Chapter 7: Training
Adrian craned his head back to look up the towering platform above him and sighed deeply. It was at least 20 feet over his head. No one could jump that. The structure itself was pretty insane too. The legs were way too thin to support a wide platform like that 20 feet in the air.
But they were in a different world, or something. Adrian shook his head. What an insane month this had been. It had started off pretty well; he had finally been taken off the apartment waiting list at college, so now he could leave the dorm and move much closer to the parking lot.
Res. Ed had failed to mention the downside of the arrangement, however. Namely, the being shot at by people he didn't know and possessed by weird creatures from a different dimension.
Adrian saw a figure's head appear from behind the edge of the platform. It was Dan. He was waving, and Adrian heard him shout:
"Hey man, what's keeping you? There's so many hot chicks and FREE BEER up here!"
"What an ass" Adrian muttered to himself, as he backed up a ways and prepared to try that impossible jump again.
"Am not!" came the shout from above.
How was it that Dan could always hear him, wherever he was?
Adrian took a deep breath, banishing the pointless thought. He was way far behind the others in his dorm as far as ability, and that wasn't cool at all. He couldn't have people lording stuff over him.
When Adrian had backed up enough to get a good running jump, he regarded the platform once more. It was impossible. Screw what Dan had told him about expanding his limits, allowing his mind to believe that he could push his upward motion way higher than what he thought he could do, this was just plain, freaking impossible.
Except, he had seen it done. About 5 minutes ago, by Dan, who actually drank a can of beer on the way up. He made everything look like it was easier than breathing. It was maddening.
Adrian ran as hard as he could towards the tower, chanting something as he went. He still had no idea if he was pronouncing the thing right; it had so many vowels in it. Dan told him it was in the language of angels, and that it had power.
At the end of his run, Adrian leapt into the air as hard and as high as he could. He imagined the upward motion below him like a rubber band, just as Dan had taught him. He imagined the words he was shouting stretching the band, giving him more lift, shooting him up towards the platform. It was amazing, like having a rocket boost. The platform got closer and closer as Adrian rose through the air. Was that the edge of the platform there? Yes! Desperately throwing out a hand, Adrian just barely managed to snag the edge of the platform with his hands. He dangled there helplessly, his breath coming out in deep huffs.
Just as Adrian felt his grip slipping, Dan's fingers shot out from the twoer's edge and grabbed his shirt, yanking him up.
Sweet. Careful now. Adrian peered over the edge. He had come along way. That was awesome. It made the last month of landing on his ass worth it. He had felt like he was so far behind the others, and it had pissed him off. Now he didn't have to just listen to Hal brag all the time about how good he was getting.
Now he could brag too.
Letting out a sigh of relief, Adrian looked around at the top of the wooden platform he was on. It was empty except for Dan.
"Hey man, where's all the chicks?" He said, keeping a straight face.
Dan pointed to his head. "Imagination" he said, with a wink.
Adrian rolled his eyes.
Dan frowned then, and pointed to Adrian's hand.
"Dude, your bleeding".
Adrian looked down. His hand was bleeding a little. Must've been from where he had snagged the edge of the platform. He shrugged, and was about to work on a way to get back down to earth, when he suddenly felt an odd throb in his hand. It wasn't painful,; but it was strong.
The wound looked strange somehow. Suddenly, Adrian felt really weird. His vision blacked out for a moment. When it came back, he saw a network of rivers, each crisscrossing into the next. He was looking down on the rivers, as if floating above them. In the rivers were small circular shapes, like rafts. Around the rivers, around him, it was dim and enclosed, like a cave. But the ceiling of the cave seemed semi translucent. Light came through a little, but Adrian couldn't make anything out. Adrian's vision seemed to sweep across the rivers, towards where they were flowing. Abruptly, the cave ended in a ragged line, and light poured in. The opening of the cave looked like it had been chewed away by something violent.
Wait.
That's when it occurred to Adrian to pay more attention to the water. It was a copper-red. Criss-rossing in canals, dribbling out a torn opening-
His cut. He was looking at his own hand, INSIDE it. At the arteries.
His vision blinked again, and then turned back to normal. Adrian shook his head.
"Dude!" Dan was saying, poking him.
"What happened?" Dan said when Adrian looked at him again."You totally zoned out."
Adrian described it to him. Dan nodded, interested.
"Wow. It looks like you have some natural talent with the Life sphere. That's cool. I'll have to get someone who can teach you more later. This kind of thing happens sometimes when your tearing down the cobwebs in your brain."
Adrian looked at his hand again, watched the blood drip down. The world was a whole lot bigger than he thought.
Rich felt unusually chipper as he passed through the window in Hal's bedroom and into the Library. He swung his headless hockey stick in an easy motion in front of him, like he was leading a marching band. He saw Adrian approaching him from the direction of the stairs, staring at his own hand.
"Hey Adrian. Something the matter with your hand?"
"Hi Rich. No, it-". Adrian stopped, frowning.
"It's hard to explain. It's cool though."
Rich was about to say something else, but Adrian walked past him, still looking at that hand. That was odd. Oh well.
Rich went upstairs, and into a room that Dan had told him about before. Apparently this room was constantly being changed, as training for people practicing the Matter Sphere. And Dan was taking advantage of that for his training.
Upon entering though, the room was empty. It was just Dan and an empty table. Well, mostly empty. There was a white towel on top of the table. Behind him, the door shut.
"Hey Rich, you ready for a little training?" Dan said lightly. "It's going to be tough today."
Rich nodded and set himself in front of the table, his hands holding the hockey stick out in front like a katana.
"I am always ready." He said.
Dan nodded gravely.
"Your task today is to expand not only your abilities, but the way in which you use them. Controlling kinetic forces has a wide range of uses. But beyond that, one must always think whether it is necessary to use magic, for doing so in the real world is always dangerous. The way you accomplish this initially is simple: Do not get hit."
Rich nodded, bouncing on the back of his heels, ready.
Rising from his chair behind the table, Dan lifted the towel in front of him. He held it at the middle so the towel dangled down like a ghost, it's edges just kissing the table's surface. Rich had seen him do this before. It was a foci for summoning. He was calling objects from a different location, perhaps a back store room.
Rich watched tentatively as Dan lifted the towel, gave it a slight jerk, and then caused objects to begin falling out of it and onto the table.
Immediately, Dan began grabbing these and throwing them at Rich with a dizzying speed. Rich was deflecting almost before he knew what had happened.
Only dimly did Rich realized that the objects being thrown at him were i Frisbees /i . And Dan had acted like it would be dangerous.
Soon Dan increased his pace, and the air was thick with orange saucers. Now Rich had no choice.
"Celeriorum me fac!" He shouted, whirling through the air as fast as he could, knocking a path through the Frisbees and dodging the ones he missed.
But now Dan's pace increased AGAIN. Rich would've thought that'd be impossible a second before.
Now the air looked like an almost solid block of orange layers. Rich had no idea how Dan timed it so the Frisbees didn't even really touch each other at all. He could only barely make Dan out through the mess in the air. His teacher looked like a blur, running back and forth, flinging things at seemingly all heights and angles.
But Rich had little time to think about it, as he whirled in all directions, flinging his staff wildly. But even so, Frisbees kept bonking into his head every time he had to swing low to bat away those spinning for his feet.
In a short amount of time a headache blared in Rich's forehead. He was going to need another solution. He could barely see anything and he didn't have time to think. there were so many all around him. It was all he could do to just knock down half of them. The others kept hitting his face and arms.
Finally, an idea formed. He had to clear the way somehow to get to Dan. And the force from the Frisbees was too much to get too far forward at this rate. Every time he swung his staff and tried to step forward to run, he got nailed in the face. So what needed to happen, is for things to slow down.
He concentrated on the area in front of him, and shouted his other phrase in Latin. The one for slowing down objects. He had just learned it a few days ago. It didn't slow it down a lot, because slowing something else's kinetic force that was going too fast was like trying to grab a rope on the back of a train when you were standing beside it. This was more like tossing crates in front of the train.
Even so, he could feel his words settling down to affect the kinetic force behind a whole line of Frisbees coming towards him. They slowed, and the ones around them hit them, causing a whole area to become clear. Rich ran straight down the now open lane, and dove over the table, rolling and landing behind Dan. He turned to face Dan, just in time to get nailed in the face with a Frisbee. Rich fell over and swore.
Dan came over to where Rich lay on the ground. Rich could tell he was trying not to laugh.
"That was good Rich. Remember that you have to craft your magic for the right situation. There are always ways out, If you can just think it through. Just running around crazily all the time is fun, but not always too effective."
Rich took Dan's offered hand, and stood up.
Frustration boiled in his veins.
"There were too many of them though! I just couldn't react fast enough." He could see everything, but he just couldn't get his mind to process it all fast enough. It was maddening.
"It's ok Rich, that's what the training is for man. Relax."
Rich sniffed. Easy for him to say.
Then Dan's face got serious. This indicated to Rich that Dan was about to say something profoundly stupid.
"It takes a brave dude, to stare down a pack of wild Frisbees." He said gravely.
Rich rolled his eyes. Sometimes he really wished Dan would grow up.
Looking at his master, a thought bubbled to the surface, linger in Rich's mind. How could the guy always react so fast to everything?
Obviously Rich needed to learn a lot more.
Dan noticed Rich's expression and he dropped his own fake one.
"Your reaction time is bothering you, isn't it?" Dan paused for a moment, thoughtfully. Then he said, "I think I know someone you can meet to help with that."
7-2
Collin focused on his new ring. It was the one that Dan had given him for completing the last mission. Well, sort of completing it anyway. They got Adrian out, that was the important thing right? Why squabble over the tiny details?
You know, like getting ambushed and losing two of their members to snipers, and then allowing their Library to be half destroyed.
Hardly worth mentioning, really.
But it had turned out ok. Mostly. And anyway, Collin had bigger things to worry about at the moment.
Like tennis balls. Lots of them.
"Anywhere else -" Dan began, his voice coming, from directly behind Collin. Collin swiveled immediately, trying to see where Dan was. But by the time he looked behind, Dan was already gone.
"-this would be impossible" came Dan's voice again, this time from up and behind Collin's head. He turned around as fast as he could. There he was. Up on a platform in the corner of this changeable training room they were in.
Dan's arm was already moving. A tennis ball shot out of his hand with a lot more speed than would ever be possible in real life. Collin could barely even twitch an eye before it bounced off his head. It hurt, but he shook it off, and tried to track what Dan was doing. He was doing something with his hands again. He was going to teleport. Collin focused on his ring. The fire emanating from the lighter in front of him intensified into a small ball with tentacles coming out from the middle. A shape he found useful for controlling more carefully.
"Why impossible?" Collin asked, keeping his body tense and ready.
A voice came from directly behind him again.
"Too vulgar. 'Dox would blow me up."
Collin sensed movement out of the corner of his eye. He immediately sent a flame tentacle directly over his shoulder, rolling forward at the same time so he wouldn't hit himself.
He turned immediately, to see if he had hit anything. That's when a tennis ball hit him in the head again from his left.
Collin rubbed his head, and looked up.
Dan was standing next to him, laughing.
"Missed me!"
Crap. How come he could never hit that doofus, or even get close to him? It was impossible, like always.
That was when Collin got an idea. He noticed that Dan was keeping his eyes on the Squidy's tentacles. Not on the flame from his lighter. What if he… Yes, it could work. Nevermind that Collin had never gotten two to work together in tandem before, he could do it.
He focused on the ring, willed it to transfer his power into the lighter in his hand. Suddenly, a second sphere of flame burst out from the root of the flame. Now two Squidies floated in the air. Collin immediately made the second one lash out with all tentacles.
Dan's eyes grew wide, as the flame passed by his shirt. Too close. A little flame burst into existence where the tentacle brushed him.
Collin jumped to his feet, dropped one of the Squidies, and focused on the fire on Dan's shirt, willing it through the ring to get bigger, to grow.
He knew from experience that if he didn't press his advantage with Dan, he would get hurt, every time. Plus there were people watching him, Dan wouldn't really get hurt: badly.
Dan leapt backwards, his hands flashing up. The flame on his shirt grew bigger, Collin could feel the pattern in the flame, feel it expanding, burning new materials, turning cloth into floating embers.
Just as the fire was growing massive, Collin saw a small gray, oval shape glowing over Dan's fingers. What was that?
Abruptly the fire winked out. Dan landed on the ground, and flashed to Collin's right. He was moving almost faster than Collin could see. Normally, Collin would lose him as soon as he started moving like that.. But this time Collin was able to keep an eye on him. He felt strangely sharp, aware of his surroundings in a way he hadn't before. It was almost as if he just knew where Dan was, regardless of whether his eyes were on him or not.
Collin lashed out with a tentacle, trying to catch the flashing blur that was Dan. But he was too fast. He couldn't control the flame quick enough. Dan circled around Collin, and he couldn't quite turn his head fast enough to follow that speed-demon.
It was only a matter of time. Dan got directly behind him. But…
Collin could swear he still saw him without even turning his head. It was impossible but-
He didn't think, he sent the tentacle straight back towards-
But Collin lost his sight of Dan, however he had gotten it, halfway through. His tentacle faltered.
He fell onto his face as a torrent of tennis balls seem to pile on top of him.
There were easily thousands of them. It took Collin a full minute to dig himself out, since he lost his lighter during the fall. Faintly, he heard Dan's voice. It sounded… different. And not just because of the muffling. It didn't sound like your usual chipper goofy Dan. It sounded- well, Collin didn't know how to describe it. Different.
"That was good Collin. Very good control, you've gotten better. You can't see behind you yet. At least not quite. As we found out last time, I can't always protect you. You have to learn Collin. It's very important. I- ".
This was strange, Dan sounded different- like.. sad, or something. It was right then that Collin managed to break through the pile of tennis balls. He took a big gulp of sweet 02.
Dan was standing right there.
"Well anyway, here you go man. These will help you see behind you. Cool huh?"
He sounded goofy again. Weird.
Collin took the glasses from Dan. They had a red tint.
Cool.
"You have a little talent with Correspondence Collin. But you have to focus to use it. These glasses should help. Ok man?"
Collin nodded. This was getting cool.