James expected that she would sleep badly, after all she couldn’t get good sleep on a good day. But the second her head hit the pillow, she was out like a light. Not a single headache waking her up. It was quite possibly the best sleep of her life. And all it took was several near-death experiences crammed into a single day, who knew?

Stretching out, her toes greeted the cool morning air outside her blanket and curled right back under it. Sighing, she forced herself to put on a hoodie she stashed on her nightstand for just that purpose and went to the small kitchen to make herself tea. Blue dot in her vision or not, she wasn’t changing her routine.

Looking outside the window, and subconsciously expecting to see the same old street view, she was startled to see the modified street view from the tutorial zone. It had the same quality of light she expected to see in the morning, and she realized she hadn’t questioned the time difference between southern Washington and wherever she was. She really should try and find out, but her Permanent Skill A Thousand Questions made the situation all too easy to ignore.

Besides, it was just trippy how she was able to travel so far just by going out her door. It didn’t make any sense at all, defying all rules of physics and time. Well, she didn’t have near enough knowledge to even tackle the question, for all she knew there was some way it made sense. She just stocked it up to the System. Something that almost pained her to do, she didn’t like unanswered questions, and the System had created an uncomfortable amount.

Checking her tablet, she was glad to see that it did indeed charge overnight. She wasn’t willing to consider the alternative. With no new publications to go through, James went to her exotic veterinary textbooks. She had downloaded them in anticipation of the class, but still hadn’t had the chance to take it since it seemed to always coincide with mandatory programming classes. And those always seemed to fill up the second they were open.

She figured she might as well research apes since they were so similar to the goblins, at least from a cursory far-away look. Losing herself in their anatomy for the next two hours, she looked up when the ninety minutes alarm she had set went off. Sighing, she put down her tablet and went to get changed into some real clothes.

Grabbing a workout outfit from the limited offerings- she didn’t go out often enough for her closet to be normal-sized- she quickly changed. Looking at the clock, and sincerely hoping that part of the time-change applied to it too, she saw that she had five minutes before eight. Nodding, she quickly rinsed her cup from that morning and the last one which she had been forced to abandon. Grabbing her bag, still mostly packed from the day before, and stuffing in another change of clothes she went to the door.

She didn’t know if she was hoping Jean Paul and Louis wouldn’t be there when she opened it, but she was somewhat disappointed she’d be missing a walk through the forest by herself when she saw that they were waiting for her. Alright, who was she kidding, she didn’t want to see them, but it really wasn’t their fault, so she didn’t let any negative emotion reflect on her face. Of course, this meant that no emotion crossed her face, resulting in the same message.

“Not a morning person I take it?” Jean Paul clearly was, and she had to restrain herself from scowling at him. They’d be spending a lot of time together, not to mention that he was supposed to be protecting her, it wasn’t a smart idea to antagonize him. She was a morning person, she’d been awake for a while now. Being unhappy to see people first thing at her door was a different matter altogether. She didn’t answer him, and they started on their way to the Tutorial Area. Unlike the walk back yesterday, it seemed nobody bothered going to the clearing so early, leaving the woods to only be filled with animal sounds.

Once they got to the clearing, she saw that her previous assumption was wrong. The cooks were already out, presumably prepping for the day. There were also some guards set up. Finally, the ones she recognized as the trainers, or squadron leaders, were being led through their paces in a grueling looking exercise circuit by Arthur. She wondered when he worked out, it was clear he did.

First, she went to check in on Christian to see if anything cropped up that he needed her immediate help with. He answered in the negative, explaining that it was probably best James wasn’t around when everyone dropped off their first aid supplies with him. Shooing them out of the infirmary, he gave James a quick wink and closed the door in her face.

“I guess you’re ours for now!” Jean Paul exclaimed, probably forcing the excitement, and led her to a secluded training area. A couple of the trainees looked her way, but Arthur quickly recaptured their attention with a short command for pushups. Looking back at Jean Paul, she hoped any self-defense training wouldn’t include too much physical training. Of course, she was wrong. “Alright, so we’re going to start with stretching!”

He and Louis led her through a nice quick cycle of stretches where she easily outperformed them. She had always been flexible, unfortunately she didn’t think any stat really described flexibility. Maybe agility? It made sense that in that she would have an 8 then.

“Now that we Skilled individuals have been shown up, it’s time for a run!” Jean Paul declared after fifteen minutes, casting an evil grin. Or at least James thought so.

“Shouldn’t we just get to the self-defense portion?” She knew it was fruitless asking, she had even requested the training, but she couldn’t help herself. Jean Paul cheerfully shook his head and she sighed. “Okay, let me just drop off my bag with Christian.”

Jean Paul and Louis looked over at the infirmary and, seeing the line of people waiting outside of it with their stuff, shut down that idea. Instead, Jean Paul left her with Louis and put her bag away while the two stood in companionable silence. She preferred it to Jean Paul’s off-handed comments.

Once he came back, they started jogging, letting James set the pace while Jean Louis decided on the route. The air was cool enough that it was nice to run through, lending a feeling of cutting through it like freshly mowed grass. It carried the smells of the forest and its small chattering, from the rustle of the trees to the chirps of birds. Jean Paul led them just past the edge of the clearing, close enough to see its light filtering through the trees but far away enough that James didn’t feel observed by the slowly filling up meadow.

By the time he let up eleven laps and forty-fiveish minutes later James was glad she had already done some jogging regularly. Of course, she realized that if she wasn’t used to any endurance exercises Jean Paul would have probably gone easier on her.

“That was a great warm-up, wasn’t it?” Jean Paul was way too chipper in the morning. Almost sadistic. James narrowed her eyes at him as she put her hands behind her head and breathed deeply. Louis nodded at her proper breathing technique and took on the same position. While he wasn’t breathing as heavily as she was, he wasn’t in the same position as Jean Paul, who truly did look like it was just a light jog and could go do it again a couple of times. Going back to the same training area, Jean Paul finally started to teach her some self-defense.

“Okay, form a fist. Good, never make a fist with your thumb inside of it, that’s how people break it. When you strike, you want it to be with your first two knuckles,” he showed her his, which were nicely calloused. He had turned surprisingly serious now that they were done with the conditioning.

“Now that we went over all that, I don’t want you throwing punches. Beginners are as likely to hurt themselves with a punch as the person they’re punching. Yes, it’s very much a Hollywood myth. So, we’re going to work on a palm strike.”

Showing her the proper stance, Jean Paul prompted Louis to take it as well and went over everything he did right. Legs slightly wider than shoulder width apart, one foot in front of the other, body in the middle.

“This position is stable,” pushing Louis slightly, he showed her as he absorbed the hit and didn’t really move. Tapping him to stand normally, he pushed him again and James smiled when she saw Louis stumble. “Let’s see you do it. Good, now hand position, you can keep them at your side, or you can guard you face, which do you think is better?” She moved her hands to her chin.

“Nice, yes, same leg that’s back has the hand slightly back too. Why is that? When we’re using any type of strike, we want to maximize our power, so we’re going to generate power from our core. Every time you strike, your back hand is going to go forward, making your body twist to completely face your opponent.”

Demonstrating the proper position, he showed her how he did it a couple of times, watching as she followed his movements. Meanwhile, Louis shuffled over a training dummy for her to strike. They repeatedly corrected her stance and movement over the next thirty minutes, refusing to let her drop in quality as she became increasingly exhausted. Finally, she broke and asked, “why aren’t we training with a weapon?”

“We’re eventually going to run out of bullets. And if we let you use blades, you’d get cut. Better to learn the basics perfectly then move on.” Jean Paul explained, nudging her feet and correcting her stance again. But then, that was training, wasn’t it? Practice didn’t make perfect. Perfect practice made perfect. Because James wasn’t talented, not in this. She’d have to make up for it with hard work. At least that was something she was familiar with.