Willow
Coach’s Dojo, Texas, Earth
The world was spinning. Again. Fury raged with the realization. Not due to the spinning, but because of what it meant. She’d lost. Again. The exposed steel beams which held up the metal roof oscillated, casting colors of every shade across the room. It was a familiar room, or would be when it stopped going round and round. It would resolve into an old, but well maintained, gymnasium housed within an unassuming warehouse building. The track around the outer edge was padded with a semi-cushioned material which had enough give to be comfortable to run dozens of laps on with sneakers, but would give a barefoot walker a near instant mix of rug-burn and asphalt-scrapes.
Within the boundary of the track, the north-most part of the gym housed a state of the art weight training area. State of the art as of the 1960s, that is. There wasn’t a machine or pulley-system to be found. Most of the free-weights weren’t adjustable, being solid chunks of steel or iron. The “resistance bands” available were more than likely made of some poor animal’s twined innards, rather than some kind of synthetic or plant based material. Of course, if you want some entertainment while you run through a gauntlet of sets then you’d better like FM radio.
The east side of the huge open space was dedicated to a weapon’s training area. Besides the large cordoned off area for weapon sparing, the space was mostly dominated by: several articulating wooden dummies, a couple metal ones, and even an honest to God roboticized monstrosity that was more spider in form than human. Besides the ‘automated opponents’, was the weapon’s rack. It was absolutely filled with dulled and padded weaponry, almost any melee or thrown weapon imaginable was on the wall. Nun-chucks? Of course. Tomahawk? Naturally. A Glaive with blades on both ends but opposite sides of the shaft? Check. None of those were even exotic, by the grand training-rack’s standards. Try something more outlandish. What about a boot which spring-loaded shuriken into a loose magnetic spur - which could release its payload when the wielder properly kicked? No doubt it was on the wall. Probably.
Once a trainee was done either sparing or honing their skills against dummies, they might wonder to the western portion of the dojo. If they did, they’d find the acrobatics section. Vaulting, bars, beams, a couple large ground trampolines, ropes, the works. Of course, each piece of equipment was made of some unforgiving material or other. Most of it was metal or stone. It was also all old and possibly second-hand, but well maintained and clean. If someone couldn’t see their distorted reflection as they walked the balance beam, then they’d probably been on it for hours working on their routine.
The entrance to the gym was just a huge garage door, which was open when the gym was. That doorway was southern facing and led directly to a stretch and warm-up area. This was, perhaps, the only part of the entire gym which bowed to modern wisdom in material or form. Yoga balls and mats, foam rollers, cheap message guns, and other random ‘warm up and cool down aides’.
Of course, every section of the gym revolved around the central podium. A raised area with four standard-sized, 20 square foot, boxing rings. It was within one of these rings that she lay, angry and vengeful. Willow swept herself to her feet in a fluid motion as the dizzy-spell ended. She glared up and across the ring at her enemy. Coach smiled back with his normal sardonic, lazy, expression. The expression that meant he wasn’t taking her seriously.
She screamed and flew at him. Her view pulled back, the world slowing momentarily as it did. She saw herself from above, from every side. She was young, probably fourteen. She still had her hair cut in a short bob. She’d kept it short for a long time thinking, ‘long hair is a weapon which can be used against me!’ It hadn’t been until around seventeen or eighteen that she’d realized it was a dumb consideration. She wasn’t a soldier, going into battle. She was a sportswoman, who always had time to put up her hair and generally wore protective gear which entirely covered it anyway.
This version of her was still developing. The disembodied version of Willow examining the frozen scene would have winced, had she the face to do so, at how scrawny and weak she had looked. She hadn’t been weak. Not compared to other girls her age. She never compared herself against them, though. No. She compared herself to boys her age, and of course coach. Her primary concern with boys at this point had mostly been, ‘could I beat him in a fight?’ She hadn’t ever been a particularly romantic girl and hadn’t even developed an interest in them until long after her peers.
Beyond her body, though, this memory of herself was out of control. She’d already been training under coach for years, maybe around seven. Yet the anger was still burning bright and unfettered. The memory resumed, with Willow watching as an outsider this time. Her face would probably burn a bit with embarrassment, even as her younger self’s burned in shame and rage, as coach casually kicked her in the gut. The kick wasn’t tricky, or fast, or even that strong. Yet it both connected, and sent her flying.
She watched herself get back up and charge back in, stupidly. She didn’t even try anything new. Coach didn’t do anything new either, just casually kicked her each time she was in range. Watching the pseudo recording of the event brought with it a memory of her thoughts at the time, ‘if I’m strong enough, I can get back up as many times as it takes. If I’m determined enough, I’ll beat him!’ Something like that. She was pretty sure she’d watched some kind of anime recently wherein a certain fiery villainess had impressed her by blowing up a mountain with lightning. Lightning fueled by rage.
Kick. Recover, rush. Kick. It went on for an embarrassingly long time. Until she, inevitably, ran out of energy and just laid there. Staring up into the rafters. Because of course she ran out of energy. She’d been spending it like it was oxygen in a forest. Meanwhile, coach had barely had to move. The worst part, for the Willow of then, and the Willow of now, was that she knew better. She knew how to fight, and well. But coach had pissed her off. On purpose. Again.
She saw his face swim into view, not smiling mockingly, but wearing his ‘game face’ his stern soldier face. “Willow, up.” He commanded and she obeyed. She was too tired not to. The memory was oddly fuzzy, as exhaustion had caused the edges to be blurry and faded.
More commands came, “Rush me.” She ran at him, just as he had been.
“Dodge left, guard low.” His casual kick flew past her right side.
“Block right sweep.” The kick had turned into a sweep, which she caught and shoved down hard.
“Close in and jab.” She did.
On and on, the fight continued. She followed every order, then she started to follow the orders before they came. She knew how to fight, after all. Then the orders stopped coming, but she kept following them. She hit coach. Right in the jaw.
“Stop.”
The command froze her mid follow-up. She blinked several times, then grinned up at him. In her too-high voice she squealed, “I hit you!” She threw her gloved hands in the air in celebration.
Coach smiled at her and sat down against the ropes, just a bit lower than eye level with her now. “Do you know why you managed to hit me?”
“Because you told me how?” She dropped her arms and frowned at him, as she realized he’d helped her win.
He shook his head, “I told you what to do to get you going, then you took over. You knew what to do. What was different?”
A few moments, then she sighed. She knew what he wanted, since he’d told her a million times, “I used my head, not my heart.”
A soft “hmmm…” Then, “You were still angry, right?”
She nodded, “Yeah. I wanted to hit you SO BAD. You were making me SO MAD!” She stomped her little foot and jerked her arms downward for emphasis.
He chuckled and rubbed his jaw as if it hurt. The younger version of Willow felt proud, vindicated. She’d hurt him. She was awesome. The older version watching, rolled her metaphorical eyes. Coach was clearly unharmed and just as clearly he’d let her hit him. She hadn’t been doing terribly, but he was still much better than her at that point in her training.
“So, how’d you hit me?”
Another beat of thought passed before young her answered hesitantly, “I… Fought smarter? Used what I knew?”
He nodded, “And, you controlled your anger. You were disciplined. Disciple doesn’t mean we don’t feel, it doesn’t mean we don’t have impulses and reflexes. It means we decide what to do with those things. Through disciple, we control ourselves.”
Little Willow nodded seriously, barely paying attention. She chirped, “Can we have a snack before working on my gymnastics?” Her energy was coming back rapidly and she was bouncing from foot to foot eagerly.
Coach chuckled and stood, ruffling her hair before he climbed out of the ring and headed toward the small fridge tucked away behind some of the weights.
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Still floating, Willow watched herself crying in the same ring. Now much older and presumably wiser. A lump tried to form in a throat that didn’t exist. Her left shoulder was a disgusting mass of uneven flesh. It looked as if there were dozens of bones which did their best to approximate the shape of a ball beneath the skin. In reality, the shoulder had been saved by dent of multiple surgeries implanting bits of metal all over the place. She’d never have full motion in the arm again and she’d never be beautiful again. She’d always be weaker in that side and there would always be a risk of the wounds causing additional problems if she strained the surgical implants too much.
The gym was closed, dark. She remembered coming here to see her favorite place in the world, just one more time. It had been almost three months since she was released from the hospital, but she hadn’t been here since the accident. Coach had been with her more days than not, of course. So had her parents. They didn’t know she’d decided to come here, she was fully cleared and as “better” as she’d ever be, after all.
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She thought she’d be strong enough, disciplined enough not to break down. She’d been wrong. Almost her entire life had been spent training here. She’d go to school, do her best in class only because she knew coach would drop all physical training and switch her to a strict academic schedule if she started doing poorly in school. She’d tried ignoring school once, that had been a long week while coach and ma’ma had ‘gotten her back up to speed’. This place was part of her. She used to think she was part of it, too. Now she realized that wasn’t true. The gym would keep running without her. Just like the rest of the world would keep moving on without her. She’d won her medals, some people knew about her and probably even admired her. For now. They’d forget about her soon enough though, just like the gym would.
So she cried. The thought of stopping herself came and went. She could stop herself, she realized and found comfort in the realization. She was disciplined enough. No longer a child who couldn’t control her emotions. But she didn’t need to control her sorrow, she needed to let it out. The tears flowed until there were no more left. Although she felt there should be a puddle on the mat beneath her, it was dry. Her shirt and sleeves were a mess, and her face was probably a sorry sight of snot and salty water. She didn’t care, she’d mourn her loss properly.
Long before she was done, the garage door suddenly opened. Letting in the mid-day sun. Mr. Joseph, one of Coach’s friends from the marines, nodded at her, “Willow.” He said, just like he had every other time he’d opened up to find her already there.
Mr. Joseph went about his routine as if nothing was wrong, unlocking doors, cleaning equipment, and generally getting the place ready for business. Willow almost laughed at the absurdity. It was one thing to realize things would go on without her, it was another thing to see it so callously put in front of her. She stiffly stood and wiped her tears away one more time before climbing out of the ring and making her way to leave through the now-open garage door.
“Not getting back into it, yet, Willow?” Mr. Joseph’s voice was conversational. When she looked back toward him in confusion, he was wiping down the warm-up/cool-down equipment with a fresh towel and bottle of disinfectant. She knew he’d probably done the same thing the night prior after closing. He was a large barn of a man, at least six and a half feet tall with shoulders that seemed almost as broad. He had a very slight ponch, which he sometimes jokingly refereed to as his, “Emergency energy store.” Given how hard he worked and how much he used the equipment in the gym, Willow wasn’t really sure how he had any fat at all.
Hesitantly, she asked, “Back into it… Yet… You… You heard what happened, right?”
Nodding, the huge man looked up from his task, “Yup. No shame in taking some time. Just don’t give yourself too long or you’ll start making excuses.”
Her jaw was literally hanging open. Future Willow snickered at her own expense, knowing what was coming next.
Mr. Joseph raised an eyebrow, “Trying to catch flies, Willow? Didn’t take you for a frog.”
Snapping her mouth shut, Willow went to cross her arms, then felt a sharp reminder that doing something that simple wasn’t quite within reach. She glared and used her left hand to wave at her eye-sore of a shoulder, “I can’t do shit with this!”
Raising an eyebrow, he answered levelly, “Loss sucks, kid… But it doesn’t mean you give up. You just gotta change the way you think about things, maybe change your goals a bit. Lots of those acrobatic stunts you pull would probably tough-”
“-Impossible.” She cut him off flatly.
He shrugged, “I’m no expert to tell ya anything about that. What I will say is that I know a few men and women who lost more than some motion in their shoulder and are still pursuing their dreams. It’s not a matter of can or can’t, it’s a matter of will, determination.” He smirked, “Jim would say it’s a matter of discipline, I bet. Ol’ straight-lace drank too much of the cool-aid for my tastes, but he’s right sometimes. I know he turned your feral behind into a respectable citizen, after all.”
Smiling a bit, Willow half-halfheartedly stuck her tongue out before thinking through what he was saying. Eventually, she decided she would stay. She was being dramatic before. There was no reason she couldn’t keep coming to the gym, she just couldn’t play around in the gymnastics area. Or… Could she… Was it possible to do a one-handed bars routine? Well… Why not try?
Taking a deep breath, Willow decided. If she could learn to control her own internal storm of emotions and impulses, she could overcome something as simple as a minor disability. “Through discipline, I control myself. Nothing else controls me, nothing else limits me.”
Feeling… Something… Willow found herself looking forward to what she’d accomplish. Because she was determined, she would accomplish something great.
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Willow woke with a bitter-sweet smile on her face. The dream was fresh and clear in her mind. Both memories were precious, they were defining moments in her life. It was odd, she probably wouldn’t have been able to recall them in such detail consciously. Yet they embodied large portions of who she was now. She whispered to herself, “Through discipline, I control myself. Nothing else controls me, nothing else limits me.” Her dojo trembled and somehow became more stable. It hadn’t been unstable before, as far as she knew. It was as if it had gone from a simulation, to a reality. She noticed that her avatar, which was a mere ghost haunting the dojo with how depleted her instruction mana was, hadn’t changed at all.
Opening her eyes, Willow stretched wide and turned her head sharply in surprise upon bumping into someone. She saw Naomi curled up, back to her, sound asleep. Pulling herself into a seated position and tucked her legs against her chest. She took deep, slow, breaths as she took a moment to re-commit the dreams she’d had to memory while they were fresh. She didn’t want to lose them, and seeing them played out in front of her like that made her realize that she almost had. Once she felt she had sufficiently etched them upon her mind, she noticed a new small shelf in her dojo. A shelf containing two DVDs in 90s style boxes, edgy cover art and all, representing each of them. The sight brought with it a sense of deep satisfaction. She knew at a base level that, unless she intentionally destroyed them, those DVDs, and the memories they represented, would be with her forever.
Done preserving critical moments of her life, Willow just sat in thought for a while. Some of her time was spent trying to dredge up additional memories, afraid now that she would loose too many if she didn’t consciously preserve them. Most of her time, though, was spent aching as she remembered the people in her life who she’d likely never see again. Her parents, Coach, Mr. Joseph, Vash, Whitney, James, Fenny, and so many more. Reliving those moments had, finally, fully nailed home the reality of the situation.
She had mourned her losses in the emptiness between dying and being reborn, or is it spawned? Recreated? Reloaded?, into this new world. Yet, it hadn’t been enough. She knew it hadn’t, but there was so much to learn and do. Besides some faction immediately trying to scam her into signing her next thousand years or whatever away, being attacked and kidnapped by a lunatic, then being shoved through a portal and thrust into entirely unfamiliar situations, not to mention Magic! There had just been plenty to keep her from thinking about sore subjects too much. She could have asked the others to take a couple days so she could fully process but… avoiding pain was usually the more pleasant option. She stared off into nothing for a long time, lost in thoughts. She let herself feel the now somewhat distant and dull, throbbing, heart wrenching, longing to hug her pa-paw. To laugh with her ma’ma. To dance around with Coach, dodging punches and throwing his own, taunting and taking taunts, laughing.
Eventually she felt a slight smile tugging her lips upward in a smile as she remembered times gossiping with Vash, arguing with Whitney, challenging James to random unnecessary contests. It had all just been a tutorial, but now she realized that it had all been so important and precious to her. Yet she’d taken it all for granted, until it was gone. She sighed, pushing away the morose thoughts and mood and centered herself. It was good to remember, it was good to process, but she wouldn’t wallow. Returning her attention to the moment she was in now, rather than the ones she’d already lived, she took in her situation.
The tent was pleasantly warm which, after a moment of consideration, was likely due to their combined body heat. She felt a bit bad for Jonah, hopefully he hadn’t been too cold. Looking around, she didn’t see any clothes in the tent. Probably still hanging outside…
Before she did anything impulsive, like immediately open the tent and go get to her morning exercise like she wanted to, she mentally ran through the previous night’s events. Sooo… What are the chances I pass out if I try to get up again? Concerned, she began a careful, thorough, examination of herself. She found no scrapes or bruises on her body, felt no aches or pains. No headache. No dizziness when she sat up. She didn’t feel anything bad at all. Not even the lingering soreness she’d expect after over-exerting herself.
Huh… I wonder if Jonah got a healing spell or something. Although her instinct was to sneak out and let Naomi sleep, she recognized that she’d also thought she’d been fine the previous night. Then she’d passed out after just taking a step or two… Or had someone grabbed her? It was fuzzy. The exact details didn’t really matter right now. What did matter is she shouldn’t assume she was fine just because she felt like she was.
Gently, she shook Naomi awake. The woman yawned, stretched, and sat up while wiping the sleep from her eyes. “Morning Willow, how do you feel?”
“Great!” She chirped, not allowing any of the still lingering emotion from her dreams and following trip down memory lane leak through. “Did Jonah get a spell to heal me or something?”
Shaking her head, Naomi scooted forward and started undoing the tent-flap ties, “No. We didn’t even think to look for that, actually. Probably should have. I was able to scream at you loudly enough that, I think, you used your xp to improve your body’s ability to heal itself.”
Eyebrows shooting up, Willow focused inward. Specifically, she checked the mural of her body. She found that said mural had a new layer to it, it looked almost like a system of veins - though it was entirely separate and mostly didn’t even follow her actual veins. She intuitively understood that this was a system which would improve her body’s ability to regenerate using her mana. She was fairly certain that it wouldn’t automatically kick in, unless she was unconscious. While she was conscious she’d have to intentionally feed mana into the… ability? Nah, I think this is closer to what the rank 2 packet described as a skill. It’s tied to my body, not my soul-nexus. Neat! Oooh… In that case…
Gleefully, she followed Naomi out of the tent. They found themselves standing, for the first time in way too long, under a clear sky. This sky wasn’t blue, like Earth’s, but it was still nice to be able to see it! Instead, the sky was a soft orange-red color. It was very pretty. With the mist gone, they could also see there was what looked like multiple small suns. Naturally, Willow didn’t stare directly at them… for too long. They were each a slightly different color: one deep red, one soft orange, and one a pale yellow.
The weather was also delightful. The previous night have been way too cold, and the following day had been too hot, just like every other day had been. Today, though, was perfect. She’d guess it was around 22ºC and sunny. Things were looking up! Too bad I didn’t get to allocate all of that sweet sweet xp into improving more than just my healing… Though… Hm… I wonder just how good that skill is.
Before she could convince herself to start experimenting, Naomi’s voice intruded, “Hey, it looks like Jonah took our jumpers down and put them in my tent. Here.”
Taking the beat up garment, Willow frowned at it. It wasn’t cute. Nor was it comfy. She lamented, momentarily, not going shopping before being kidnapped by a madman. Then she got dressed and started going through her morning workout routine, slowly. She took it easy, not jumping in with her normal gusto. At least until the found herself entirely free of pain of any kind and couldn’t find even a single thing wrong with her body. Then she went all out, as usual.
Jonah came out about half an hour later and looked horrified, then amused, to see Willow exercising. She saw him and Naomi talk, probably about her. She just kept at it until she had broken a good sweat and was ready to eat.
Then she joined her friends, who were breaking out the last precious rations the kobolds had left them with. They’d been supplementing with their own savaging so they had stretched out the higher quality food much longer than initially expected to. Before digging into her own pack, she looked down at Naomi and Jonah with hands on her hips and announced, “You two!”
They looked up at her, Naomi with a bland expression which might or might not indicate interest and Jonah with uncertainty. She grinned, “Are the best!”
I miss my family, my friends, even Coach’s dojo and my past life… But I can’t let that stop me from enjoying the new friends and opportunities I have. So far, this new life has been fun! Beating on nonsense fodder monsters, making friends with little crocodile people, what’s not to like?
She flopped down and got to the exciting business of making herself a hearty breakfast. If she cut herself a little bit while, unnecessarily, slicing the last small chunk of cheese she had - just to channel a tiny bit of mana into her skill while watching the cut vanish almost instantly… Well that was just a coincidence.