"What the hell..." Henry muttered, stepping back cautiously from the meathead he'd been beating up.

At the start of Phase B, he gave the guy a break to meditate upon his beating and anticipate the next. At this moment of respite, the meathead should have remained motionless, lying in a broken mess on the ground, panting in shock. Instead, the weirdo immediately sprang to his feet, his muscular body rearing to continue the fight.

Dan, rising crimson-covered but intact from the earth into which he'd been trodden, was himself surprised at his own reaction.

Where, the boy wondered, had this courage come from? Why was his blood pulsating so joyfully?

But wasn’t this perfect? Dan's rugby coach was always stressing how his biggest weakness on the field was his meekness, his aversion to getting physical, his refusal to strive out from the line on his own and risk a bit of danger. Yet, in this world, there was no pain, he could be fearless.

Wasn't this an opportunity to temper his resolve, to build the strength to break free from his mental shackles?

On Dan's bloody, dirt-caked face shone a grin of euphoria and focus.

This was it! He had been transported right into the big game during crunch hour, a boiling potato was in his hand, it was a 5 to 8 situation, there were no nearby friendlies to offload to, and, if he didn’t loophole the frigid owl before the buzzer blew, the season would be flushed down the toilet! (AN: I don’t understand Handsome Dan's thoughts either. By 2050, the language of sports had evolved to be incomprehensible to the modern mind).

By the time Dan was upright, he couldn’t see Big Bro anywhere, Big Bro already evading as he'd promised in Phase B. Nevertheless, not feeling discouraged, he scanned the field. Between two of his fighting teammates, he spotted a flash of colourful clothing and a monkey’s ear.

“Found you, Big Bro!” Dan roared as he charged headlong into the fray.

Big Bro tried to keep the distance by circling around Dan's teammates, keeping them between the two of them. To counteract this, Dan, using a special rugby technique, gave a semi-Gaussian mushroom feint to suggest he was heading left while, in actual fact, he was heading right.

The masterful manoeuvre paid off, allowing him to close to within four strides of Big Bro.

"AHHHHHH!" Dan, spooking his teammates, screamed like a neanderthal hopped up on amphetamines.

Breaking through his physical and mental limits, he raised his wooden pole high above his head in preparation for a killing blow.

“Time's up." Henry clapped. "Phase A."

"Ah!" Dan suddenly saw the world spinning again, the ground falling from above to meet him, his eardrums splintering with another shout.

“You overconfident preschooler!” Henry stomped the noob's jaw, the bone giving a satisfactory crunch as it separated from the skull. “Did you think I would fall for your playground charade?!” He kicked the kid's mouth, sprinkling the ground with two premolars and a canine.

As before, he gave Dan a relentless 15-second pummelling while insulting the kid.

Saana Combat Pro-tip #3: Saana wasn't a shounen anime. No amount of teenage optimism or bravery could overcome the unforgiving reality of violence. Everyone who'd reached the top of the bloody mountain had aged their bodies by subjecting themselves to years of tireless combat training. You had to be mature, you had to be smart, you had to be disciplined. A fight had no room for children. Once the enemy embraced you in the grapple, neither your nakama's words of encouragement nor your mother's scratching fingers would pry them away before their dagger had finished blending your organs.

Another pair of meatheads sparring nearby had stopped their fight to study their handsome friend's abuse at the hand of this monkey-headed stranger.

So far, they’d themselves been in a sort of gentleman’s agreement where they smacked each others’ sticks, their imagination confined to the limits of their modern, violence-averse upbringing. Now, however, their eyes were awakened to a new, more brutal possibility.

Both meatheads having the same thought at the same time, they attempted to tackle each other, their skulls clattering as they collided.

The sparring lesson continued, Henry demolishing the kid over and over again.

No matter how much he bullied the overly-handsome meathead, the kid would get back up and continue to fight with more passion, like a generic anime protagonist whose only character trait was a stubborn Will or a masochist.

But if the kid wanted a beating, Henry wouldn't deny him.

Trouncing this handsome child was making for excellent stress relief from the inconveniences of the morning. Whenever Henry's foot stomped firmly upon the meat of this noob's head, it was almost like he was stomping on the head of all the idiots of Suchi. At a more elevated, spiritual level, it was like stomping upon the head of Suchi itself, this irredeemable hellhole spawning such morons.

Dan, in the middle of one round, bent his arm too far back for a swing.

Henry rushed in faster than the strike, hugging the kid's body and tripping him. “You confused casual!” He headbutted the kid's handsome nose, breaking it yet again. "This isn’t a golf game! Keep winding your swings up too far, and the only holes being sunk will be the ones in your face!”

Saana Combat Pro-tip #4: This was a habit noobs had to unlearn, imitating the wide, visually-dramatic movements of hand-to-hand combat in popular media. Real fights were rarely so flashy. Constraining attacks was a type of martial economy, one bound to the rules of velocity and acceleration, of time and distances, of force and momentum, of stimulus and response. All the muscular strength one invested into a heavy swing would be dissipated if the opponent read its telegraphy and knew they could stab your stomach quicker.

Gradually, however, as Henry continued pummelling noob up, he found his rationale for doing so evolving, transcending to a less selfish motive.

With each successive beating, the meathead showed small signs of improvement, and this effect started to instil Henry with a strange feeling, as though he were being possessed by something.

“You one-slice toaster!” Henry, taking down the kid in another round, punched him in his soft throat. “Where’s your adaptability? You said you play rugby, but why is it that when I go for your legs, it doesn’t occur to you to try fend me off with your free-arm!"

Saana Combat Pro-tip #5: Beginners over-focused on their weapon, viewing it as the sole conduit for attack and defence. In hand-to-hand combat, it was better to regard the weapon as one extended limb, one part of the entire body engaged in mortal struggle. The legs controlled distances and force, the head and torso were open to attacks, a free-arm was available for grabbing or emergency blocking, etc.

This more holistic mindset especially applied in a duel, where no teammates could cover for the use-limits inherent to each weapon. The world's greatest spear-expert could have all their genius negated in a second by their enemy using a shield to slip past the weapon's point; afterwards, until the spearman could disengage, they would be left to resort to whatever else their body could offer. For a newbie, to bring the other limbs into play, it was often useful to start them off by having them ignore weapons entirely and teach them to wrestle instead. Wrestling was a great skill in general. Even the top duels of today still regularly devolved to that primitive type of fighting, just two apes rolling in the arena sand while prodding each other with knives.

"You're not going to use this limb?" Seizing the kid's arm, Henry cranked it back, a sweet snap singing from the shoulder socket. "Fine, I will take it from you!"

Wasn't this higher feeling possessing Henry the noble spirit of teaching?

On this day, had he been initiated into the allures of that great cause that had inspired so many great men, from Socrates to Confucius? To correct the errant ways of the youth, to gift them the proper tools with which they could forge a dazzling future, what greater motivator could there be than this?

Perhaps this was the natural progression of the retired man entering life's grey-decades. At the end of his career, we should transition from bright-eyed students to wrinkled teachers.

In another round, Dan celebrated at successfully landing a direct hit with his stick to his new teacher's face, only to scream a moment later when Henry, allowing the blow to crash against his mask, ignored it, grabbed him and tripped him again.

“You mathematically-inept neonate!” Henry stomped the kid's handsome teeth once more. “If stomping your head this many times doesn’t stop you, would I be stopped by a single pathetic tap from your rattle? You can't stop a charging elephant with a pistol. Next round, swing with force, swing faster, swing with purpose!”

Saana Combat Pro-tip #6: Newbies had to discard the simplistic binary perspective of attacks, in which hits spelt success and misses failure. Really, attacks had continuous and qualitative aspects, depending on many variables like the force of the blow and the precise site of impact. A headshot to the side of the brow might glance off harmlessly, but, had it been redirected a couple centimetres closer towards the centre, the very same attack might've rattled the gelatinous bag of brainmeat inside the skull and knocked the opponent out cold. One would also struggle to find much resemblance between a headshot to the skull from a sabre versus a spear versus a mace. In Saana's combat, attacks covered a wide range of significances, some being trivial, others ending a life.

"I'll show you an incapacitating headshot!" Henry rolled the meathead face-up.

Dan stared up in silent awe, his eyes shimmering with terror and respect. After a thorough pulverisation of his body and soul, he'd submitted entirely, a student offering up his eternal allegiance.

Henry, hiding a disgusted snarl behind his mask, jabbed those admiring eyeballs and tugged at both.

As the pair—the extraocular muscles and optic nerves offering the subtlest of pullback of resistance before snapping—were dislodged from their sockets, a wave of feeling rippled through Henry's body, his limbs flooded with another surge of corporeal memory.

But, no, Henry realised, as if awakening suddenly from a fever dream where ideas merge without coherent logic.

He wasn't transforming into a teacher. If that'd ever been the goal, there'd been much more effective methods than this.

As the warm-up neared its end, Instructor Apari, who'd been patrolling giving tips of his own, was shaking his bald head.

Earlier, he'd considered separating those two, but, when he’d approached, he’d been stopped by the expression on the one being brutalised’s face. It was a strange grin, one that seemed almost euphoric.

Still, maybe he should have interfered. Now, all around the pair, the other shirtless Offworlders had been corrupted, the brutes wrestling in the dirt, smashing and biting and shouting and choking and kneeing.

The scene had become violent and ugly, but Instructor Apari had to admit, it would prove more effective than the fangless tango of most Offworlders when they first arrived.

He raised his horn to his lips and blew. At once, the music of flesh and bone came to a pause.

“Alright, you savage lot, calm down!" Instructor Apari shouted. "Grab a real weapon; get fitted into your armour. In the next part of the lesson, you'll be fighting your first drove of fearsome beasts!"