How does one try - without trying?
Jamie had tried pretty much everything he could think of. He had tried extremely hard, all the time, in the dim hopes that it would become second nature and he would no longer have to try.
This had worked, but only to a point. It had allowed him to manage his shifts and biology to an absurd degree. The lag time between shifts had drawn down to a matter of milliseconds. He had actually used his power to check, and in some cases he was actively shifting faster than the electrical impulses that demonstrated he was thinking could travel.
He flowed forward as he thought, suiting meditation to movement in a way only possible when the mind and body were one.
'Great Bear's Mauling Fist' he thought idly as his upper torso took on the characteristics of half a dozen bear species, all mingled together into what he instinctively knew was the ideal configuration for this attack. Hands with opaque ivory claws as big as meathooks were thrust through the air, bearing down on an invisible opponent.
But that was all it was. Force. Muscle. Technique. It was maddening, as though he could just barely sense what was missing, what would make the strike perfect. It was as though there was a hidden channel in his body that something was supposed to flow through, but that his power could not detect or help him with.
'Hands of the Dread Ape' He added, as his body - seemingly on autopilot, from his mental perspective - morphed and shifted, his fingers and hands elongating and thickening until the bulk of his mass was in his upper torso.
Then he clapped them together with a thundercrack of noise, the sheer force involved enough that an actual gorilla would have pulped its own hands in making the strike.
Again, there was the feeling of wrongness, of absence. But he felt it closer this time. Just barely out of sight. Just barely out of reach.
He tried to relax. To allow the moves to flow without thinking about them. He tried to think about them, but not to think about what was missing.
He tried every mental trick in the book.
But it was only when he gave up and allowed his shadow boxing routine to play out without much of any thought at all that he achieved something.
One moment, his mind was adrift as he spun around, elongated his foot into an over muscled ostrich and kicked out, and the next, a giant pearlescent ostrich was hovering over him, mirroring his movements. It was beautiful. It was sublime. It was like his very soul was experiencing a higher state of being.
The mirror creature was not real. It was not physical. He was not suddenly a Master type cape. But it was what it represented that filled him now, not just its biology. An icon of the creature's strength standing over him like a silvery glowing banner.
He was so excited that he barely stopped to consider the damage his empowered kick had wrought on the steel pillar he had been targeting with it. He spared not one iota of thought for the eddies and whorls of wind that spun about the room - like the survivors of a hurricane hurrying to safety in the aftermath.
He had to hang onto this… this feeling. He had to strangle the urge to examine or think too hard about what was happening lest he waste the moment of inspiration.
Instead, he just rode it out. He allowed his body to simply move, while the everchanging menagerie of beasts hovered in the air behind him. When his speed grew too great for him to maintain a solid humanoid form, he really cut loose, lashing out with a hundred punches, and kicks, and bites and snares at once. Where two fists made him a master combatant, a hundred made him a Shura. A hundred hands all bent towards violent ends.
It was only at the last second that he realized something was wrong. That he was slowly shifting in a way he did not want to, that he was channeling something beyond his normal understanding.
Fear was what stopped him before his output peaked. Fear, and the withering remains of an icon in the corner of his eye unlike any animal he had ever seen or heard of.
He tried to ponder it, to determine if this was as far as he could go before he tripped over into the schizophrenic monster he knew he had the potential to be… and then paused as he abruptly forgot what he was doing.
He had a vague recollection of… of a being twisting in on itself in a spectral breeze. Galactic in scale, and swirling back and forth like a billion Shards of-
A knock at the door, distracted him again, and this time he was unable to hang onto the thought. He was abruptly unsure of even how he had reached enlightenment, though he was sure he could display the ability again if he had to.
Was this what it was to be a master? Truly? Was his physical training over, now to be replaced with pondering the infinite in search of meaning?
He shook the thought from his head when he realized he hadn't answered the knock yet.
"Come in." He allowed, knowing that no one would come into his training hall without permission. It wasn't a matter of respect - although there was much of that present - but rather, safety. The forces he worked with were enough to obliterate a normal human. It was simply for the best that no one enter the room while he was practicing.
"Hey Chief! How's your thingy going?" Kim asked curiously as the ostensible second in command of the Dojo skipped into the room like a twelve year old girl.
"Well enough. I have attained a degree of enlightenment that-" he began, only all too happy to have someone to talk to about it so soon after his achievement.
"Sorry boss, don't have the time, I just wanted to get your permission for something before heading out. Hot date." The bubbly but well muscled woman explained quickly, shaking her hands in front of herself as though begging him to stop.
Which was rude. He could read the mood well enough, he wasn't going to ramble on about something nobody else cared about.
…wasn't he?
"…Well?" He asked, somewhat bratty sounding even to his own ears. He was glad he could hide the blush on his face using his power when Kim snickered at him from behind one raised hand.
"Right! I was thinking of changing things a bit. A handful of my girls have started to be able to do some vaguely magical stuff, so I was thinking we split classes into mundane and super kung-fu. A two tier kinda thing. Also, I wanted to do an in house tournament for 'em and was hoping you could get the okay from the big boss? Anything that serious, we definitely need healing on hand for, or someone's gonna die. Also, my cousin has a sister about your age and you should take her on a date." Kim rattled off in quick succession.
Aspirant nodded along with her until she finished, and then paused as he realized that there was a point in there that wasn't the same kind of concern as the others.
"Wha-" he began, only for Kim to rush ahead of him.
"Great! I'll get her around sometime tomorrow to meet you! I'm sure you'll get along great. Anyway, gotta go, dinner reservations and you know how anal retentive Willow is! Bye!" She cheered before turning and - literally - sprinting out of the room.
In response, Aspirant did what he always did when faces with an unpleasant truth.
He pretended he didn't know anything about it until he couldn't anymore.
Now, a tournament… that could be fun.
He had a proposal in his head before he even left the building that night.