Chương 27: Day Twenty-Seven

Dear Diary, As I drifted off to sleep last night, I realized something and thought, hey Loki, does your Blend do anything more overt, like shapeshiftery stuff? His reply came back immediately. Indeed it does, a wide variety of minor Shapeshifting designed to make it easier for me to pass without comment; even some fairly subtle spiritual Shapeshifting, things which take enormous effort to do otherwise. Good night, Tabitha Diaz. G'night, Loki.

For the first time since I arrived at PCHA, I didn't wake up mildly sore; I'd gone out after lunch and picked up half a dozen fluffy blankets. I even bought two of them; one from a woman on South selling hand-woven blankets right there on the sidewalk, and another from a little mom and pop bodega that had an oddly broad selection of what I eventually recognized as 'Adventuring Gear'. The rest I got from cons on snooty shopkeeps who looked like they'd never sewn anything in their lives.

Probably had sweatshops hidden away in the back rooms or some shit. I am a Good and Faithful Devotee of my Patron, after all. I still woke up tired, probably 'cause I spent the rest of yesterday afternoon and a while after dinner fucking around with my Status spell. I crawled out of bed to the door, pulling myself to my knees by the handle before opening it. Saffron stood there, pointedly looking up when the door opened, dropping her gaze in confusion when she didn't see me.

A moment later, her gaze having dropped straight past my face before bouncing back up to lock onto my eyes as her cheeks went red, she fought back a grin and said, "some day that's going to come back to bite you in the ass, you realize?"

"Ooh. Kinky." I said I woke up tired, not dead. She rolled her eyes and shook her head, walking off as she let off one of those long, whistling sighs that told me she really wanted to say something else, but had too much patience or too little nerve. I suspected the latter when I heard the faintest chuckle as she walked out of my line of sight. I closed the door, crawled my way over to my armoire for a fresh uniform, and managed to stumble my way to the Dining Hall reasonably upright.

I wasn't sure I'd literally kill for a cup of coffee, but grievous bodily harm was definitely on the table. I polished off more bread than usual at breakfast, hoping the carbs would kick in before Physical Training. Alas, I hoped in vain, because my daily dash to beat duBois wound up as more of a really fast stagger; even fuckin' Larry almost beat me to the Practice Yard. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

We wound up doing more weightlifting and calisthenics in the morning. Okay, I did nothing but weightlifting, because, to quote duBois, "there ain't shit I can push your Endurance with in the Practice Yard... yet." That 'yet' bothered me until after lunch, when he introduced those of us rotating through Agility training to what he called 'Advanced Dynamic Isometric Exercises'.

Some of what he had us do reminded me of Yoga, some of it reminded me of some Tai Chi videos I'd seen, but all of it reminded me that 'being able to run for a long time' wasn't anywhere near as tough as 'being able to hold a handstand for half an hour' or 'doing pull-ups until you can't feel your arms'.

Some of the positions he had us hold felt a little bit silly until I asked the Marshall why we had to learn to hold these weird poses and he nodded to me with a sort of 'fair point' look on his face and twisted through half a dozen of them in rapid succession. Individually, they looked like really stupid poses designed to target really specific muscle sets. Put together in sequence, duBois made them look like some Matrix level bullet time dodging bullshit, only sped up to something approaching real time.

He even managed to catch me when my arms and legs gave out at the same time and I nearly landed headfirst on the paving stone. I groaned up at him and said, "if you can pull off that kind of freaky dodging and you still run away from some shit, I think becoming a Hero might be the stupidest idea I've ever had." He frowned down at me as he lowered me to the ground, still headfirst but at a way less painful speed, saying, "are you thinking about quitting on me, Diaz?"

I grabbed at his hand as he straightened, using it to pull myself back to my feet.

"Aw, c'mon Marshall duBois, when have you ever known me to have an insufficient amount of stupid for anything?" That got a genuine guffaw out of him as he yanked me to, then off of, my feet, swinging me around and swinging me up until I came to rest directly above him, balanced on that one hand that gripped his when he barked, 'hold!' I managed to stay there, precariously balancing on one hand, while he counted. I didn't fall until eleven.

Then he set me to doing two-person work with Saffron, saying, "you're strong enough you won't drop her."

"But isn't she supposed to be alternating with me?"

"Yeah, your head is hard enough you won't die if she drops you." Like I said, I'm really not sure if I love having duBois as a teacher or hate it.