Chương 23: 11.Warm Welcome with a Fist 11-3

I dragged my body—freshly scraped off a basalt wall and barely reassembled into human shape—to the front of the formation, back still pulsing with every beat. The pain was the annoying kind, not the drop-you-immediately kind, more like a debt collector who'd taken up residence on your spine and was tapping an accounts ledger: still here, still billing. Wonderful. A fourteen-year-old girl. Young. Silver-haired.

Theoretically the type who should be sitting in a classroom worrying about math homework and lunch choices. Currently standing in a Federal high-gravity special operations training ground, about to receive a hands-on education from a two-meter semi-mechanized war accident. Civilization really is advancing. Karl stood across from me, synthetic voice as flat as an equipment operations manual.

"CQC is not street fighting."

"Funny," I worked feeling back into my numb fingers and held my chin up through sheer stubbornness, "I'm not here for etiquette lessons either."

"I can tell."

"That sounded like it needed hitting."

"You're welcome to try." …Right then. The class stepped back and arranged themselves into a standard, bloodless semicircle. Everyone's expression was attentive—not the attentiveness of students, but of witnesses to a sanctioned public event. Understandable. One of humanity's baser instincts is the low-cost satisfaction of watching someone else go first. Karl raised one alloy arm.

"Basic rules," he said.

"You can attack, block, evade, disengage. The one thing you cannot do is expect me to hold back."

"Sounds like the Federation's approach to parenting."

"Begin." No countdown. No preparatory stance. No please take care of me. He just came. Not a charge. More like a wall that had decided to accelerate toward you and establish a close physical relationship. Karl's right shoulder dipped, left hand feinted high, but the real attack came from low, cutting in fast enough that the profanity in my brain only made it to rough draft stage. I stepped back on instinct, both arms crossing to block— Crack. I blocked it. Then I was airborne. Not an exaggeration.

Literally off the ground. The high gravity made every kilogram of my body more inconvenient than usual, but Karl's strike still picked me up clean and threw me—demonstrating precisely what I thought I blocked it but actually I just absorbed it more completely looks like in practice. I hit the ground rolling, elbow scraping rough floor, eye twitching hard enough that I nearly delivered a formal eulogy to the Federation's entire military education apparatus on the spot.

"Too straight," Karl said.

"You hit too straight, you bastard!"

"Complaints you can make while still alive have corrective value. Again." He didn't even walk over to follow up. Just stood there and waited for me to get up myself. That was the most infuriating part. Because it meant in his assessment, that hit hadn't even been worth pursuing. I wasn't being seriously beaten—I was a test consumable that had just entered the field. I spat the blood taste out of my mouth and found my footing again.

"Again is again," I wiped the corner of my mouth.

"At least you're not the one getting thrown into walls today."

"You'll miss that first hit soon enough."

"If you wrote feedback like that in a parent-teacher notebook, parents would bring guns to school." Karl didn't answer. His foot moved. This time I saw it. Not the whole motion—just a small tell. The outer edge of his right foot pressed down slightly, weight shifting not toward my face but cutting into the empty space at my left shoulder. My brain hadn't finished processing it when my body already stepped sideways. Sure enough, that alloy arm swept past my ear, the pressure differential nearly trimming my bangs.

I dodged the first one. Good. No time to celebrate. The second was already there. Karl rotated his hip and drove a knee straight into my flank.

"Ngh—!" That wasn't pain. That was my organs filing collective resignation. I folded over, nearly seeing my life's highlights. My stomach felt like someone had grabbed it in a fist; the air in my lungs compressed into one deeply undignified sound. I staggered back two steps, nearly went down, tears threatening under the joint authority of high gravity and blunt force.

"Too slow," Karl said.

"You—" I gasped, bent double.

"You titanium domestic-abuse training manual…"

"Stand up." You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"I'm currently preserving the last shred of dignity belonging to a young, adorable girl!"

"Dignity doesn't block punches."

"You're extremely good at destroying other people's dignity though!" I kept cursing as I forced myself upright. Flank hurting. Back hurting. Arms hurting. My entire body felt like gravity and metal had split ownership down the middle. But in that specific state of pain—bad enough to file a labor complaint—I started noticing something else. Karl's movements weren't random. Every strike had an origin point.

Shoulder line, hip rotation, weight distribution, the angle his foot pressed into the floor—even before that alloy arm engaged, there was a microscopic mechanical engagement sound from the joint seams. Very brief. Brief enough that most people would dismiss it as background noise. But I wasn't most people. I was the unfortunate specimen who'd been shocked, injected, high-G scrambled, and had her nervous system catalogued as premium sample material by Dr. Steiner at the First Special Operations Division.

My body was wrecked in several ways, but in at least a few respects, it genuinely was faster than before. … The cost being a significant drop in quality of life. Third round. Karl threw a straight punch. This time I didn't try to block it head-on—I gave half a step, rolled my shoulder back, let it graze my training jacket while simultaneously slapping the inside of his forearm with my right hand, trying to redirect the force line outward. Crack. Half successful.

His fist deflected, but that arm weighed roughly the same as a compact battering ram. Just the graze sent shockwaves through my entire arm—my metacarpals felt like they'd been kissed by a high-speed train. But I didn't go flying. That mattered. Not flying meant this was no longer entirely one-directional violence. Before I could mentally congratulate myself, Karl's other hand was already reaching for my throat.

This time I ducked in early, slipping into the blind spot at his chest, drove my knee into his inner thigh and hammered my elbow hard into his lower ribs. Clang. … Right. Sixty percent alloy. My elbow went numb on contact. A string of civilized profanity scrolled through my head. But Karl actually paused for half a beat. Just that half beat. He looked down at me. I looked up at him. Close enough that I could see the fine wear marks along the edge of his metal faceplate.

"Interesting," he said.

"Thanks," I gritted out, jumping back.

"I also thought it was extremely brave of me—turns out I just elbowed a military-grade automatic door." Muffled laughter from the back of the classroom. Good. At least I had a future in stand-up. If the special operations camp returned me as defective, I could do a routine: My Days Being Legally Beaten by the Federation. Karl didn't stop the laughter. He just rotated his left wrist. The alloy joints produced a soft calibration sound. Then the next round started faster than all the previous ones. Punch. Elbow. Knee.

Grab. Throw. My world became a series of very short, very hard, very unreasonable violent segments. Every second dodging. Every second hurting. Every second relearning, under high gravity, the full range of angles from which a human body can be educated. First minute: I was a punching bag with dialogue. Second minute: I at least began understanding how to get hit less completely. Third minute: I actually caught a fragment of rhythm. Not winning. Don't flatter yourself.

I was approximately one civilization level away from beating this war refrigerator. But I was beginning to understand—Karl's attacks weren't unsolvable. They were just clean, fast, heavy, and entirely without sympathy. Every advance started with a drop in center of gravity. Every grab for my neck, his left shoulder set before his right. Every time that alloy arm meant to break through my guard, a brief red calibration light flashed beneath his faceplate. Fourth exchange. I saw it.

That red flicker deep in his left eye. Not emotion. Not killing intent. More like an optical targeting system acquiring focus. But it came fast, and exactly as I stepped a half-beat early and slipped his grapple. I slid out along his elbow, shoes screeching against the floor, body rotating almost parallel to the ground while backhanding his wrist outward. This time I didn't just evade—I deflected his trajectory. Karl's strike missed. Small miss. But a real one. The classroom went quiet again.

I stared for a fraction of a second myself. … Wait. Did I just make this mechanized violence tutorial actually whiff? Karl steadied himself and slowly turned to look at me. That half-metal face showed nothing, but the red light in his left eye flickered once more—very briefly. If that system had a surprised function, that was probably it. Oh. Right. So this iron-plated thing hadn't been operating on the assumption that I was exclusively wall-packing material.

I stood there panting, legs shaking, hands numb, flank still aching—but the corner of my mouth pulled up anyway.

"So, Instructor," I said between breaths, grinning in a way that had no business on anyone's face right now, "starting to think maybe throwing a young, adorable girl onto this godforsaken planet to fight a robot is a bit wasteful?" Karl looked at me.

"No," he said. The next second, he was already moving.

"I just confirmed—you do have the potential to be beaten into a weapon." Crack. This time I still got knocked off my feet, shoulder rolling across the floor, pain sharp enough that I nearly delivered a formal address to the entire planet's ancestral history—but I actually managed to bleed off some of the force in the roll. I didn't paste into the wall like before. I came up in a half-kneel, looked up, chest burning as I dragged in air.

Karl stood there looking down at me, synthetic voice still flat as a weather report.

"That's the point." He raised one finger.

"Not winning." Second finger.

"Not enduring blindly." Third finger.

"Surviving long enough to read your opponent." I got up slowly, knees still unsteady, but my head clearer than it had been. Right. That was it. This place doesn't want a performance. Doesn't want you pulling off some impossible reversal on day one, stepping on a two-meter augmented instructor while heroic music plays. The Federation isn't that romantic. What this place wants is— Don't die so fast. Learn to take two fewer hits. Then slowly turn two fewer hits into one hit back. I ran my tongue over my back teeth.

Still tasted like iron. Then I looked at Karl and laughed once.

"Understood."

"Say it."

"Don't die first," I shook out my numb right hand.

"Then figure out how to make the other side die first." The classroom went quiet. Karl looked at me. The red light in his left eye didn't flicker this time—just held steady. A few seconds later, he gave one small nod. Very small. Small enough to be imaginary.

"Barely passing," he said. …Oh. That was higher praise than I'd expected. High enough that for one shameful second, I actually felt something close to satisfied. No. Absolutely not. Getting a nod of approval from a metal bastard who just threw you into a wall, and feeling good about it—that's textbook Stockholm syndrome, special operations training edition. The teenage part of me raised a protest sign immediately. The battle-worn smart-mouth part tore it up faster. Karl turned back to face the class.

"You saw that." His synthetic voice landed in every ear.

"She's not stronger than you." He pointed at me.

"She just learned first not to take every hit with her face." …Fuck. That sentence was humiliating. But accurate. And infuriatingly educational. Nobody in the class dared laugh. Even the ones who'd been suppressing smiles earlier had arranged their expressions like memorial photographs. Karl looked back at me.

"Hoshino."

"Sir."

"Stand to the side and watch." I blinked.

"What, sudden attack of conscience?"

"No," he said.

"So you can see what stupider mistakes look like." … Right. There it was. That was the proper temperature for a Federal special operations training center. I dragged my barely-assembled skeleton to the edge and leaned against the wall. The spot on my back that had been introduced to basalt was still filing formal complaints; my breathing hadn't fully evened out. But my eyes were already tracking Karl without being told. Watch the shoulders. Watch the hips. Watch the feet.

Watch when that damned alloy arm decides to engage. And I knew clearly. What just happened wasn't the lesson yet. That was just Karl using the simplest, most direct, most rights-optional method available to drive one fact into my bones first: Here, you can be mouthy. You can refuse to submit. You can curse while bleeding. But you'd better learn fast. Because next time, it won't just be your back on that basalt wall.