“Mom said dads been up and around. He even restarted the garden he had when we grew up.”
We were in the back office of the dojo. Victor was sleeping on the futon. It wasn't a deep sleep from staying up all night fighting. That happened once or twice before the ninjas gave up. He was just catching up on the sleep he had missed. Jacob was across from me in a seat leaning forward. He had his hands out and little wisps of chi were flowing between them. I had him tell me about his life while doing it as an exercise. Using chi while distracted is a learned thing.
Victor was different. He had this instinctual grip on his chi. The only thing that would advance his mastery over it would be trading pointers. “What kind of things did your dad grow while you were young?”
“A random assortment of vegetables and herbs. We grew up on them.” He replied between wisps of chi floating between his palms. “Potatos, cucumbers, things like that.”
Anthony stuck his head into the office. He glanced at the three of us then focused on me, "She's back again.”
I rolled my eyes and stood up. After the ninjas had given up they had tried a different tactic. Sneak someone into the dojo to learn what I was teaching everyone else. It was amusing because if they had just come to me and asked I would teach them.
I headed past Anthony to the main floor of the dojo and saw her. She had fresh training gear on and was training with the new people at their level. She was taller than me but not that much shorter than Anne. she was doing a pretty good job of acting like a novice with talent but to me it was like watching an artist trying to paint like a toddler.
I recognized her the first time she came into the dojo. I could feel her chi and noticed the feeling of it matched one of the ninjas that attacked Victor's place. She was one of the first to jump out the window, showing she had some smarts. I approached her from her periphery so she could notice my approach. The only tell she gave away was the shifting of chi. I rolled my hands into fist and held them up when I got close, “Match me.”
She did a little jump and turned to me, “Oh. You startled me.” She looked from my hands up to my eyes, “What’s this you want me to do?”
Her voice was bright and cheerful. I could feel standing across from me unnerved her and meeting my eyes took some courage, “Raise your fists and match mine.”
She raised them slowly with a curious look on her face. She set her knuckles against mine and looked to me for direction. I pushed my fists forward, giving her a shove making her step back. I raised my eyebrow at her and she flushed, “Is that all you have?”
She met my fists again, knuckle to knuckle and started pushing back. I gave her a few seconds but she still wasn't doing what I wanted so I gave her another shove. This time she didn't stumble, my shove planted her on her butt. People around us had stopped training and Anthony was watching with his arms crossed. I glared at her, “Take this seriously or leave and don't come back.”
She looked around the room at everyone watching, then she looked at me. Her hazel eyes sharpened when she stood up this time. I could see her start to sweat when she met my knuckles this time. Chi swirled and she started to push. Her feet sunk deeply into the mat as she reinforced her body. She leaned forward and added her bodyweight to the push. I heard the floor beneath the mats start creaking and flexing.
I watched a bead of sweat roll down the ridges on her forehead. Her breathing started to pick up as she pushed against the wall that was my fists. She struggled and I learned just how far her understanding of chi was and where she was at in her mastery of it. She was almost as skilled as Victor in bodily reinforcement but she had an amateur understanding of the rest of it. That was probably why they gave up trying to beat him and were trying this.
True mastery comes from the chi itself, not the body. I rolled both my fists to the right while twisting chi along with it. It swept her legs out and tossed her. She cartwheeled through the air in a ragdoll. Limbs flailing trying to catch herself she soared over the rest of the people in the dojo then she hit the wall. Her hitting the wall sounded a whole lot worse than it was.
Students of the dojo moved out of my way as I walked over to her. She looked pretty dazed from hitting the wall. I reached down and grabbed her ankle then turned and headed to the back. Anthony gave me a questioning look and I nodded letting him know I had it handled. Victor was still asleep on the futon and Jacob looked to be on the phone. I lifted my leg and jammed my foot into Victor's ribs. He snapped up and away, throwing out a sweeping arm to get me away from his ribs.
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He grunted and looked around, still half asleep. I raised my hand and snapped my fingers to get his attention then pointed down and the ninja, “This is your fellow student. She goes by Jane.”
I was pretty sure that wasn't her name but that didn't really matter. A few months under my thumb she would probably be able to teach her whole ninja group something new, maybe take it over. Victor looked down at her and she looked up at him. She had come around just as Victor woke up and was very tense. I could feel it in her leg muscles. “What?” Victor blurted out.
I rolled my eyes then twisted my hips and threw her at him. She let out an eep then there was a meaty smack as the connected and went down in a tangle of limbs. While they pulled themselves apart and stood up I pointed to the back door, “Go outside and spar each other. Face to face. No stealth techniques.”
Jane looked alarmed. She probably thought I was going to kill her. Victor nodded to me, “Yes Sensei.”
I waved at her to go with him and gave Victor another requirement, "Don't slap the barrel. She doesn't know a good durability technique. That would probably kill her.”
He gave me a slow nod then headed for the back with Jane following. The door shut behind them and I walked over to Jacob and took a seat across the desk from him. He was having a hushed conversation and was throwing me glances. He eventually covered the mouth piece on his phone, “There was a big mess of a car crash on one of the highways entering the city. A whole lot of cars are wrapped around each other and rescue people are having trouble getting their equipment to the site.”
“Paramedic rescue people or pull car doors off people?” I had to ask.
“Car doors paramedics are on scene, getting firetrucks through the traffic is turning out to be a struggle. Robert from the night class is on the phone asking if you can get there and help.”
“What highway?” He told me so I stood up and headed for the backdoor.
Victor and Jane were circling each other, sizing each other up. The marking on the ground told me they had got into it a few times and were now in a lul between contact. They glanced at me when I stepped out of hte back door. I nodded and turned towards the highway the car crash was on then crouched, “I’ll be back later. Jacob is in charge.”
Victor rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to say something in reply. I pushed off the ground and missed it. From my leap I knew I was not going to get there in one jump, it was going to take maybe three. The city opened up under me and I could see it formed into a spiral of construction. Older construction was being worked on and new stuff was being built in the outskirts. Some of the older buildings in the center of the city were being rebuilt.
I landed on a random street and pushed off again. I could see the highway I was headed to but not the pile up. It was one of the main ones that most of the traffic used to enter and leave the city. One side of the road was filled with cars, the other had moderate traffic. I landed and pushed off again, this time I could see the wreck. I twisted in the air and aimed my fall at the wreck.
I could see a semi jackknifed across all four lanes of the highway and a bunch of cars that didn't stop in time. It was right next to an onramp entering the highway so it had jammed traffic. I landed close so a small leap took me the rest of the way to the highway, over the sidewall and onto the road itself.
I could see a few people stuck in their cars because of how slammed together they were. There were people walking around with their phones out and were walking around talking on them. I could see Robert directing people so I headed over to him, walking across the hoods of smashed cars. As I got closer to him he nodded at me and kept working. I stepped off the hood of a crumpled suv and asked, “What happened here?”
He waved at the offramp, “Some guy in a sports car came flying down the off ramp. He cut across four lanes of traffic, got his car under control enough to turn the other way and hit the trailer of that semi hard. The truck tipped over and here we are.”
I looked at all the mess, "Where's the sports car? Is the guy ok?”
“The sports car guy bounced off the semi and slapped the median pretty hard. Paramedics have him.” He pointed at the semi indicating the other side. “Ambulances and stuff are on that side of the trailer. Can you grab the trailer itself and pull it off the immediate road so we can get traffic going again?”
I gave it a shrug, “I will try.”
He nodded and we headed for the end of the trailer. The semi was laying on its side across all four lanes. If I pulled the trailer to the side of the road it would free up three of them. We got to the back of the trailer and I saw what it was hauling, small glass marbles. There was a carpet of them scattered across the road.
Robert pointed at the end of the trailer, “Set your shoulder there and give it a shove.”
I set my shoulder against the tail of the trailer and pushed. It moved to the sound of shrieking metal. It was extremely loud and from the corner of my eye I could see everyone around us turn their phones in my direction. I stopped pushing at the noise and looked to Robert for direction. He leaned out and checked the other side then turned back to me, “It's clear. Push it all the way. The trailer is already busted and you are not going to do more damage than what was already done.”
I started pushing again and the shrieking metal started again. It wasn't a straight push to the side of the road. I had to swing out with the motion of the trailer. I could hear the popping of stressed steel on the other end of the trailer as I pushed it out of the road. The trailer started jumping as it got close to the side of the road and by the time I had it off the road some other cars were moved and traffic was already starting to flow again.
Robert was doing the directing so I headed over to him, “Is that all you needed?”
“Yes. Thanks for the help. This would have been a few more hours of work trying to get that trailer off the road.”
I gave him a wave then turned back to the dojo and pushed off. Paperwork and paparazzi dodged!