Chương 37: Measuring Progress

Three knocks rapped against the front door.

"That is Kenji." Leaning against the kitchen island with his arms crossed over his chest, Kurisu recognized the familiar Ki signature. Closest the door, Charlotte moved toward the entryway, casting a dry look over her shoulder.

"Did your magic radar tell you that, or the fact he was already planning to come over?"

"Zanshin," Kurisu corrected quietly.

"And Ware merely provided confirmation." Rolling her eyes, she pulled the door open for Kenji, revealing the teenager standing on the porch, a 12-pack of soda clutched in one hand, a pink donut box balanced on the other, his shoulders hunched against the morning chill.

"Morning, Mrs. Miller," he said, nodding as he raised the 12-pack in greeting.

"Come on in, Kenji," Charlotte replied, retreating a step to clear the threshold before returning to the kitchen to wash the breakfast plates. Boot kicking the door shut behind him, Kenji wiped his shoes on the mat, his smile fading as he caught sight of the scene in the living room before moving to set the donuts and soda on the kitchen island. Ace and Kellevra lay curled in fetal positions, their fingers clawing into the fibers as their bodies seized.

Beneath them, the floorboards vibrated from the hum of their Ki, the house shuddering every time a heel or elbow struck the floor. Kenji, frowning, looked from the trembling boys to Kurisu.

"Okay. What's up with them?"

"The soil in the greenhouse absorbed the Ki bleeding from our months of practice," Kurisu replied, his gaze fixed on the boys.

"The excess Reiki enhanced the harvest."

"Harvest?! The hell'd you feed them? Plutonium?!" From the sink, Charlotte cleared her throat as a soapy plate clinked against the side of the basin. The boy ducked his head, wincing.

"Sorry, Mrs. Miller."

"Hardly." Kurisu shook his head, placing a finger on his chin.

"It appears that the tomatoes have quickened their reflexes, while the basil seems to harden their bones, and the peppers temper their flesh." He regarded Kenji with a flat stare.

"Ware fails to understand why you all insist on using vulgar terminology when it earns you such consistent reprimands."

"Because they think swearing makes them sound like adults," Steven said as he lowered his coffee, watching the boys from the dining table.

"And what great news. Because a faster, heavier herd of elephants is exactly what we need." Ace groaned, Kellevra's jaw clamping shut beside him, teeth grinding like millstones against the floorboards. Elbows propped on the counter, Kenji stared down at the writhing pair.

"Jeez. Are you really sure they're okay? I don't remember Charmander nearly dying from eating a Calcium."

"Do not be so dramatic," Kurisu said."'Don't.'""What?""'Don't be so dramatic.' Use a contraction, man. You sound like an LLM." With a dismissive shake of his head, Kurisu responded, "We have been over this."

"Yeah, yeah, nonsensical rules and all that." Kenji reached over, sighing as he placed a hand on his friend's shoulder.

"We'll learn ya good soon, there son," he drawled, affecting an exaggerated accent.

"Don't count on it," Kellevra ground out from the floor, his voice strained through clenched teeth.

"We've been trying that for months." Turning his focus back to the boys, Kurisu said, "With these changes, their bodies may now have the potential to keep up with their Keiraku." Hours later, the spasms finally ceased. Tracks rattling, the sliding glass door scraped open as Kellevra shoved past the threshold, his footing momentarily wobbly before he caught his balance against a terra-cotta planter, the clay cracking down the middle under the weight of his palm.

Through the open doorway, Ace zipped past his brother, vaulting the railing to land in the frosted mud, his shoes sinking into the frozen soil, his head snapping to track the erratic flitting of a sparrow.

"Whoa," he breathed, squinting up into the branches.

"That's so sick. I can see its wings flapping. Like, every single beat." At the edge of the yard, Kurisu clasped his hands behind his back, watching through his Zanshin as their muscle and bone pulsed brighter than they had before the meal. Distance established, the pair dropped into their respective stances. Ace stepped forward into a Zenkutsu-dachi, raising both hands with his fingers hooked into open claws to frame Kellevra in the maw of the Mōryū no Kamae.

Igniting the space at the center of his palms, he wreathed his fists in flame, the radiating heat distorting the surrounding air. Kellevra dropped into a low Kiba-dachi, pressing his forearms vertically together in front of his chest with his elbows tucked tight to his ribs to form the Iron Gate of the Banryū no Kamae. The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Hajime." Kurisu commanded. As Ace drove the ball of his rear foot back, he vented a blast of heat from his soles to launch himself across the yard on the thermal expansion. Upon impact, Kellevra absorbed the heavy palm strike with his forearms, the force blowing a ring of frost and loose dirt outward as it shoved the younger boy backward to carve twin furrows in the thawing mud. Before the slide stopped, Ace unleashed a point-blank burst of flame.

The blast washing over him, Kellevra held his position while the flames singed his eyebrows but left his skin otherwise unbothered. Dropping his weight onto his heels, he stomped the ground, sending a jagged pillar of frozen clay erupting from the dirt. The earthen mass shot forward at close range, denying his brother a chance to reset. Pores venting heat, Ace generated a rapid thermal updraft. He almost cleared the pillar on the rising air currents, but the jagged edge clipped his shoe, throwing off his rotation.

Ace tumbled through the air, his body plowing straight through a low-hanging bough, shattering it on impact. From a grounded roll, he sprang to his feet, brushing bark dust from his shoulder.

"Sore made," Kurisu called out, ending the short match.

"Did the produce temper your bodies?" Lifting his shirt, Ace revealed his side where he'd hit the timber, while Kellevra wiped the ash off his face. With a nod, Kurisu noted the boys' unblemished skin.

"Good. The steel is finally worthy of the forge." Nodding toward the porch, his voice carried across the yard, "Step forward, Kenji. Let us test the limits of your abilities." After eating the final bite of his donut, Kenji wiped his hands onto his jeans, walking past the boys as Ace rubbed his chest and Kellevra swiped soot from his singed eyebrows.

"Don't cry when I put you in the dirt," he said, but his eyes lost all humor as he stepped onto the mud. He strafed sideways into a Neko-ashi-dachi, resting the majority of his weight on the ball of his rear foot while dropping his front hand loose over his thigh and raising his right fist near his jaw to form the Senryū no Kamae. Drawing the ambient photons around him like a cloak, he warped the refraction until his form blurred into a hazy silhouette. To normal eyes, his position was lost.

However, through Kurisu's Zanshin, his presence stood as clear as a blazing torch. Over the soft crunch of frosted mud, Kurisu walked to the center of the yard and settled into a Shizentai, a neutral, upright posture, maintaining readiness in the Jinryū no Kamae.

"Hajime," Kenji used the distortion to hide his first step, crossing the twenty-foot gap before the word fully left Kurisu's mouth. Ki flaring mid-stride, he erupted a blade of white plasma from his right hand to slash at Kurisu's throat in a hiss of superheated air. Instead of meeting the full force of the attack, Kurisu tapped Kenji's wrist to bleed off the momentum early.

With the forward energy broken, he discharged a pulse of electricity that deflected the blade outward, the collision blasting the air away from them both with a pop. Through the recoil of the deflection, Kenji split the light into three distinct illusions, a strobe-light flicker of motion surrounding the samurai. As the projection on the left threw a sweeping hook and the right drove a knee, the true Kenji vaulted from above, his arms wreathed in white flame.

Though such visual overwhelm was designed to break a defender's focus, Kurisu sensed the hollow nature of the phantoms against the weight of Kenji's spirit descending from above. Ignoring the knee, the samurai prepared to meet the strike, only to sense an increase in the density of Ki within the sweeping hook. His guard adjusted, Kurisu raised a forearm to catch the phantom fist while driving a lightning-wreathed palm upward to deflect the real assault.

The illusion struck with the force of a wooden mallet before shattering into scattered sparks just as the real Kenji crashed his flame strike into Kurisu's Raiki-imbued block, sending blue and white energies spiraling across the yard. Kenji was solidifying a mirage. Splendid ingenuity and control. With a push off Kurisu's palm, Kenji spun into an airborne butterfly kick, his body trailing a ribbon of white fire. Kurisu ducked beneath the flames, twisting to throw a kick at the boy's ribs.

Rather than retreat, Kenji shifted off the centerline and dropped his center of gravity, pivoting on the ball of his foot in the mud to sweep Kurisu's standing leg while the kick was still extended. Mid-rotation, Kurisu hopped the sweep. At the peak of his spin, he drove a Raiki-coated fist down toward Kenji's exposed back.

Channeling his sweep momentum into a spring from the dirt, Kenji blasted a jet of fire from his shoulder blades to launch himself into a corkscrew spin, driving a heated heel toward Kurisu's temple. As Kurisu caught the ankle, the impact echoing across the yard, he discharged a shock of electricity into the joint. Flame rocketing from his shoe to force a release, Kenji backflipped away. He landed in a crouch with a grimace, stumbling slightly before launching himself forward again.

They met in the center of the yard. When Kenji delivered a snap-kick to the chin, Kurisu leaned back, allowing the shoe to miss him by a fraction of an inch before countering with a dual-palm strike to Kenji's chest. Arms crossed, Kenji absorbed the impact, skidding backward to carve trenches in the soil. Before his momentum stopped, he executed a Shukuchi, dissolving his physical form to reappear five feet in the air behind Kurisu.

Lungs expanding with a massive breath, his chest glowing through his shirt, he spat three spheres of compressed white fire. In a tight spin that carved a circle in the dirt, Kurisu raised a hand, condensing his Raiki into a plasmatic wall that absorbed the impact of the fireballs as they detonated against the barrier, shaking the ground and obscuring the yard in smoke and steam. Through the smoke, a laser of concentrated heat hissed toward the space right between Kurisu's eyes.

Kurisu tilted his head, dodging the beam as the attack flash-vaporized a clean hole through the oak tree behind him, and the shed behind that. The light bending back to reveal his form, Kenji landed in a crouch, his boots sinking into the frosted mud, the latent electricity grounding out from Kurisu's smoking hand, leaving the stench of ozone and sulfur in the crisp air.

"Damn," Kenji breathed, wiping sweat from his forehead.

"I missed."

"Precision requires patience," Kurisu countered, brushing a speck of ash from his shoulder.

"But the force is acceptable. Ware notes you relied exclusively on your fire and light. Are you still unable to call upon Seiki at will?"

"Nah." Kenji shook out his hands, letting the ambient distortion fade completely.

"It's like it's locked behind a wall. I can only really reach it when my adrenaline spikes."

"Then it remains tethered to your emotional state." Kurisu nodded.

"Discipline will bridge that gap. With continued practice, you will learn to command it without relying on panic." Kenji let out a short exhale.

"By the way, how the hell have the neighbors not called the cops on us yet? Sounds like a warzone out here." Gesturing toward the fence line, Kurisu replied, "Ware condenses the air pressure along the perimeter of the property. The dense boundary traps the sound waves, muffling the impact."