“Is it really wise to be training together this close to the yacht party? We’re only two days out now.” I took a break from folding another shirt and pair of pants to sit on my bed. “Aren’t you worried we’re going to get sick of each other when we should be focused?”
“Well, you have to admit that we haven’t done any real group exercises. We still haven’t spent any extended time with Julio and Braden.” Rebecca set down the pair of shorts she was folding to hold up a finger to me. “And no, the beating you two put on each other does not count as time spent together.”
“Fine, I’ll concede that,” I grumbled. “But does it have to be at the ice rink? I can’t skate. Why did we agree to this again?”
“Because you want to get stronger, you want to see your friends, and I want to learn to ice skate.” She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek, beating down any mock anger I was able to summon. She ran a hand through my blond hair. “Since you’re such a sweet, tall, strong, and handsome boyfriend, you thought it’d be a good idea for us to learn together.”
“Laying it on a bit thick there.” We grinned at each other. “At least you won’t be learning with Alex. I don’t think I want to do any activity with him that involves a slippery surface and blades on our feet.”
Our packing wasn’t all the way done, not that packing was ever truly done. Looking at the work we did, we had enough put away we could justify heading to the ice rink. An ice rink was just casually built in the middle of a community for people with suerpowers, because of course it was. It shouldn’t have been a surprise to learn we had one there, and yet, I still managed to be surprised. I thought the community center would be enough for the collection of homes. Apparently, that’s where I had been a naïve idiot.
With Shelly offering to watch Megan for the day so we could squeeze in some group training before the yacht party, my only excuse to back out had been ripped from my hands. I couldn’t keep the disappointment off my face when Shelly walked out the front door with the kiddo right behind her. She sent me a knowing smirk right before she shut the door to take her out to Lincoln for some shopping.
Outside had a crisp chill to it, unseasonably cool for the rapidly approaching summer. I was just warm enough that I didn’t grab a jacket. Rebecca wasn’t a fan of anything below eighty degrees, so she was still in full winter attire. If it wasn’t for her deliberately dressing so warm, I would have thought she was just looking for an excuse to nuzzle up closer to me on our walks. As much as I liked that, I still poked some fun at her for it on the way to the rink under the beautiful, clear sky. Still no tornadoes, which I took as a sign that Nebraska was more than happy to have us in there. If the weather approved, we were definitely in it for the long haul.
Unfortunately, karma was right on my tail. For some reason, a building designed to maintain ice for extended periods of time had to be cold. Everyone from both our teams was there and I was the only one dressed for a day at the beach. Another thing everyone else was prepared for was ice skating. Lizzy was graceful with fluid movements and Alex was shooting pucks into a hockey net with ease while looping around his section of the ice on his skates. Lori and Rosie were good enough at skating, only letting a few stumbles halt their momentum. Val, Braden, and Julio were only a couple of steps above what Rebecca and I could do, but they could at least skate without holding the boards along the rink. Julio and Braden both stumbled and fell a couple of times each. Val’s balance and strength were both superior, allowing her to catch herself before she landed on her butt from a bad turn.
Getting close to one of the benches that hockey teams used, I nervously looked down at the unforgivingly slippery surface. Lizzy skated up and stopped on a dime, looking at my attire with a grin. “Did no one tell you that-”
“No, no one told me. It’s cold, but there’s no wind, so it could be worse.” I peered down at the ice again. My heart started to pound, both out of fear of injury and out of humiliating myself in front of my peers. I’d managed to make it through my entire life in Oregon without slipping on ice in the winter. My time was coming, and there was no better time than the present.
Lizzy got Rebecca properly sized up for skates, going through a bunch of the ones sitting on a rack by the rink. She told me that was because there were different kinds of skates used, and all of us would be using hockey skates for the sake of staying on the same page. I didn’t have any help getting ones that fit well, managing to find a pair that fit nicely in a few minutes. The third pair fit just right for me. Lori came by to stress the importance of getting a pair that fit right, especially since we were beginners. Falling and risking injury was going to be part of the learning process anyway. Having poorly fitted blades on our feet didn’t have to add to that process, so she triple-checked that my skates were the right size and that I laced them up properly. She looked satisfied for a few moments, still reminding me to be cautious a few times before she went back to what she’d been doing.
I leaned against anything I could find to help keep my balance, not able to even budge an inch. Alex rested his hands and chin on his hockey stick, waiting for me to try and make my way over there. I didn’t know how to move forward with the skates, and I didn’t want to push off the boards that went around the rink. I was scared that I’d put too much into it and that’d result in me falling on my face. The attempt to move without the wall resulted in me falling anyway. At least I didn’t shoot out of my starting position like I was fired out of a cannon.
“Falling the first time you hit the ice is part of it,” Alex said, gliding his way over to me. I took the outstretched hand he offered and allowed him to pull me back up. He smirked when he saw me glare at him. “That’s not just me being a dick. Professional hockey players and ice skaters all fall down, and they’re the best on the planet. Easier to get used to it early. Come on, I’ll teach you the basics.”
After a lot more ice-eating trial and error, I finally got the basics enough to stand and carefully push forward without falling. Alex taught me about staying on the inside edge of my skate, but I didn’t really understand that, so he just had me bend my knees slightly inward. From that position, he showed me exactly how to push off with my skates to drift forward. The first few times I did that made me fall face-first onto the ice before I eventually found my balance. Alex said I wasn’t allowed to use my powers to assist in skating or to keep me propped up against a fall. I had to learn the way of skating the hard way, so learn the hard way I did.
“Can you put up a shield in front of you and then put up another one in front of that one? Or does it block you from putting another one up?” He started gathering pucks in a wide circle around me, probably for some planned revenge against me for Lizzy stealing pucks from his team when I first started training.
“Yeah, I think so. I put up a bunch in a row in front of Lori back in Columbus.” Just to make sure, I put two up in front of me, both clearly visible.
“Great, I just wanted to be sure a slight line of sight interruption wouldn’t block you from generating more.” He took a puck on the blade of his stick and quickly fired it into the first shield. The sound of the impact made me flinch and rub my ears. I’d never been to a hockey game before. I didn’t think the sound of a hockey puck hitting something could be so loud. “Your shields are holding better. Today won’t be a waste of our time then.”
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“Is your plan to deafen me?” My ears were still ringing from the first one and I was not exactly eager for him to shoot more.
“No, it’s not. Now be quiet and put up a shield around your entire body.” He waited patiently, or at least as patiently as he could, for me to break down the first two shields and construct a cylindrical one around my body. “You’re going to try and be a goalie against me, so to speak.”
“Don’t those sit in the net?” My gaze drifted toward the unoccupied net for a moment. Alex took that opportunity to launch another puck at my shield, jolting me back to attention. “Can you stop doing that? You’re going to give me a headache.”
“It’s going to be your job to stop that. To stop all of these, really. Follow the shot, put up a shield, and block it. Bam, you’re a goalie now, congrats. Make a square one that’s a little bigger than your hand.” Without waiting for me to ask any further questions, he sent a puck right toward my face. It bounced harmlessly off the shield I had set up, but I still flinched from the sound. “Okay, react better than a sloth on dental anesthetic would next time.”
Even with his friendly and helpful advice, I still couldn’t do it. I couldn’t follow the puck off his stick blade or through the air. His idea was for me to swiftly create a small barrier in the air to block the puck, tear it down, and be ready for the next shot. The idea was simple enough, and it didn’t seem bad either. It was a good way to practice defending against small, fast attacks that could come from anywhere.
Sadly, my vision and reaction times weren’t up to snuff for it. Every time I got a barrier up in the air, the puck was already falling to the ice after hitting the protective barrier I kept up around me, and half the time the barrier was in the wrong place anyway. Between my own ineptitude and the ringing in my ears each impact created, I felt like I was close to losing my mind.
“This is stupid,” I complained, using my powers to shove a puck toward the boards in frustration. “What’s this going to be useful for? Don’t think I’m going to be put in a life-threatening battle against a professional hockey player any time soon.”
“Never rule out any possibility,” Alex chastised, wagging his finger at me like I was a disobedient puppy. “It’s not about that. This is about improving your reaction time and how well you see attacks. You’re living in a naïve fantasy if you think every fight that you’ll be in will have massive shadow warriors or bright blue fire. There are subtle powers out there. I’m talking about ones that give you only a second to react to if you’re lucky. Not every surface you fight on will be stable ground either. There are going to be times where you fight with poor balance.”
For Alex, he truly was being surprisingly patient. His words still had an edge to them, sure. He was never going to not have a little bite when he was serious about something. Still, from the guy who’d barely give me the time of day when we first met, he’d come a long way. If nothing else, I could respect his work ethic and how much he wanted me to improve. That was about the only thing that kept me from quitting outright.
We kept practicing, which was what I generously called my miserable failures. I was getting a little bit better with my barrier placement, but even if my placement was perfect, I was still too late to stop the puck. My entire body started to get sticky with sweat, something I didn’t think could happen standing on ice. That made me feel gross, which added to my feelings of frustration, and I just opted to wing it. I saw the puck on the stick and tried to use the past shots to guess where the shot would go. Almost the moment it was off the blade of his stick, it bounced right off the small square Shimmer-Shield I spawned.
“Finally.” Alex shook his head, grumbling something else about taking too long to figure it out. “Players get paid seven—sometimes eight—figures to shoot pucks or stop them, and they still can’t hit or block everything accurately. There’s a lot of randomness to this. I wanted you to start trying to predict instead of reacting to something you wouldn’t be able to. Let that be the lesson from this session. Vision and prediction can make up for a lack of reaction time if you’re going against something that’s just too fast for you. You want to attack, not react. Nothing personal, but if you try to react, it’ll be bad. You’re just not fast enough.”
“Can I get faster?” My legs started to wobble, threatening to send me tumbling into the shield around me.
“Yeah, you can probably get faster with certain exercises. I’m faster now than I was when I was a teenager.” He picked a puck up off the ice with his stick, tossing it through the air on the blade like a hacky sack. “Go sit and rest for a bit. It’s time to take a breather.”
“Oh, really? I didn’t know ‘break’ was a word you knew. Thought you’d just run me into the ground until I died.” My frustration and exhaustion made it come out snarkier than I really meant for it to. Alex didn’t seem to care about my silly little outburst.
“You can be the first one in the building and the last one out. Doesn’t do much to help your skills if you burn out and run ragged.” Alex went back to shooting pucks at the empty net while I took down my shield and unsteadily made my way back to the bench.
The instant I was off my legs, waves of aches and pains rippled through them. I was not in the best shape anyway, let alone for skating, and it showed. My legs spasmed as I stretched them out. Trying to rub the soreness away didn’t do much to help the pain, only managing to make me feel a little proactive. What did help me was Rebecca sitting down next to me, flipping red hair out of her face to reveal shining green eyes and a small sheen of sweat on her forehead.
“This is so much fun,” she whispered. Enthusiastically, she patted my arm and pointed toward Lizzy. Our tall friend graced us with a confident and elegant spin in the air, probably managing a wink our way. There was certainly a proper ice-skating name for it, but I was just a guy with sore legs, not one with a working brain or any skating knowledge. “Isn’t that so cool? Lizzy’s great at this.”
“Dang, are you my girlfriend, or are you hers?”
“Aw, are you jealous?” She laughed and rested her head against my chest. “Don’t worry, I like your hair more than I like hers anyway.”
“How’d you take to skating? My legs are killing me.” As if in response, my right leg twitched, bringing the pain back to the forefront of my thinking.
“Fell enough that the seat of my jeans is wet. Lori said if I wore any kind of cotton bottoms, like leggings, my butt would be frozen and I’d be miserable. It’s a good thing I dress for the occasion.”
“One of us has to have some brains in the relationship.” I pulled her closer and rested my chin on her head. Val was mixing in some flying with her skating, which looked great. With some extra skating practice and coordination, she’d be able to put on a whole show. Julio and Braden were trading some light jabs with their own powers, with the bright lighting in the rink seeming to hamper Braden’s Anomaly, so they made sure to keep it gentle. Lori and Lizzy were doing something similar to Alex’s lesson for me, just without the embarrassing failures. They were trading light physical jabs while moving, often switching to awkward stances and positions to stay off balance.
I grinned. “I thought this would be a day of goofing off. It’s good to see everyone is taking it pretty seriously.”
One thing I could appreciate was that we could just sit there in silence and enjoy each other’s company. We didn’t require constant talking, or even contact, which made everything so much easier. I wanted to impress Rebecca, obviously, but I liked that I didn’t have to talk endlessly to do it. She seemed proud of any progress I made in anything, a feeling I mirrored for her own accomplishments. That seemed to be perfectly fine for us. Maybe that was the norm for most couples. I wouldn’t know, since she was my first girlfriend. I was just winging everything while trying to be thoughtful of her.
“Break time’s up! Let’s go!” Alex skated up to the bench, reaching over to take a sip from a water bottle. “You’ve been there almost half an hour. Let’s go.”
Time sure does fly by when you’re not being used for target practice.
“I’ll await your return with bated breath!” Rebecca dramatically cried out. When I turned back to reply, she was down on one knee, had one hand clutched to her chest, and the other was outreached toward the ceiling. On the other side of the rink, Lizzy snorted and laughed, so I just turned back to Alex for my second round of being a target dummy. At least Alex had some decent lessons for me to learn that might keep me alive in a fight.
With how my legs felt after the day, I was wondering if it was the best decision, even if I might end up avoiding death because of it. Was it worth it if it felt like he was just trying to kill me right then and there?