. A behemoth of a Modd-classed creature, bestially draconic, crusted with dark spines and crustaceous ash-red plating, watches us from the rapidly-clearing midst of the mob. Only the barest slivers of orange adorn his darkened mass in the form of a thin rope bound around one huge wrist. His chitinous arms are crossed. Head an eyeless wedge shape, impassive and unwavering as he watches us.
Ajax’s voice draws me back. “You really can’t focus, can you?”
I shake my head and return to looking forward. “Cool classes. Can’t help it.”
Ajax smiles in the corner of my vision. His blade raises up in a simple swordfighter’s pose that any child could mimic. Knees bent, blade up and forward at an angle, ready for action and adventure.
“If we want to beat Prazen, you must understand me as I do you. This is my foundation.” He looks over at me until I meet his hopeful, exhausted gaze. “Before every fight, before every decisive moment, I always have a way of focusing myself,” he says. “The method differs for everyone. Some use deep breathing. Others yoga, or hasu, or meditation. But you can’t use those in a fight. When you focus yourself before the final cut, you have to achieve clarity in the midst of battle. For me, it begins with picturing my blade as an extension of my body. And how I guide that blade always starts in my hands.”
He nods for me to follow along. Begrudgingly, I do. I sink into one of the first kickboxing stances I was ever taught. Knees bent, hands curled into fists that find their home in a basic defensive position. Again, childishly simple. To my left, Ajax’s novice stance transforms into the opening mantra of the Lungracian style. His blade readies for a thrust from his right shoulder, just as it did when we faced off. Blue eyes wide open.
“First comes hands,” he says, smiling to himself like he’s sharing a childhood secret. “Sometimes I even say it aloud when I fight. First comes hands. I’m sure it sounds silly. But it’s the truth. Focus comes from the hands. Not the feet or hips or mind. It, like power, is something you guide. Not something you stoke.”
The next time Ajax looks over, my hands are raised and ready; my breathing even as I try to remember the stillness of that lake and mist and the burning fire I seek. I remember us in Fang’s garden. The tranquility and peace. Dew dripping from bamboo.
My brow narrows in concentration. I do not look to my hands as I move them, forming the triangle at my hip that marks the stance of gathering power. Wind stirs around me. Crimson hair ripples across my vision as aura stirs above my skin. Wispy trails of harmless white fire funnel smoothly between my palms. And as the light grows, I release the breath I have been holding since I brought my hands together, and I repeat those words so I might make them my own.
“First, comes, hands.”