Mirah had been as unsurprised as everyone else. Well, except maybe Walter, who was more nervous than surprised at the fact that they were going to learn how to fight hand to hand.

Willem had set them up in a row facing him and had instructed them quickly on where to place their feet, and general stance related advice. ‘Keep your hands up’, ‘Feet shoulder width apart’; all advice which had been quickly taken by the group. Aaliyah was the first to settle into the correct stance, Mirah and Ajax shortly after and then, after a minute of confusion, Walter managed to get himself into a halfway decent stance, in Willem’s reckoning.

He took them through a few basic punches, but really focusing on teaching them how to make the most of their punches. Properly rotating their bodies to generate as much force as possible.

“Alright, that’s enough. I won’t be teaching you kicks today, punches are enough for now. Go grab training gear in your size from over there.” The short man pointed with his thumb at a series of hooks that had bulky bags hanging off of them. “Also, Ajax. Hand me your axe please.”

The large man nodded and unhooked his large fire axe off of a utility belt he had found somewhere and handed it off to Willem. Willem just tucked the axe under his arm and waited for the group to go get ready.

Mirah walked over to the rack slowly and looked at the sizes, ranging all the way from triple x-small to triple x-large. Never having seen any of these in her entire life, she was suitably dumbfounded. Walter and Aaliyah instantly gravitated towards their own size, and Ajax just gambled on picking the largest size.

Mirah picked a small up off of a hook and pulled out a padded vest and looked at it, trying to gauge if it’d fit her. As she was trying to squeeze her head into the small opening, she heard an awkward cough from Walter.

“Um. I think a medium would fit you, Mirah.” His voice called out shakily.

Why does this stuff have to be so complicated? How am I supposed to know what a small size is? She thought as she painfully pulled the padded vest back off from over her head, hair now well and truly dishevelled. She looked towards Walter, who shied from her gaze, and saw that he had already gotten his protective gear on, helmet and all. She grabbed a medium from off it’s hook and pulled out the vest, but as she began to put it over her head again, Walter interjected.

“Er, Mirah? You are supposed to undo the straps and put it on that way.” He said nervously. Mirah looked at the vest perplexedly, almost scowling. Walter chuckled a little, before quickly going quiet when Mirah turned her almost-scowl to him.

“I– I’m sorry…” He said, but Mirah had moved on, trying to unstrap the gear and failing terribly.

“Would you like me to help you?” Walter said finally after watching Mirah undo and redo the few straps incorrectly a few times, obviously uncomprehending of what she was supposed to do with the mess of Velcro. Walter grimaced when that gave turned onto him.

Mirah was always wearing a passive gaze, one so difficult to parse that it just came off as boredom at best, and subdued anger at worse. Walter, a man of many anxieties, could barely stand being around her at all. His total inability to understand what she was thinking and how little she talked, made him nervous that he was annoying her by even being in her presence.

Mirah gave Walter a long, considering look. She had never had anyone offer to help her before, at least not for a very long time. To be helped getting dressed? It made her feel almost like a child. But when she looked down at the complicated mess of straps and fasteners in her hands, she realised she had no choice.

“Yes… please.” She said, words she hadn’t spoken in a long, long time. Immediately after receiving the affirmative from Mirah, Walter seemed to light up, happy to be given something useful he can do. He took the vest out of her hands, and undid the back of the vest, doing it slow enough to make sure that Mirah could see and learn how to do it herself.

He gave it back to her, the back of the vest wide open, allowing her to easily slip her arms through the sleeves of the vest and Walter moved behind her and began to nimbly fasten the undone straps.

Mirah had almost jumped at the sudden contact, stiffening like a board, but Walter didn’t seem to notice and went about his business. After only a few more seconds, Mirah’s vest was done tight and firm around her chest and midsection, but not so tight that she couldn’t breathe.

She looked into the pack she had pulled her vest from and pulled out the pants of the set, and managed to get them and the helmet on without issue, as well as a set of fingerless gloves with a little extra padding.

“There we go!” Walter exclaimed cheerily, a wide smile on his face “All done. We should get back over there; they’re waiting on us.” Walter jogged on over, and for the first time as Mirah was following the man, she realised that he had lost a substantial amount of weight in the past week. He had gone from being relatively chubby, especially for his height, to being more or less ‘normal’ in only a week of general fitness.

She wondered, had she changed physically as well?

“So, grab a partner and we’ll do some basic drills and then you can have a go at actually fighting one another.” Willem said as Mirah finally lined up with the rest of the team. It seemed that Ajax and Aaliyah immediately paired up, leaving Mirah and Walter to stand across from each other on the mats that covered the floors of most of the paining area.

Willem proceeded to direct them in blocking drills, where one partner would attack and the other would do a slow blocking motion, just allowing them to get used to the motion of it, and then swapping positions and the attacker would become defender.

Willem constantly wandered around the two pairs, adjusting the form of his subjects however he saw fit, usually just in the form of a call out. Sometimes he’d physically change the form of the person himself, though he didn’t do that for Mirah, only going so far as to place his index finger on her forearm to move it down slightly, pointing it closer to Walter’s chest and chin than his nose and forehead, something Mirah greatly appreciated.

Walter was clumsy overall, and Mirah found it easy to keep up with the man’s flailing. She felt as though the movements were so natural to her, taking to them pretty easily. She wasn’t prodigious, but she could feel herself learn from every mock punch she threw, able quickly to reconfigure her stance or positioning.

Mirah stole glances at Ajax and Aaliyah between drills and saw that they were going much harder, Aaliyah may as well be throwing everything into her punches, and Ajax being as close to a brick wall as a human could be in return. They were clearly in a different weight class, but it was still humbling for Mirah.

“Good! You’ve been doing pretty well so far. Time for the fun bit!” Mirah turned to look at the man, grin wide on his aged face, hands on his wide hips. “We’re going to do a light spar. We will not be looking to bruise, only to make contact. Kicking stays disallowed, try not to go for the head, but the helmets should protect you well for this training. We all understand?” He asked finally, and everyone nodded, though Walter just looked even more nervous.

Mirah really couldn’t tell why the man was so anxious, everything was clear enough to her. It wasn’t like anyone was going to get seriously hurt, not with Willem on the mats only a few metres away at most.

“We’ll have Ajax and Aaliyah go first, then have you two go later.” He said as he nodded towards Mirah and Walter. The two of them quickly got out of the way while Ajax and Aaliyah squared up in the new room that they’ve been given. Aaliyah jumped up and down on her toes while glaring at Ajax full force, and Ajax just wore a calm smile as he stood in the stance that Willem had been teaching them.

The two, once properly prepared for the small bout, stood only a metre or so apart and stared direct at each other, already beginning to strategize in their heads. Willem smiled at the sight and the readied himself to call.

“Fight!”

As soon as the word left Willem’s lips, Aaliyah was pushing her fist through the air and, with a heavy thump, slamming it into Ajax’s shoulder. Though the punch sounded impressive, it didn’t even seem to knock the man at all. Ajax wasn’t just tall, he was built strongly and practically. Ajax ducked closer into Aaliyah’s personal space, forcing her to move backwards to reclaim a defensible position.

Ajax’s punches were slower and not as lightning quick as Aaliyah’s but when they contacted Aaliyah’s body she was significantly impacted. In one case she was forced to alter the direction she was retreating in to keep her footing.

Mirah watched on with precise attention. She had never, apart from the link testing earlier in the week, seen a fight where the goal wasn’t to actually do significant harm to the other person. Mirah had seen fights as close as a few metres away take place where knives were drawn, and once where a Linked was involved in a fight at the end of her street. They were terrifying ordeals, one where the loser had his throat cut and the winner bled to death anyway and the other where the Linked simply punched the other man so hard that his neck bent the wrong way.

This, however, was different. She could see the strategy in Aaliyah’s movements, clearly being a more trained or experienced fighter somehow, and see Ajax trying to use his physical attributes to their maximum efficiency to get what he wanted done.

The outcome of the match was obvious, Ajax was going to win. He was far too physically overpowering, and Aaliyah’s blows seemed to do nothing to him at all. She wailed on him with all her might, fists flying through the air and her sleeves snapping with the force of the blows, but Ajax always simply took it head on, or blocked it with his arms which one of was thicker than both of Mirah’s legs combined.

Aaliyah sent a powerful blow straight towards Ajax’s lower stomach which he lowered a hand to bat the punch off of its course in response. However Aaliyah, who’s skin had slowly been gaining the bright red dots signifying her anger at her ineffectiveness, launched an uppercut towards his face while using her link.

The punch roared through the air like Mirah had only heard before one other time, and she hastily closed her eyes to what she could only assume was going to be a horrifically disfigured neck as Ajax’s head was pummelled with the powerful blow. However, there was a massive rush of air, as if a car had passed right by you at high speeds, and there was silence.

“I believe I said no links.” Willem’s quiet voice proclaimed, unamused. Mirah opened her eyes to see Ajax having stepped back a metre or so and Willem holding onto Aaliyah’s wrist strongly, stopping her from pulling it away from his grasp.

“Fuck you!” She yelled into his face, the red that Mirah had seen splotched onto her skin growing larger, as if she had been splashed with a bright red paint. Ajax’s eyes widened and moved back further allowing Willem to handle the enraged woman.

“Okay, this is time for a teaching moment here. I will show you an example of how possessing technique and thoughtful application of power can easily make you superior to someone that simply throws their power around willy-nilly.” He lectured as he easily threw off a blow from the enraged Aaliyah without so much as a twitch. He pushed the girl away from him and retreated a few metres and set his stance.

Immediately the difference between the rest of the team’s stance and his was obvious, glaringly so. He had given a demonstration on where to place your feet and arms before, but now that he was in this fight it was so much different.

His stance was… tight. It was hard to describe. But it almost looked as if he was suffering under a massive weight and was compressing himself into a small ball to resist against it. His already small form constricted itself even smaller, and his arms, which were already large in proportion to his body grew larger, his corded muscle defining itself under his skin. His stomach, which Mirah had mistaken for fat, flexed to where the shirt grew taught over the bulging collection of muscles, hard as stone.

It didn’t take long for Aaliyah to regain her stance and fly towards Willem with a wordless yell. Her punch was met with a standard block, but this block held so much force that her own punch flew wide, leaving her padded chest open.

Willem moved into that space with a silent swiftness using the standard steps he had taught the team, and with no fuss, he let out two standard punches into her chest. The sound of the impact alone made the hair on Mirah’s arms stand on end.

And with those two punches, the enraged Aaliyah fell to the floor with a cough, the red leaking from her skin to whatever depths it had come from within her. Willem nodded, satisfied, and turned to the rest of the group.

“You get a good look at all that?”

The team simply nodded dumbly.