After I was discharged by my medical doctor, I didn’t have the option to do most of the things I would normally do. Which was to say, magic. Considering inside my body still felt pretty bad I had to agree with the person who actually knew what he was talking about.

Because of recent events I had been encouraged to go see my other doctor, the one for the parts of my head that were non-physical. In short, my therapist. Doctor Patenaude was the same as always, with extra sensory stalks flowing around his head. He could theoretically sense my emotions but he wouldn’t tell me what any of them were most of the time. Apparently that was for my own good, and I had to admit I probably felt overall better now compared to before I’d first seen him, including the negative dip in the early days.

“So how are you feeling today, Turlough?”

“Good, I think.” Was there anything to complain about? “I haven’t interacted with Gloom lately, which is always a positive. Oh! And I kicked Handface through a portal. That felt good.”

“Handface would be your nemesis, Deimos, correct?” Doctor Patenaude said as he took his usual notes.

“I guess you could call him my nemesis, yeah,” I nodded. “Or former nemesis?”

“You sound uncertain about that part,” Doctor Patenaude prodded.

“I wanted him to be dead but he might not be,” I shrugged. “Should take a while for him to return, if he does. That makes me feel better.”

“Good to hear. Anything else you’d like to bring up?”

“My apprentice got into trouble, then I saved him and now he’s a werewolf.” I thought for a few moments. “I’m glad he’s healthy, though.”

“What about the rest of it?”

Was there more? It took a moment to dredge that up. “I’m also upset I wasn’t strong enough to stop it. Even with help. I’m so much stronger now but it’s not enough.”

“A common feeling,” the therapist said. “Nobody can handle everything alone, but accepting help makes things easier.”

“I still could have done better.”

“Your companions doubtless felt the same. It seems, however, that all survived, did they not? Somewhat worse for wear, but able to go on. I’m sure there are difficulties associated with being a werewolf, of course, but there must be ways to manage it.”

“Yeah, I think so,” I frowned. “If it’s the one I know, probably. I might even be able to remove it, though we already missed the best opportunity for that.” A proper Remove Curse spell might work, though I had to admit I was unfamiliar with all of the details. I knew that like wolfsbane, it was best before first transformations, which we didn’t have the luxury of. There were higher level things, but some were rather onerous to use.

Sensing that I was done with the topic, as usual, Patenaude moved on. “Anything else?” he asked. That usually meant he knew there was something. Or maybe it always meant that and sometimes I never figure out what.

My brain processed through what else happened. “I might be friends with Izzy again. Or we might have just become new friends.” He was going to ask how it made me feel. “It’s confusing.”

“Is that all you feel?”

I took the question seriously, but as I searched that seemed to be correct. “Right now, yeah. Maybe a little happy we fought alongside each other? This would be easier if Midnight was here.”

“Perhaps some day that would be an appropriate arrangement,” Doctor Patenaude conceded. “But using him as an emotional crutch isn’t necessarily helpful.”

“It’s a lot easier, though.”

-----

With other activity forbidden, I settled for training my body, some additional application of powers returning me to a reasonable state. I only had a small amount of physical injuries to begin with, after what got through my Force Armor and Stoneskin. Overstraining my magical capabilities at least twice was probably the worse of the two things. Notable accompaniments were Midnight- who found humanoid physical training generally kind of pointless- Great Girl, Jim, and… a guy in silver spandex from head to toe. Was that Antagonist? Didn’t he just copy people and fight like that?

Actually, given that he created a copy of someone he kind of needed his body to function well to stay safe. Same thing with me, because while I had magic I couldn’t just rely on it. Haste made me several times as fast, but if my body was garbage it would hardly matter. Same with Enlarge, if I was going down that route.

Our trainer for the session was Meztli, a good choice for not only her experience but how her power could allow us to go further or recover quickly between exercises. We did some basic warm up exercises, but the main focus was the sparring. We began with unarmed combat, during which I was able to face all of the notable opponents at least once.

As should be expected, Great Girl wiped the floor with me. Even without using powers- besides her traditional size increase to sixish feet tall- she was much more practiced and in better shape. Whatever muscle mass I had through virtue of recent training and being an orc she at least matched. But she was nice enough to make it obvious where I slipped up the most so I could learn, even as she fought with a strangely determined face. Perhaps I would ask her about that later.

Fighting Jim without a weapon or magic was an exercise in futility, even as he limited himself to a small number of appendages. Grapples were kind of pointless with his flexible body, and strikes were nearly impossible to get in position for. Not that punching him in the ‘gut’ did much. It was kind of hard to say he didn’t make use of his ‘powers’, but they were just kind of him to begin with. And I knew there was more than just his body involved in his skillset.

The fight with Antagonist was the most straightforward. I had a bit of an advantage in size, but the guy clearly had skill. We went back and forth a few times with my marginally securing a victory. Then I convinced him to fight me more seriously, which meant him copying my body. It was quite useful for seeing how much more I could do with it. However, I didn’t have the intention of switching my focus to traditionally orcish and barbaric tactics… no matter how much I would need to continue to make use of such fighting styles to some extent.

Fighting Midnight required him to use powers- specifically Enlarge. Otherwise, he was basically just a housecat, a creature that was while quite annoying not physically threatening. The reasons people got hurt by cats were mostly related to not actually intending to harm them. With Midnight Enlarged, juiced up to spend the full mana cost instead of the reduced amount, he was a reasonable sized dog. Maybe like a mountain lion, but not as big as any of the proper ‘great cats’ like lions or cheetahs or anything.

The battle between Midnight and I was mostly a matter of me trying to deal with an opponent with a different body shape, while Midnight was quite familiar with humanoids by now. His size was still smaller than mine, but we easily agreed that the winner would be whoever could first incapacitate the other somehow- by pinning perhaps- or whoever broke through Force Armor. That would allow him to use his claws with impunity, instead of worrying about actual damage. What I learned was that I wanted a weapon for fighting things lower to the ground.

When the time came for us to work with weapons, Meztli just handed them out. Blunted and padded versions, of course, still sufficient to break bones if we went too hard. Even with Midnight and I working together we couldn’t supply everyone with Force Armor, so traditional methods were employed. When Meztli handed me a staff, I looked at it and blinked.

Technically, it could be a stand-in for a spear or any other polearm with moderate reach. The important thing that was clear was that it was not a sword or an axe. It also made me feel very stupid. I didn’t like using weapons, yet somehow I had no trouble with a gun. I wondered if I should have made use of that against the werewolves. Likely wouldn’t have been that great, since bullets caused small wounds that would have been entirely non magical. It was one of the few reasonable times, though.

The point wasn’t about my choices in that instance, however. It was that I didn’t like using melee weapons because… well, it was orc crap. I could probably wield an axe, but I didn’t want to. In that moment of clarity, I thought Doctor Patenaude would be proud of me later. As I gripped the staff, I felt it didn’t have any particular capacity to channel magic more effectively. I wasn’t knowledgeable about enchanting to begin with, and getting such a thing in this world was likely difficult, but the fact that it could do that made me feel better. And if I also happened to hit people with it sometimes… well, it wasn’t that bad.

Unlike our previous sparring, we didn’t just pair up. Instead, Meztli and a few other skilled weapon users sparred against each of us one at a time. A staff had passed through my hands before so I was decently aware of how to use it, but something felt better this time. Not that it meant I was any good at it yet. There wasn’t even an option for me to win in the first place, given the asymmetric levels between myself and Meztli, but I tried. And I felt like I could reasonably request to carry a proper staff with me later. It was an approved weapon for supers as it leaned towards the nonlethal category as long as one avoided blows to the head and such, though mercenaries could get away with whatever the situation required.

Midnight barely participated in the weapons portions. Celmothians did have some weapon designs, but Midnight didn’t really know how they worked. He did get some advice on avoiding the additional reach and danger weapons could provide, with some practical experience.

Watching Jim fight with weapons was… terrifying. If the dozens of weapons had been sharp, he could have no doubt impaled and lacerated me with the majority of them. His opponent, however, managed to parry them with a weapon in either hand, striking back just past the guards and ‘severing’ his tentacles which held the weapons as they danced about. It was an honor system for him to drop his weapons and forego the use of the tentacles that were taken out, mostly because he had more and nobody else could really count them. If I learned anything it was that Jim was a good multitasker but a truly skilled opponent could overcome that.

I also took note of the woman he fought. She was older, enough to be retired from active duty, but still fit. Omni was her name, and from the limited information that had been available to me in the database she was a user of not just various weapons but gadgets and the like, making constant use of her hands in battle. A good match, and I wondered what her movements would look like with Haste.

“Good job, everyone,” Meztli declared after the session was over. She’d made most of us collapse into a puddle multiple times- the exception being Great Girl, and the most puddly being Jim- but she was ultimately a supporting trainer. “Make sure to keep up with this sort of thing regularly, even if it’s not your focus. You’re all dismissed.” Her eyes caught me, and while I was trying to figure out what her look meant I accidentally fulfilled her intention. “Thanks for staying behind. I wanted to talk to you about today’s session.”

I wondered if I had done something wrong, but decided that she would have said it right away. So I just waited for her to continue.

She clapped me on the shoulder. “You looked much more comfortable today, making use of weapons. Usually you’re putting too much into grimacing and not enough into the fighting.”

“... I think I want to get better with the staff,” I declared. “I like it.” Or maybe I disliked other familiar weapons. I’d never seen an orc use a gun, so… maybe that was why it felt fine. Not that I’d actually seen orcs much at all.

“We’d all be glad to help you with that goal,” Meztli said. “We encourage testing development down different paths, and a staff is a good weapon for defensive use as well, allowing you to get openings for magic if that’s what you need.”

“I need to find one that’s enchanted,” I commented. “It could make my magic more efficient.” An option I had overlooked in my previous struggles because I was used to both not having money and assuming that nothing in this world had anything to do with magic. But maybe there was something someone could do.

“We can certainly look into equipment options, if you can make your needs known,” Meztli nodded. “Though you should make sure you’re going to stick with it first. Don’t want to waste anyone’s time and the Brigade’s money.”