“Again,” Javier commanded. I punched out at his body, my brass knuckles crackling with stored electricity. A twist of his wrists and the rubber guard ate my impact, technique dissipating into the air.

The derived application of my Direct Current was a tool to be honed in the midst of training, our efforts no longer dedicated only to attacking spike feeders. After our engagement with Lord Nonan and our bouts in the arena, fighting with the purpose of fending off another person had been added to the training menu. My own addition to the regiment had been the addition of brass knuckles and training to help minimize the hits I took. Taking a hit I couldn’t afford to take would be the end of me— even if my fur was swollen that didn’t mean my ego needed to be swollen as well.

Off to the side, Mia danced about with daggers, practicing her moves again Alain, the best matchup for her own the team. It was folly to think her beak was intended as a weapon to wound. It worked on the weaker spike feeders, but even with the heights of her third tier, that wouldn’t last against those who specialized in defense. It was better to call upon other tools to shore up her weaknesses then try to adapt her beak into a role it wasn’t meant for.

While Alain’s claws were certainly shaper than most man-made materials, learning restraint was an invaluable tool as a member of the city guard. Lethality was frowned upon when enacting force upon the civilians, barring those who had crossed the line with their own acts of violence. His current score for destroying Mia’s daggers was at a meager ten— no small feat considering how long they’d been fighting. Their routine allowed him to slowly apply more and more force over time with Mia having to learn how to mitigate the impacts on her weaponry. They weren’t supposed to directly eat the impact, but misdirect it.

I couldn’t let myself get distracted though. It was my turn to be the defender, and Javier didn’t hold back. I had my Swollen Fur active the whole time, preparing to deactivate the technique to avoid an attack that would have clipped by me if it wasn’t active in the first place. The first two times in the rotation my success rate was something around one out of every ten times, and now it was somewhere around three out of every ten. An improvement, to be sure, but not enough. Not nearly enough. So much of my evasion before had been predicated on Electromuting my enemies, but sufficiently strong opponents could work around it have attacks so large that even my mitigation wouldn’t meaningfully misdirect the trajectory. The only answer was more practice.

Javier was doing me the courtesy of attacking fully visible— we had briefly tried doing a session where all of his attacks came camouflaged, and while my electroreception was adept at tracking his position, the dependency on that one sense wasn’t sufficient to compensate, resulting in failure after failure.

“Ready, kid?” He asked, his mouth wide open, revealing his coiled weapon, the deadly bludgeoning implement he had manufactured his tongue into becoming. The mighty muscle had speared holes through weaker beasts, the blunt force blowing through the paper-thin defenses. Even when using restraint his attacks still smarted something fierce, pain an excellent teacher.

I nodded, filling my blunt rings with more electricity. I hoped that a glancing blow could redirect Javier’s assault in a meaningful manner rather than resulting in my arms needing a session with the medics to re-align my shoulder with the socket. That had already happened to varying degrees in prior weeks. I would prefer to not have another session scheduled.

A clap sounded through the area, signaling Javier’s permission to attack. His head whipped out, a massive coiling lilac rod burst from his mouth, stretching across the gap we had construed between us. My electroreception read the anticipated path but my legs were not as receptive to the movement. I attempted to side step, leaning into a wide sweep of my arms, my charged knuckle careening for his tongue.

I heard the sizzling before I felt the impact of my fists, noting with horror the unexpected undulation of the tongue. It thrashed about, blowing me off to the side as it convulsed under the duress of my counter-attack. I grunted from the attack, hands traveling the course of my body to check for any serious wounds but I turned up dust, only bruises that would mend in due time.

Javier's tongue recoiled back into his waiting mouth, whipping fast enough to create a breeze from its trajectory. His next words were off, something awry with the delivery even if they had to be loud enough to carry across our gap. “Whatever you did was effective, Perry. I also hate it. Please refrain from executing new strategies unprompted during training, although put that in your repertoire for later.”

His hands crawled over his chin, gently rubbing at the hairs trailing around his jaw. He shivered, revulsion trailing in the exaggerated convulsions of his limbs. “Now go get back in position, and focus on dodging the attack, not counter attacking it. Alright?”

I groaned and strolled back to my starting position, mentally preparing for the next attack.

“Is that all you’ve got?” Mia asked, flashing a smirk at Alain. Something was invigorating her, her grief buried somewhere during the period after her father’s funeral. The exact day of the switch was invisible, but her improved attitude was a relief for the team. Her grief was a subject most of us didn’t know how to properly dance around, and for all the support we proffered little was taken. It was her right to deny the help in her grieving process but that didn’t make it easier to engage with her. Whatever resolution she found to continue was welcome, and I knew I would do whatever I could to help ensure its presence.

While she had averted her gaze at her mother’s cremation, crying into her father’s legs, there was no family left to sob into. She only had herself, the last of the Nonan line. Vera’s warm hands were the support that Mia required, but she had stared unflinching at her father’s burning body, tracing the trails of smoke with her eyes as they spiraled into the sky. She had looked away from his actions, but her resolve told me she would never look away again. She couldn’t afford to as the new Lord Nonan of Titan city.

Mia was already making great strides in restoring her houses honor, formally announcing her house’s investment in the city guard, canceling all shady arrangements with Lord Montare’s household. She was putting the city guard above her own houses restoration, spending more time training than performing noble duties. I had asked her about her goals and she had managed to succinctly capture it in one word. Revenge.

And now, her training was showing results, her tier increase and focused will allowed her to maintain her double-time state for even longer than before, body withstanding the stress of the action.

Alain grit his teeth, welcoming the opportunity to train with a faster foe, even if the cost of the opportunity meant being needled with endless insults from Mia. She had found the upperhand and was clinging to it for all it was worth. “You know if I stopped holding back I could shatter those daggers.”

“And if I stopped holding back I would suck your energy dry. We can say all the ‘woulds’ and ‘shoulds’ we want but we’ve chosen our limitations and we’re sticking to them, Alain. Now stop making excuses and successfully fend off my blade this time.”

She twirled her daggers about, the blades spinning incredibly fast under her augmented hands, as though she was holding two wheels of pure steel, before they came to a sudden stop in her hands. “In three, I’ll come at you. Got it?”

Alain rolled his eyes and nodded in confirmation, hair raising on end as his senses strained their utmost to anticipate Mia’s impending barrage. A confident countdown emanated from Mia’s lips, and when the last digit dropped, she bolted, feet kicking off dirt as she took two steps for every one of Alain’s.

Mia kicked off of the ground, wings beating quickly to wrap around Alain, diving for his ankles while he still tried to keep up with her rotation. His legs sunk into shadow, upper body following suit. With his bodies height passively accounted for, turning to meet the clash was a more achievable pursuit, meaning his claws were unfurled to block Mia’s hasty scrapes.

“How long have you been saving that idea?” she asked, jumping back upon impact. “It’s pretty good.”

Alain pursed his lips to the side, eyes searching his memory for the buried thought. “It’s been sitting around for a while but didn’t really meet the opportunity until this moment.”

“Guess we’ll need to give you more opportunities to practice it then. The more fluid you are in the shadows, the less likely you’ll ever be hit. If you can flit about only long enough to expose yourself for your own attack, you’ll be practically untouchable.”

Alain’s teeth steeled together. “The prospect of dancing so much in the shadows in a prescient one, if not a horrifying one. It’s terribly cold in that stretch of darkness.”

Mia’s casual smirk was almost as impactful as if she had smacked on him on the cheek. “Guess you’ll have to get used to it.”

“Guess I will,” he replied through his gritted teeth, the pair resetting their positions for another clash.

While I was perhaps just as exhausted from my own routine with Javier, it could be reasonably claimed that the rest of us were getting off easy compared to Vera, who was receiving her own training routine under the tutelage of Amalarys. The first thing she needed beat into her body was to refrain from showing mercy to other people. There wasn’t room to take it easy against other trained fighters to the extent she had, essentially lowering her defenses to the point that even a child would be able to take her out.

Thus Vera’s training consisted largely of being punished by Amalarys, her body bearing the weight of rings of constriction to simulate being on the threshold of death, to beat that fear of action into her body. It was accompanied by lectures reprimanding Vera for her kindness and to put the doctrine aside when it came to fighting others. “Ask for forgiveness after the fight,” Amalarys commanded. “You know who won’t be forgiven if you don’t take fighting other people seriously? Yourself. If you die due to being unwilling to take your opponents seriously, no matter what they look like, you’ll leave behind regrets and bitter condemnation at the face of your attitude of superiority.”

Vera didn’t have much to say in response. That, or being constricted meant most of her air were spent to preventing from the last of her strength fading from her body as she collapsed into unconsciousness. Either way, she could only struggle against the threat, trying her best to call upon her techniques and other capabilities to escape Amalarys’s attack lest she suffer through another lecture. Certain things were worse than death, and one of those was having to hear another story from Amalarys about her time working on the front line.

For all that Vera struggled, today was not the day she broke out of Amalarys’s technique, meaning yet another day dedicated to hearing her faults. Her ears were almost as bruised as her body, a testament to Amalarys’s overwhelming prowess. Even with Vera’s relatively recent acquisition of her third tier, that didn’t make result in any meaningful progress against Amalarys. So another day would end with the whole team exhausted, so much energy spent towards preparing for the impending future around the corner.

“Well, that was overall an improvement,” Javier said, staring at our assembled party panting on the ground. “Perry, you’ve continued to improve at your dodging capabilities. Mia, Alain, don’t think I didn’t watch you over there. You’ve both certainly improved at single combat. And Vera, well, I’m sure you’ve gained an appreciation for your own life. Why don’t you all hit the showers and get dinner. I’m sure you’ve done more than enough for the day.”

“Are you sure about that, Javier? I think Vera could stand to hear a few more hours of my words,” Amalarys interjected. Her eyes glinted, the predator having found the prey that could not escape.

“I don’t think they can physically manage any more for the day, Amalarys. Let’s reconvene on our next training day. I’ll see you later,” he said, seemingly no worse for the wear from the exertion of the day.

“I don’t know how he does it and yet still continues to do who knows what,” I muttered, trudging back towards the dorm.

“Evil does a body good,” Vera snarled, trying to shake away whatever remnants of Amalarys’s lectures that remained in her head.

“I just hope they put out something special in the mess hall or I’ll scream.”

The rest of us didn’t seem to have the same magnitude of concern over the food awaiting our arrival. My greater concern was feeling clean again.

“I’ll see you down there after I freshen up,” I said. “You coming along, Alain?”

He grunted, trudging along after me to our room to quickly pick up some spare clothes before hurrying down to the men’s bathing area. We found spare lockers and stepped into the showers, audible sighs of relief cresting over the slow and steady pitch of the water trickling from the shower heads.

“You doing alright, Alain?” I asked, unable to see him within my stall.

“I’ve certainly done better. I’ll be happy when we do something easy like killing spike feeders again.”

“You think that’s easier?”

“I don’t have to hold back there,” he grunted. That sort of tone told me there was no more time for small talk in the bathroom, only the need for cleanliness so that I could shovel food into my patiently pleading stomach.

I left feeling much fresher, Alain evidently lingering in the shower, seeing that of the other half of the party, Mia was the first one present.

“So, where’s Vera?” I asked, sitting down with my plate of food. It was meat stew. I hoped Vera wouldn’t throw a fit over it.

“I think she’s saying prayers on behalf of Amalarys. I don’t know what good that will do her, but if it clears her mood then I’m all for it,” Mia said, taking a quick swig from her mug.

“Will you be free soon for some of that… other practice?” I asked, waggling my eyebrows at her.

She looked around the mess hall warily, taking a measure of the people present. “You know you shouldn’t speak so freely. You don’t know who is watching. Or listening, for that matter,” Mia whispered.

“That’s why I speak obliquely, Mia. There’s a wide range of things that could mean. I think we would know if someone else was watching.”

“So you don’t think Javier or Amalarys are watching?”

“I didn’t say that. Just that we would know, and in this instance, I think we’re in the clear.”

She sighed, arms laying against her head. “You’re insufferable, you know that? Otherwise yes, I’m available for additional practice. Perhaps after dinner. Might as well try to end the night productively as well.”

I shrugged and continued eating my meat stew, hiding my smile in my bowl. A success was a success, even if Mia didn’t want to name it one. Maybe if we were lucky, the other training would provide more fruitful than usual.