2.5

“What?! You want me to fight him?!” Olivia shouts.

“Ugh.” I drag my hand over my face.

Rook frowns. “Her,” she corrects. “And I do. If you don’t want to, I’ll have you do extra reps later.”

She rolls her eyes. “Fine.”

I sigh, and follow her out into the fake intersection. She takes a spot close to where she was in her last fight, and I find myself standing close to the curb. I make a note of it.

“So, how long have you been fighting for?” Olivia asks, bouncing on her heels.

“Mh. Maybe a couple hours, total,” I respond absentmindedly.

“Great, so you won’t mind if I stomp you, right?”

I scowl. “Try it.”

She smiles.

“Ready?” Rook asks. I nod, while Olivia just shrugs. “Good. Begin.”

Olivia dashes, which I was expecting. Good. But she doesn’t go for the grab like last time. Instead, she closes in and a flash of heat erupts from her right foot, pushing her leg up into a vicious knee. I’m barely able to track it thanks to how flashy it is, but even pulling in to block it with both arms, I think I can hear my bones creaking. I grunt at the impact, and smoke flows around us.

Olivia swings her arms forward, and streams of fire spit out, sending her flying back. She skids to a stop a good distance away and slowly starts walking to my right.

I try to keep track of her while panting and shaking out my hands. I’m wary of trying to use my power in the middle of a fight if I don’t have to.

“Not bad, Mr. ‘maybe a couple hours’,” she taunts.

“Trust me, it’s not skill.” she laughs.

Then, her jets flare and she rushes forward again. This time, as the heat and smoke washes over me and I prepare for an attack, she doesn’t follow through. Instead, the jets of flame swivel along her hands and feet, and she tilts to my left, blasting out of my field of view.

Shit. Is that how she’s so good at maneuvering in the air?

I feel an impact at the back of my head, a wash of heat, and I go stumbling forward.

“Yeah, I can tell,” Olivia responds, as I hear her boost away again and struggle to pull myself together. My head is pounding, and my hands ache. I turn around, and she’s lazily bouncing on her heels a ways away.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see the other three watching the fight. They look bored.

Bored? Hm. No one’s taking this seriously.

I straighten up. “Eh. Was that supposed to hurt?” I say, tilting my head. I watch as Olivia’s expression flattens. Her stance lowers. She lifts her arms up, and jets start up from the backs of her open palms.

She bursts forward, straight at me. One palm aligned with my face and the other with my sternum, with roaring jets of flame backing them up.

I pull up my arm to block the one aimed at my face. I don’t block the other one.

The impacts rattle my skeleton, and I skid back along the intersection with the force of it.

“Yeah, it fucking was!” Olivia shouts, pushing off of me, and instead of disengaging like earlier, she sweeps her arms to the side. Orange streams erupt from her hands and wash against the concrete from her legs, keeping her airborne and sliding her around to my right.

She sweeps her leg up, redirecting her momentum with another harsh jet of shining fire into a swift, glowing side kick.

“Gah!” I can’t keep up. The kick connects, I hear bones crack, and I’m knocked over into a roll.

It hurts. I pull myself up. My breaths are short, and I hold a hand to my side.

“So?! Does it hurt now, Jacob?!” She shouts, snarling as she jets forward, throwing everything into her right fist.

“Olivia —” I hear Rook start, attempting to stop the match. I don’t let her.

Olivia speeds toward me, in a straight line, unbalanced and insultingly obvious.

I feel my face stretch into a grin. Now.

Ducking under her punch, I reach out to snatch her arm as it sails past my face. Immediately, as her legs swing by with her momentum, I can tell I don’t have enough strength to end it. So, taking a risk, I sink into my power. I burn muscle, fat, anything I can from the parts of my body I’m not using, and when that isn’t enough I reach for tendons, ligaments, bone marrow, anything. I only leave the bare minimum my power tells me is necessary for my body to function.

I burn most of it to accelerate the process, but the rest is pumped into stabilizing my legs, my back, and boosting the capacity of my arm to its limit. I can feel muscles, especially in my arm, start to bulge, and throb with an unnatural heat.

Gripping Olivia’s arm with inhuman strength, I swing down with everything I have.

Whump!

Her body trails behind, fuming with smoke and sputtering flame, before impacting the ground with a heavy thump.

Silence, except for the sound of my heaving breaths while I repair some minor strain before resurfacing from analysis mode. As I do, I notice my body, and especially my right arm, is steaming.

“That’s not my fuckin’ name,” I say to Olivia, coughing weakly on the ground in front of me. And then I fall over.

—

It only takes me a couple minutes to redistribute the huge mass of muscle bulking up my arm, but I decide to wait for a stretcher, anyway. A few hours later, while I’m vacuuming up snacks in a cot at the medical wing, Rook comes to visit. I expect to be scolded, maybe even dropped from the team.

For some reason, I don’t feel as bad about that as I should.

“You did well today,” Rook says, to my surprise.

It must show on my face. “I engineered this encounter, and expected this outcome. You will not be punished,” she provides.

“Do you usually let your students beat the shit out of each other?” I ask.

She frowns. “No. In the future, you will be disciplined for behavior like this. But only after you’ve been taught proper sparring procedure and rules of engagement.”

Rook pulls something up on her tablet. “This was the exception. I believe both of you have learned something from this engagement.”

“How to hit things really hard?” I suggest.

Rook sighs. “Go home, Red. You’ll observe the rescue exercise another time.”

—

It’s only during the car ride home that I realize I may have given away more than I meant to in regard to my power. Stupid.

Not as if it was doing anything for me before then, I don’t have any reason to lie to the USMC at the moment, but… still. Stupid.

Well. At least I won. That was… cathartic.

Olivia’s always liked pushing my buttons. I never really figured out why, but I didn’t usually fight back. What was I gonna do, punch her?

Throw her, apparently. My whole body, but especially my arm, aches from that stunt. I won’t be able to do it again safely for a while, I think, and it’s unlikely to be useful in active combat. Not unless I know that it’ll end the fight, I guess.

I stretch, feeling muscles and tendons pull against each other with the movement. My body aches, and it’s not a pleasant ache, but it feels… real. It feels like proof.

Leaning my head against the glass window of the van, I watch the city skate by under the soft evening sun.

—

“Jacob? Honey, are you — oh, gosh.” Mom greets me at the door, eyes widening as she takes in my diminished appearance. I don’t think I look injured, or anything, but I’m skinnier that usual, and shorter too, I think.

“I’m fine. Nice to be back,” I provide.

“Oh, yes, ah… come, come in. We have dinner, and your father’s here this time.”

I nod and step inside, slipping off my shoes.

The meal is quiet, but only because it’s awkward. Dad complains about the notices the USMC have been sending him instead of his job for once.

“They want you to stay in a dorm — in high school! This is ridiculous. They have some kind of agenda,” he mutters in between bites, stealing glances at the laptop propped open next to him.

I wonder if he doesn’t just want to keep an eye on me.

I lay in bed that night with thoughts of smoke, fire, and steaming flesh.

—

The next day, I’m again transported to the USMC tower. It’s a little later in the day than last time, so when I meet Rook in the lobby, we head straight to the training floor. This time, I pick a uniform from the women’s locker. It fits much better. As I walk out, I notice Rook’s also wearing one, this time.

Still has her glasses on, though.

The fake urban landscape looks the same as last time. Actually, I think it looks better. I remember seeing scuffs and scorch marks at the end of yesterday’s matches, but now they’re weirdly absent. I guess they clean up fast around here.

Another thing I notice. The others are avoiding me.

Sort of. Rook has them start on a simulation — something about breaching — pretty early on, but even before then I get weird looks. For some reason, it doesn’t really surprise me.

I’m a bit disappointed about Eva, though. I thought we were getting along.

While the others get started breaking into fake buildings, Rook pulls me into an exercise.

“We’ll start with hand-to-hand, seeing as that’s likely going to be your specialty,” she lectures. “If you can learn to consistently pull off that stunt you did yesterday, we can revisit the style you use, but for now…”

Rook settles into a neutral stance, with one hand hovering out in front of her, and the other pulled in close. “Judo. Ideal for non-lethal takedowns. You don’t need to know it to a competitive level, but it can be a useful tool when subduing suspects.” She nods at me. “Try to copy my stance.”

I try to approximate her hand position. She drops the stance and walks over to me. “May I touch you?”

I nod, hesitantly. She begins gently guiding my limbs to the correct positions. She’s methodical, almost robotic with her movements, even without piloting her drone. “You should gain some weight if you want to get the most of it. You should be doing that anyway, really, with how much mass your power seems to consume.” She pauses her adjustments for a moment to look over at the mock-raid. “Communication, Olivia! Call out your position!”

“I know how to do this already!” She shouts back.

“It’s procedure!” Rook returns.

“Ugh!”

Rook sighs, and returns to her stance across from me. “Contact points are here, and here,” she starts, indicating her sleeve and collar. I follow along as she runs through the basics.

As I’m practicing proper form and Rook is occasionally directing the simulation happening next door, my mind can’t help but wander.

“Is she like that in, uh. In the field, too?”

“Hm? Olivia?” I nod. “She’s… proactive. She’s also a child, as are you. I’m confident she will learn to adhere to procedure.”

“I guess.” Rook guides my arms as I hold onto her collar.

“Tighter grip. Good.” She gestures for my other arm. I grab her sleeve. “Do you know her? You two seemed as if you had history.”

I scowl. “Yeah, she was my, uh. Ex.”

“Ah.”

I roll my eyes and tug on the sleeve I’m still holding. “How’s she here? I thought she went to… my old school.”

“Right, well. Here, spin this way,” Rook says, directing my movements. “She insisted, to her father, that she go to a ‘normal school’. He made it work. You might have noticed her absences?”

I nod. She usually has to leave for — well, she said it was a club, but she never specified. I guess I know why, now.

Rook follows through with the motion, and I spend the rest of the session learning judo with Rook while she yells at the others over her shoulder.

It feels real.