Chương 7: Chapter 6 – Spar me

Training started the next day at six in the morning… no, at oh-six-hundred. I was in the KSF now, so I had to get used to military time... if that was what it was. We gathered in the warehouse, the same space where we'd done tryouts. Staff Sergeant Cross stood at the front, flanked by two instructors I didn't recognize. The Crusader armor racks lined the wall, freshly charged and waiting.

"Today, we begin combat integration training," Cross announced.

"You will learn to fight as a unit, to move as a unit, and to trust each other as a unit." Her eyes found mine.

"All of you will participate fully. No exceptions." The others suited up. I stood off to the side, watching. Nadia caught my eye as she sealed her helmet. She gave me a small nod. Something had shifted since yesterday. Not friendship, exactly, but something. Liam's glare put me back into place though. The training started simple. Movement drills. Formation exercises. Basic tactics for urban environments. The Crusader armor made it look easy, the suits compensating for individual differences in strength and speed.

I followed along in the uniform we got to wear under the suits. It wasn't terrible… but it wasn't an expensive suit, either. Cross called out corrections constantly. Tighten up. Watch your spacing. Cover your partner. When she got to me, she glared for a long moment, then moved on without a word. By noon, we'd progressed to combat training. In particular, sparring.

"O'Connor," Cross said.

"You're with Torres." Torres was the oldest of us, mid-thirties, carrying the calm competence he had brought home from the service. Army first, then police, or so I'd gathered from overheard conversations. Eight years of experience, if the rumors were correct. He approached me with his hands loose at his sides.

"You want to do this light, or you want to do this real?"

"Light," I said.

"The only thing hard sparring is good for is getting injured." Well, him getting injured, to be precise. He laughed, a genuine sound that caught me off guard.

"Fair enough. Let's see what you've got." He took a stance, and so did I. He started circling. I simply pivoted on the spot. Yes, I was supposed to circle him too, but I never fought like that. The others had stopped their own matches to watch. Assholes. Okay, how to approach this? Torres moved first, a probing jab. I knocked it aside with my left hand. Like a game. I put my right arm behind my back, raising the left in front of me. One hand, no special techniques, that could make it a decent fight.

He followed with a combination, fast and with seamless flow, the armor enhancing his speed. I knocked all strikes aside with my left hand, not moving from the spot.

"You're overdoing it," he said.

"Don't hold back so much. I can take it." Not quite. I pivoted on the spot, drawing a circle around me with my shoe.

"Force me to take a step out of the circle." He frowned, but also sort of smiled. He bolted in with a flurry of punches. I parried everything with my left. He started blending kicks into it. That forced me to move faster, but I still managed to parry everything with my left. This was actually fun. I had to empty my mind, leaving my subconsciousness to focus on the fight. While I couldn't really do this myself, my instinct could perfectly predict his moves, and plan the parries.

He kept going for a few more minutes, but he started slowing down. Torres pushed himself to the limit of how much power he could get from the armor, which he couldn't sustain for long. He finally stopped after another minute, panting.

"Okay," Staff Sergeant Cross said.

"Unconventional, but this is good practice. Imagine O'Connor's a kaiju. The rest of the squad, make him move out of the circle." Liam shook his head, but they all got ready. I waited. They came at me, bumping into each other. I parried what got into me, but they often tripped, barely could find a decent angle, and overall, got into each other's way. In a minute, they all realized, and withdrew. Yeah, fighting in a group wasn't easy. I couldn't really do it myself at all.

I wasn't going to learn it through this, but at least I made a good training dummy for the rest of the squad. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. They talked for a moment, then surrounded me, and came at me again. This time, I had to use my right hand too. Their coordination still lacked timing, but I had to put some effort into the defense. And I did get actual practice from this too. Torres joined them. Though Liam did most of the coordinating, anyway.

They tried an attack pattern, I blocked everything, they took a break, and tried a different pattern. We kept it up for almost an hour, until they had all exhausted themselves. I actually broke a sweat.

"Good," Cross said.

"It's not in the official guidebook, but this has been excellent coordination training. We have a lunch now, and continue later." Continuation was shooting though, which I bombed, predictably. Without the Crusader armor set, I didn't have any aim assist. I had the urge to ask for AI-aim weapons, but I wasn't sure they had the technology. We finished the day with physical training. This schedule repeated the next day, and the days blurred together. Same schedule, same people, same everything, every day.

The problem I started feeling a few days in was the combat training. Everyone against me worked as training, but it also naturally made everyone bond with not-me. I was the villain, the imaginary kaiju, and even though everyone knew it was training, some part of them filed me under enemy. It didn't bother me all that much, though. In a way, I was a threat to them.

Not that I would do anything to them directly, but it wasn't difficult to imagine a scenario where we got into a fight that was too much for them because I pulled in too big a kaiju or something. I started getting the feeling for the rest of the squad. The combat helped, both in terms of what they could do, and who they were. Liam turned out to be exactly what I expected. Competitive, driven, by-the-book. He took it upon himself to figure out a strategy of how to get me out of the circle.

He excelled at it too, coming up with creative ways to force me to move. His scores from tryouts had been the highest overall, and it showed. As he excelled at everything we did, he naturally became the leader of the squad. We were probably going to get a senior commander, but still. Sara, the second best performing member of our squad, couldn't be more different. Quiet, focused, efficient. From what I gathered, she was in the KSF back when it was the Vampire Suppression Force, the VSF.

She quit a few years ago, and now, she reapplied to get back into it. When she wasn't training, she was checking her gear. Obsessively, methodically, like a ritual she couldn't break. The awkward part of her were the Hellgear boots she wore. That was Kallisto's brand. I didn't catch when, but she made high-end combat gear, stylized in her signature style, made of whatever alloy she could create. Kara had a piece, and the brand mark of a skull with horns that just so happened to be shaped as Kallisto's horns.

Okay, it wasn't awkward for her, but I couldn't talk about it for obvious reasons. Nadia happened to be one of the two people who actually talked to me. We were eating dinner in the mess hall, three days into training. The others sat together at one table. I sat alone at another. Standard arrangement. She picked up her tray and walked over.

"Mind if I sit?" I gestured at the empty seats.

"Be my guest." She sat down across from me, started eating her mashed potatoes. For a minute, neither of us spoke.

"You know," she said eventually, "for someone who drove two hours to help a near-stranger, you make it really hard for people to like you." I shrugged.

"Don't know what else I should be doing."

"Yeah, I can tell." She took a bite of mystery meat.

"But we're going to be fighting together. Watching each other's backs. It would help if we could have an actual conversation once in a while. You know, one where you aren't stonewalling everything about yourself."

"That's tough," I admitted.

"What do you want to know?"

"Anything. Where are you from? What did you do before this? Why are you here?" She spread her hands.

"Normal getting-to-know-you stuff."

"I'm from Ireland, originally, but my father's American. I was an agent at one of the largest corporations of the mage underworld. And I'm here because it's useful and has pay attached to it." She waited for more. When nothing came, she sighed.

"See, that's the problem. You give these technically true answers that don't actually tell me anything." She leaned forward.

"Look, I'm not asking for your life story. I'm just trying to understand who I'm trusting my life to."

"You shouldn't trust your life to me. Like, really, you shouldn't. I'm an extremely disappointing type of person."

"Too late. We're squadmates now." She smiled, but there was something serious underneath.

"Besides, after what you did for me with Josh, I figure I owe you the benefit of the doubt."

"You don't owe me anything."

"See, that's exactly what I mean. You help people, but you won't let them help you back." She shook her head.

"That's not sustainable, you know. Eventually, you have to let someone in." I didn't have a response to that. But I also wasn't getting into the details of my life, especially the parts that involved anything I did for my corporation. Stuff was secret for a reason. She went back to the other table after that. But she nodded at me in the hallways. Said good morning when we passed each other in the bathroom line. Small things. I still didn't know what to do with them.

The second person that talked to me, or well, tried to, anyway, was Manuel, my roommate. Since I saw him a lot, we naturally talked more. Or well, more was relative, as I just really didn't have much to talk about when it came to myself. My one saving grace would be anime, as thanks to Kallisto, I had seen a lot of it. But he never hinted at anything related. At least there was no awkwardness about sharing a room. We'd driven to Queens together, and stood together in front of Nadia's building.

That counted for something.

"Okay, I have to ask," he said on the third night. He was sitting on his bed, phone in hand.

"The running thing. At the try-outs. Was that like... your top speed? Or can you go faster?"

"I don't know." He stared at me.

"What do you mean that you don't know?"

"I've never tested it."

"How can you break a sound barrier and not even know what your top speed is?"

"Knowing a number isn't useful. I know how to move fast, and that's the important part. Measuring it wouldn't do anything for me, so, I never bothered to." He rolled his eyes.

"Is it the same with the fighting thing? We've been going at you five on one for days and we literally can't force you to make a step. That's crazy."

"I'm much faster, and I've got a lot of combat experience. You don't fight badly, I just… do it better."

"That's kind of weird for a mage."

"I know. I'm not terribly good at magic. Actually, I'm pretty bad at it. But I'm good at fighting." Manuel stayed silent for a long moment. Then he laughed, a short, surprised sound.

"Man," he said.

"That's actually kind of sad."

"Yeah. It is." He went back to his phone after that. But some of the tension had left the room.