A groan sounded from behind him and he turned cautiously. Lars eased himself slowly off the floor. A moment later, Vishlog and Frog appeared.
John cocked his head.
“What happened to you guys?”
“You blew up half the mountain. It merely took us this long to land,” the lead instructor told him sourly.
He stared at the man for a moment, then laughed. “Really?”
“Yes,” Frog replied. “Can we please not do that again?”
“You intended to throw me off it,” he reminded them.
“And we’ll try to do it again,” Lars told him shortly.
“Before we do…” John said quickly. “Do you have any tips?”
“Yeah,” Frog started, “when you enter freefall, flapping your arms won’t do you any good.”
“Ha, ha,” he replied.
“Don’t mix nMU and any other kind,” Vishlog advised.
He frowned. “How did Stephanie do it, then?”
“That is something you will have to ask her, but before she worked out how, she used to empty all the other MU present in her body and then she would use the nMU.”
“Noted.” It seemed simple enough—empty the MU or eMU in his case. But how had she done that?
And could he do it before he landed if he needed to refuel his Talent on the way down? It made him miss Earth and he wondered what kind of things he could do with his Talent now that he’d had some actual training.
Before he could decide what he wanted to do about that, the world twisted and he stood on the edge of the mountain plateau again. This time, the guys didn’t waste time talking.
John flipped high to avoid them and decided they needed a dose of their own medicine. Turning so he landed facing them, he thrust his hands before him and launched a solid block of power at Vishlog.
There was nothing like disabling the hardest guy to beat, right?
He realized his mistake a few seconds after the Dreth disappeared over the edge. Frog stopped and stared at the space his teammate had occupied with a look of disbelief.
“Harsh,” he noted, but the young Talent didn’t have time to celebrate.
The massive warrior wasn’t the hardest one to beat. Lars was and the man wasn’t impressed.
“That,” the guard snarled as he closed, “wasn’t in the playbook.”
“Why not?” he asked as lightning arced over his hands.
He unleashed a spray of bolts and backed away as his opponent avoided them. His back met solid rock and he twisted his head to look up. There was no way he could climb that, Instead, he turned to face the man.
“This must be where the sparring practice comes in,” he remarked and noticed Frog seemed to be over his shock.
The small man looked furious. “We’re supposed to throw you over the cliff.” He snarled with real annoyance.
John chuckled, ducked under Lars’ fist, and kicked him in the gut to make him keep his distance.
“I can do this all day,” the lead instructor informed him and swept his leg in a sideways kick.
He jerked out of its way and released a short burst of blue at the man.
Lars dodged it, snickered as he stepped back, and reached for his holster. Frog’s blaster was already clear. Together, they gained some distance and opened fire.
The boy raised a hastily created shield and watched the eMU sparkle under each strike. They didn’t waste any time, he noted, and felt his Talent drain with the effort.
He was merely glad he could hold them off with a cliff at his back and not a who-knew-how-many-thousand-foot drop.
“So can I,” he responded and recalled Vishlog’s advice about emptying himself of eMU before he tried to draw in any of Dreth’s nMU.
“And I’m fairly sure you can’t,” Lars taunted, drew a pistol, and fired with both hands. Beside him, Frog did the same.
The man was right but he wouldn’t admit it. The added barrage demanded more energy than he had stored, and he wondered if they’d stop firing when his shields were depleted. He wouldn’t be able to hold them off forever.
“Sneaky sonsaguns,” he muttered and focused on holding the shield with one hand and firing balls of lightning with the other.
He reasoned that if he could disable their guns long enough, he’d have time to draw the nMU in and build another shield when the eMU ran out.
The idea was sound but its implementation was a challenge.
His attacks had managed to short their weapons out but used the last of his Talent, and he had barely reached for the negatively charged nMU when Lars charged. Torn between focusing on the energy and on avoiding the guard’s attack, he lost sight of Frog.
The smaller man bounded in, ducked John’s hastily thrown punch, and thumped him twice in the gut. As he doubled over, the short guard grasped his shoulders and pushed down as he brought his knee up.
John’s’s face struck the man’s knee and his legs folded. Lars pivoted and caught him by his shirt and one arm, and his teammate did the same on the other side.
“Hey! Wait! I’m…not…ready…” he protested, as they reached the edge of the cliff.
His nose felt crushed and he had difficulty breathing but they shoved him over without hesitation.
“Hey!”
He panicked and snatched at the nMU he knew had to be around him, drew it in hastily, and attempted to direct it to slow his fall. The air rushed past him and he tried to focus on the energy. His gaze caught on the distant peaks and the lowlands far below.
John scrambled to haul in more Talent. He thought frantically about creating a dark platform beneath his feet and of the platform rising above the ground. His fall slowed.
Hopeful now, he drew more energy to strengthen his magical support and his descent ceased and he began to rise. He was so focused on building it that he didn’t notice when he rose above the plateau’s edge.
Lars’s well-aimed rock caught him squarely on the side of the head, and he began to plummet again.
This time, he didn’t recover in time to avoid the valley floor.
Chapter Five
“I’m calling a rest day,” John announced at breakfast the next day.
“You still need to practice,” Remy told him.
“I’ll practice outside,” he replied, “and try to get a feel for how some of what I’ve learned works in the real world.”
He stood from the table and made coffee at the dispenser as he waited for a reply. It took the AI so long to respond that he almost thought it was broken or turned off.
“Remy?”
The silence continued for a few seconds longer before he spoke. “Your alternative is acceptable. I will monitor your progress using the external surveillance systems.”
His sigh of relief was noisy and heartfelt.
“You do understand that they are constructs,” the AI said and reminded him of his three trainers inside the system. “They will take no offense at your actions in the previous session.”
John nodded. “I understand that, but I need to see how much of it translates to the real world.”
“That will be difficult since there is no nMU on Earth.”
He shook his head in exasperation.
“No, not with the nMU. I only…” He gestured vaguely. “I simply want to try some of the things I did in the Virtual World out in the real world.”