Chương 195: Chapter 196: OODA

Leo knocked on Harbach's door. He'd been standing in the hallway for three minutes, working up the courage to apologize. Vince had made it sound simple. Just say sorry. Let him help you. But Vince hadn't been the one who'd skipped every punishment Harbach assigned and had the Commissioner sign off on it.

"Come in." Too late to back out now. Harbach was standing at the window, watching the practice fields below. He turned when the door opened. His expression was unreadable.

"Chen."

"Coach." Leo stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

"I wanted to apologize." Harbach didn't say anything.

"I skipped your preseason training program and made you look bad in front of the whole organization." Leo forced himself to maintain eye contact.

"I was wrong. I should have handled it differently." Harbach said nothing. Then he exhaled.

"Sit down, Chen." Leo sat.

"You want to know something?" Harbach leaned back in his chair.

"I spent forty minutes in that parking lot. Forty minutes. The groundskeeper filmed me screaming at the sky and sold it to TMZ for ten thousand dollars." Leo winced.

"My daughter called me." Harbach shook his head.

"My ex-wife called me. Even Roger Goodell called me personally to ask if I was having a mental health crisis."

"I'm sorry, Coach." Harbach waved a hand.

"You're nineteen. What were you supposed to do, tell a Nascent Soul Lord no?" Leo started to relax.

"Here's where we're at." Harbach folded his hands on the desk.

"Next time the military hands you a schedule that conflicts with my practices, I hear it from you. You walk into this office and you tell me yourself." He let that sit.

"Because the next time I find out after everybody else, I pull you off the starting lineup and you sit and watch the game from the sideline." Leo gulped. Harbach unfolded his hands.

"I was angry," he continued.

"I was angry because I thought you were just another hotshot kid who thought he knew better than everyone else. I thought you were going to flame out the same way every other first-round pick flames out. Too talented to listen, too arrogant to learn." He paused.

"I was wrong about you." Leo let out a breath. He hadn't realized how tense he'd been.

"Coach..."

"We both made mistakes. Let's move on. You didn't come here just to apologize. You want to know how to beat McKinsey next time." Harbach picked up a remote. The holographic projector flickered on. Footage from the Saints game filled the air between them. Leo watched himself chase McKinsey across the field, always a half-second behind, always reacting to a position the linebacker had already abandoned. During the game, it had felt close, like he was almost there, almost fast enough.

On film, it looked like McKinsey was toying with him.

"You know why McKinsey beat you?" Harbach paused the footage. McKinsey was mid-shift, already transferring to his next position while Leo's sword was still turning toward the old one.

"It was this." Harbach tapped the projector. A diagram replaced the footage. Four boxes arranged in a loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

"OODA. Every combat decision you make runs through this loop. You observe the situation, orient yourself to what it means, decide what to do, and act. Then the loop restarts." Leo's eyes widened. This made so much sense. It matched what he'd felt during the game. He observed McKinsey shifting. He reoriented to the new position. He decided how to counter. By the time he acted, McKinsey was already somewhere else. Repeat ad nauseam.

"This is why McKinsey beat you." Harbach tapped the diagram.

"Two flyers in a duel are both running this loop at the same time. Whoever completes it faster forces the other one to restart. You're never finishing the loop, Leo. You're restarting it every time he moves. That's what 'on the backfoot' actually means. Your processing cycle is longer than his. He completes two loops in the time it takes you to complete one." Leo wanted to push back, but the evidence was floating right in front of him.

"The reason he's faster than you is simple. You've only been playing Flying Aces for two seasons. You're predictable. McKinsey studied your film until he knew exactly what you'd do in every situation. When you committed to a certain angle, he already knew where you'd go next. He didn't have to Orient or Decide. All he had left was Act." Harbach drew a line on the diagram, connecting Observe directly to Act, bypassing Orient and Decide.

"That's what you need. Pattern recognition so deep that the middle two steps happen automatically. You see the stimulus, you Act." He pulled up a new display. Chess positions filled the screen.

"Think about chess. Grandmasters don't sit there calculating the first fifteen moves of an opening. They've memorized every common one. They know the best response to each. So they play instantly and save their mental energy for later."

"And memorizing endgames is even more important than openings." Harbach pulled up footage from the Chiefs game.

"Remember Mamones?" Leo remembered.

"You made one mistake. One opening. And Mamones had you dead within three seconds." Harbach paused the footage at the moment of Leo's error.

"Mamones must have identified a few key weaknesses of yours from film. Spent the whole week drilling the killing sequences. So when you gave him the opening, he didn't have to think. He just executed." He let the footage play. Leo watched himself die in slow motion.

"Stop trying to think your way through fights," Harbach said.

"Rely on memorization. Think about your micrododging. The only reason you can thread shrapnel at point-blank range is because you don't orient and you don't decide. You just act." Leo nodded slowly.

"That's why I gave you ten years of wing footage when you first walked in here in March. The more patterns you memorize, the faster you process. The faster you process, the less time McKinsey has to exploit." Leo stared at the modified diagram. Harbach leaned back.

"And with your enhanced reflexes from the Synaptic Acceleration Protocol? If you can cut your OODA loop down to two steps, you'll be the one running circles around them. McKinsey won't be able to keep up because you'll be acting before he finishes observing." It made perfect sense. Harbach pulled up a new folder on the holographic display. Philadelphia Eagles. Week 6.

"Let's start with their starting wing." He scrubbed through footage until he found a specific play.

"Watch his positioning when the striker commits left." An hour passed. Harbach was patient, thorough, and clearly good at this. He explained angles, timing windows, baiting patterns, recovery positions. Leo nodded along and understood every word. But understanding wasn't the same as building muscle memory. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

When he'd worked with Niki back in the spring, she'd taught him where to be on the field, how to read rotations, when to commit. This was different. Harbach was trying to teach him reflexes through film, and that wasn't how he learned. Everyone else in this league had trained as formation masters for fifty years before they ever touched a professional field. They'd built their divine sense through decades of study, and film was just another form of study. Leo's path to the NFL had been completely different.

"This isn't working," Leo said. Harbach paused the footage.

"Give it time. Most players spend years..."

"That's the problem. I don't learn this way." Leo gestured at the frozen hologram.

"I'm a doer. I learn by trying something, failing, adjusting, trying again. Repetition. That's how I learned micrododging. I didn't watch film of other people threading shrapnel. I flew into flak until my body figured it out." Harbach was quiet for a long moment. He stared at the frozen footage and Leo watched him think. Finally, Harbach exhaled.

"You're right."

"So what do I do?" Harbach was quiet for a moment.

"My hands are mostly tied. There are only so many reps I can give you each week. The league regulates every bit of spiritual qi we use."

"So I practice on my own time."

"You could." Harbach nodded slowly.

"Find flyers willing to spar with you outside of team activities. But that's expensive. T3 qi isn't cheap, and you'd be burning through it every session." Leo nodded. That was what he'd done with Hilda before preseason. Training at the Walton family compound.

"Usually," Harbach continued, "if someone wants to pursue that kind of independent training, they find a sponsor. Someone willing to foot the bill for the qi expenditure." A sponsor. Like the Waltons. Or Sky Sports.

"But." Harbach frowned.

"If I were you, Leo, I wouldn't pursue sponsorships right now." Leo looked at him.

"The climate isn't right. Especially for someone like you." Leo waited for an explanation. None came. The strange thing was that Harbach didn't know about Leo's conversation with Edward at Popeyes. He didn't know about the Sky Sports offer. Yet the coach was warning him against all sponsorships. What was going on? Leo filed it away. Whatever the big families were planning, it was large enough that even Harbach had caught wind of it. He didn't press. Harbach clearly wasn't going to say any more.

"What about training with a holographic projector?" Leo asked.

"That's how I learned to micrododge. Maybe I could train against holograms to learn combat reflexes."

"Good idea in theory. Two problems." Harbach held up a finger.

"First, the team is only allowed to reimburse T2 spiritual qi for projector training. League financial fair play rules. You'd be practicing in slow motion."

"Second, and this is the real problem." Harbach leaned forward.

"There's no contact." Oh... yeah...

"The projector can simulate opponents. It's decent for training evasion and formations." Harbach spread his hands.

"But you never hit anything. The holograms don't react when you strike them." Leo frowned.

"It's like practicing chess openings and endgames without ever getting past the first move." Harbach tapped the desk.

"Sure, the first move is better than nothing. But can you become a grandmaster that way? Hard to tell if it's really useful or if it just teaches bad habits."

"So what do I do?" Leo asked.

"What do other players do?" Harbach studied him for a long moment.

"Leo." His voice was quieter now.

"Have you ever wondered why every NFL superstar, after retiring, joins the military and disappears? Almost never to be seen again?" The question had never occurred to him. But now that Harbach said it, it was confusing. These were people who had made millions. They had fame, wealth, everything the world could offer. Why would they trade all of that to join the military?

"Nothing in life is free," Harbach said.

"In order for someone like Mamones to build the killer instinct he has, he needed a lot of training." He paused.

"The kind of training you can only get from the military." He leaned back.

"Every superstar in the NFL has taken some sort of deal to get that experience. And every deal has strings attached." Leo was quiet. He didn't like where this was going.

"In this wartime economy..." Harbach shook his head.

"The strings all lead back to one place." The military.

Leo left Harbach's office with more questions than answers. The conversation had been productive. But he couldn't stop trying to figure out why Harbach had warned him about sponsorships. The climate isn't right. Especially for someone like you. What did that mean? Leo walked through the facility on autopilot. Past the weight room. Past the meeting room. Past Kowalski, who was explaining something about satellite frequency bands to a janitor who nodded along politely. He arrived at the holographic training field.

The space was empty. Practice had ended hours ago. Leo pulled up the control panel and loaded a basic evasion drill. The projector hummed to life. A holographic lightsaber materialized in the center of the field, cycling through attack patterns. Leo didn't fly up to meet it. Instead, he sat down on the bleachers and watched the holographic weapon cycle through various attack patterns. Something was going on. Something bigger than his rookie season, bigger than the Giants, bigger than who won the Super Bowl.

He thought back to his conversation with Edward at Popeyes. Edward had pitched the Sky Sports sponsorship deal as a chance to help his generation. The current rules banned Gold Cores from international competition, which meant the old guard dominated every tournament. If Leo became the spokesman for a rule change, young cultivators across the world would finally get their shot at playing Flying Aces. It was a good story. The kind of story that would make Leo feel righteous about accepting the money.

But Leo was starting to trust Edward less and less. The problem was motivation. Whoever had the power to sign an eighty-million-dollar check was old. Hundreds of years old. Deity Transformation Monarchs who had lived through the founding of America, the industrial revolution, the entire history of modern cultivation. Why would ancient Monarchs care whether thirty-year-old Gold Cores got to play in televised tournaments? They wouldn't. There had to be something else.

Some deeper motivation that Edward either didn't know about or wasn't telling him. His NFL debut had been too smooth. That thought surfaced and wouldn't go away. He'd made the roster. He'd started every game. The Commissioner had signed off on Leo skipping preseason. Manning had helped him learn micrododging. Lord Mara had given him a generous merchandise deal. Everyone was being so helpful. Leo had assumed it was because he was valuable. Because he sold tickets.

Because the golden rookie story was good for the league. But what if that wasn't the whole picture? What if someone wanted him to succeed for reasons that had nothing to do with football? Who could he ask? Who would actually tell him the truth? He ran through his options. There were only two Lords Leo trusted. Lord Newmont and Lord Ross. But both were inseparable from the military. In fact, almost every Lord was inseparable from the military. That was the whole point of what Harbach had just told him.

The strings all led back to one place. What about Harry? Or Jimbo? Both were trustworthy. Neither would lie to him. But they only knew what their families told them. And their families could easily be feeding them whatever story served their interests. Harry and Jimbo would pass along the information in good faith, never realizing they were being used to manipulate their former teammate. Leo didn't know what to do. He sat on the bleachers and watched the holographic lightsaber spin.

It cycled through dozens of attack patterns, no two sequences the same. The AI behind it had been trained on thousands of hours of professional combat footage. It could adapt, feint, and punish mistakes. Even veterans used these drills to sharpen their reflexes. But it wasn't real. You could dodge it perfectly. You could read its patterns and slip through every gap. But you couldn't deflect it. Your weapon would pass through empty light. No way to practice what came after the opening. What came after.

That was the problem with everything right now. Leo could see the opening move. He just couldn't see what followed. Eventually, whoever was watching from the sidelines would get tired of waiting. They would force him to make a choice before he understood what he was choosing between. But not yet. There were still four months before the Super Bowl. Whatever was coming, it hadn't arrived. He could use that time to prepare. To figure out if he could handle whatever came next on his own terms.

At least Harbach's first problem was something he could solve. The team couldn't reimburse T3 spiritual qi? Fine. Leo didn't need their money. He was wealthy in the Azure Profound Continent. He'd earned piles of T3 spiritstones from the Cranesong trade. He pulled out his phone and texted Kevin to bring his storage ring back to the Hidden Hideout. Once Kevin arrived, Leo could top off Sunshifter's T3 spiritual qi reserves using spiritstones from the otherworld and train as much as he wanted.

But he still needed someone to practice against. Or something. Leo watched the holographic lightsaber. The projection was crisp, responsive, and fast enough to simulate real combat conditions. After transmigrating, Leo had thought all the futuristic technology was amazing. Holograms. Flying cars. VR pods. Formations made things possible that would have only existed in science fiction in his old world. So why hadn't anyone created a realistic training dummy? It would be incredibly useful for the military.

People must have tried. Decades of research and development. Billions of dollars in funding. And apparently, they weren't satisfied with the results. Leo stared at the holographic lightsaber. He was running into the limits of formation technology. Earth's best engineers and formation masters had already attempted this problem and failed. If he wanted some kind of futuristic training robot to fight against, he would need technology that didn't exist.

If only the Azure Profound Continent had some kind of futuristic fighting robot technology. If only. Leo sat up straighter. It wasn't futuristic. But he started to wonder if it would work. Maybe if he combined it with the best technologies of Earth. The holographic projectors. The LLMs trained on tens of thousands of NFL games. He dug out his phone and called Vivian.