“You truly aren’t,” the young man replied, but before he had a chance to ask him what he meant, the room twisted and he fell onto the mats in the training dojo.
This time, the computer didn’t set him on his feet but released him from a foot above so he landed hard on the mat. His knees buckled from the impact.
“Your landing needs work,” a deep voice rumbled and he jerked his head up to find who was speaking.
He threw himself back in a panicked scramble when he registered the hulking figure of what by now was possibly his worst nightmare.
John squinted. “You’re a Dreth?”
The green-skinned humanoid came toward him and the fluidity of his movement belied his size.
“And you call yourself human,” he replied and his dark eyes glittered.
The young trainee scrabbled onto his hands and knees, then to his feet, and scurried back in a half-crouch. He had difficulty understanding why a Dreth was in the training center.
“Where’s Lars?”
A sudden movement to his left answered the question as the instructor took his feet out from under him and settled on his chest.
“You need to look at the whole battlefield and not only at what’s in front of you,” the guard said. One hand spanned his young trainee’s throat and his other had been drawn back in a fist.
“All the things,” he acknowledged in a strangled tone. “Gotit.”
Lars nodded, eased off him, and offered him a hand. “This is Vishlog. He will be joining us.”
“Two against one,” John noted. “Okay.”
Lars raised an eyebrow. “Remy tells me you’ve been in this situation before.”
“Kind of.”
“Tell me about it.”
He complied and the man listened thoughtfully and nodded as he described the battle with the two hunter Talents.
“Wolves,” the AI interrupted. “Also known as hunters, although that doesn’t have the same predatory ring to it. The Regime uses them to hunt their own.”
Lars shrugged and gave the boy a serious look. “You’re lucky you had that much juice to spare.”
He indicated the newcomer. “This afternoon, we’ll work on how to deal with an opponent who is bigger, faster—”
“And smarter,” Vishlog interjected and bared his teeth in a Dreth grin.
“Than you,” the man finished and frowned at his colleague. “He is also part of Stephanie’s security team.”
“The first Dreth,” the big alien noted proudly.
“There’s more than one Dreth on her team?” he asked. He honestly found it hard to believe.
“My nephew,” Vishlog confirmed and looked at Lars. “Shall we begin?”
John caught the look that passed between them, danced back several paces, and watched both of them warily this time. They separated and moved to either side, which made it difficult to keep them both in sight.
“So, how—” Lars began and John blasted him with two bolts of blue force.
The power of them picked the man up and flung him toward a wall. He didn’t wait to see if he made impact but swept his hands around in search of Vishlog.
He was not prepared for the swift grace with which the Dreth bounded into an arched dive that took him over the initial blast. As the guard reached for him, he threw himself to one side.
Lars had rebounded from the wall, and John frowned and pulled a little extra energy from his Talent as he landed. Without pause, he rolled rapidly away from his landing point and regained his feet as the two guards surged toward him.
Both were grinning like fiends.
Rather than run from them, he tried to put the training from the last few days into practice. This time, he focused on the Dreth, moved so Vishlog was between him and Lars, and tried to get closer.
He didn’t bother to aim at the Dreth’s head. Instead, he focused on the body and lashed out with a foot at the warrior’s knee.
His massive opponent laughed, blocked the blow, and retaliated with a mirrored kick. John danced back and Lars tackled him from the side.
“We need to work on your awareness,” the guard told him as he thumped into the mats, “or you’ll be dead in seconds.”
John wondered why that might matter, but the man hadn’t finished.
“And then Stephanie will be upset.”
“And that is not good,” Vishlog rumbled as the man hauled the trainee to his feet.
“Remy, we need Frog.”
Frog? the boy wondered but a second later, a small man landed on the mat in the center of the room.
He turned to study the new arrival and John was surprised to see he was shorter than he was.
That doesn’t mean anything, he thought when he noticed his build. Nothing about him, his height notwithstanding, suggested feeble or unfit.
Unfortunately, Frog didn’t seem as impressed by him. The small man inclined his head and studied him with a frown. “Fresh meat?”
“New mage,” Lars explained, and the newcomer started to circle.
“What’s he got?”
“Not much.”
John scowled at the dismissive assessment. The guard caught his look and raised an eyebrow.
“Not that he’s shown us,” he amended.
“You mean I was supposed to use my Talent?” he asked and Lars grinned.
“You mean you thought you were cheating when you blasted me back there?”
He flushed. “I…”
The man stepped in and jabbed him twice in the ribs, and Vishlog took his feet out from under him.
“That’s cheating,” Lars explained and looked sternly at him.
As tempting as it was to retort, he didn’t. Instead, he reached out, used Talent to boost his strength, and wrapped one hand around Vishlog’s ankle and the other around Lars’ and yanked them hard.
Two startled exclamations followed, and he tried to roll out from between them.
Get clear before trying to—
“Oof!”
The short man’s boot connected with the side of his head and he landed on the mat a third time.
When he opened his eyes, Frog’s face was inches from his own. John threw a shield between them as the man’s head came forward.
“Ow!” the guard exclaimed as the air flashed blue and his forehead rebounded.
With a quiet snicker, he scrambled back as fast as he could. The smile faded from his face as the three of them turned toward him.
“This will be like fighting Stephanie when she first started,” Frog noted and Lars nodded.
“It had better be or we’ll put him in the white in ten seconds flat.”
The training became more intense after that. In addition to the dream lessons on combat technique, other sessions in the pod used electrical stimulation to train muscle memory for some of the more acrobatic movements such as those he’d seen Frog make.
He practiced them when he was sparring and tried to combine his Talent with each maneuver as he made it. None of it was easy and more than once, he had to grit his teeth and force himself to continue.
It took him a week before he could stay on his feet for more than a few minutes at a time. Soon after, he was able to take Frog out of the air at the same time as he blocked Vishlog’s charge and twisted away from Lars’ punch.