Hello! I have a new chapter for you! This one is definitely longer than usual, though I have no idea how as this has possibly been one of my busiest weeks since August when I had to repatriate. I had to rush it to my beta reader last-minute, and she is an absolute hero and managed to find the time to confirm that yes, my stuff is still readable and I have not lost my mind. A LOT of research went into this chapter (probably why it's so long - I tend to get carried away when I'm researching), so I really hope you all enjoy it! Have an amazing week, guys!
Year Nine.
side note: yes, again, fanfiction net only allows me 40 characters in the story title, so the listed title and actual title are a bit different. am very tired and very annoyed.
Rule #8: Do not commit to an action before you understand the consequences
He considered the 'traditional' method of learning inefficient - there was far more room for error or developing bad habits when all you had to do was copy some vague moves with no real power behind the blows. So instead of teaching her in a way that was sure to guarantee her failure, Mister Wilson developed his own style of teaching instead.
Learning an art by example was slow and tedious work, and often the material had to be retaught when the student soon forgot it. Watching the moves performed and attempting to copy them was just plain idiotic since it didn't require the student to put that much effort in - far different from a life-or-death situation where success was equal to giving it your best and more. Mister Wilson believed (having had plenty of experience on the subject) that the only way to effectively learn how to defend yourself was to actually have to go on the defense.
So one day he had given Stormkrigeren a knife. A ka-bar combat-utility blade, to be exact.
Next, he had knelt down to her level and showed the girl the proper way to hold it, walking her through forming the correct wrist posture and gently folding her fingers over the handle so that she had a good grip. They practiced grasping the blade for an hour or two, going over the best way to press her palm against the handle and hold her fingers just-so to prevent them from slipping onto the sharp metal, then Mister Wilson moved on to teaching Stormkrigeren how to make her grip lethal.
By now, the little girl had studied under him long enough to understand some basic blows and how to dodge a simple attack, but now her training ensued in full force.
Mister Wilson showed her no moves by example (unless, of course, she was really struggling, which was rare), but instead went straight into what was called a 'spar' - a typically short and instructional fight done for the sake of practice and/or training. That was not to say that her Teacher showed her no moves and basically forced Stormkrigeren into a fight with no experience whatsoever, which was true in its own sense. Mister Wilson made sure to clearly telegraph his actions well beforehand, and all his student had to do was read, react, and defend.
He took his time and went slowly, giving her short, clipped instructions as they sparred - 'sidestep', 'strike higher', 'protect your side', 'watch how you strike', 'duck, not lunge', 'keep your head up', and many more. All of this was done in an effort to keep Stormkrigeren thinking and moving as quickly as she could to land the right blows. Mister Wilson also took the time to explain every movement he made, from the curl of his fists down to the shifting of his stance, pointing out how the former gave him more power and control over his punches while the latter lowered his center of gravity and increased his stability.
He made sense, and Stormkrigeren liked that - not a lot of things made sense, and all too often, it felt like she was being kept in the dark. But Mister Wilson was a good Teacher, and having nothing better to do, he ensured that his student at least knew what she was doing.
If her form was good, her Teacher would point it out and suggest ways of possibly improving it even more, giving her tips on movements and muscle control. Yet if she made a mistake, she knew so immediately, alerted to the issue with a hard knock and a bruise from the flat of whatever weapon Mister Wilson was training with that day.
When the lessons first began, both Teacher and student started off with two weapons each: a simple knife, and themselves. Mister Wilson intended to focus heavily on teaching her what an unarmed body could do when wielded correctly, getting the very basics of combat into her head as they worked on perfecting her kicks, fists, and dodges to build a solid foundation for the next step of her tuition - the knife was honestly just to see if she could punch a man without cutting herself on it (she could).
As time went on and both Stormkrigeren's lessons and skills progressed, Mister Wilson began to introduce her to open- and closed-hand combat. The former required much more precision and focus than the latter, but allowed for a wider range of movement and did not require quite as much energy as closed-hand. The downside was that while the open methodology was excellent for defense, it did not have the stability or power that a closed-hand could do on the offense. Krav Maga was the perfect combination of both forms, being the most efficient and having the widest range of all of the main methods of hand-to-hand combat, so it became the basis for a majority of her lessons without weapons.
That was not to say that they did not use any - Mister Wilson was well familiar with the essentiality of a good sword, or even a bo-staff, but he had chosen to introduce his student to combat with only her fists to protect her until she was comfortable with fighting unarmed before they moved on to more deadly tools of war.
Mister Wilson started her out on the ka-bar he had given her, being the simplest and most effective combat weapon for someone of Stormkrigeren's size and experience. She had a pretty good grasp of how it could be used in deadly ways, and within a few months was able to wield it nearly as well as Mister Wilson himself - combined with her fists, a ka-bar in each hand could be lethal.
Recognizing how well she adapted to the knife, her Teacher brought a few more short blades for them to train with, including push daggers, tiger's claw karambits, and dual kukris which Stormkrigeren enjoyed nearly as well as the ka-bars. She might have even taken to carrying one just as Mister Wilson always carried a karambit in his belt, if it had not been against the Rules for the Project to have any weapons outside of training for fear that she might use them. Seeing her disappointment at the news, her Teacher simply brushed the subject aside and announced that next lesson they would begin working on swordsmanship.
They started with the Chinese dao - actually, it was a short liuyedao variation of the sword, but Mister Wilson eventually worked her through many alterations of the same basic blade. The weapons themselves were not only meant to improve her skill as a swordswoman, but to teach her the minute differences between them and how those same differences could define between something that cut cleanly or thrust deeply. A curve or a sharpened edge or heavy handle could mean all the difference and end a duel in a single movement if put to its best use - and Stormkrigeren learned how to find it.
Of course, the next logical step up was the dao's distant cousin, the katana - which also happened to be Mister Wilson's blade of choice. He owned a pair of high-carbon blades custom-made to fit with his swift and vicious fighting style, and had even brought them to her Rooms once or twice for Stormkrigeren to study during her lessons in bladesmithing. Now he brought them not just to examine, but to train with. His student, on the other hand, was still a bit on the young side to use a full-length katana, so had to be satisfied with the lighter and shorter wakizashi. Unsurprisingly, when trained by a master of the art, Stormkrigeren became exemplary and proficient in it as well.
More weapons were added to her repertoire of experience, if only so that she could fight decently well with anything at hand. That was possibly the most dangerous situation for anyone in Mister Wilson's line of work - having years of training in only one aspect of combat, but no knowledge of anything else so when deprived of their usual weapons, they became as helpless as if unarmed. So in order to avoid this, her Teacher focused on ensuring that his student understood how to use anything that was given to her - he showed her how to accommodate for length or weight, find which edge was best for slicing, which part was best for blunt trauma (which could still be fatal when wielded correctly), and even how to use normal, non-weapon objects in unexpected ways. Stormkrigeren had already shown an interest in ranged fighting, specifically throwing knives from their training with shorter blades, and got very good at using a hatchet in close quarters and even from a distance. She also had an affinity for unarmed combat simply because carrying and concealing anything bigger than a knife could be troublesome, so Mister Wilson took advantage of the preference and taught her how to use brass knuckles in dangerous ways, then building on previous lessons, how to break bone even without the advantage of steel on her fists. He had not expected her to be able to crack his jaw (damnit, it'd hurt, but at least it healed quickly), though deep down, he should have expected that from a girl who not only healed even faster than him, but tended to snap solid steel blades without even trying and could catch movements not even her Teacher with his enhanced senses could perceive.
Despite her quick thinking and attention to detail, Stormkrigeren learned and processed things a bit slowly, so training often took far longer than Mister Wilson would have expected. Still, her lagging progress did not deter her and the student dutifully carried on, even when it felt like she was getting nowhere. With only a blade in her hand and wrath in her heart, she continued to fight what she already knew was a losing battle against someone not only much stronger than her, but far more experienced too. That was why Mister Wilson was the Teacher, after all.
Stormkrigeren did not know it at the time, but as their lessons carried on, Mister Wilson taught her nearly fifty forms of fatal combat over the course of five years, and she would learn many more in the times ahead - open-handed, closed-hand, with a weapon, and without, swordsmanship, marksmanship, and anything else that Mister Wilson could teach her that was involved in quickly and efficiently destroying one's opponent. Her skills grew with each passing week and the training sessions that accompanied them, her Teacher's tests slowly but surely honing her mind and sharpening her body, conditioning the small girl to think and act as her Teacher did - always wary of any threat, yet never caught off guard.
Through these years of training and under Mister Wilson's attentive eye, Stormkrigeren developed her own preferred method of fighting. She mastered her own body well, and could fight nearly as well as her Teacher without a weapon, but still had a special liking to combat knives. Swords were another matter, and although she enjoyed the range and versatility of a longer blade, she never could decide on a particular style (though wakizashi and liuyedao ranked high for more reasons other than that she had experience with them). But even without a preference, Stormkrigeren was still a force to be wary of when she had not just one blade, but two - dual-wielding was a skill not to be taken lightly.
She was an odd little thing as far as young children went, and not just because she could swing two knives in the same movement or her otherworldly origins. Mister Wilson had raised one or two kids himself, and was well familiar with the fact that they needed a pretty strong motivator to force them to get something done (threat of punishment worked pretty well, though rewards such as favorite foods or activities could be strong stimuli too). But Stormkrigeren was a bit different.
She could almost be described as a 'point-and-shoot' sort of child - point her at a task or goal, and off she would go, pouring all of her effort into it until she either failed beyond repair or succeeded admirably, all without any expectation of reward. At their first lesson, both Mister Wilson and Herr Luthor had unwittingly aimed the small girl at the goal of not just becoming an excellent fighter, but even surpassing Mister Wilson himself. Every time her Teacher suffered to pick up his blade or his fists and practice with her himself, it set a small flicker of hope in Stormkrigeren that this might just be the time that she won.
It never was. But somehow, she still enjoyed the constant lessons in combat - and even if there was no chance of her ever beating Mister Wilson at something he had been doing longer than she had been alive, Stormkrigeren was still determined to excel at one of the very few things she found pleasure in.
She was not quite sure why she enjoyed it. Maybe it was because she enjoyed the exercise, pushing her body as hard as she could just to feel the soreness afterward and know that she was getting stronger. Maybe it was something to keep her mind and body occupied, and distract her from the white walls and gray ceiling looming all around her - it gave her something to get good at, something to perfect. Maybe it was only an activity, something new to do when studying got too tedious. Maybe it forced her to focus and think clearly and block everything else out when she was too busy reacting to blows swung at her throat, maybe it kept her out of her own head. Or maybe it was just because Stormkrigeren needed someone to talk to, and Mister Wilson just so happened to be willing to listen.
Never in a million years could he ever fit into the tightly defined category of 'friend' to Stormkrigeren (she had far too much respect for him to even consider it), so remained simply her Teacher. Not that it was a bad thing - despite his rough and indifferent bearing, Mister Wilson was one of the few people she found she really enjoyed spending time with. He actually looked at Stormkrigeren when he was speaking to her, and took the time to ensure that she understood everything he said and did, even when it hurt her.
No one expected her to not earn at least a few scars and scrapes from their combat training, and even a few more injuries from sparring, so it had become a common occurrence for Stormkrigeren to be bleeding in more than a few places while Mister Wilson hadn't so much as a scratch on him. Still, her Teacher had to be the most careful person she had ever met, because not once had he ever injured her in a way that turned out to be severely debilitating or take longer than a few months to heal - which was saying something because it took an awful lot of precision just to swing a blade with good form, let alone control the force and depth with which it struck.
And though he never said it out loud and her blood on the floor might argue otherwise, Stormkrigeren slowly came to understand that even if Mister Wilson was not her friend, he was still a faithful ally and good teacher who deep down meant her no harm. The pain he brought was a lesson, and he only wanted to see her learn.
But Mister Wilson was not always around to conduct those lessons and teach his student the art of combat, so besides the occasional visits from her caretakers, Project Stormkrigeren spent a vast majority of her time alone.
And being the good student that she was, she used that time well.
When Mister Wilson wasn't around to teach her, Stormkrigeren taught herself. She quickly figured out that continually practicing whatever movements or methodology she had learned in previous lessons helped to keep them in her head, not to mention that once her muscles were used to something, they were much more willing to do it again. Mister Wilson called it 'drilling', and often when he was present, he would show her two or three routines to do while he was gone.
They were usually pretty simple - a few kicks, a few punches, maybe a dodge or two to avoid imaginary blows, and the occasional sidestep before it was followed up with a few more kicks and punches. Nearly every routine Stormkrigeren performed was some variation of this, though by adding more dodges of kicks or blows with a particular angle or form, the general pattern could be adjusted to work specific muscle groups or skills. Routines were adaptable and targeted, just as she was training to be. And the more Stormkrigeren trained, the more she improved.
Not a day went past that did not see her practicing in some form, often multiple times throughout her schedule. Routines became… well, routine for her - a regular part of who she was and what she did. If Stormkrigeren had a spare moment, she spent it throwing punches at the air or lunging to avoid unseen dangers. She kept herself moving constantly, performing every step and movement, kick and dodge, drilling all of it into both her memory and her muscles. There was always the urge to do it all better, or faster, or even yet another set, or all of it together at once. Every moment Stormkrigeren spent training was another moment closer to her Teacher's return and the day when she might just become strong enough to fight him, and win.
(Because even though she denied it and had far too much respect for Mister Wilson to ever want to truly see him beaten, there was still some small pleasure in trying to best the man who taught her everything she knew.)
And after months of training and drills and routines whenever she was able, something still felt… a bit unusual, to be honest. Of course, Stormkrigeren had partly expected to grow at least a little bit stronger and maybe marginally faster as she pushed her body daily, but she hadn't expected pain to hurt any less.
Pain was supposed to hurt - and it did, but somehow not as much as before. As the weeks of training progressed into months, she found herself becoming more resilient to it. Burns and scrapes and cuts were still distractingly uncomfortable, though it was easier to ignore them now. Additionally, something was wrong with her skin - it was still smooth and pliable and, well, skin - but for some reason that still escaped her, Stormkrigeren found that she was harder to injure. During training, she could still feel the lash of Mister Wilson's steel blade against her skin when she failed to dodge a blow quick enough, but what should have left a wound in need of stitches now only left a deep scratch. Scrapes and bumps had been a normal part of her life for as long as she could remember, but a day came when Stormkrigeren realized that she rarely even bruised anymore.
That wasn't even the most disturbing thing about the whole situation. Stormkrigeren, admittedly, wasn't very good at understanding what people meant when they didn't talk - body language was something she had always struggled with, but that wasn't to say she couldn't recognize fear when she saw it.
It was visible in the slight widening of Dr. Schreyer's eyes when she came to do the weekly medical examination only to take readings she herself didn't understand, and in the doctor's uneven step as she moved uneasily around her subject. Stormkrigeren wouldn't have gone as far to say that Lisa was afraid of her - she hoped Lisa wasn't afraid of her, she liked Lisa, she was nice and very quiet - but the hesitation was still there. Somehow she hadn't noticed exactly when Dr. Schreyer stopped treating her like a small, sensitive girl and more like a strong, but dangerous young woman. It was a big change. Stormkrigeren wasn't sure if she liked it.
Their interactions themselves had not changed much - there were still the few medical tests and readings to be taken every few days, and Dr. Schreyer's occasional unscheduled visits to her main Room for nothing more than a 'check-in' as she called it weren't entirely out of the ordinary. But there was a new wariness in her caretaker's demeanor, a look not altogether unlike the one Stormkrigeren had when dealing with something she did not quite understand or trust. It was a look that told Stormkrigeren that somehow, just maybe… she wasn't normal.
Looking back, it should have been obvious from the start. Normal people didn't get shut up in white Rooms to be tested and taught and poked and have their blood taken and be forced to fight someone like Mister Wilson for 'training' (not that she didn't like fighting Mister Wilson - he was rough and interesting, but he was in no way normal). Stormkrigeren's distinct lack of normalcy was the very reason for her Rooms in the first place, not to mention the weekly blood tests and medical scans.
It did not take her long to realize that she was being studied.
But as to why she was under such intense scrutiny to the point of being locked away from the world, Stormkrigeren hadn't the slightest idea.
She didn't have much time to question it as her days were always packed with training and testing and drills and studying and writing and practicing and learning and fighting, so much so that the only quiet moments Stormkrigeren ever got were those in the twilight of sleep. By then, she was too exhausted to do much more than lay down on her mattress and either wait for Mister Wilson's arrival for night training, or try to get as many hours of slumber as she could. Survival was the priority - questions could wait.
She did not question the fact that Mister Wilson very rarely came for lessons on a regular basis - that was just how the world was, and Stormkrigeren had no business wondering 'why' about something she already knew.
Teaching Stormkrigeren was not Mister Wilson's main occupation - more an extension of it, if anything. Her teacher was a mercenary, and a good one at that, so whenever he received what was called a 'contract', it usually meant that he had to go away for a while. It might be a few days, or even weeks where Stormkrigeren would not see him, but that was alright because she knew he was coming back. He'd promised.
Within the month, Mister Wilson would be back in her Rooms with a new lesson, there to both keep his promise and meet the hours Herr Luthor had required of him in order to earn his pay for teaching the little girl how to fight. Sometimes, if it was early on in the month, Stormkrigeren's lessons would only last a few hours before Mister Wilson would pack up his kit and leave again to return the next day. Other times, when he only had a few days left to reach his required hours, Mister Wilson might spend nearly a week solid training her without a moment's rest for either of them, pushing the limits of Stormkrigeren's stamina and endurance in day-long sprints of drilling. But on occasion, when Mister Wilson decided that Stormkrigeren was finding the usual training too easy (which was rare), he might dedicate his hours to night training instead. It was unexpected, to be sure, but Stormkrigeren soon learned how to fight back even when she was blind and caught off guard, so if anything, most of Mister Wilson's most productive hours with his student were spent in said night training.
But despite however long the instruction lasted, Mister Wilson still spent a vast majority of his time out on contracts and killings, leaving Stormkrigeren to practice whatever drills he had taught her last while she waited for the next lesson. She was left in her Rooms, and her Teacher would go back to his usual job as a 'security consultant'.
Stormkrigeren was, unfortunately, a bit too clever for her own good and it did not take her more than a year to figure out what exactly her Teacher was. But if she was perfectly honest, she was not entirely sure what being a 'mercenary' entailed, except that it involved a lot of traveling and a lot of fighting. The next time he came for lessons, she begged Mister Wilson to tell her more, pointing out that since he was training her to be just like him, she would have to know at least what she was getting into.
Mister Wilson had genuinely chuckled at that, and asked where the hell she had gotten the notion that he was training her to be anything like him.
The answer was obvious: you could only teach another person a subject you yourself understood well. Mister Wilson was an expert mercenary (or 'merc' as he sometimes called it), so it was only logical that he should teach Stormkrigeren how to be one too. And being the good student that she was, she asked as many questions as he would allow about what Mister Wilson did during his time Outside.
Mister Wilson grumbled a bit and tended to scowl whenever she talked too much (which was extremely rare, considering that Stormkrigeren didn't like talking and really opened her mouth when she thought it was worthwhile), but eventually her Teacher decided to answer the persisting questions and told his student that he spent his spare time taking contracts. A 'contract', he explained, was nothing more than an agreement between Mister Wilson and another person who needed a job done. That job was usually finding someone who had done the world an immense wrong, such as neglecting their purpose or blocking an individual from completing theirs, and then Mister Wilson would ensure that the someone never did so again. And the most efficient way of doing so was to kill them.
Here her Teacher had paused in his explanation, eyeing Stormkrigeren as if he expected her to be surprised or frightened by the news that Mister Wilson was nothing more than a contract killer, but she did nothing more than nod. It made sense - there was just no stopping some people, and if the wrong was great enough, letting the wrongdoer carry on could cause more deaths than theirs alone. And one death, Stormkrigeren knew, was always better than a hundred.
There was, of course, the argument that by killing a killer, Mister Wilson himself became a killer and the number of such people in the world remained the same. But Stormkrigeren had done her fair share of math homework (she was very proud of her long grade transcript with its solid line of A's), and had, in fact, been discussing with Dr. Schreyer the possibility of attempting a degree in accounting just to put her skills to the test, but that wasn't the point. The point was that Stormkrigeren could count, and she knew that while one killer killing another meant there was still one killer left, but one killer killing a hundred other murderers put the overall count down by ninety-nine, which was a decent amount.
So Mister Wilson was actually doing the world a service through his gruesome but necessary job - and for that, Stormkrigeren was proud to call him Teacher.
And though he may have been fearsome (and in his student's eyes, nigh on inevitable), there were times when Mister Wilson would return from one of his said contracts with something just the tiniest bit off about him. Maybe it was a slight limp or unsteadiness, or maybe his blank glare was a little too blank or showing signs of a concussion, and more often than not, it turned out to be an injury. Stormkrigeren's Teacher, no matter how strong and simply undefeatable he seemed, was still vulnerable.
He could be injured, he could be hurt.
And deep down, Stormkrigeren wanted to be the cause of at least one of those wounds. Not for the sake of harming the man who had taught her so much and did his purpose well, but for the sake of being able to say that she could and she had hurt someone who was supposedly unable to hurt at all.
Because that was Mister Wilson's purpose. Stormkrigeren's might have been to protect, but her Teacher's was simply to fight. And his student would fight back, if only just to say that she had fought.
Quick Update: I really hope to have the entirety of this fic done by the end of December, so there is a good chance it will be fully uploaded on December 31st. That's a really important day for me, because:
a) Dec 31 is sort of a big day in my fic community - a lot of stories go up on that day!
b) It'll be the last day of this insane year and the beginning of 2020: Part 2 (aka 2021)
c) Dec 31, 2019 is the birthday of Red Capes: Saviors!
d) It's also my birthday! I get a free drink at Dutch Bros! And from Starbucks! And I think a donut from Dunkin!
Totally not related to the fic, but please comment below with places that you know of that have free things on your birthday because I am a poor fic writer and my party will probably only cost the gas money to drive to all of the above-mentioned places. Also please comment about the fic! I love answering questions and talking to people!