The Artifact Competition (Approaching Infinity Book 1)
Page 7
Jav nodded, satisfied. He noticed Mai standing solemnly by his bed and they stared at each other for a moment.
The doctor looked from face to face as the silence held. “I’ll check on you again later,” he said and then eased out of the room.
“Stupid,” she finally said in a low voice.
Jav sat up a little and shrugged.
“You did an excellent job, though.”
He grinned. “How long was I out?”
“Thirteen days.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“What the hell did she do to me?”
“Something she wasn’t supposed to.”
“Which means?”
“Approaching Infinity,” Mai said. “It’s still too early for you so there’s no way you could have defended against those punches.”
Jav shook his head, not understanding in the least.
“The last three forms of the Eighteen Heavenly Claws are special,” Mai said. They contain advanced fighting techniques, but they also begin to condition the mind to appreciate certain spatial relationships and exploit them.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that in the instant before impact, you can explosively—exponentially—increase your striking power. Teacher used this technique on you the day you arrived.”
“Is there any defense against it?”
“Yes, but you’ll have to learn the eighth form first.”
Jav’s grin returned. “When do we start?”
Mai smiled in turn, but self-consciously covered her mouth with her right hand. As she did this Jav noticed she was still holding one of the stone flowers he had carved for Lili. It was a small rose.
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“Are you sure you’re ready?”
“I’m fine. I was asleep for thirteen days. How much more rested could I be?”
Mai rolled her eyes. “Fine. You need to be able to concentrate.”
“I can do that.”
“Just. . . just be quiet, okay? And watch.” Mai moved to the middle of the gravity block, then turned back to face Jav. “You need to watch very carefully, but even after you get the movements down and can do them from memory, you haven’t really learned the form.”
Jav started to ask a question but stopped, crushed by the force behind Mai’s narrowing eyes. She continued, “The seventh form teaches the basic dragon movements. The eighth and ninth forms are much more advanced and require intensive visualization. So, this is the eighth form, Dragon Dances on Raindrops. As much as possible, try to imagine that each step I take is literally on top an individual falling raindrop.”
This intrigued Jav. He stood up straight, folded his arms and bent his mind to the task. As much as he tried though, he couldn’t get the two images to synch. His superimposed visualization was slow and unwieldy, while Mai was fluid motion and grace personified.
“Well?” she said when finished.
He shook his head. “Your example was incredible as always, but I couldn’t do both.”
She sighed. “Don’t worry about it. I couldn’t either. Let’s get you started with the first five steps.”
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“Okay, Jav, I’ve taught you all the movements of Dragon Dances on Raindrops. Your body can do the form, but now we need to train your mind to do its part. I want you to watch me one last time and, like I told you when we started this a month ago, try to see my steps—really see my steps—from one raindrop to the next.”
“Right.”
Since he already knew them, Jav wasn’t distracted by the techniques. He focused on Mai, blotting out everything around her. The gravity block, the walls, the villa—everything was gone. There was only Mai and the rain. And it was beautiful. Once the image was established, it was like being drawn into a secret world, one that had always been there, hidden behind the veil of mundanity. It was like seeing the truth.
He was seeing Mai the way she was imagining herself. Whenever she alighted, time and the raindrops froze. It was just for an instant and each drop bobbed like a float almost imperceptibly under her weight, but then, once she moved, everything resumed. Jav watched and absorbed and he noticed something fundamental. As Mai approached a drop—each and every drop—the process of stopping began. Once her foot was within a few centimeters of the raindrop she was aiming for, it was almost as if it got caught by her, as if she were exerting gravity herself. Something was happening between the bottoms of her feet and the drops, and while Jav still didn’t understand the mechanics of it he deduced rightly that this was the critical point. Mai had talked about spatial relationships. Jav had guessed that the most important of those was the relationship between a weapon and its target. Now, he was beginning to see how that relationship might be exploited, if only in one’s imagination. But he had several scars to prove that reality could in fact be made manifest from something so seemingly intangible.
Jav continued to stare in fascination even after Mai had finished. She snapped her fingers a couple of times to get his attention and motioned for him to join her up on the block. “What did you see?” she said.
“I saw what I was supposed to, I think.”
“Describe it.”
He did and she posed another question. “What was happening to the raindrops?”
Jav thought for a moment and frowned. It looked like she was catching the raindrops, and if not drawing them to herself, then at the very least arresting their motion. But now, when she asked, that seemed like too obvious an answer. Mai started to grin as Jav continued to think through it. Time wasn’t actually stopping, the raindrops were still falling, but Mai was moving at a faster rate than the drops and should have overtaken them or dashed them to mist. It was the opposite! She wasn’t attracting the raindrops, she was repelling them. Just as the name of the form suggested, she was using them as transient steppingstones by tricking time and space in some way.
“You’re somehow delaying impact with the raindrops, aren’t you?”
Her grin widened and she nodded. Then with a prideful sigh she said, “That’s very impressive Jav. Not many people can see that right away. Now, you’ve been practicing this form at ten times gravity, but to stimulate your brain to fit the visualization, you’ll need to make a jump.”
She stepped down to the control podium and he realized too late what she was doing. The gravity block had been set at Jav’s limit, but now Jav felt his knees buckle under the sudden increase. He fought for his balance and to simply remain upright and through main force of will he was able to.
“Wh-what did you set it to?”
“Thirteen.”
Jav grunted.
“You can do it. You have to do it.” She rejoined him on the block. “We’ll do it together.”
And they did. Through her coaching, Jav was able to achieve the beginnings of his own visualization. The key was to use his mind, not his body, to resist the new, more insistent force of gravity by imagining an increase in distance between himself and the gravity block using the raindrops as reference points. They spent the next two weeks on the form and it was like learning it all over again, but little by little, Jav was starting to really see. Of course, at first Jav could not help but crash through the raindrops in his visualization, he lacked the power of mind and resulting finesse to avoid that, but he was improving.
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“Today we’re going to do something a little different.”
“Okay.”
“Everything must be done in strict order. I can’t teach you the Approaching Infinity strike, only Teacher can do that, but I can show you what it’s like to be hit with it.”
“Uh. . .”
“I won’t actually hit you. . . yet,” Mai said, grinning. She took a position before Jav and dropped into a front stance. “Now, watch my hand. Don’t flinch! Watch it carefully.”
At first Jav couldn’t help but flinch. Something was happening in the instant before impact—but there was no impact. Or was
there? It felt like there should have been in spite of what Mai had said. He watched as Mai punched again and again right in front of his face, forcing his eyes to follow her claw-hands and fists. This went on for hours until finally Jav saw what he was supposed to see.
In that instant before impact Jav saw it. Just as in the eighth form, upon landing on a raindrop, time seemed to stop. Or rather, it seemed that Mai created her own time in the infinitesimal gap between milliseconds. In that space of time he clearly saw her hand approach, as in a series of photographs—half the distance, half the distance, half the distance again. It seemed to continue endlessly, her hand always half the distance of the time before. He could feel the acceleration and the uncanny increase in mass get closer and closer. Closer still her hand came, but it never made contact. How was that possible?
He still didn’t know how it worked but his exhilaration overwhelmed him a little and he blurted out, “I see it! I see it!”
“Good!” She stepped back a bit and relaxed
They still had a lot of work to do. Jav could see Mai’s hands as they “approached infinity” but it took a little longer for him to see that she was also reeling them back in to avoid destroying his head each time. They practiced without stopping until he could see both.
• • •
Over the next few months, they sparred and Mai incorporated the Approaching Infinity technique into random strikes, forcing Jav to pay close attention at all times. They practiced that way until his perception of AI was nearly reflexive.
In spite of the time it took to simply read the telltale signs of AI, the counter was decidedly more difficult. They were back once again to standing still with Mai throwing punches at Jav, but this time she wasn’t reeling her strikes back in before they could impact. Jav wasn’t too ashamed to admit that the prospect of receiving another of those punches frightened him a little, but he rose to the challenge. And why not? He had seen nearly from the beginning the truth within Dragon Dances on Raindrops and here is where its lesson was to be applied. All he had to do was make it work. Once he discerned the “approach”, it was a battle of wills. Each time Mai halved the distance, Jav doubled it. This went on until one of them miscalculated or was exhausted. If it was the attacker, then the strike would be reduced to mundane levels determined by physical strength, positioning, and initial momentum; if the defender, then some of the accumulated power of the strike would be transmitted. One thing Mai had insisted that he realize, though, was that AI defense only worked against AI attacks—the defense was useless, she said, against regular force. Good enough. That’s what all the rest of the training was for.
Their regimen resumed into sparring much like before, but now it was especially taxing, both physically and mentally. Jav could detect and differentiate the attacks without having to exert the slightest effort, but actually nullifying them on the fly required more months of constant and rigorous training.
All during this time, Mei was strangely sedate. She had never apologized for what she had done, but Mao, Amia, and Tani had told Jav and Mai about their teacher’s arrival afterwards and they could all guess what might have happened. Mei stayed away from Jav, and the others treated her differently now.
Life continued at the school. When Jav wasn’t practicing he was busy working on something that he was keeping a secret. Lili was still in the infirmary, but she was expected to make a more or less full recovery eventually.
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Laedra Hol stood before all her students on the sparring block. “Mr. Holson! Mai tells me that you have made excellent progress not only with the eighth form but also with the Approaching Infinity defense. I wonder if we couldn’t have a little match today to see how much you’ve improved.”
Jav bowed and said, “Yes, Teacher.”
“Mei!” Hol called, and at the sound of her name Mei recoiled.
“Yes, Teacher,” her response was prompt, but her voice was unsteady.
“You will be his opponent.”
“Teacher?” Mei didn’t want to disobey or even contradict her teacher, but she wondered if this was a good idea.
Hol grinned. “Mei, you have nothing to worry about. This time, use of AI is encouraged. Mr. Holson, if you are successful here, it will serve as your initiation into the next stage of your training.”
“Successful, Teacher? What do I have to do?”
“Beat her,” she said matter-of-factly.
Jav stared incredulously for an instant and Mei’s eyes narrowed to hateful slits.
“Yes, Teacher,” he said.
Everyone stepped down from the block, leaving Jav and Mei alone, facing each other. Mei scowled bitterly at Jav, but he was a model of concentration, prepared for whatever might come. He didn’t wait, however. He moved first, launching into a series of attacks that Mei fended off. Now he smiled. This of course infuriated Mei, but again, Jav advanced, not waiting an instant for retribution. This time she had to work harder to evade him or block and she grew tired of being passive.
The AI defense was only necessary if impact was imminent so Jav held off the inevitable as long as possible. Though Mei was physically faster, Jav had practiced hard and had developed a knack for AI so her speed afforded her no advantage in that respect. When the first of her AI claws finally came, Jav reduced it to normal levels and immediately counterattacked, driving a wicked palm into her midsection. This caught Mei off guard, sending her back a few paces. Jav pushed forward, attacking again. She feinted, struck again, and again was robbed of her power.
They went on trading punches and Mei was becoming more and more frustrated. Jav had learned his forms well and all the application and sparring practice they did only served to more fully supplement his already instinctive understanding of the techniques within. He was patient and was able to use everything he had learned so far and that was pushing Mei beyond her limit. She began to focus exclusively on delivering a successful AI punch. Just one would be enough, she thought, just one big enough to end this maddening show.
But Jav had become an observant fighter. He noticed her frustration and her single-minded strategy quickly and used both to his advantage. He moved into a position that made him appear to be an irresistible target, and she, thinking he had made a mistake, grinned and acted. For the briefest moment there was a tremendous struggle. Mei would not give up so easily and the year and a half of built-up hate fueled her AI visualization like never before. But Jav checked her, approach for approach. He saw it through until there was nothing extraordinary about her punch and it landed. She put everything behind that punch and then realized too late that she had been tricked.
Jav’s footwork and positioning made contact inevitable, but only glancingly so. Mei’s eyes went wide in dawning awareness as her momentum took her forward, off balance, and Jav’s body turned with her punch. She could do nothing to prevent the clawed backhand that met her nose, popping it with a burst of red, and violently reversing her course.
She stumbled backwards nearly senseless, but Jav did not relent. He pivoted back around towards her, driving the heel of his left palm into the valley between her right cheekbone and the somewhat diminished ridge of her nose. A spray of blood painted a graceful diagonal arc as her head turned, grinding around on her own neck. Jav struck a final time, his front kick pistoning into her stomach and forcing her off the sparring block.
Jav stood still and watched as the other girls helped Mei back up onto the block. Hol approached Jav, placed her hands on his shoulders and shook him good-naturedly. Smiling—rather beautifully, Jav thought—she said, “That was a fabulous display.” Jav nodded self-consciously and she left him to check on Mei.
Mei was still shaking with anger and disbelief. She was muttering something to herself and her eyes were wild, dancing about in nervous agitation. She kept sniffing and wiping at the blood pumping from her shattered nose.
Hol took hold of her chin and forced Mei to face her. She said as sympathetically as possible, “You lost, Mei.”
Hol stepped back, leaving Mei to herself and addressed Jav once again. “Mr. Holson, beginning first thing next week, I will be seeing to your training personally. Congratulations, you have done very, very well.”
“Yes, Teacher.”
She left and, after gathering herself, Mei, too, stalked off to see to her broken nose and then to be alone.
• • •
Mao shuffled up to Jav and kicked his foot lightly. “Lucky!” she blurted. “I wish I could get one-on-one training from Teacher.”
He sank his fingers into her hair and shook playfully. “You’ll get your chance, Mao.”
“That’s right, Mouse.” Mai came up behind her. “You just have to keep at it. I don’t think anyone can deny that Jav works the hardest here.”
“Oh, come on,” Jav started to protest, but before he could continue Amia and Tani were standing in front of him.
“No, she’s right,” Amia said.
“You make us feel lazy,” Tani added.
Now Sessa came closer, and Lili, who was not yet ready or dressed for practice, joined her.
“But you know, Jav,” Lili said, “what you’ve managed to do so far is really something. The Eighteen Heavenly Claws has a long history. Teacher has volumes and volumes of lineage records in the library.”
Sessa rolled her eyes. “She’s read them all, too.”
“So I like books. You could stand to read a few, yourself. Anyway, I’ve had a lot of free time lately.”
At this Jav’s composure faltered, but Lili was quick to reassure him. “That wasn’t an appeal for guilt or pity, Jav,” she said, smiling. “Just a statement of fact. Anyway, the lineage records are quite complete with annotations and progress dates. Teacher keeps a book in her study that has all our information in it, too. Facts are facts. Jav isn’t the fastest, but so far he’s one of them.”