Moonstrike 22

It felt like being on a family vacation. While Ji Min called around to find a space she could reserve for them to train in, M. J. and Ari apparently negotiated a schedule. Ji Min looked it over. The morning was for fitness- strength training and cardio like urban running, and there was a daily block of time in the evening for some type of skill. There was an extremely half hearted “homework time” scribbled in late mornings that Ji Min snorted at. She passed the notebook back with a shrug. “Assuming this works with the times the trainers can meet, yeah,” she agreed easily.

Two weeks wasn’t a lot of time, but it wasn’t nothing, either.

Her time working with spaceship engines was the longest block of time that she was away from her siblings. She spent 3 hours, 3 days a week on practical demonstrations and exercises and about an hour every night reading about the topic.

The marksmanship trainer was willing to add M.J. on, for an additional fee. Ji Min forked out a few thousand dollars for their time and called it a win. They both did alright. Neither of them was a particular talent, but they saw marked improvement and gained in confidence.

Their morning family time was an intensely satisfying ritual. All three of them were fit to start with, since Ari and Ji Min were gym rats and Min Joon played hockey competitively. Her little siblings took to parkour with relative ease, she thought, compared to half the villains she’d seen taking intro training. Afternoons went well too. It was strangely embarrassing to try to teach Ari and M.J. basic self defense, but it helped her remember things. They were both pretty good for her to practice with, by the end of the first week. Obviously she was better, but they were both strong and fast enough that it was a marked improvement over anything that she could do on her own.

9 days after taking M.J. out of town, Ji Min had a call from her Dad early in the morning. Of fucking course she didn’t pick up. She waited to see if he left a voice message. Nothing.

Alright then.

She stuffed the phone in a pocket and finished getting ready for early morning conditioning. Ari was singing under her breath in the bathroom. Min Joon was blasting his music in the attached hotel room while he got ready. Ji Min did a quick visual check of her braid in the mirror by the door and knocked on the wall. “Let’s go,” she called. How was she the first person ready when she’d been out late doing another session of movement practice and gymnastics with Bengal?

Min Joon’s music cut off.

“Gimme two,” Ari demanded. “I forgot to get my sunscreen on.”

Min Joon wandered into the shared hotel room and closed the door behind him, jinging his keys even though they didn’t need the things. He hadn’t bothered to do anything with his bedhead. Ji Min eyed it and repressed the urge to try to smooth it with her fingers. It wouldn’t work and it would just cause a fight.

They eventually got out the door and to the car. “Who wants to drive?” Ji Min asked.

“Can I?” Min Joon put his hand up.

“Go for it.” Ari opened the backseat and sprawled out like a spoiled house cat in the weak sun, long legs folded up on the seat.

Ji Min tossed him the key and got in the passenger seat.

He wasn’t a terrible driver for a 17 year old boy. Ji Min resisted the urge to put her feet up on the dash and instead cracked open a water bottle. Her phone went off, so she dug it out. She had the unhappy premonition that Dad would have sent the follow-up message asking where the hell his kid was.

It was from the Investigator guy. Hm. Ji Min clicked through the document drop, taking a brief glance at what he’d sent as his evidence that the facility was a human trafficking hub. She couldn’t see a good reason for a company to get sedatives and restraints in bulk.

Honestly, she was pretty convinced. But she didn’t know exactly what he wanted her to do about it. Should she like… report this to her handler? Ji Min grimaced at her phone. She was technically still a trainee. Getting through orientation didn’t mean she was allowed to do vigilante shit.

The Investigator was insistent that there was a government connection. That was what every conspiracy theorist said. She should just report it.

But she didn’t trust the government either. If she did, they’d have her name. And if she made the wrong call, wouldn’t it be more harmful to be wrong by reporting it? What did an excess of caution ever hurt?

She did not enjoy the feeling of relating to a conspiracy theorist terminally online weirdo stalker. It kinda made her wonder if there was something wrong with the way she did things. But would it really hurt to take a look into it? She was a world class cat burglar. Who could be more qualified to take a quiet look around and see if there was something going on? If there was official sanction for some kind of project like that, there would be documentation on site.

She typed up a promise to read the documents in full that day, thanked the guy, and put her phone away as Min Joon parked at the gym she’d managed to reserve for their mornings.

“Wow, what a great job driving,” Min Joon said. He turned the engine off with a showmanlike flick of the wrist. “That was the kind of work you expect from the top industry performers.” He stretched performatively to make sure everyone looked at him.

“You’re brilliant,” Ari said from the backseat. She opened the door with her foot and then slithered out. “An artist.”

Ji Min lifted her hands, turned to make serious eye contact with her brother, and soberly clapped three times. He bowed with a hand flourish and gave her the key back.

“Legs today,” Ji Min said as they jogged up the steps. “Agility drills first, plyometric movement, then strength training. Should be in and out in 2 hours,” she estimated. “There’s something I want you to learn as a precursor to a new parkour skill tomorrow.”

“That’s nothing,” Ari said. She deliberately swished her dark ponytail back and forth when she turned in the building.

Min Joon groaned. “You’re so mean,” he complained. “I hate leg day. Have mercy by at least moaning with me.”

“You moan alone,” Ji Min informed him. “I could kick God off their golden throne through the clouds.” She flexed the major muscles in her thighs just to enjoy how strong she was.

Ari laughed at that. “Sucks to suck,” she told the only person there who had yet to develop some kind of augmented strength and recovery time. He groaned theatrically, but he was having fun.

Honestly, Ji Min was too. This was one of the best periods of her life, even with the shadow of some stalker hanging over their shoulders. She felt strong and capable and like she had a lot to offer the people she cared about. And the comradery from training together was like a drug. It was serotonin delivered directly to her brain in a way that usually cost a lot of money to achieve by other means. It made her feel ambitious.

‘I need to get more martial arts training. I don’t want to be a trainee hero for longer than I have to be. I want to be good.’

After their morning workout, she read through the documents from the investigator in full. She bit her lip and thought it over, star fished out on the hotel bed while Ari took a shower.

“I need to meet this person,” she decided. “They can’t send me out on an investigation like this without putting at least a little trust in me.”

So she messaged them to that effect and promptly forgot about it. The message sat unanswered as she had lunch, learned how fuel conversion worked in a spaceship and built a converter from pieces, and had dinner before dragging her siblings to do 90 minutes of judo drills.

Ji Min felt personally fulfilled after flinging her little siblings onto mats. The whumpf of a body hitting plastic at velocity was probably her favorite sound. They’d never really scuffled when they were kids, since Min Joon was 7 years younger than her and Ari had been predisposed to peace. Ji Min didn’t even feel bad about flinging them around now, since they’d both grown up to be bigger than her. Ari was a little on the tall side at 5’7”, and Min Joon towered over both of them at 6 feet.

“Wanna go out tonight?” Min Joon glanced up from his phone in the backseat, heading back from their evening workout. “There’s a planetarium.”

Ji Min experienced a powerful surge of emotion and the recurring anger at remembering Hammer was out there somewhere trying to sell a model of Jupiter. She snapped her head around to stare at him suspiciously. Was that a joke? Was that at her expense?

…Probably not, judging from his confused expression.

She relaxed a little. “A good one?”

Ari hummed without looking away from the road. “I’d be fine with it. Do you think your space pirate friend would like to go, or is old news to her?”

“...I think it’s old news,” Ji Min said, after a long pause where she wanted to deny that Issa was a pirate. But honestly, yeah, she was a distinctly piratical individual. “Is that why you’re interested, M.J.?”

He shrugged casually, but she got the impression he was acting a bit. “Yeah, I mean… She’s cool, isn’t she? And so’s space.” He looked out the window. “I’m not gonna get into NASA but uh, maybe I could go to space one day. You said she works with them, not for them.”

…Wow, terror. Ji Min was experiencing terror. With great effort she evenly managed, “You probably could, yeah. Have you thought about what kind of skillset you’d wanna develop to be a crew asset?”

‘Play it cool. Be cool. Jesus fucking christ, be cool.’ She was keeping her expression normal with an enormous amount of effort. ‘Do not be a lunatic. I will support my brother’s dreams or he will stop telling them to me. I cannot confine him to only safe jobs and if I try, I will only incentivize him to prove me wrong.’

Oh, god. That was why he’d wanted the laser marksmanship lessons?

Her baby brother, prospective pirate? She jiggled her leg, full of anxiety she couldn’t direct anywhere.

‘I need to make him so scary. He’s adorable right now. He can’t go into space like this. That’s a disaster. He’s going to get eaten alive.’

Her siblings kept up a conversation, thankfully unaware of her impending mental breakdown.

‘At least there’s time. He’s not going to go straight from high school to space crime. If Ari- god, Ari is about to graduate college. She could do something terrifying. But she won’t, because she’s going to be a doctor. She’s going to go to graduate school next. I have until she finishes that before she becomes a space pirate.’

She was so transcendent with stress about Min Joon’s potential piracy that she barely noticed she had messages from Alejandro. She opened them when they got back into the hotel to get ready to go to the planetarium.

Alejandro : Can you commit to a 2-4 week intensive any time soon? SugarSteel has time to work with you. I’d also like to check in with you about Alex.

…Oh right, Alex was under review for creeping on that weirdo hoarding explosives. Ji Min disguised a laugh as a cough into her fist. She typed up an affirmative to the bit about Alex and made a mental note to call him and find out what was going on with him. If she had to fess up to taking them to the conference, she would. That didn’t necessarily implicate her of anything but having a criminal contact.

As for the other thing he said…

‘I need to be decisive about this.’

She grimaced at her phone and tugged at her hair. It made her feel- she felt anxious and like her safety net was at risk. But she was pretty sure that she should fully quit her contract work for the insurance company. Honestly? She didn’t need the income. She had investments and jobs that brought in a lot of cash. The job gave her a source of income that she could point to, but she wasn’t really under scrutiny anymore. She had enough of an established career and had grown out of her baby face.

And her mental health had never been better than it had been since she started putting her time into all this personal development.

‘Is that why my career went the way it did?’ Ji Min wondered. ‘I didn’t need to get any of those insurance certifications. I made enough money in the garage.’

Maybe that was just a personal trait she hadn’t been aware enough of: she liked learning. And hero work basically required you to always get better and better to stay ahead of the curve and get to the top of the field.

There was some real grief, but a lot more relief when she decided to send an email ending her work with the insurance company. That freed her up to tell Alejandro that she could do 4 weeks.

Steam billowed out when Ari opened the door and stepped into the hotel room draped in one of the huge bathrobes. “It’s your turn.”

“Thanks.” Ji Min tossed her phone onto the bed and grinned at her soggy little sister. “I’ll be out in ten.”