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Chapter 22

TJ

We learn to fight. Every minute, every hour. If we didn't hardly sleep before, then we barely did at all now. We learn how to properly stand, keep and center our ground, how to throw kicks and punches without damaging our knuckles and toes. But they still split and bleed.

Leon teaches us how to properly use our opponents bodies against them. How to jab and strike nerves to the point of paralysis. We become incredibly fast. I don't even know where it came from.

Our palms become shields. Strong and able to push Leon's iron training dummies with a single thrust.

Our feet become light and deadly. Natalie kicked through a wooden beam the other day like it was nothing. Her eyes were full of shock, wonder, and excitement when she did it.

Leon teaches us that our bodies' reflexes are heightened and that we must learn how to focus our energy.

Focus was like bending the energy inside of us and outside of our bodies all at once. When we learned how to focus our skills with Leon, we could leap long distances, run nearly as fast as any car, punch through nearly anything, even sense different energies around us.

Leon taught us that energy, especially Resurgent energy, are tied to our minds and emotions. Every Resurgent apparently has their own enhanced atmospheric pressure that affects the way forces of nature like gravity, heat, and air work. It can be manipulated through focus training. Also, the stronger the Resurgent, the higher the atmospheric pressure. That's why Leon's body temperature engulfs us. He tells us that it can fluctuate and seep out at times. So that means even though his atmospheric pressure is intense now, we haven't even felt the extend of it. He really was deadly.

Training was brutal, and at times even cruel. We didn't get to eat now unless Leon felt satisfied with our work for the day. Although learning about fighting and our bodies was interesting and entertaining, we still felt the ache of our humanity in our starving stomachs and nauseous minds. I couldn't keep track of how many times I vomited throughout the day while training. Natalie coughed up blood during one session. Leon still made us continue.

We punched, kicked, twisted in the air, flipped over obstacles, punched, kicked, hit water with our palms, carried sandbags, kicked sandbags, ran through miles and miles of train tracks every day until I truly didn't recognize time anymore. I looked at myself in the mirrors in the brief moments I had in the mornings. My hair was longer, dirty, and touched the top of my ears. My nail beds were split, mirroring my knuckles, and my hands began to look leathery.

Natalie changed too. Her long dark hair reached the top of her back now and her eyes were nearly always bloodshot. We didn't talk much these weeks we trained. We did our training, ate when we could, and slept. I didn't think about anything else. Except my parents who I would still have to remind myself to remember.

"I'm doing this for them." I muttered to myself one morning when we met Leon in the dojo to learn how to throw knives. We had learned how to use guns the week before, apparently Amar left a few pistols with Leon for us. He wouldn't dare give them to us before he knew Leon felt like we could handle them.

I didn't care for guns, but my sister did. They felt heavy, untrustworthy, and unstable. I wasn't that great of a shot either. Natalie was. She got so good that she nearly mastered Leon's Focus Shot technique he taught us in two days. The way it worked was utilizing focus for field perception. You latch on the energies surrounding you and target them. Then you shoot them all.

The move was a little too flashy for me, but I could see how it could be effective.

"Perhaps you'll fair better at this, TJ. Lord knows you'll let the gun shoot you before you shoot it." Leon scathed lazily to me as he handed me four long silver knives with black grips.

I took them carefully from him and looked down at them in my hands. I fumbled them in my palms for a moment when Leon's sharp tone cut my thought.

"Well, what are you waiting for?'

I looked up slowly at him, into his piercing cinnamon colored eyes.

"You…you called me my name." I said softly.

Leon huffed slowly and said "Is that all? You can get to work."

I smiled at him. He stared at me sternly. I quickly turned around to join my sister at the cork board targets Leon set up for us.

Natalie tossed a knife almost in a flash of flesh quickly. It zoomed toward one of the six boards on metal frames in front of us but it didn't stick. The next two she did weren't good throws either.

"Shit." She mumbled looking down at her hands still full of knives.

"Your wrist is too loose." I say about to try my own hand at the board. The knife felt as unnatural as the gun, but if I had to choose between them then this would be the lesser of two evils.

"Then you try it." Natalie huffed. Her brow glistened with sweat droplets she quickly wiped off with her knife free hand.

Leon stood behind us silently. But the way his pressure felt around my shoulders he was agitated.

I stepped forward to the line and aimed for the throwing board. It was cut in the shape of a human silhouette with white paint around the edges. The targets on the body were on the heart area, lungs, head, eyes, and stomach. All vital points. I tried to not imagine the real thing in front of me by squeezing my eyes together quickly. It didn't help much.

I balanced the knife in my hand and flipped it carefully so that the blade rested between my fingers. I heard my sister's even breathing behind me and realized my own was perfectly in sync to hers. Symmetrical.

I looked at the white target spots and decided to aim for the stomach. Maybe the cork dummy would survive the hit if I aimed there.

I raised my arm in a quick motion and flicked my wrist sharply. The knife went whirling across the room. I shut my eyes tight. I heard a deafening thud. Natalie gasped indignantly and I heard Leon's soft chuckle.

I opened my eyes and right above the stomach target was my knife planted deep in the board. I felt myself smile widely. I turned to my sister who had her arms crossed, knives sticking out of curled hand, and a look of annoyance on her face.

"You still missed." She snorted.

"I know." I grinned.

"I wouldn't be happy about that." Leon's deep voice came closer. "You won't stop anybody if all you hit are fat folds. Do it again. This time hit all the targets. All at once."

I turned to him slowly and looked into his burning stare. He looked back at me irritably and I felt the unnatural heat of his body hit my neck.

"What are you waiting for?" He snapped.

"Nothing!" I yelped. "I-I just…you want me to hit all of them? At the same time?"

"Is that a problem? He asked icily.

"How?" I asked my grin now faded into a perplexed stare.

"Utilize your training. Multiple target focus like with the guns can be applied here."

I felt my body stiffen at his instructions. I still hadn't mastered that technique, nor did Natalie. She was better than I was, but I couldn't hit all those targets with just three knives. Could I?

Leon's nostrils flared open and he pushed past me toward the cork targets. He moved them quickly from the wall across the room at various points. Two targets he wedged on opposite sides of my sister and myself. One he placed near the entrance steps, another near the weapons rack. The last two he placed in right in front of us.

He steps back toward the target near the stairs and said "So you're surrounded. Your enemies all have projectile weapons and the only thing you have are a bunch of knives. What do you do?"

Natalie looked at me and shrugged her shoulders. She turned to Leon speaking past the dummy boards in front of us and says "Don't bring a bunch of knives to a gun fight?"

I thought Leon would send a knife flying into her arm for her sarcastic response. But he says nothing. But I feel his heat and pressure hit my chest heavier than ever this time. It almost knocks the wind out of my lungs. My legs begin to tremble and grow weak. Natalie clutches her own chest and stomach.

The feeling recedes and before we know it Leon is twisting high in the air. His magnificent body moves almost slowly in our eyes but it's only because of our Resurgent genes we're able to understand his movements. To anyone else he would probably be a dark blur.

As he begins to fall, he thrusts his arms out. Several knives come streaming in multiple directions. They hit the targets near the weapons rack and entrance stairs with quick and accurate thumps, sticking perfectly in all the white rings. The next set of knives he tosses while still in mid air come soaring into the targets on the side my sister and me. But then the last set of knives he throws upward into the air. They bounce off each other with loud metallic clangs changing their projectile trajectory. They curve and spin into the targets in directly in front of us.

Leon lands with a soft thud. My throat is dry when I swallow. I don't believe that just happened.

Natalie gasps and shakes her head in disbelief.

"How…there's no way…how?" She stammers clutching her hair between her fingers.

Leon walks toward us and says "Focus. Now get to work."

He disappears. As he vanishes all the boards split slightly with ear-splitting cracks near all the targets. How could anyone be that powerful?

Suddenly I felt something warm run down my left ear. I touch it gingerly and see my own dark crimson blood on my fingertips. When did that happen?

"He got us." Natalie said turning to me showing me her right ear that was bleeding on the cartilage. "It's not deep, but it's a nice scratch. Maybe he's not as good as he thinks he is if he hit us. How did he get us both in the same exact spot. At the same time?"

"Focus…" I said looking at my blood-stained fingertips. He hit us on purpose. A warning. Leon isn't playing with us.

We throw the knives until our hands are sore. But even then we don't stop for pain.

Natalie's taking over next. :-)