Alexandra spent most of the evening buried in God’s combat catalog, working through one martial-arts package after another.
She leaned back against the desk chair in her quarters and rubbed at the tension in her neck, one elbow resting on the edge of the terminal.
Between the physical conditioning of the past few days and the lingering disorientation of everything else she’d been forced to absorb, her body felt fine, but her mind was running on fumes.
Still, she stayed planted in front of the screen, flicking through the interface with tired precision.
The first few pages were almost entirely Chinese, which wasn’t particularly surprising given the catalog’s obvious fondness for traditional martial arts.
The sheer variety was impressive—swordsmanship, saber work, empty-hand systems, spear techniques, internal styles, and ancient military methods—enough entries to keep someone occupied for years.
There was just one problem: a ridiculous number of them involved qi.
Alexandra skimmed through descriptions of internal energy circulation, cultivation foundations, meridian conditioning, spiritual reinforcement, and increasingly elaborate techniques that assumed the practitioner intended to spend years developing some kind of supernatural power system.
She wasn’t looking for a ten-year martial-arts education, and the cheaper entry-level material seemed explicitly designed as the first step toward a larger cultivation pipeline.
The more complete sword and saber packages climbed rapidly in price, buried behind rank requirements that made them even less attractive.
She needed something she could download, understand immediately, and actually use with the body she already possessed.
Eventually, the catalog began drifting away from historical martial arts and into fictional combat systems, which at least gave Alexandra something new to look through.
The entries were certainly more entertaining, although most of them were no more useful.
Flying swords, energy blades, magical sword auras, bloodline techniques, weapons that were larger than some cars, and styles that seemed to exist primarily so their users could produce increasingly ridiculous explosions filled page after page.
She skipped over most of them until one particular entry caught her attention: Sephiroth.
I know this guy.
Alexandra leaned closer to the display.
While the Masamune was about as practical as a streetlight for anyone without Sephiroth’s absurd physical abilities, there was something underneath the spectacle that interested her.
Okay, the flashy stuff is ridiculous, but the actual mechanics underneath it are solid.
The body had to be positioned correctly before the attack began, the scabbard had to move out of the blade’s path, the hands had to coordinate rather than fight each other, and the edge still had to follow the intended line of the cut.
There was a strong iaijutsu influence in the way the draw, strike, and recovery flowed together as one movement.
All right.
Where’s the catch?
Alexandra scrolled through the description again.
There was no mention of qi, internal energy, cultivation, meridians, magical reinforcement, or some hereditary power that had to be awakened before the technique became useful.
It was simply a combat-style package.
“A fictional pop-culture icon?” Six asked smoothly, stepping up behind her chair with a faint, amused tilt of her head as her eyes swept over the glowing terminal.
“I wasn’t aware God’s database catered so explicitly to human entertainment.”
“I’m not trying to copy the character,” Alexandra said, looking over her shoulder with a dry, slightly defensive look.
“And I’m definitely not buying a nine-foot sword. I’m looking at the footwork and the draw mechanics. Drop the anime bullshit, and the underlying technique is actually solid.”
Six’s lips twitched subtly.
“If you say so.”
A grin slowly spread across Alexandra’s face.
Exactly what I was looking for.
She didn’t need the fictional strength behind Sephiroth’s ridiculous attacks—she already had more physical ability than any normal human needed for a sword.
What she needed was the knowledge of how to put that strength through a weapon without turning every movement into a wasteful swing.
More importantly, God could just put the knowledge in my head.
Alexandra selected the package.
The purchase confirmation appeared almost immediately, followed by the familiar notification that the download was beginning.
Information settled into place with startling clarity.
Left hand moves the scabbard.
Right hand draws.
Hips lead the shoulders.
Keep the edge on the line.
Alexandra sat back in her chair and flexed her fingers.
Her right hand hovered, instinctively snapping forward through the air while her left hand pulled back at her hip, mimicking the motion of clearing a scabbard.
Her fingers closed on empty air.
She paused, staring down at her bare palm.
Okay.
Knowing how to do it is one thing.
Doing it without thinking is going to be a completely different story.
The download had given her the information, the coordination principles, and the correct mechanics.
It hadn’t given her Sephiroth’s physical attributes, nor had it somehow transformed her into a master swordswoman.
That part was going to require practice.
This works.
Take the actual technique, ditch the ridiculous superhuman stuff, and run it through a body that can already handle the speed.
Sephiroth’s impossible physical feats were a separate matter.
The package gave her the swordsmanship; it didn’t turn her into Sephiroth.
Alexandra opened the basic armory catalog and searched for a suitable weapon.
The answer appeared almost immediately: Standard Japanese Katana (Carbon Steel).
10 Points.
No rank requirement and no expensive enhancement package.
Just a normal steel katana and its scabbard.
Alexandra stared at the price for a moment before her mouth curled into a grin.
“Fuck it.”
She bought the sword.
A shimmer of light appeared in the air before a plain, black-lacquered scabbard dropped into her waiting hand.
She wrapped her fingers around the grip and drew the blade several inches, watching the industrial overhead lights glint along the cold steel.
Ten points was cheap enough to experiment with.
Now she had something she could actually work with.
She spent the next hour simply getting used to having the weapon in her hands.
She adjusted the belt loop at her hip, trying to find an angle that didn’t feel completely awkward when she walked.
Wearing a sheathed blade was entirely unnatural; the scabbard kept bumping against her thigh, and every time she shifted her weight, the balance felt off.
She practiced pulling the hilt clear by half an inch, feeling the weight distribution and testing the draw length of the steel against her arm span.
After getting a basic feel for it, she went down to the subterranean range.
She cleared out a section of the concrete lane, pushed aside some empty storage crates, and set up a basic paper target at the far end before returning to her quarters for the night.
The first morning on the subterranean range was a complete disaster.
Alexandra stood in the center of the concrete lane, her feet planted shoulder-width apart, the black scabbard gripped firmly in her left hand at her hip.
Her right hand hovered half an inch above the ray-skin hilt.
The downloaded technique was crystal clear in her mind: smooth draw, snap the wrist, clear the scabbard, cut horizontally across the target’s throat.
She lunged forward, her fingers slamming into the hilt as she yanked the blade clear.
CLANG.
The steel caught hard against the lip of the scabbard.
The sudden, violent friction jerked her left arm forward, throwing her center of gravity off balance.
Her enhanced strength took over to compensate, turning what should have been a clean arc into an awkward, bone-rattling yank.
The blade tore sideways out of the scabbard, missing the paper target entirely and slamming edge-first into the concrete floor with a shower of bright sparks.
“Fuck,” Alexandra muttered, retrieving the blade and inspecting the nicked steel.
“Your hand angle is misaligned with the natural curvature of the sheath,” Six noted, stepping up behind her with her arms crossed over her chest, a faint, indulgent tilt to her head.
“You are treating the scabbard as a static anchor rather than an active component of the draw. As your right hand pulls, your left hand must push the scabbard backward to clear the edge.”
“I know how the draw works,” Alexandra grunted, sliding the blade back into the sheath with a sharp click.
“My body is just moving faster than the steel wants to clear.”
She reset her feet and attempted the draw again, trying to apply the correction.
She forced her left hand to push the scabbard back, but in her impatience, her enhanced strength took over.
Her right arm whipped forward with raw force, pulling the steel out before her left wrist had finished steering the sheath.
The blade bound against the throat of the scabbard with a metallic screech before yanking free, her arm jerking wildly to the right from the uneven momentum.
“You are still using force to override mechanical error,” Six said calmly.
“Force will not correct a bad vector. It will only make the mistake faster.”
Alexandra let out a harsh breath, her jaw tight.
“Right.”
She forced her shoulders to drop, taking a deliberate beat to let her pulse settle.
She closed her eyes for a second, mentally walking through the sequence without the strength behind it.
Pop the guard, slide the wood back, let the steel clear.
She opened her eyes and initiated the draw again, consciously slowing the movement to a fraction of her actual speed.
This time, her left thumb popped the tsuba clear, her right hand swept back smoothly, and her left hip snapped backward to pull the scabbard out of the blade’s path.
The sword cleared the wood with a clean, singing shhh-t!
She swung horizontally, but her reflexes were still faster than her body was accustomed to handling.
Her wrist snapped through the movement before her elbow had caught up, dragging her right shoulder forward and over-pivoting her torso, leaving her entire flank completely exposed.
BZZZT.
The training lane’s tactical analyzer let out a soft warning tone, projecting a red holographic strike-zone across her open ribs.
FATAL OPENING DETECTED.
“God damn it,” Alexandra growled, resetting her stance.
“My upper body is moving before my hips settle.”
“You are attempting to finish the motion before completing the initial movement,” Six murmured, stepping close enough that Alexandra could catch the light, floral scent she always seemed to wear.
She rested a warm hand lightly on Alexandra’s hip, guiding her back into position.
“Stop rushing to finish the kill. Let the movement breathe.”
“Thank you, coach,” Alexandra muttered, fighting a small flush.
For the rest of the first day, Alexandra repeated the exact same motion hundreds of times, drawing, snapping through the cut, and recovering each time.
She misjudged the scabbard angle and pinched her thumb against the wooden mouth.
She pulled too fast and nearly threw the sword across the room.
She over-rotated her hips until her back muscles protested.
That evening, back in her room, Alexandra sat on the edge of her bed with a small maintenance kit.
She wiped down the carbon steel blade, using a soft cloth to clean off the scuffs and carefully filing down the small nick near the tip from her morning collision with the concrete.
Her thumb was sore and tender where she’d pinched it against the sheath mouth, and a steady ache throbbed across her shoulders and lower back.
As she slid the clean steel back into the scabbard, she ran the mechanics through her head again—and realized that by the end of the afternoon, her hands had stopped searching for the hilt.
The movement was already starting to feel natural.
Day two was about basic cuts.
Once the draw-cut stopped catching on the scabbard, she moved on to horizontal slashes, vertical splits, and diagonal sweeps.
She stood before a row of heavy, hanging straw mats.
Step, diagonal cut, pivot, vertical split.
She surged forward, the katana whistling through the air.
The blade hit the first straw mat at a shallow angle.
Instead of slicing cleanly through, the edge bound up halfway into the dense fibers, the sudden resistance sending a jarring shudder straight up her arm and vibrating into her teeth.
Alexandra swore, yanking the bound steel free.
“Why the hell did it bind? I had the speed!”
“Edge alignment,” Six said calmly, stepping up beside the mat and trailing two delicate fingers along the fresh cut in the straw.
“Your blade entered at a thirty-five-degree angle, but your wrist turned mid-stride. Speed without proper alignment simply wedged the flat of the blade into the target.”
Alexandra stared at the torn straw, her jaw clenching.
Right.
It’s a blade, not a baseball bat.
The edge has to follow the line of momentum.
She took a slow breath, resetting her feet.
She focused entirely on the angle of her knuckles, feeling the exact orientation of the sword’s spine relative to her forearm.
She stepped in.
Slash.
The blade cut through the straw with a soft, clean swish, severing the top half of the mat so cleanly that it hovered in place for a fraction of a second before sliding off and hitting the concrete floor.
Alexandra smirked slightly, rolling her wrist.
“There we go.”
She spent the remainder of the second day working through the same sequence, repeating the cuts against target after target until the resistance of the straw barely registered.
The katana was beginning to feel like a simple extension of her arms, the edge naturally tracking where her knuckles guided it.
“You have stopped trying to force the blade through with raw muscle,” Six observed quietly from the side of the lane, watching her complete a clean diagonal sweep.
“Turns out letting the steel do the work is easier,” Alexandra said, resting the sword against her shoulder with a brief, dry grin.
By the third day, the conscious thought began to drain away.
She stood in the center of the lane, her eyes closed, listening to the ambient hum of the training hall’s ventilation.
Behind her, a mechanized target released a sudden, high-speed foam projectile aimed straight for the back of her head.
Alexandra didn’t consciously analyze the movement.
Her body finally began to execute what her mind had understood since the download.
Her left hand slid the scabbard backward, her right hand swept forward in a fluid, seamless arc, and the katana cleared the sheath with a sharp, ringing tone.
The steel flashed through the air, splitting the projectile before the pieces tumbled past her shoulders.
She completed the arc, swept the blade down in a crisp chiburi motion, and snapped the steel back into the scabbard with a heavy, satisfying clack.
Each session left the sword feeling a little less awkward in her hands, her reactions a little cleaner, and the movements easier to execute without conscious correction.
Alexandra let the blade settle at her side before looking down at the hilt.
I’m nowhere near a grandmaster.
An actual swordsman would probably tear my footwork apart in five seconds.
She rolled her shoulder and sheathed the sword.
But that’s not what I needed.
I needed a foundation.
Something I can actually work with instead of just swinging this thing around with superhuman strength and hoping for the best.
She looked down at the hilt again.
It’s a start.