A few days passed after I remembered some things, though not all of them. I still couldn't remember everything about that cloaked guy, though I might someday, I did remember him before after all. I couldn't force myself to remember, and hypnotism for some reason didn't work.
Let's not think about the fact I could remember an almost two-minute song that's basically nations' names, but not someone I studied for the last seven years.
So I stuck with what I could do. Which is basically training and learning things so I could someday look for a way back. And so Aura training started.
Using Aura and letting it be used were two different things. Healing and protection were as automatic and simple as breathing. A feeling so natural and comfortable as it happens.
But using it, consciously manipulating it, proved it to be harder. Someone that trains to use their Aura instead of having it unlocked gains the perception to sense Aura and can use it even before reaching its full potential. Though it was a far cry from the full experience, they could still be hurt but simply healed faster if they focused, how well varying from person to person.
Someone that has it unlocked, on the other hand, has full Aura, but no perception of how to sense it or how to manipulate it. That's where the training John gave me came, the overbearing exercises had a point in the end.
It gives me the idea of how it feels, but not really how to manipulate it.
I recall that feeling, a warmth that seems to seep out of my bones. It starts slow and uneven, a change so gradual that I thought I was imagining it, but it's there. I focus more, and that feeling grows as the warmth slowly diffuses throughout my flesh.
"Done," I say.
"Focus on your legs now." He says.
And I do that. I focus on my legs and feel the heat as it slowly flows, and there's supposed to be resistance in the way, from what John told me, to the point I wouldn't - shouldn't - be able to move my Aura at all due to how much I'm supposed to have. I feel my heart warming up, pumping something else into my body. A thin line, with a different kind of warmth than Aura, starts to run down my chest and to my legs, my focus shifts just a little to contain it.
It had taken me the few days since my memory came back to do this, and it didn't disappoint.
Because It's more than before. It surpasses the warm and nice feeling. Just by bending my knees and shifting my weight I could feel the power behind the movement. From the way my feet pushed against the ground to the way my muscles flexed. All of it announced the power behind it.
I prepare to leap, my knees extend and I feel my feet pushing against the ground.
Everything passes in a blur. Mostly greens of the grass and tree leaves and the blue of the sky. I put one foot forward to stop when the speed goes down.
But it hadn't gone down enough as I feel my knee give in as I land. I put my hands up to protect my head by reflex. The blues and greens switch again and again as I roll on the grass.
I stop and then turn on my back, staring at the sky as my chest rises and falls.
"Now I'm glad we didn't try this at home." I faintly hear John speak, some humor in his voice. I went further than I thought I would go. I thought it would've been two, maybe three meters if I pushed it, which would've been pretty good for a jump from a stand still. But I had doubled that, easily, even discounting the rolling. Though a big chunk of dirt and grass did disappear from the spot I was standing just a few moments ago.
I barely hear the whispers of the people that pass by, my heart pounding in my ears as the adrenaline kicks off. My leg ached a little, but Aura was handling that.
Luci trots over to me followed by John, tongue hanging out, somehow the doggy grin seemed directed at me. "That was awesome!" I can barely contain the smile as I sit up, looking up to John.
"I should've told you to put some Aura onto the ground you're standing too." He says, almost to himself. "But then again..." He scratches his head and shrugs.
He knees down, leaning for support with his left hand and sits down next to me. "I really thought that you would take more time to learn this." John shifts a bit and scratches Luci's ears. "That does speed some things up though. We could start sparring today after lunch if you want."
"Yeah, that would be... nice." Without the high the adrenaline gave me I could focus on what I felt. "Whatever that is," I continue, "it mixed in when I tried to focus." He didn't know what it was, and I certainly didn't either. We agreed it wasn't my Semblance since, if those feverish dream-like memories could be trusted, I used it even before unlocking my Aura. "I pushed it back, I think?"
"Maybe it's helping you," he offers. "It's supposed to take longer than that to be able to use Aura that way."
I really need to remember those things. I rub my temple with my right hand.
"You can stay if you want, but I'll head back first," he says, "want to get started on lunch and make a few calls."
"No, I'll go back too." I had spent enough time outside, while back at the house I could read something. There's also the fact that all of the people I know are in school right now. And I'm not quite sure what that says about me. Both Euros and Leona taught at Sanctum, the combat school that was established inside the city. Maybe I should I meet more people? Nah.
It's a leisure walk back and on the way home I started moving around whatever that thing was in my chest. I had figured out that while I couldn't feel the same pull and warmth as I walked and breathed, simply moving around whatever it was inside of me was simpler.
A thin line of warmth spreads to my left arm, recedes and then goes to my right, the process is slow as I feel the warmth rolling from one place to the other, and requires some focus. A bit more of focus pushed into it and it goes to the center of my palm and instead of the glow, I divide it, guiding it into my fingers. I feel the tips growing warm as the odd glow starts, like asphalt in a hot day it distorted the air around it.
When we get back he goes for the phone to start making calls, setting appointments with what I think is the place we'll spar at. I decide to head to the kitchen and start on the lunch, while I couldn't exactly season things like a normal person, cutting, dicing, and chopping were things that didn't require a sense of taste.
I take out the ingredients. Washing and then cutting down the stalks of the whole head of broccoli. Bring a pan of water to boil. A thin and shallow cut along the first layer of the onion and I take out the unusable parts. Take out the top, and cut the rings thinly. Cut those in half and start dicing.
Just like I saw my mom doing hundreds if not thousands of times.
When Leona came here we talked a lot. Rather, they talked and I simply listened, nodding and laughing at the appropriate times. It reminded me a lot of home. Or how normal people should behave.
Maybe…
"Did I ever tell you how I learned to do this? Cooking and the other chores, I mean." I say as I set down a forkful of pasta, I'm going to need the carbs later according to John.
I see the twitch of an eyebrow and a small smile. "Yes, you said your mother taught you," I admit I hadn't talked much to him except the times when he asked something.
"Yeah," I stab a piece of broccoli with the fork. "mom taught me before I left for college. I was going to live with my brother so, I kind of needed to learn that."
"I cooked just once when mom was teaching me." I continue, "apparently my range of acceptable food is... wider than a lot of people. Made it really easy to raise me as a kid, though." I chew the broccoli. "I say 'as a kid', but…"
Lunch then becomes slower than the previous times, both of us slow our pace, something that I rarely, if ever, did. I tell him about my family, cousins, aunts, and uncles. How my godfather was a musician which meant that I didn't get to see him much.
Eventually, we finish eating, and I take the plates. I start washing dishes but we keep on talking. "I studied in the next town over. And since classes started seven thirty in the morning, and it took an hour to get there, so I had to wake up really early." My school life was uneventful, I never really practiced any sports, except on P.E., or ran into any trouble. Life was nice and simple. A bit boring at times.
"And that's where you met her?" We had talked more what the memories meant than what they actually were. An unknown ability that I shouldn't have kind of takes precedence over a girl.
"Yeah, she used to make fun of me because I was short. But it was when I was being a little… annoying. It wasn't just her, even my family sometimes joked like that, but, yeah. Mainly her." I answer. "My friends were in their…" I have to do some math, "five fives and higher and growing, while I wasn't even five feet tall yet. But, well," I gesture to myself. "Clearly that joke went away."
"Eton's starting to have those issues," he says and lets out a short laugh. "The trials and tribulations of an adolescent." His grandson was a bit on the shorter side, though judging by his mother and sister- hell, even his grandfather- he had the right genes for it.
We take a cab and the place he takes us for the spar is very different from what I expected.
The three-story building took almost an entire block, dividing itself into a shooting range underground, two floors for sparring and a gym. The windows to the upper floors showed people there, either sparring or working out, though due to the time of day there weren't that many people around.
The moment we get in I notice the receptionist calling someone, and it doesn't take long for a man to come. From his looks, he is the guy that took the 'if you do what you love' thing far too serious, a few gray hairs amongst the black show his age.
"Mr. Chambers!" He's effusive, greeting us both with a handshake, firm and quick. A smile shows his pearly whites while he guides us to some room in the back, I end up hanging back, letting them talk.
"I'm sorry for not calling you before, Nick. I thought I would come here next week but…"
"No problem Mr. Chambers." He pats John on the back and lets out a hearty laugh. "You helped my father when the business was down, so it's okay. Besides, there's not much going on around this time."
"I just came here once in a while a few years ago. It wasn't much." John told me that a lot of Huntsmen and Huntresses are known. Not that hard to imagine, considering the things they faced.
Though he might have undersold just how well he was. Or still is.
The room he guides us into is large, wood racks of weapons displayed along the walls different kinds of melee weapons, from the European - I think - longer and wider blade of a two handed sword and rapiers that seem better suited for thrusting than slashes to the more Asian-looking ones, one edged blades and a double edged one that I'm pretty sure is Chinese. There's even a more different one that I'm not sure I've seen, looking more like a cross between a hook and a sword.
"So you're a swords man, huh? I'm more of an axe man myself." I only notice the guy when he gives me a solid pat on the back. John had gone farther into the room and seemed to be deciding between some kind of spear - maybe a poleaxe, they're next to each other - and a staff.
"Yeah, I've always liked them," I say. "But I also know how… bad things can get if you don't know how to handle them." I turn and decide to pick something... safer, at least as far as weapons went. Maybe some other day.
From swords to polearms, and then spears. I see some smaller blades mounted on a rack on the wall. Anyone could grab a sword and swing it around, but there are more subtleties to it, I think. You need to mind the angle of the blade as you slash or thrust, lest your blade ends stuck in your target or even worse, break. Though Aura is supposed to make that more difficult. But... I walk to the racks in between them, where the staves and other blunt weapons are.
It doesn't take that much technique to bash things. I think.
I hope.
I look over the staves, some as long as my body is. Something short would be easier to handle. Some kind of mace maybe?
I pick one of those up and give it a tentative swing. It's slower than I would've liked, but the momentum is easily stopped when I try. Too slow, maybe something smaller?
The head of the next one is a small sphere, it's easier to maneuver than the last one. A stronger swing cuts the air, but it doesn't slip off my hands.
"Did you pick something yet?" John says as he walks up to me, a staff, as long as he is tall, in hand. Is he not using his guns? That's… better for me, actually.
"This one, I think. It's long enough that I could use both of my hands, and light enough that it doesn't stop me from using it with one."
He nods, satisfied, and the guy takes us out of the room and into an elevator to the top floor.
"Your grandkids come here from time to time too." Nick says, "Maya's turning out to be quite the fighter. So is Eton. She's been teaching them well."
We get out and he leads us to a tinted glass door and swipes a card. The door slides open, and John steps in, taking the card from Nick. I go to follow him and Nick pats me on the back.
"Good luck out there," the smile seems more strained. "You'll need it." I hear it faintly through the door as it slides close and I can't see out anymore.
Maybe so that people can focus more on sparring than the people watching? Also, what.
"We can set it so it's see through if you want," John says and snaps me out of my short confusion.
"No, that's okay," I answer. "Though, how are we doing this? You said we would cross that bridge when we got to it, and…" I gesture to the room. The walls are covered with light blue pads, some with boot marks on them. Clearly, some people had gotten a bit overexcited. There's a monitor showing two vertical bars side by side, going from red to yellow to green.
"We'll attack each other. You'll have time to think after each time." I'm still worried about trying to hit an eighty-year-old man. He said it's okay as long as his Aura is up, but still…
Suddenly, I feel the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. I raise my mace in my left hand, and the first thing I realize is the distance. Should've picked something longer.
He can hit me before I can hit him. Maybe block and get close to enough to hit?
I step closer to him and it's like I have goosebumps all over my body. His movement is quick, he raises the staff and strikes.
I hold my mace with both hands to block the overhead strike, and even still I feel my knees giving in the moment our weapons connect, the impact ringing through the room.
He doesn't retreat or move, simply holding me down by keeping the pressure. I feel the strain on my arms as the seconds tick by, moments that feel longer as more time passes, I look at the weapons, trying to figure out something, anything to break out of this.
I feel metal grinding against metal and the pressure increasing as the staff slides forward before I see the reason why. John steps in close, his leg raises and he kicks me. Air is knocked out of me when he strikes me on my stomach, making me fall back.
"Think. What did you do?" Is the only thing he says, as he waits for me to get back up.
It takes me a few moments to catch my breath. Think, he said. What did I do? The block? No. Maybe? I mean, I could do it, even if just barely. He kicked. Because he got close. Because I had looked away, even if just for a moment.
Okay.
I get up, grabbing the mace and make my way to him again. Once again he strikes and I block, my knees giving in just a little. But once we're locked in the same situation, he steps closer, metal grinding against metal once again.
"Think. What are you doing?" I hear him say.
I feel the warmth seeping into my arms. I kept looking at him, so why? He steps in closer and… I feel the stupidity on me to the point I would drag my hand down my face if I could. One word comes to mind.
Leverage.
The movement is awkward and shaky as I slide the contact point from the middle of the mace to closer to my hands and there's the release of pressure as I use my whole body to push away the staff. I jump in close, winding up a strike of my own.
And he stops me dead in my tracks with another kick straight onto my stomach.
Warmth pools into my torso, relieving some of the pain as I try to think. Don't rush in? Or don't use just your weapons?
I get up and we continue. It is no 'song of steel' as our weapons clash, he goes through the same starting overhead strike a few times before switching, always with a simple 'think' at the end of each exchange.
To each strike I had in me he counters with no apparent effort. He starts to add variation to the exercise, circling around instead of simply moving back and forth, a flurry of light strikes mixed in with a couple of heavier, more powerful ones. He aims both head, torso, and legs, moving just fast enough for me to catch up, even if just barely.
A thrust to my chest that I try to swat away proves to be a feint as he pulls back the staff making me swing on nothing. He then steps in striking me on the side of the head with the back end of his weapon.
The adding of feints on top of it all made the exercise… complicated.
"It's probably the last time for the day, I think." He says as points to the monitor. "Better use everything you've got."
The left bar had been barely touched, a small fraction of it gone. The right one, on the other hand, had gone past the yellow, teetering on the red zone. How does that thing even work?
I breathe in.
Think. What else?
I breathe out.
I try to remember anything that could help. Any showing of technique that I could try, maybe angling and timing my blocks to better deflect one strike, but there's nothing with a mace. I always found more interest in the barehanded section of martial arts then this.
One look around the room draws my attention to the boot marks on the padding on the walls at some points. At higher places of the wall that seem impossible to reach normally. There's a little flash as something clicks inside my head.
I'm a little past normal at this point.
Even though I have been taking hits more like a video game character than a normal person I had forgotten about Aura.
I breathe in again. And out.
Put those together and you have…
I hold the mace lower than before, almost parallel to the ground. By bending my knees I feel my muscles tensing, the simple and pure power behind every twitch of a muscle, though oddly controlled. I let the warmth in my heart branch out in lines, of something I'm not sure what it is, spreading to my arm.
My muscles are suffused with a mixture of Aura and that, - I should really think of a name for it - I wind up the mace, pulling it back as I focus more on walking than anything else. Focus on the ground. I feel Aura as it seeps out of me guided by the lines, flowing into the ground in one step.
Because that's all it takes, one step. One foot forward and I lean into it, twisting on the ball of my back foot and rotating my hips. I feel my shoulder tensing up as I bring it forward, followed by the mace. I let it go, and I hear it as the mace cuts through the wind.
John hits it down and away from his body. I take that chance of an opening and lunge forward, fist already cocked back.
The blue walls fade into a blur, and John seems to be standing still. But I still see the small twitch of his arms, bringing in the staff for a strike. I barely have time to bring my arm up.
I hear a buzz, loud, like the ones they have in basketball games, though it quickly fades and sounds muffled like I had taken a dive into the water.
When I wake up I'm in a hospital. Again.