Moonstrike 4: rooms full of (shitty) people

Ji Min and Ari made no progress on the lingering question before she had to leave. How could they? Ji Min did manage to confirm that it only worked one way. She couldn’t hear anything that Ari thought at her. But she tested it. Ari rattled off the numbers that Ji Min thought, even when they weren’t in the same room.

“You’re so loud now,” Ari complained. She rubbed at her face. “You’re shouting at me all the time. You didn’t do that before.” She was wan and dark circles were beginning to form. “I can’t hear myself think. You’re panicking.”

“I don’t even know what I’m doing.” Ji Min tried to stop. But every few minutes, even from another room, Ari would bark ‘loud!’

She eventually fled before she’d meant to and started the drive back to the center.

Guilty, Ji Min stopped the car an hour out and sent a text to her sister. The response was gratifyingly fast.

Can’t hear you from here. 👍 It stopped maybe two minutes after you left the apartment.

“That’s good,” Ji Min said shakily. She swept her hair back. “Good… Yeah.” She cleared her throat. That said something about the range, probably. She sent back a wish for her sister to do well in her finals and then put the phone away.

Ji Min arrived at the facility an hour early, and decided not to wait in the parking lot. Luckily, there was already someone waiting at the entrance. She hid her nerves under a curt attitude as the intern went off to retrieve Alejandro.  She avoided eye contact with anyone who came near. There was no reason to think so, but she had the paranoid feeling that the mind thing might be related to eye contact.

Alejandro seemed glad to drop her off at the gym in the facility where she'd be staying for two weeks of intensive training.

First was a physical. She had decided not to hide her capabilities. Imitating the gradual progression that the pamphlet described seemed impossibly fiddly. Ji Min didn't think she could act that well, all the time.

The day got derailed immediately. They checked her range of motion, her vision, her hearing, and sense of smell. Her hearing was apparently a little above average human levels for her age, but her other senses were normal. It was probably just that she wore good ear protection and didn’t listen to her music loud. Then they put her on a treadmill and told her to run as fast as she could for twenty minutes.

This was supposed to measure both her peak speed and her stamina. She hit the max speed on the machine and maintained it for ten minutes, when she had to hit the slowdown button frantically.

The trainer didn't say anything beyond, "Alright, thank you, the weights next." But he seemed a little bemused.

Ji Min glanced at the can-do checklist and reached for the first specified weight.

"I think we can skip that," Trainer Ross said, and indicated something towards the top of the range. "Can you lift that over your head? Two hands is easy? Okay, show me– you can do it with one. Good, thank you." He scribbled on his board.

She racked up the weight carefully and then snuck a spritz of alcoholic hand cleaner.

Ross let out a long exhalation, not looking at her. "Alright," he said in an undertone. "Can you tell me about your current routine? Exercise, diet, and sleep."

Ji Min shifted in place, a little uncomfortable in her brand new government issued workout kit. The shoes had a high arch that she didn't like. "I sleep about 8 hours a night, I eat four to five times a day, maybe 4000 calories," she estimated. She tried very hard not to think much. She definitely wasn’t directing thoughts at him. Normal. Act so normal, Ji Min.

He gave a nod, waiting for her to continue.

She listed off details until she thought she'd covered it, and then she answered questions. So many questions. After a while, Ross clicked his pen and put it away. "I'm going to be honest with you," he said. "I don't think that I'll be able to help you, aside from checking your form for various exercises." When he blew out air, it ruffled his bangs. "You're not mutation type strength-A, you're strength-B." He frowned a little.

Was that bad?

Ji Min resisted the urge to cross her arms. "And that means?" She prompted.

Ross shrugged. "You're not predisposed to other physical augmentations," he listed. "You don't have the stamina and augmented vision that Alex does, for example, or any other perceptual augmentation. And you won't really benefit from strength training, aside from the fact that it will change your body composition." He gave her a rueful smile. "You can come here to get the heroic body you want, but it won't actually improve your performance."

It was starting to sound like she might actually be less lucky than Alex. Less lucky than the average person with mutations.

"...That matches my experience," Ji Min admitted, a sinking feeling in her gut. "Why'd they think I was type A?"

He gave her a rueful look and her paperwork back. "Strength Type A is the most common cluster of mutations by far. When we see superhuman strength, it's type A until proven otherwise. Take this back to your handler, please."

"...Alejandro?" She confirmed. When Ross nodded, she left the gym.

He was waiting where he'd left her, tapping at a tablet. He looked surprised to see her back so early.

"You got me wrong," Ji Min said, trying to play it off casually. It was too soon to regret coming here. She didn’t actually know that she was in over her head.

Alejandro frowned. "Pardon?"

She gave him the paperwork and leaned against the wall. "Ross says the training program won't suit me." She shrugged. She was inwardly thrumming with nerves.

He gave her a searching look before lifting Ross's notes up to read. They stood in silence for a while. Eventually, Alejandro cleared his throat. "Good thing he caught it immediately." His tone was level, practical, reassuring. "I'll get you a revised schedule today. We can use your time here differently."

She nodded slowly. She leaned her hips out from the wall and put her hands on the curve below her waist, stretching her hands. "What's next?"

Alejandro looked at his papers again. "You've finished ahead of schedule here. Why don't you take 15 in your room or the common area, maybe check in with Alex? I'll see if the combat trainer we have lined up can get you started early."

She made a face reflexively. It was hidden under her mask, a freedom she was really starting to enjoy in the environment. "Yeah, I'll go hang out with Alex."

Ji Min made her way to the common room. He was on the shortest sofa, diligently taking notes. Ji Min sidled up and knocked on the coffee table to get his attention. "Hello, Alex."

"Good morning, Moonshine," he said absently.

She frowned as she sat down. But she didn't correct him. He was just focused on something else. She picked up a magazine and started flipping through it.

Each glossy page showed an example combination of complementary weapons for capture, short distance, and mid or long distance combat. Ji Min turned the page to better look at some kind of rope with weights that you could apparently throw at people's legs.

She pictured that. She frowned.

It was supposed to be the harmless option, for neutralizing civilian or low level threats. She was pretty sure most people would injure themselves falling flat on their faces.

'What do I know?' She flipped the page and her eyebrows shot up at the devil-themed whip, rapier, and knuckles set on the next page.

"You any good with a weapon?" Alex asked idly.

Ji Min shrugged. "I'm not experienced," she said.

He let out a hum. "I've got a mean arm," he said. His pencil scribbled. "Baseball. And I did wrestling, so that part of training is going well for me."

Oh. So she genuinely was behind, then. She flexed and scrunched up her toes. "That's good."

"I'm going to let the team developers come up with my theme, name, etcetera." He flipped a page. "I'm not that hung up on it. Anyway, it seems like a specialist skillset, you know?"

"It's a marketing thing," Ji Min agreed. She crossed her legs. "Branding. Image." She flipped away from the devil set.

"Did a villain really give you your name?" Alex asked. He looked up at her for the first time. "That can't be true." He was faintly smiling. “No one with any self respect would let that happen.”

She didn't smile back. "I'm stuck with it. But I like it." She pretended to be absorbed in the magazine even though the product photos were all blending together. "They definitely mean to make us a team, right?"

"I think so," Alex agreed. He let out a huff through his nose. "Maybe we'll continue with your theme, find something complementary for me."

"Sure, you can be my sidekick." She turned the page.

He snorted. "Other way around, I think," he said.

She paused. She looked at him. He wasn't looking at her. So far as she could tell, that had been serious rather than playful banter.

"That's fun," she said in an undertone. She stood up. "I'm going to get something done in my room. Thanks for the chat."

"Anytime," he said back.

Unfortunate, Ji Min decided as she stalked away. Her government-assigned-friend fucking sucked. She could play nice, but she wasn’t going to sit and be condescended to more than she had to.

Her fifteen minutes of free time turned out to be more like ten. Someone in a black workout outfit knocked on her door before she’d had a chance to get settled. Grumpily, Ji Min re-checked her mask and followed them to a different training room. They were probably her new trainer. She waited for them to introduce themselves, bemused the longer the silence continued. Not a friendly person, then.

The first place had been a normal-looking gym. Weights, machines, a bit of space for stretching and body weight exercises.

This was a large open space with padded walls and mats on the floor. Ji Min got the hint.

“Combat training?”

“Yes,” her guide said crisply. “You declared no relevant experience, so we’re going to the basics. I’m going to start you off with judo, to get a feel for controlling a standing opponent.”

“What’s the general outline for training?”

The trainer looked bored, if anything, eyes heavily lidded. “For today? Two hours of judo, thirty minutes liberty, ninety minutes of academic instruction, then lunch. Afternoon will be preliminary weapons, checking out your proprioception, eye tracking, and current habits. Once we figure out what suits you, we’ll train in that specifically.”

Two hours of judo turned out to mean an hour of rolling, falling, and walking in weird ways including upside down. The second hour was excruciating in that she spent it doing what felt like the same thing to her, getting nitpicked for minor variations on how she placed and moved her hands and feet while trying to sweep someone’s leg.

The biggest challenge was boredom. Ji Min didn’t particularly lack discipline, but this was something else entirely from work and studying.

Of course, she regretted the studying session as soon as it started. She was going through the legal code and code of heroic conduct. She needed to be able to recognize crime and corruption and know her own limits and obligations.

It was almost a relief to get to weaponry. That didn’t last. It didn’t go particularly well.

“You lack accuracy,” the trainer said, not even looking at her. There was the sound of a pen scratching a checkmark. “I suppose that’s why you hurl the biggest thing possible, and swing around a stick. I gather from footage that you don’t have any particular knowledge of human anatomy.”

Okay, rude.

“I didn’t take biology or anything like that,” Ji Min said tightly. “Should I be learning any of that?”

The trainer gave her a doubtful look. “If you can, yes. For now, let’s try to get you to throw things where you’re aiming.” They bounced a ball once on the ground to check something and then threw it at her underhand. Ji Min caught it easily. “That circle, there,” the trainer pointed. “Throw it a hundred times with your right. I’ll count how many hits you get. Then we’ll switch to the left.”

The indicated circle was on the other side of the gym, about the size of the lip of a coffee cup.

Ji Min eyed it dubiously, but she hefted the ball without complaint. She didn’t need more conversation from the trainer, not when the quality was so…. High. She threw, and threw, and threw far past the point of boredom. There were occasional comments about her form.

“65,” the trainer said at the end, not pleased. “Left.”

Left was 67, which was the first time the trainer gave her a look that was more assessing. “Ambidextrous?”

Ji Min lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I only write with my right, but I use my left plenty.”

“Try using it to write as well, it’s an advantage.” The trainer blew out air. “I’m Hodge. Why did you use a stick to fight criminals?”

“I like the moment of connection,” Ji Min said after a moment of thought. “It protects my hands by keeping them further from an opponent. There’s also an element of precision, I feel, and it can be used to control someone without actually hitting. I’m not interested in anything with a blade.”

Hodge chewed that over. “I can work with that.”