"The parting is a spell that most of us wish we had the power to perform. I'm lucky, I have and you're cursed in that you do too," master Immortal declares with his usual flare. I want to learn how to use the Lotus to its fullest effect and he wants to teach me how to make copies of myself.

"Wouldn't it be more useful to teach the one of me to use the Lotus blade, rather than just make copies of myself?" I ask, feeling more than a little impatient. I had assumed that my training was mostly over and that I was going to be able to take the fight to Drakken before Christmas rolled around. Sad as it is, I have no idea when Hanukah is this year, mostly because I haven't had access to a temple or a Jewish calendar for a long time.

"Maybe there is a reason to teach you this before we start messing with the sword; ever consider that?"

"I have and I can't see the point. I already have more control over the thing than Sun did. Well, at least according to you and Arahat."

"Perhaps Arahat and I lied to you. Perhaps you have little control over it at all. Maybe Sun had powers that you don't imagine yet. Now, are you going to learn from me today or am I going to have to get the whole lot of your teachers together to explain what we're doing?" it was a daring gambit, I'll give him that, but I'm not in the mood for taking him on trust. I killed a man with that thing.

"You're going to have to explain the whole thing, I think. I'm not accepting any more lessons without explanation."

He just grins.

The biggest surprise I receive is who my circle of teachers consists of. Arahat, Immortal, Sensei and Saint are all there as I expected. More of the paragons that I haven't even met sit around the edges of the tent. I am introduced to them as Pagan, Prophet (Jewish!), Dreamer, Shaman and Watcher. I'm not sure which religions most of them represent…hell, I'd never even heard of Daoism before Immortal started handing me my butt.

Also present are a number of the Shaolin and Wudang masters that I have been training with; in increasing numbers recently. Monty Fiske sits to the let of Sensei, at peace for the first time since I met him. The strangest presence here, however is that of Wade Christopher Lodden.

"Wade? What the hell are you doing here?" I demand, completely taken off guard by this.

"Stoppable-San, please take a seat. All will be explained in time," answers Sensei in the most commanding fashion I've heard from him since we left Japan. He seemed somehow diminished up to this point but now he's gone back to his Yoda, bigger than life ways in an instant.

"Very well, Sensei," I reply, bowing to the prescribed depth, something I haven't done until now, ever. I think he understands that I'm irked about this. To prove my point, I sit down cross-legged at one end of the ring, directly opposite Sensei and Wade and look to them expectantly. There is some muttering from the traditional oriental elements of the circle as I breach protocol in this way.

"Stoppable-San, you came to me over a year ago, when we were still in Japan, at the Yamanuchi school. You were a broken man, a boy thrown into the currents without a lifeline. You had committed acts in your need to hide from the forces of your enemies and their synthetic ghosts that haunt you to this day. You were, in effect, damaged. I saw this as a grave thing and with the help of your old foe, Fiske, I was able to draw you back out, into the realm of feeling.

"In order to do this, Fiske was forced to draw out your rage. He did this tirelessly, until your anger could be uncovered and laid bare in the sun. At this point, we were forced to abandon the school and flee across China. You committed yourself to our cause, as you have for so many others in the past, putting away your fears, conquering them and making them your strength. As we travelled, we encountered many here who would become your teachers, including the most influential here; Masters Immortal and Arahat.

"You have gone along with everything that we have taught. You have honed yourself into a weapon under our guidance but now you have been given another weapon and it is time for us to teach you how to be a man."

I sit for a moment wondering what the hell he's talking about. I'm a man according to every state of the union, even if I couldn't drink their beer. I continue staring at Sensei, wondering what the punch-line is going to be. It's Immortal that speaks first, however.

"A poor craftsman may blame his tools, but what if he's right?" he asked quietly, his voice carrying unnaturally as it always does. I tilt my head in his direction as he continues, "I've asked that question of you so many times before and yet you seemed to have missed the point. Sensei explained it well when he asked you his version of it; 'just because you could compose a symphony on a broken pipe, does that mean you should?'

"We know all about your past, Arahat can read you like a book. We know that Kim used to call you 'potential boy' and every time she made a change in you, you slipped from her control, becoming what she described as a monster. That is because of a very specific piece of human nature that you are virtually an exemplar of. It is said that 'those who cannot follow are doomed to lead'."

"That's all very nice, but it still doesn't answer why I'm being taught to clone myself instead of how to use the shapeshifting sword to crush robots," I snap, thinking that I want to get this over with as soon as possible.

"What this amounts to, Ron, is that your nature does not make you a good student. We have devised a way of using the Lotus that is complex and hugely effective but it will require a lot of skill and knowledge on your part to implement. The trouble is, the moment that you get beyond us, you will become virtually unteachable. Your inability to be merely a follower will kick in and that other drummer you follow will begin to strike all the louder.

"We will outline the materials that we will be teaching you, but not in the order that we will be doing it and not exactly how we will be making that teaching known to you. Trust me, this was devised by Arahat and master Lodden to ensure that everything will click when the time is right."

"You're sneak teaching me?"

"More setting up dominoes, if you want an honest answer," he replies, smiling knowingly.

After a great deal of explanation of how I was to learn the esoteric techniques of Immortal and Arahat, learn to step into the dreaming, whatever that is, call forth aid when it is needed and speak directly to the hearts of men, we finally get around to why Wade is here.

"Well, Ron," he began, pulling that face that says 'you're not going to understand this' that I'm so used to seeing on a two inch screen, "I've been running scans on the Lotus Blade, trying to work out how it works. I know it's magic, but there seemed to be some kind of underlying mechanism behind its shifting. Thanks to Monty's ability to change the weapon, I was able to measure what happens when it does.

"Trying not to put this in overly technical terms, the Lotus Blade isn't a solid weapon. It's made up of an unknown number of tiny grains, each one shaped like a tiny pin. These move over each other and seemingly through one another to form the objects you create. The thing is, we don't really know the limits of their motion, because until you killed Fukushima, no one had ever had the Lotus create discreet objects before and you didn't technically do that, Fukushima's subconscious mind did.

"Immortal thinks that by teaching you to inhabit more than one body at a time, we may be able to gradually ease you into doing some interesting things with the weapon."

"So you can't teach me how to use the Lotus blade now because it'll stop me learning cool stuff later?" I ask finally, trying desperately to work out what's going on.

"Basically."

"I can live with that, I guess."

It turns out that Immortal was right after all. Cloning myself is easy compared to keeping control of just one clone. It's a truly maddening experience being simultaneously two different people having different experiences but looking at the world through the same basic framework.

Creating a copy requires investing part of yourself into it and that means that they will have a slightly different focus to you and you goals will mean something slightly different to each of you. The experience isn't so much controlling the copies as trying to keep your head straight in a lot of different games. It's like having multiple cases of déjà vu, all at the same time.

The part of me that rises to the surface in these copies with alarming regularity is my passion. My lust, my anger. It's like having a feeling that you're doing wrong by not responding to your baser instincts all the time. Apparently, that is usually the first thing that you are able to tap into and the more copies you make, the more dilute it becomes. Unfortunately, I'm not able to create more than one copy at the moment without being confused which me is the real me.

My training has gone from esoteric to utterly surreal. Right now, both of me are fighting two of Immortal on one of a collection of gigantic stone cacti over a giant pit of lava that Arahat realised for the purpose.

I bound from one spine to another, trying desperately to keep my minds focused, maintain my balance, plan my next move, keep an eye on Immortal and avoid dropping either pants or sword. Passion-me leaps into the air and exchanges multiple blows with one of the Immortals as they bounce between spikes and off each other. Passion-I'm knocked onto his back as Immortal throws his Jian past him and glides through to stand on one hand on the pommel and deliver a pair of bone wrenching side kicks.

At that moment, I pull my attention back to my own space in time to duck a thrust from another Jian. This time, I'm not going home with any broken bones or deep cuts. I dip and dive as he begins the first strokes of 'Dao', one of the most difficult characters to avoid and begin to sail through the air, dancing on thermals and stepping on sparks. Then he starts throwing fire at me. Is there anything that man can't do?

Where have I heard that before?

Author's Note: Now it's just getting a little silly but I guess that's what I get for proof reading my own materials. Forewarning: I'm going to end up mangling the plot of Reunion within the next 5 chapters so anyone who hasn't read it, I suggest you do before the chapters hit the 30's or you'll have the plot ruined for you. If anyone's confused about what Ron's powers are, check out the Wikipedia page for Journey to the West. It's not hugely informative, but it's easier than reading the whole of Monkey by Waley or the whole translation by Anthony Yu (University of Chicago Press, 1999) though it is an awesome read.