FOUR

The Training

“You’ve never told me why you don’t like weapons” John said as we walked, doing our best to avoid getting near any of the sidewalk drains. You can disappear down one of those.

“It’s not that I don’t like ‘em, it’s that I rarely feel the need for them”.

He gave me a queer look. “You used ‘em in the New Orleans job” he challenged, referring to when I first introduced him to the flipside’s existence and forever shattered his concept of reality. He stared at me, waiting. It seemed I wasn’t going to get off that easy, so I settled into my pace and took a deep breath.

“Before going off to college to earn my piano degree, I trained for a year in Osaka’s flipside. Shed was partway through his training there with Kenji, and vouched to have me brought over. I’d not yet heard of the Flip Side, but hey - free ticket to live in Japan, right?

“You remember that I used to cage fight, before I took up piano?” John nodded. “Well, this was a chance to train in a place that was rich in martial arts culture. A chance at my own ‘80s kung fu montage. I couldn’t resist”.

“I thought kung fu was Chinese?” He interjected.

I ignored him. “We flew into Narita and spent a couple days in Tokyo to help me get over the jetlag and culture shock, then took a train to the western edge of Chiba prefecture. That was almost a second culture shock in itself. Where Tokyo was nothing but city in all directions, Chiba was pretty rural. Rice fields and small homes outside town as far as the eye could see.

“It was there that Shed introduced me to master Watraru Miyamoto, a sensei of his. I’d later discover he trained with multiple people. I only spoke a little Japanese back then and Miyamoto-sama spoke no English, but I could tell by the way he moved that I could learn a lot from him”.

We continued walking, the streetlights casting their harsh and unwelcoming yellow glow down upon us.

“Shed translated for us the first few days, but then the old man forbade it. I would have to learn to understand him through context and time. It took awhile, but it worked.

“It was incredibly hot the first few months, and I came down with heat sickness a few times. It didn’t matter to Miyamoto-sama. I trained while I was sick. He was relentless, and considered any sign of exhaustion a sign of weakness. In short, it was hell. In retrospect I’m glade he pushed me, but I really hated it at the time”.

Shed chuckled, remembering.

“I wish I could say it was like the movie montage I’d hoped for, starting with me bruised and bloody and ending with me one-inch punching my way through a tree, but the reality is that I was bruised and bloody the whole time. We ran miles each day, most of which were through the mud and waters of nearby fields. We sparred, and he only gave me half rations. “American pudginess” he called it. I didn’t argue.

“He trained me in various Aikido techniques, explaining I’d need some defensive ability for what would come later in the year. He also routinely struck my hands, forearms, stomach, back and thighs with a wooden katana, demanding that I not flinch. I flinched a lot”.

Shed nodded in agreement.

John’s pace slowed a little as I told my story, perhaps in an effort to be polite and hear me out since he’d pressed me for the tale.

“I would wake each day in more pain than I’d known prior, with welts the likes of which I’d never seen, and still he would strike me. I started to think I hated him, but I stayed - mostly because Shed was taking it all alongside me without a single fucking complaint”.

I glared at Shed with a smirk, but he kept his eyes straight ahead, ignoring me. I caught the corner of his mouth raise in amusement.

“Looking back, it’s obvious he was teaching me to disconnect myself from pain, so that it would not rule me. I’m grateful now, especially for how it prepared me for what was to come later that year. Regardless, the beatings toughened me and my pain tolerance slowly caught up with Shed’s. Like him, I was eventually able to stand stoically until our sensei decided we’d have enough. I got full rations from then on”.

The three of us rounded a corner and had to jump up against a shop window to avoid colliding with a biker who’d hopped the curb to get around a carriage. We were only about halfway to our destination, so I pulled out the flask Moses had left me and took another drop of bliss into my mouth as John continued to question me.

“Aikido is defensive” he began, “but is going to be useless against a gun, or someone skilled with a blade. So you still haven’t answered my question”.

“I’m getting to that” I said, giving in and deciding to compress the story so I could finish before we reached Capital Investments. Shed remained silent, which was common for him, and let me finish. “I just wanted to set the stage for what came next”.

“As the weather began to cool, Miyamoto-sama told us that he would be heading in to Tokyo for an annual Aikido tournament. They apparently honored him each year. I was interested in seeing it for myself, but was informed that we would be remaining behind. Our next sensei was already on his way to pick us up.

Shed and I spent a few days in the old sensei’s home, going about our daily exercises and sparring with one another as usual. We were in one of these sparring sessions on the fourth day when Shed managed to throw me to the ground. I rolled with the motion and came back up as I was expected to, and found myself staring at an honest to god Viking”.

“A Viking” John repeated flatly.

“A Viking. At the time, I could only describe him like that. As it turns out, he actually had been a legitimate Norse pillager and follower of Thor, making him a real Viking once upon at time. Before I could open my mouth to say hello or ask who he was, he charged me. I reacted instinctively, reaching for his wrist and stepping to the side, intent on using his own momentum against him as Miyamoto-sama had taught me. It would have worked, too, had he been using Aikido techniques himself”.

“Right, a Viking who knows Aikido” John smiled.

“Yeah, well, he wasn’t using any of those techniques. As I grabbed his wrist and started to twist it, he bent and rammed his shoulder into my stomach, lifted me off the ground, and slammed me into the side of Miyamoto-sama’s house. I saw stars. He then cracked my jaw with his elbow before stepping back and drawing his sword.

“Shed shouted and tossed me a similar one-handed Viking sword. I’d never held one before but it felt… I don’t know. Right? In my hands. The Viking rushed me with his sword raised. I had felt his strength and expected to fail if I tried to block or parry, so I gave up”.

John looked at me incredulously. “Wh-”

“No,” I interrupted him. “I didn’t give up the fight. I gave up on making it through the fight alive. Instead I put all my focus into ensuring I took the brute with me”.

Shed’s mouth curved upward in satisfaction. “Your first kill”.

“Yeah. I still don’t know why I did it, but I flipped the sword over in my hand to grip the blade, and threw it at him. It was a lucky throw, I admit that, and it lodged in his shoulder. He dropped his own blade and snarled at me as he grabbed the hilt to pull the blade out. As I rushed up to him, I grabbed his dropped sword from the ground, and shoved it through his throat”.

I stopped, remembering the rush I’d felt, and then the sickening sense of dread that had followed shortly after. John smiled with a faraway look in his eye, doubtless remembering his first kill fondly. Interestingly, once the initial shock of it all was over, I found that the dread wasn’t from the act of killing a man - that wasn’t actually bothering me at all. It was that I had been forced into it without knowing why. That irked me, at the time, being attacked without knowing the reason. Now it happens monthly. How times have changed.

“In any event, a slow clap brought me out of my numbness as the adrenaline wore off. I turned to find a thin man with a gray mustache and a steam-punk looking brown suit standing next to Shed. His glasses were round, and had that look of being actual glass”.

“That was Tesla, our next trainer” Shed added. “He took us to Osaka for the next year”.

“And in Osaka” I continued, “Tesla gave me my tattoos. A process that ended up robbing me of the ability to feel pain”.

John turned his head to look at us as we walked, waiting for an explanation.

“Oh come on, you know Tesla right? The electricity guy?”

“I know the cars” he offered. I sighed.

“Nicolai Tesla was a contemporary of Thomas Edison. They went about the handling of electricity differently. Anyway, he gave me these tattoos by engraving my arms, not inking them. He used electric arcs, spraying ink with them as they shot from a metal ball of some kind into my arm. He worked with a set of levers to control the arcs, and engrave the runes on my arms”.

“Doing so deadened his pain receptors”, Shed finished for me.

“Woah, neat. Why didn’t you just do that all over?” John asked.

“We did, kind of. You’ve never seen me without a shirt. My forearms, entire torso, and thighs were all engraved and devoid of pain. The nerves in my hands were dead too, until this fucking thing” I rubbed at the arrow tattoo again.

“You’re leaving out the best part” Shed said. John looked at me expectantly.

I paused. I hadn’t told anyone about my bones, though Shed knew.

“When we continued training, we found a side effect to my engravings. I should note that this wasn’t an established method of his - it was a completely new experiment for Tesla, I just didn’t know that at the time. Anyway, without the pain we got into more and more dangerous sparring sessions.

“Shed was better than me, but I could take enough of a beating to keep up with him. Shed landed a blow that absolutely, positively should have shattered the bones in my arm. I felt fine, but since I couldn’t feel pain Tesla called a stop to our session and took me into a side room where he had some more equipment. A few x-rays later, and we realized that a side effect of his engravings were that he’d permanently changed the composition of my bones. They were interlaced with what looked like metal, and had no breaks at all”.

“You telling me you’re Wolverine?” John asked, starting to laugh. I looked at him. The laugh stopped before it left his lips. “Woah”.

“Yeah, so y’know. I don’t normally feel the need for a weapon. Eventually the rest of my pain receptors stopped functioning, not just the tattooed areas, and it seemed my bones were in no danger, so from then on I’ve tackled most situations hand-to-hand”.

“Badass, man. I wouldn’t give up my guns, though. Victoria here would get jealous” he added, patting the six-shooter at his side. “And Pedro would be pissed” he added, referencing the shotgun on his back.

I smiled, not just at the names, glad that the pistol had found him. In a way, that six-shooter was to him what Satsujinsha was to Shed, or Tyrfing was to me. Sastujinsha, Tyrfing, Pedro and Victoria. I shook my head in amusement, but it faded quickly. I still had no idea where Tyrfing had gone after it disappeared, but I shoved the worry aside the moment.

The entrance to The Tower loomed ahead of us. The streetlight above flickered ominously.

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