41 - Training

It had been almost two weeks since George, Geraldine, and the Church of Carcinization had joined our ranks.

After my repeated reassurance that I didn’t mind if they continued worshiping crabs as the Church of Carcinization—as long as it did not run in opposition to our goals, of course—Joel had taken to running their daily crab meditations on my shore.

As for George and Geraldine, they had spent most of the last fortnight fishing, and they’d caught a surprising amount of species. Just as quick as the seasonal fish had arrived, their numbers started to dwindle. You could still catch one here and there, but the variety of fish caught from the rockwall had drastically increased, the other species returning after most of the blue fish had left.

There was still no sign of Rocky, but that was probably for the best. The cantankerous little bugger had a fair bit of self reflection to do, and his absence was mostly unnoticed. Snips had her claws full; most of her days were spent being praised by the Church of Carcinization. As I watched her showing them her wonderful form, I smiled.

“This will never not be funny,” Maria said, smiling at the five humans scuttling sideways into the ocean after Snips, ‘clacking’ their hands together all the way.

“I couldn’t agree more.”

“We can hear you!” Joel called, scowling but still retaining his crab-like posture.

“Do you speak crab?” Maria asked, turning to me.

“I’m ninety-nine percent sure he called me handsome.”

Jess giggled, blowing bubbles from her submerged mouth.

A loud crack like far-off thunder tore through the air. I turned southward, gazing at the distant mountains. “Should we go check up on them?”

“Oh, I’d love to! It’s always entertaining!”

“Especially when Claws is involved.”

Maria leaped to her feet. “That boom was probably her! Let’s go!”

“Coming, Snips?” I asked as I stretched.

Soon, she replied with a quiet hiss before submerging back beneath the ocean’s water, only her eye visible.

I smiled and blew her a kiss. Though I knew she didn’t care for their praise, she had been more than accommodating for Joel and the rest of his followers, always willing to join their meditations.

With Maria’s hand in mine, we ran across the sand and leaped right over the rivermouth. I stole a glance at her midair, only to find she was staring back. She poked her tongue out at me, only turning away to spot her landing. No sooner than we hit the sand, we were off again, heading for the southern mountains. We reached the forest in record time, not slowing as we dashed between trunks and over grass. Another boom came, this time close enough for me to feel who it was.

Light streamed through the forest ahead of us, and as we emerged into the sunlight, we skidded to a stop.

Roger had cleared a section of forest. Even the stumps were nowhere to be seen, completely uprooted and replaced by a section of tamped ground as large as a football field. Twenty or so people were scattered around the edges, intently watching the match taking place. In the center of the field, Borks hunched down and launched forward.

Roger stood firm, and as the maw of Borks’s hellhound form opened to clamp down on his torso, he cut diagonally through the air with one arm. A sharp blade of chi flew from him, and Borks bit down on it.

Boom!

Air shot outward, reverberating in my core when it struck me.

The attack blew Borks back. He skidded to a stop on the sand.

“See how he neutralized my attack?” Roger instructed the surrounding cultivators. “Though I didn’t use my full strength, that would have cut most of you in two. Brigadier Borks nullified it by channeling chi into his jaws and biting down on it. With enough control, you can do that with your bodies.”

The cultivators nodded, some even recording the words in notepads that Ellis had provided. Over the past week since the blue fish’s numbers had begun to drop, Roger had seen fit to start his very own village-wide training montage. Not everyone took part, but more than a few of the cultivators from Gormona were interested in being a part of New Tropica’s defense force. Though I wasn’t too keen on participating—mostly for fear of accidentally atomizing someone—Maria and I often came to watch.

“Morning Fischer!” Deklan called, waving to me from across the clearing.

I’d spotted him immediately—he and his brother were the only two audacious enough to risk Roger’s wrath by sitting down while waiting for their turn to spar.

“G’day mate!” I replied.

Now that they noticed us, most of the others gave us a wave or bow. Thankfully, they’d become a lot less reverential of me since they first arrived, but a few still bent a little too low for my liking.

Twin blurs of movement came from my left. Rather than brace my body for the impending blows, I thought I’d let them have their fun. Corporal Claws and Cinnamon slammed into my chest, both trilling their arrival. My feet left the sand as I sailed through the air and skidded to a stop on my back, my two assailants clutched to my chest.

I groaned, holding a hand to my forehead. “Go on without me. I will never recover from such—” My diatribe was cut off by a choked noise coming from my mouth as Claws rammed her little digits into my neck and started tickling. I squirmed away, fighting off her questing paws. “Mercy! I concede!”

As I held Claws by the scruff of her neck, neutralizing her attack, Cinnamon puffed herself up on my chest. She peered down at me with a victorious smirk, all but saying the word pathetic as she accepted my surrender.

“Okay, you two,” Maria said, scooping them up in an arm each. “That’s enough guerrilla warfare for one morning.”

In stark opposition to the violence they’d shown me, both creatures cuddled into Maria, Cinnamon by curling into a little loaf, and Claws by rolling onto her back and settling into the nook of Maria’s arm.

I stood and shook myself off, doing my best to dislodge any sand that had made its way into my clothing. “Now that we’ve said good morning, how has your little experiment been going, Claws?”

She sat bolt upright, her eyes going wider than I’ve ever seen them. The slow grin that made its way over her face told me that there had been progress. Looking more liquid than otter, she flowed out of Maria’s arms and landed gracefully on the ground. Cinnamon hopped down to meet her, and together they raced toward the western side of the training grounds.

Yesterday there had been a stack of boulders there. Now, only one remained, the rest having been blasted into gravel by Claws’s experiments. Claws started stretching, looking downright adorable as she limbered up. Cinnamon hopped around the boulder, sniffing, touching, and even slapping it a few times, ostensibly assessing its suitability.

When Cinnamon’s head swiveled to face Claws, she gave her an almost lecherous smile. Claws returned it. They started giggling, sounding like high-pitched, much cuter versions of Beavis and Butt-Head. Abruptly, their tone shifted. Both went silent, and after a swift nod to each other, they moved into position. Claws faced the boulder and reached out for her chi, her core softly vibrating in preparation. Cinnamon sat at a right angle to Claws, also facing the boulder.

Both closed their eyes as their power swelled. Cinnamon’s flowed into her body and flooded her muscles, waiting there for the moment she called on it. Claws’s core hummed and opened up, her chi slowly pouring upward into her chest. From there, her will pulsed out, demanding that it... change? Obey? It was hard to distinguish, but she was definitely doing something.

Beyond intrigued, I sent my awareness out, focusing entirely on her will.

Her lightning chi resisted. It didn’t want to be altered. Though Claws was a trickster and might appear flippant to those that don’t really know her, I knew the truth. When she set her mind to something—whether it be defending her friends, messing with someone, or devouring a small village’s worth of shellfish—nothing would sway her. Her will demanding that her chi obey was an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. The struggle likely only took a few seconds; to me, it was a day-long battle, filled with skirmishes and feints and headed by two masters of warfare.

Slowly, her chi’s metaphorical forces were defeated, systematically dismantled by her immense will and desire. The chi started to change shape. No, that wasn’t entirely correct. It was both the same yet undeniably different. Its flavor, for lack of a more-accurate term, had shifted, gaining complexity. Focused as I was on what she was doing, I didn’t have the bandwidth to run through the implications. I did, however, have a front-row seat to the moment she won the battle.

Corporal Claws’s will washed over her chi in a flash, completing its alteration. From her chest, it wound around her, wreathing her limbs. She stood tall and cocked her arm back, gathering the chi in her fist.

Cinnamon, not missing a beat, launched herself along the ground. With her back to the sand, she wedged herself under the boulder, lifted it up on all four limbs, then lobbed it into the air.

The moment it was before Claws, she struck. Her fist raced forward, too fast for anyone but a cultivator to follow. My curiosity swelled as I tried to comprehend exactly what was going on. Her paw held too much strength and would shatter the boulder into a million pieces. Just like every other rock, judging by the surrounding gravel.

She never once slowed, her fist rocketing forward and promising the annihilation of anything in her path. Just before it hit though, her chi flared. With mere millimeters between her touch of death and the boulder, her lightning flowed out of her body and into the foreign object. This, too, should have brought destruction.

But it didn’t.

The essence not only filled the boulder; it also surrounded it, holding it in one piece. The next moment, her fist collided with the rock. Wreathed in arcs of blue essence, the boulder flew skyward so fast that I almost lost sight of it. Thunder boomed, slamming into my chest as lightning seemed to strike in reverse, originating from Claws and ending on the boulder that was now hundreds of meters above us. The mass continued on, soaring from sight, only flashes of blue chi letting me catch sight of it.

As it sailed far upward and slightly north west, all I could do was stare, my jaw slack and expectations exceeded. When the world’s essence flowed in toward us, I had to cut my amazement short. Faster than ever before, it billowed up and slammed into Claws. Knowing what to expect, I slung chi from my core, surrounding Claws in a protective bubble.

The world rushed into her abdomen, filling it to the brim.

I tried to yell for everyone to get back, but my mouth couldn’t move fast enough. Her core detonated, the breakthrough’s excess chi rushing out and slamming into my protective bubble. Where Roger’s chi was bladelike and Peter’s radiated heat like a blazing hearth, Corporal Claws’s was electric. It arced over the inside of my shielding, seeking a way out. When it succeeded, my panic surged through me. Barbs of it zapped through my protective shielding. I only had a fraction of a second to react before it shot out, and not knowing what effect it would have if it struck any of the weaker cultivators, I made an executive decision.

I turned my shielding into a funnel, aiming it for something it could travel through into the ground. Uncountable fingers of electricity formed a single bolt, and with a crack that made my ears ring, it shot into the makeshift lightning rod.

There was only one problem with the whole plan: I was the lightning rod.

It sent me flying backward and I tried to curl my limbs into a protective ball, but Claws’s power still lingered, my muscles nonresponsive. Suddenly, my flight came to an abrupt end, and I blinked, my vision blurry as I turned to look at my saviors.

“Are you okay?” Maria asked, not at all amused. “Are you hurt?”

“Frack me,” Barry laughed, entirely too amused. “What did I just stumble upon?”

I groaned as I cracked my neck and tested my limbs. “I think I’m okay...” I rubbed my eyes. “Claws. Are you—”

A loud chirp was the only warning I had. She landed on my chest a moment later.

“Are you okay, girl?” I asked, reaching up to support her.

She had tears in her eyes, her lower lip quivering as she stared up at me.

“I’m fine,” I said, smoothing the fur atop her head. “Barry, are there any villages to the north west?”

“You mean in the direction that Claws just launched a lightning-covered meteor?”

“Yeah.” I opened my jaw, loosening the muscles there and causing my ears to pop. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

“Nope,” he replied, still sounding all too entertained. “It’s only forest and wilderness.”

“Good. I was worried someone would have to race off and try to catch it.” I returned my attention to Claws. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Yes, she chirped, still giving me a guilty look that broke my heart.

“I’m totally fine. I promise.” I scratched behind her ear, reassuring her.

“Okay,” Maria said. “Now that we know everyone is safe...” She picked up Claws, holding her by the underarms and lifting her high. “What the frack was that, Claws? That was so cool!”

Claws shimmied her shoulders, unable to suppress her joy at being praised. Maria pulled her back into a hug, my otter pal melting in her arms. 

I smiled at them. “Agreed. Did you know it would do that, Claws?”

She shrugged coyly, letting out a mysterious trill and wiggling her fuzzy little eyebrows at me from atop Maria’s arms.

“Regardless of your intent, that was a crazy breakthrough, Claws.” I wrapped my arms around Maria’s waist, pulling them both into a hug. “Well done.”

Cinnamon leaped up to my shoulder, joining in the cuddle puddle. Claws revealing her needle-like teeth with a grin as she shimmied again, jubilation radiating from her core.