Lucien grunted as he slammed down onto the ground, wincing at the shock rippling through his body, to say nothing of the fissured earth. His assailant, an older man with a shaved head and a scowl on his features tapped his foot impatiently. Groaning in discomfort, Lucien pushed himself to his feet, shaking out his arms and rolling his neck and shoulders. A quick glance at the ground showed him how hard he’d hit, and he shook his head in disbelief. The subtle layer of hard granite beneath the grass had cracked from the impact.

“You need to keep your guard up.” The older man growled in a thick Israeli accent.

“I’m trying, but it doesn’t seem to be helping much.” Lucien said snarkily.

“That’s because you’re slow and stupid.”

“Thanks, Malachi.” He responded drily, not taking the other man’s words to heart.

His day until that point had been simple; wake up, get ready for school, eat breakfast with his family and head in to First High. Classes, a pop quiz, time spent socialising — and then he’d remained with Ty only long enough for them to leave together before hopping out of his best friend’s truck and super speeding to Yosemite to meet Malachi Cohen. The grizzled Israeli veteran had been both surly and annoyed from the start, as if the lessons he’d agreed to give aggrieved him personally.

Yet he’d thrown himself into teaching with a gusto, and so Lucien found himself the subject of repeatedly harsh takedowns, each one managing to actually send pain through his immensely durable body. He’d initially worried he’d be too fast or too strong for the older man, but Malachi was gifted with strength and speed as well — just not any of Lucien’s other various abilities. It meant he had the upper hand in terms of perception and spatial awareness, but those advantages had meant next to nothing in the face of Malachi’s incredible and terrifying capability as a fighter.

“Are you ready, boy?”

“Yes, sir.” He responded automatically. Malachi had insisted on proper address.

A nod from the older man and he launched forwards, Lucien mimicking him a moment later. Time slowed and bubbled around them as the world blurred with their motion, the distance between them contracting with spatial alteration as they impacted with supernatural speed enough to generate a small shockwave, in spite of it being relatively ‘normal’ to their minds. Lucien ducked a testing punch at his head and moved forwards with his right foot, aiming a practiced jab at Malachi’s kidney — only for the older man to move his right hand down and smack away Lucien’s own, pivoting into an elbow strike that took him in the sternum.

Lucien stumbled backwards and threw up his hands to guard, only for Malachi to crack his knee into his stomach. The air left his lungs and his guard faltered for a second, which was all the time the older man needed to grab him by the face, sweep his legs, and smash him spine-first back into the exact same spot on the ground with an earth-shattering boom.

“Jesus Christ!” Lucien exclaimed, groaning at the pain radiating through his body as he lay on the ground, feeling the air refilling his desperate lungs. “I don’t get it, I did exactly what you said!”

“Yes, you hatzuf, but you didn’t do it fast enough. Olympus could have hit me ten times in the space it took you to swing that snail-paced punch.”

“I’m not Olympus!”

“Clearly.” Malachi responded ruthlessly, folding his scarred arms. “During the Trumpet War, I fought against the Brotherhood alongside your Father, and the Firesworn as well. While Olympus duelled Messiah or Baal, we watched his back.” Malachi gestured idly at Lucien as he rose to his feet, rubbing the back of his head gingerly. He was already healing, though it was somewhat slower due to the repeated injuries. “You have, presumably, the same capacity for overwhelming power in your veins. Power anyone in this world would literally kill for — and not just one kill, but as many as it took. You’re the son of a Prophet, of an agent of God. You have Divine Gifts within you. You must learn to use them.”

If there was one thing that Lucien disliked, it was Malachi’s allusion towards Olympus’ presumed Divinity. It wasn’t an uncommon belief, especially among those that had seen the Primus while he’d lived. The Seventh Trumpet had often inspired religious fervour in those he’d saved and led, and while Messiah had posed as the second coming, it was Olympus that the truly faithful had turned to. Even fifteen years after his death, debate still raged as to whether Olympus had been a man, a divine messenger… or a God.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Lucien complained, hating how whiny his own voice sounded in his ears. “I’m strong and I’m fast, sure, and I have the crazy sensitive senses—” he grunted as his back cracked “—but I have no clue what the hell you mean when you say ‘Divine Gifts’. I’m not as strong as Olympus was.”

“Yet.” Malachi growled stubbornly, his cold blue eyes unwavering. “Not yet.”

Biting back an angry retort, Lucien settled into a ready stance with his fists just below his sternum, sliding his left foot back as he resolved to try again. Let the old man rant. He didn’t need to be as strong as Olympus to put Malachi on his ass. He just needed to use his youthful advantages. For all Malachi’s technique and terrifying lethality, Lucien was almost certain that he could squeeze out more speed if he focussed on it hard enough.

“Hmph.” Malachi grunted in something near to approval, before beckoning silently.

Lucien focussed all his attention on his powers, and willed himself to go faster. He took off towards Malachi with a muted boom, depressing the granite underfoot from the force of his take-off as he charged at his surly mentor. He felt the warping of reality again as he entered what he had come to call ‘speed mode’ and honed in with his advanced senses. He could hear Malachi’s heartbeat, smell the subtle drops of sweat on his mentor’s bare arms, feel the heat from his body and taste the lingering scent of cologne and nicotine in the air. His eyes followed every crease and wrinkle of his instructor’s aged features… and then he saw it: The almost invisible twitch of Malachi’s eyes as he planned his counter.

Lucien reacted immediately, throwing his weight to his left and raising his left arm in an L-shape with his fist before his face; blocking the sudden swing from Malachi’s right fist as fast as it came, and responding with a lightning kick at the older man’s midriff. Euphoric shock filled him as he felt the blow connect, and he beamed with happiness at his own accomplishment, thrusting his arms into the air in victory as his mentor was thrown backwards.

Only a heartbeat later did he realise the sheer stupidity of what he’d done, before Malachi rammed home the message with a snap-kick and uppercut that ended with Lucien on his back.

Again.

“Yep.” Lucien said with a cough, tasting blood from the punch. “I deserved that.”

Malachi grunted at his words, and the teenager blinked in surprised as the older man’s offered hand entered his vision. Taking it, Lucien was pulled to his feet and stabilised as he shook his head, spitting blood onto the ground even as he felt the itch of his lacerated mouth healing.

“How did you know I was going for your left side?” Malachi asked, watching him with an unreadable expression.

“I dunno. Well, no, I do — it’s just hard to explain. I tapped into my senses. You know, the smell, and sight, and sound and stuff—” he gestured to his own face “—and I just kinda knew. Something about your eyes and also, now I think about it, the way you shifted your weight on your feet. The impact of your soles on the earth, the timing of your heartbeat… Huh.” He felt a sudden wash of understanding roll over him, eyes widening slightly. “It’s wild. I didn’t even realise the things I was processing, but every little detail was just… there. In sharp relief. It was like I was seeing what you would do before you did it. Does that make sense?”

“Yes.” Malachi said with a little less surliness. “It’s called reading the pulse, or the tempo. You connected with your instincts and your analytical mind on a primal level. Your body moved where it had to move, not where you told it to move. You pre-empted; you didn’t just react. It’s a thing only great warriors can do.”

Lucien blinked at his mentor, taken aback by the compliments. “I see.”

“Don’t let this give you a big head though, you putz.” Malachi warned with a return to his usual growling demeanour. “You managed to tap into something you weren’t even aware you could use. When you start doing that consistently, then we can look at it as a real advantage.”

“Is this why you didn’t bother teaching me basics beyond how to kick and punch?” Lucien asked, watching the shorter man as he stepped away. “Because of my…”

“Yes.” Malachi said without preamble. “Once you learn to know the Tempo properly, your body will do what it must. Krav Maga is merely another way of honing muscle memory and teaching you to understand your body and your surroundings. Technique is important, but instinct is much more valuable to people like us. We’re just different. Once you learn to master that skill, boy…” The Israeli lit up a cigarette before continuing. “The combat techniques will come on their own. Your body already knows what to do, it’s your overactive brain that is struggling.”

“So it’s kind of like a pre-built form of muscle mimicry?”

Malachi’s blank stare caused him to hesitate, rethinking as the older man smoked in silence.

“What I mean is, it’s weird, but it kinda felt like I knew the moves because I’d seen them. So it isn’t just that it’s this weird, natural predator thing where we can just genetically kick ass — we’ve memorised it. I saw someone block once, or read about, without even realising it maybe; and now it’s just… stored in my mind, waiting to be used.”

“That’s probably the dumbest way of putting it.” Malachi sneered, exhaling smoke.

“So that’s why you wanted me to spend time watching Krav Maga videos before we started training? To expose my mind to the techniques?”

“You’re not as stupid as you look, boy.” Malachi said in response, though Lucien could hear the suppressed approval in the grumpy man’s words as he continued. “Too much information can be bad. It can confuse you, confuse your body. You might go to block a hit and hesitate because you think about a Judo block, but your mind jumps to a Go-Kan-Ryu block. That sort of mistake can be fatal in a fight at our pace.”

“So the way around that is… what, saturation?” Lucien asked after a moment.

“Yes. The more exposed you are to a particular discipline, the more likely your—” Malachi somehow managed to make expressionless air quotes mocking “—‘Muscle Mimicry’ will default to that. The reason I gave you Krav Maga instead of something else like Karate or Kung Fu is that Krav Maga is both the most efficient way to handle the kind of enemies you’re most likely to encounter, and it teaches you to use your environment like an extension of yourself.”

“And since I’m going to be engaging people in New Avalon, it stands to reason I need to learn to use all the tools at my disposal.” Lucien concluded, understanding the other man’s point. He had chosen Krav Maga himself regardless, but it wasn’t until that moment that he understood the significance of that choice. There were many capable, lethal fighting styles on the planet — several of them unnamed and employed as a kind of hybrid of several different disciplines by soldiers and killers the world over. Krav Maga, though, seemed appropriate to him. He enjoyed its structured chaos, the way it adapted to the living world and turned everything from a paperclip to a pencil into a lethal instrument.

If exposure was how he trained his Muscle Mimicry — he was determined to make that the name of the ability — then he’d saturate himself with Krav Maga. A thought struck him as he came to the decision, and his eyes widened with realisation. “Wait a minute, so are you saying that Muscle Mimicry is inherent to all physically enhanced metas?”

“From what I’ve observed.” Malachi confirmed. “Strength and Speed types tend to have the highest manifestation rate, at least.”

“So every Meta I fight is probably going to have some instinctive level of advanced physical combat capability?”

“Probably.” Malachi said with a careless shrug. “Though very few will be able to read the Tempo. If they can get halfway there, though, and let themselves fight by calculated instinct instead of through overthinking and over-analysis? They’ll still give you plenty of trouble.”

“But you think I could be stronger than anyone.”

“Yes.” Malachi said with a hint of annoyance. “With time. You’ve had your powers for, what, two months?” He gestured almost aggressively at the air with his half-smoked cigarette. “Most of your opponents that have physical enhancement will have been using their gifts for years. Your overall potential may be effectively limitless, but you don’t just get that power. You need to train, to excel, to push yourself. It’s just strength, endurance, and speed training with higher number values. Some people graduate from forty kilos to sixty kilos. You graduate from a four wheel drive to an eighteen wheeler.”

Lucien nodded, having already worked that out himself. “So I just need to constantly push myself in order to grow stronger. I can do that.”

“Not just push yourself.” Malachi corrected. “Push yourself to your breaking point, and then go beyond it. We don’t increase our capabilities gently. If you want to reach higher peaks, you need to be willing to suffer for it, boy. You need to be willing to all but destroy yourself so you can recover better, faster, stronger.”

“Good song.” Lucien murmured, drawing a moment of silence from Malachi.

“Yes. I did enjoy Daft Punk when I was younger.”

Lucien’s eyes bulged, and Malchi continued as if he hadn’t said anything. “Your only obstacle to power is your own commitment, boy. Your Father could sunder mountains and halt tsunamis. What your legend will entail entirely depends on what you’re willing to give.”

“I get it.” Lucien said with a nod, peering up at the sky with conflicted emotions. “I’ll also probably need to figure out how to get over my… other issues, too.”

“Yes.” Malachi said without pity. “Flying is a colossal advantage. Despite the saturation of Hyperion, Atlas, Tempest, and the others in the media it’s not a common or even normal ability. Of all the metahumans on the planet, less than fifteen percent can fly — and of that fifteen percent, perhaps only one percent can do so to the capacity of being effective outside a limited area. Altitude, speed, control… All these are factors in what separates a party trick from a true advantage.”

Lucien fell silent at Malachi’s words, eyes searching the sky beyond the canopy of the trees. The familiar stirring of longing filled him as he watched the distant clouds float across the blue, yet so too came the ghost of the remembered agony of his manifestation. He winced at the onset of painful recollections, and banished them from his mind as he turned back to his mentor. A moment of hesitation followed, and then he asked the question that had stirred in his mind. “How fast could Olympus fly?”

Malachi was silent for a moment as he considered, tossing down his cigarette and crushing it under his heel. “He once made it from New York City to Beijing in just under an hour.”

Lucien’s eyes widened slowly as he did the math in his head. “That’s basically Mach 10!”

“It was.” Malachi said with a little smirk. “And I don’t even think he was pushing himself.” The old man dusted his hands on his khaki pants and cracked his neck, motioning to Lucien. “Now get ready, boy. It’s not even evening yet. We have more practice to do. You need to be able to last more than three seconds in a fight before you think about flying to the land of noodles.”

Lucien couldn’t help but smile at Malachi’s words, turning to face his mentor. With everything that had been said, his goals had become far clearer and more obvious. Overcoming his flight impediment had jumped to near the top of his list, and he brushed some of his black hair from his eyes as he focussed on the Israeli veteran. First he’d focus on learning to fight.

Then he’d focus on claiming the skies.