Graduating Early

The training room door shut behind Jack and locked. He took a brass key from his trouser pocket. Its teeth were deeply cut, and it felt heavy in his palm. He had just taken it from the drawer in Hairt's office.

The training room's four walls were bare concrete coated in dark gray dustproof paint. Countless blows had polished the surface smooth and glossy. Three rows of fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting a harsh white light that left no shadows on the floor. Thick rubber mats covered the floor, their seams held down by iron strips. His footsteps made no sound.

An iron bed stood in the corner, with a thin coir mattress spread across it. On the iron table beside it lay an open booklet. The cover read "Basic Training Outline for the Six Powers." Its pages had yellowed and its corners had curled, as though someone had leafed through it many times.

Jack walked over, picked up the booklet, and turned to the first page.

Soru: Repeatedly push off the ground within an extremely short time to generate the reaction force needed for high-speed movement. Key points: Apply force with the toes of both feet simultaneously. Each push must take no more than 0.03 seconds, with at least ten consecutive pushes.

He closed the booklet, set it on the table, and stepped back to the center of the training room. He planted his feet shoulder-width apart, pressed his toes into the floor, raised his heels slightly, bent his knees, and lowered his center of gravity.

Then he pushed off.

The first time, he crushed the rubber mat beneath his feet. Rubber curled up around the split, exposing the gray concrete underneath. His body lurched half a step forward. He lost his balance and nearly fell flat on his face.

He adjusted the angle of his toes, directing the force diagonally downward instead of forward. He shot off a little faster than before, but bent his knee too deeply on landing and dropped to one knee. It struck the rubber mat with a dull thud.

He found the right point to apply force. For an instant, it felt as if something had exploded beneath his feet, and his body shot forward two meters beyond his control. He stumbled twice on landing but stayed upright.

He stood and looked at the rubber mat beneath him. Five crushed footprints marked it, each shallower than the last. The final one barely had a crack. His toes were growing hot. Beneath his Hardened Skin, his capillaries dilated and his muscle fibers trembled faintly.

Jack did not stop. He kept practicing.

Soru worked by pushing off the ground repeatedly with the toes in an extremely short time, using the reaction force to propel the body. He did not count the pushes with his eyes. He felt them with his body. Every failed push left a mark in his muscles and bones. When he succeeded, that mark would become memory.

After more than a hundred attempts, his body finally remembered the rhythm.

Both feet drove off the ground at once. Once, twice, three times, ten. His body shot across the training room like a stone from a slingshot, moving from one end to the other so fast that the fluorescent light stretched into a white line across his vision. His feet made almost no sound when he landed, leaving only faint impressions in the rubber mat.

He stopped, turned, and looked back at where he had started.

"Soru," he said. Then he tried again. This time, he deliberately slowed the rhythm of his pushes. He moved a beat slower, but he could see his path now. He could see how he got from point A to point B, could see the space he crossed in those fractions of a second.

He was beginning to understand the essence of Soru: the rhythm of his toes pushing off the ground, the rhythm of his shifting center of gravity, and the rhythm of his gaze locking onto his target. Together, those three things were Soru.

Geppo built on Soru. It required repeated pushes against the air to generate enough reaction force to stay aloft. On the first day Jack tried it, he fell thirteen times. Every time, his back hit first, his Hardened Skin slamming into the rubber mat with a heavy boom.

On the fourteenth try, his left foot pushed against the air, and his body hung there for 0.3 seconds. He had not truly stopped. The reaction force had countered part of gravity, slowing his fall enough for him to see the dust on the fluorescent tubes overhead.

He tried pushing off the air repeatedly. Once, twice, three times. His feet pressed against it as though he were climbing invisible steps. His body rose a meter before he lost his balance and crashed onto his back with a thud. But he smiled. The corner of his mouth moved only slightly, but it was a smile.

Geppo was far harder than Soru. With Soru, he only had to drive his feet into the ground. With Geppo, he had to find a foothold in empty air. It took Jack three full days to manage five consecutive steps in the air without falling. By the fifth day, he could make a circuit of the training room using Geppo. He hung three meters above the floor, each step finding an invisible foothold that carried him a little farther. He moved slowly, like someone wading through waist-deep water, but his feet never touched the ground.

He walked from one end of the training room to the other, then descended and landed on both feet.

"I flew," he murmured.

Finger Pistol was more straightforward than Soru or Geppo. It concentrated the strength of the entire body into the index and middle fingers, then released it in an explosive thrust. Jack's first Finger Pistol struck the training room's concrete wall. A hole as thick as a thumb appeared. Concrete around its rim shattered, and dust sifted down. His index and middle fingers felt a little numb, but the bones were unharmed.

He scraped a finger inside the hole. It was about three centimeters deep. According to Hairt's training manual, a fully mastered Finger Pistol could pierce a steel plate. He was still far from that, but at least he could punch through concrete.

He turned toward the iron table in the corner. Walking over, he pressed his index and middle fingers together, aimed at the tabletop, and thrust. His fingertips went through the sheet metal as easily as chopsticks through paper. He pulled them free, leaving a small, neat round hole with no burrs around its edge. A faint white mark crossed his Hardened Skin, but it had not broken.

Rankyaku used the power of the legs to kick out a vacuum blade that could slash from a distance. Jack's first attempt did almost nothing. The gust from his leg stirred a little dust but did not even shake the iron table in the corner. He adjusted the angle and speed of his kick. His second Rankyaku severed one of the table's legs. The metal tube split in the middle, its cut smooth as though sliced by a sharp blade. The table tilted to one side, and the booklet slid off onto the floor.

He picked up the booklet, dusted it off, and put it back on the table. Then he kept practicing until every Rankyaku he kicked left a mark on the wall.

Iron Body was the simplest. He had to tense every muscle in his body to the limit, making himself as hard as iron. It resembled his Hardened Skin, but Iron Body was active and required conscious control. Hardened Skin was passive; he did not need to maintain it deliberately. When he layered the two defenses, the training room wall gained several fist-shaped dents where he had struck it. His knuckles did not even have a white mark afterward.

Kami-e was the most subtle. It required him to open all his senses and use his skin to feel changes in airflow and pressure, allowing him to anticipate attacks. Jack stood in the center of the training room with his eyes closed, using the fist marks Hairt had left on the wall a few days earlier to guide his imagination. He could feel the heat from the fluorescent lights, picture the cracks his kicks had left in the wall behind him, and sense the broken table leg ahead.

He walked out of the training room into the corridor, then back again with his eyes closed. He did not bump into anything.

Half a month later, Hairt opened the training room door.

Jack was suspended two meters above the floor in the center of the room. His feet pushed against the air in a steady rhythm, while his body remained motionless, like a tree rooted in the sky. Hearing the door, he turned his head and saw Hairt standing there. Then he descended and landed silently on both feet.

Hairt stood in the doorway, looking at Jack and then at the room. The walls were riddled with holes from Finger Pistol and cuts from Rankyaku. The iron table was missing a leg and leaned against the wall. Soru had left the rubber mats pitted and uneven, exposing the concrete in places.

"How long have you been practicing?" Hairt's voice was level.

"Half a month."

Hairt was silent for two seconds. "Half a month, and your Soru and Geppo are already at this level?"

Hairt entered the training room, walked around the three-legged iron table, and approached the wall. He ran a finger around a hole left by Finger Pistol. Its rim was smooth, its depth even. He crossed to another wall and studied the Rankyaku cuts. They ran straight, without a bend. Then he turned to Jack.

"What about Finger Pistol and Rankyaku?"

"They're all right."

Hairt waited a second. "Show me."

Jack raised his right hand, pressed his index and middle fingers together, and thrust at the air thirty centimeters in front of Hairt. His fingertips drew a sharp whistle from the air, as if something had torn. Hairt narrowed his eyes, then looked down at his uniform. A cut as fine as a hair ran down the front, from collar to belt.

"And your Kami-e?"

Jack closed his eyes. Hairt had not moved yet, but Jack could already feel the change in his breathing. His center of gravity was shifting right, and his right hand was rising from his side. When Jack opened his eyes, Hairt's hand was only halfway up.

Hairt's hand stopped in midair. He studied Jack for two seconds, then lowered it. "You really only practiced for half a month?"

"Yes."

Hairt walked to the training room door and stopped without turning around. "Come with me."

Jack followed him into the corridor. Its fluorescent lights were dimmer than those in the training room, casting a yellowish glow and overlapping shadows across their faces. Hairt leaned against the wall and folded his arms.

"You can use all Six Powers now." Hairt did not speak loudly, but the corridor was quiet enough for every word to carry. "Soru, Geppo, Finger Pistol, Rankyaku, Iron Body, Kami-e. You've learned them all. Your precision and power still have a long way to go, but you've built the foundation."

Jack looked at him.

"Headquarters' training camp has nothing left to teach you." Hairt folded the paper and tucked it back into his pocket. "I'll submit a report to Vice Admiral Tsuru and have you graduate early."

Jack stood in the corridor beneath the hum of a fluorescent light. He looked at Hairt, and Hairt looked back. Two steps separated them, with a hazy patch of shadow cast between them.

Hairt turned and walked away. His military boots struck the corridor floor in steady, even steps. He neither slowed nor looked back when he reached the corner.

Jack stood in the corridor and watched Hairt disappear around the corner. He looked down at his hand, spread his fingers, then clenched them. His knuckles cracked sharply.

I've graduated early. Time to hurry up and kill someone. My Heartsteel stacks are almost maxed out.