Chapter 38 | Training And Close To D-Day

Chapter 38: Chapter 38 | Training And Close To D-Day

Mira looked at the space where his face was with the expression she used when she was deciding whether to push on the enough answer.

She wrote: One day I will get a real number out of you.

"One day," Kai agreed.

She made the exhale-through-the-nose sound she made when something was funnier than she wanted it to be.

Shira looked at her bowl and said nothing.

But the line of her mouth had moved.

=======

Day two of ten.

Four-fifteen. Nerve Sense drills. Gale Strike Echo drills with the sequential lock Shira had described. Lock precedes rotation by one full beat.

The consistency moved up from rep thirty-six to rep twenty-two.

He noted it.

Day 2. Consistency from rep 22. Sequential lock is correct. Keep the beat gap between lock and rotation exactly one beat. Not slightly less. One full beat.

He started the kettle at five-twenty.

From Shira’s room at five-twenty-two he heard it again. The resistance sound through the wall. She was already awake and already working.

He stood at the kettle.

He thought: She is training too. She has been training. Every morning before I was awake.

He thought about the wrist extension from last week. The way she had looked at her own arm when it lifted. The expression underneath all the others.

He poured the tea and left a second cup on the counter without comment.

When she came out for breakfast the cup was there.

She looked at it.

She said nothing about it.

She took it.

=====

Day four.

Consistency reached rep fourteen.

Han Dori sent the dungeon details. A C-rank dungeon three districts north called the Verren Caverns. Mid-depth underground. Common monster type: stone elementals, movement-slow, high impact resistance. Weak points at joint connections.

Han Dori’s note: Your Gale Strike output won’t penetrate stone elemental core. Aim for joints. Three to four direct hits at joint connection points destabilizes the elemental enough to collapse it. Your Nerve Sense is your advantage here. Stone elementals don’t broadcast intent the way living creatures do but they do have a preparatory vibration before impact strikes. Learn to read it.

Kai read the note three times.

At breakfast he read it to Shira.

Not as a question. Just reading it aloud the way you read something to a room because the room had context you didn’t.

Shira listened.

She ate a spoonful of rice.

Then she said: "Stone elementals have a two-beat preparatory vibration before impact. One is the weight shift in the stone mass. Two is the compression of the joint before the strike extends. Between beat one and beat two you have approximately half a second. That’s your window to move."

Kai wrote this down.

"The joint connections," Shira continued. "On a standard C-rank stone elemental the weakest joints are the knee equivalent and the shoulder equivalent. Three direct Gale Strike hits to either one will destabilize. Two hits if your rotation is at full output."

Kai kept writing.

"At current output," Shira said, "you’re hitting approximately forty percent of what the full Gale Strike generates. Which means you need three hits, not two."

"Can I reach full output in six days," Kai said.

Shira looked at her bowl.

"No," she said. "Not full output. But you could reach sixty percent with consistent training. At sixty percent, two and a half hits. Practically three."

"Same result," Kai said.

"Same result," Shira confirmed.

Mira had her board up.

What does the dungeon look like.

Kai described the Verren Caverns from Han Dori’s notes. Underground. Stone passages. Limited visibility.

Mira wrote: Limited visibility is good for you. Your Nerve Sense works better than eyesight in enclosed spaces. You’ll feel the passages before you see them.

Kai looked at her.

He wrote that down too.

The notebook was filling up with information from both of them. Technical details, tactical notes, specifications he would not have thought to consider.

Both of them had been the best in their field.

They still were.

He just happened to be the one with working legs and functioning eyes.

=============

Day six.

Consistency reached rep nine.

He was practicing the sequential lock and rotation in the kitchen alcove at four-thirty when he heard Shira’s door open.

He stopped.

Her wheelchair moved down the hallway.

Not toward the bathroom. Toward the living room.

He stepped back into the kitchen doorway.

Shira wheeled herself to the center of the living room. She stopped.

She positioned her right arm in front of her. The brace supported it. She looked at the far wall.

She breathed in slowly.

Then she initiated something from her shoulder that Kai recognized as the beginning of the Gale Strike preparation. Not the full Gift. The preparatory form. The sequence her body had learned before the accident and still remembered because muscle memory does not live in the nerves that were damaged.

The shoulder rotation. The elbow position. The forearm angle.

And then the rotation.

Her wrist moved.

Not much. Not controlled. The nerve signal arriving incomplete the way it always did.

But the form was correct. Her arm was executing the sequence properly up to the point where the nerve damage stopped it.

She held the position for three seconds.

She lowered her arm.

She sat in the dark living room and breathed.

Kai stood in the kitchen doorway and said nothing.

Shira did not know he was there.

He stepped back silently into the kitchen.

He pressed his palm against the counter.

Her rhythm: elevated slightly from effort. The deliberate quality. Underneath it something he had felt building for days and now recognized clearly.

She was trying to give him the ability back that she had lost.

She was practicing her own Gift form so that whatever trace activations her nerve channels could still produce would return to him as cleaner, more refined ability.

She was training for his dungeon run.

Kai stood at the kitchen counter with both palms flat on the surface and felt something very large and very quiet move through his chest.

He stayed in the kitchen until he heard her wheel back to her room.

Then he went back to the alcove and continued his drills.

He did not tell her he had seen.

Some things were hers to keep.

=============

Day eight.

Consistency at rep six.

Han Dori came by the apartment in the morning to do a gear check.

He knocked at nine.

Kai answered.

Han Dori stepped inside, looked around the apartment once with the economical assessment of someone who catalogued spaces automatically, and said nothing about what he saw.

He checked the equipment. Resonance dampener calibration, protective layer integrity, gloves fit. He adjusted the dampener calibration by a small margin and explained why. He checked Kai’s hand positioning for the Gale Strike rotation and made one correction to the elbow angle that was nearly identical to what Shira had told him three days ago.

"That’s better," Han Dori said.

From the living room, Shira said: "The elbow needs to lock on the first beat, not the second."

Han Dori looked toward the living room.

Kai had not mentioned his wives to Han Dori except in the context of the licensing application.

Han Dori walked to the living room doorway.

Shira was in her wheelchair with the physio sheet on the armrest. She looked at Han Dori with the level expression she used when she was deciding how much to give someone.

"Shira Voss," Han Dori said.