by P. S. Power
“Yes, Advocate Yi is learning quickly. I have heard that less than two full seasons before the present he had no training in combat at all. To have gone so far in such a small time is impressive. He is a truly dedicated individual.” Standing with legs spread slightly, the shaggy man that still looked homeless smiled. The look reminded him a little of Mark, that kind of enforced calm no matter what the situation thing he always did.
“You however, are not an advocate, but rather something new to me. A manager of men perhaps? I think we should study the arts of war and advocacy, as that is what the Lady Marcia no doubt intends, but also the arts of the mind. Do you hold clear thoughts?” The last was asked delicately, as if a personal question.
Denis had to try and decipher what the guy meant. It took a second but finally the meaning clicked.
“Wait... meditation? You mean trying to hold my mind clear of thought or maybe focus on one thought for a period of time?”
“Indeed! You do such?” The man seemed far more pleased than a simple statement like that should have allowed.
“Poorly... I just started trying, when I was in lock up. I haven't been too regular about it yet...” If the other man thought Denis some kind of mental master or something...
Instead the guy just bowed again.
“Very good. At least you do not represent yourself as more than you are. That is a fine place to start from. For now I'd like to assess your physical combat abilities as we can with you injured thusly, then we shall work on those of the mind. Each day that other work or task does not call you, please work on such.”
Then the man promptly started kicking Denis' ass.
Oh, he never touched him, just indicating the blows, the merging patterns that couldn't be tracked at all as Den tried to back pedal and run. Everywhere he tried to move, Hobbs already seemed to stand. It wasn't a power, he could see the movements happening, Denis just couldn't get out of the way in time. Finally, smiling, the man bowed a third time.
“Not without potential. Now let us retire to a venue where we may begin mental training...”
That turned out to be the fifteenth floor gym, and according to Hobbs, a good place to start learning would be in a pool of slightly cool water. All Denis had to do was strip down, which was embarrassing, because the pool was open to the large space and enter the pool, holding his mind as still as he could, since that was the kind of meditation Denis had been practicing already. Hobbs did it first, standing in shoulder deep water calmly, eyes closed. When Denis got in he nearly screamed.
It wasn't “cool” water, it was liquid ice! After a moment, Hobbs smiled bigger and suggested he hold firm to the empty mind state. Den tried. The first thing he had to quiet being a running monologue of how cold it was and how he hated this, didn't like Hobbs and felt ridiculous at his own hesitation over a little cold water.
The shock of it, when he waded out to shoulder height nearly made him go breathless. He realized after a second that he wasn't so much silencing his thoughts as he was repeating internally that he needed to. That, at least, led to him giving it a real try. A few minutes later the other man spoke.
“Good. Keep striving for clarity.”
Easy for him to say. Then, since the man also stood in the same water, maybe not so easy. Just as he managed a full thirty seconds of not overly noisy thought, the man moved them to a different pool. It was hard to move, since the water had left him numb, leaving a sharp ache in his right elbow as it tightened up, making the ladder hard to climb and all that. The pool one over wasn't colder as he'd feared at all.
The water burned instead.
“Fear not. The water is tolerable to flesh, you are merely chilled, so it feels true to burning. Clear thy mind and withstand it bravely, for it injures you not.”
Right. That seemed to be Hobbs gentle way of saying “don't be a pussy”, if he translated correctly. Denis took a minute, his thoughts suddenly racing, the pain receding before he found a calm spot inside again. They stayed in this pool longer, standing with hands clasped in front of them as if in prayer. Hobbs had done it, so Denis did too, not knowing why, if there even was a reason.
Next, still nude, the man walked him over to a platform about two feet square that moved randomly. It looked like part of the floor, but rocked under him without warning or sense. All he had to do was stand on it. Focused as well as he could on the shape of his own skin, the husk that made him. It left him hollow inside and every few seconds off balance. Hobbs stood on it as if it didn't move at all, hips nearly steady and head unmoving, his lower body adapting perfectly.
Then they had to close their eyes. He'd thought it was kind of hard to stay upright with them open, but he soon realized he'd been fooling himself completely. Eyes closed made it so much harder he could barely manage it at all. There was a lot of wild hand waving and huge shifts of body weight trying to keep his feet then.
After a while the board began to move a tiny bit faster, a little bit harder, and the frequency of changes grew as well. Denis tried to keep his mind sharp and clear, but after a bit opened his eyes. Hobbs still had his closed and Carl, the crazy trainer for the whole facility on the fifteen floor, stood at the controls. Not a hint of mercy in his eyes. Finally when the platform fairly vibrated Denis stumbled off. Hobbs didn't until Carl slowed, then stopped the device.
Opening his eyes Hobbs said only one thing.
“Keep your mind on the shape inside yourself, a hollow and empty thing, moving, but still. Let it become you totally.”
Denis kind of stared rather than doing anything, and the crazy and thin trainer, who looked half carved out of stone somehow, gestured to the square impatiently.
“You heard the man. Back on the machine. Feel that shape inside yourself.” Carl waved his hand at him lazily.
Denis tried.
He failed over and over, but really did do his best.
After half an hour of this Hobbs seemed satisfied, “good for this time. Daily practice as has been shown until you gain decent skill with these, then we shall increase the measure. Thank you for your aid sir.” Hobbs said, bowing toward Carl.
The thin guy dressed to go free climb a mountain, bowed back. If he was bothered by the fact that both men stood out in the open nude he didn't let it show at all. Some of the people looked over from their own strange workouts, but no one really stared. Everything on fifteen was just that much more extreme, Denis guessed. Two naked guys was just... Wednesday here.
“I have to say, this is the first time I've seen anyone come to my floor for meditation. In the future, please let me know what might be needed in regard for training ahead of time. We do the extreme training here, but what I saw certainly counts. If it's allowable, I may want to get with you, to help train some of the others as well? I can set up a variety of obstacles if I know to do so in advance. No need to keep to this pansy stuff after all.”
Hobbs nodded his head happily.
“Indeed!”
9
The next weeks went well, if in a strange pattern of intense focus with Hobbs, alternating between a dozen kinds of meditation and near abuse that everyone else seemed to find funny for some reason. One day Denis would be thrown in a sauna and told to focus as hard as possible on his left little toe, the next to fight to make all internal reality go away while listening to Mozart. While he ran each day, and the scraggly looking man insisted on his running, Den had to try and clear his mind or repeat a singular nonsense chant. So far as Denis could tell nothing got repeated, each day handing him new challenges to his focus.
Nearly two weeks and two whole show tapings later the special anti-riot squad went to Seattle for the riot the Hooperistas had planned there. It felt like a vacation.
At first.
This time they traveled by bus, mini-van actually, and both he and Lancaster took turns driving. The vehicle they found themselves in was white, a plain and stark thing with no external markings. The interior had well-kept but cheap looking seats and a dash done in viny
l, all a uniform dark blue. Even with the government plates they got pulled over no less than seven times on the way there, a trip that took two days, because their route had been designed by Marcia, who'd decided that detouring through several small northern towns would help hide who they were.
Poor Tobin barely got out at all and when he did, normally to go to the restroom, the little guy got hostile stares and a few times called names. He played it off, but it bothered everyone a lot. It was enough that Denis knew it was bad when he came out carrying a white plastic bag of food no one should actually eat, sugary treats and chips mainly, to find Karen glowing a brilliant blue standing in front of Tobin next to Lancaster who hadn't drawn a weapon yet, but stood with his hand on the one at his hip. In front of them stood five hostile looking men, all far too clean cut looking to be out accosting people in parking lots, with short hair and neatly cared for mustaches for the two that had them. The clothing they wore was bland, blue jeans and t-shirts, a few jackets for variety. In all they looked a lot like almost everyone else around them, except they were holding various weapons, one pointing a stick or pipe of some sort at the small man.
“Fucking freak! Kill him... If it's a male at all. Damned Infected....”
Denis moved closer then stooped to set the white plastic bag down carefully, so the food wouldn't get smooshed if a fight started, and walked over smoothly, trying to focus on the situation like Hobbs had been teaching him to do. The agitation of the others affected his thoughts, but he didn't let it rule him. Not exactly at least.
One thing he knew, more certainly now than ever before, was that he sucked at fighting. That being the case there wasn't going to be fisticuffs here if he could help it. Instead he spoke softly, walking up behind the others.
“Gentlemen. Go away now. You're accosting a Federal agent and the large man here is about to kick your asses, if he doesn't just kill you. That you aren't smart enough to see that is foolish. Even if he doesn't do that, you still want to walk away now. If you try to attack any of us it will not go well for you.” OK, massive meditation or not, he still sounded pissed and like he really wanted to fight. A problem for him in life.
Being a little defensive basically sounded a lot like that to almost everyone. Like what he really wanted was to duke it out. He never did. Marcia worked her way around the men, so she could take them from behind and Jay took a position forty degrees or so from their rear. The men didn't get that they were surrounded. They also didn't understand that any one of the people in front of them could take their whole group in less than ten seconds.
They did notice when Clark lifted and flipped their car upside down and then hovered it over their heads about ten feet above the ground. His jaw had been wired shut, the one saving grace of the trip so far, Brian having broken it in three places with the single blow he'd dealt. No doubt Clark would have a few months of things to say about that when the whole thing was healed, probably directed his way, since he'd been the one that ordered it done. Fair enough.
Denis looked up at the car and pointed at it pensively with one finger.
“So, what will it be? I know that I'd much rather not deal with squished people. They're messy and the paper work is a bore. How about you all just leave and remember that when you attacked the Infected, they didn't harm you at all, just got you to back off? Bigotry doesn't pay all the time, but today it seems like you're getting off light...” The men attacked as if they were a military hit squad, moving as one, with something close to discipline.
Fuckity crap. Another set up?
This shit was getting so freaking old.
Denis dropped them all. Retching first, then paralysis, remembering to be nice about the whole thing, even if he didn't feel like it. What the fudge though? No one sane would have looked at a car floating upside down over their heads and decided that fighting seemed the best option when they were offered walking away... Unless the whole thing really had been a set-up. Denis didn't see the cameras but wondered if they were around anyway. He mentioned it out loud, which got a grunt from Marcia.
“Probably. Still, we may as well move on. The police haven't exactly been showing themselves as our friends on this trip. I don't want to hassle with them trying to prove that these guys actually attacked us. From now on we assume that everyone is hostile unless they prove otherwise.” The woman brushed her deep brown curls from her eyes and refrained from putting a running shoe against anyone's head.
Barely.
Tobin didn't speak for hours after that, he just sat in the back seat, hunched down, trying to make sure no one saw him through the window. Hat pulled so low it made him look almost headless and a blanket, gray and institutional, around his green and black face. Finally as Lancaster drove the man spoke softly to Marcia, who'd moved in beside him.
“I'm sorry. Calling attention to us...”
Marcia snorted, “kind of the point I think. You and Lady Glory are here for that. Freaking Hooper. We really should...”
Denis got the rest, the bit that even here Quartz wouldn't say, just in case the van had listening devices she hadn't found in any of her searches. How that would be possible Denis didn't know, since she searched the whole thing and them every time they stopped and left the vehicle, but it was a point nonetheless.
They really should kill that fucker, senator or not.
Hooper and all his bigot buddies that were setting them up like this. If they did his people would have a field day with it though. Not just a little one either. It was probably how the open war would start, that or when they actually tried to move all Infected into camps for execution. Denis knew that would get him going at least. How did they think that was going to work anyway?
Their little hodge podge team here could take out fairly large battalions of soldiers and the police were a joke once the Infected decided to just kill people instead of taking them prisoner. Sure, the IPB only took in class three talents and above as a rule, but even their few class twos weren't to be messed with. Torque, the team one leader, could only take on one person at a time, making him “low-powered” but he could go toe to toe with someone like Argos and put them on the ground, hard. That plus a gun made him tough to beat in a fight. Did they expect to send everyone to death camps and just have them round them all up before reporting themselves?
No, they had to have something else up their collective scheming a-hole sleeves. What that would be he didn't know, probably their own version of super-powered soldiers or weapons. High powered robots came to mind. That or a really aggressive nuclear attack, just hoping that the public wouldn't mind all the death as long as most of the Infected got taken out too? But no... The Infected were all over the place, so that wouldn't work. A designer plague?
That might work, if anyone could figure out what made Infected what they were in the first place. It was all just so hard to know. Probably impossible until he got more information.
They slept in the van, in shifts while driving and took a route that nearly went into Canada then came back around, getting into position less than six hours before the planned event. The big difference that Denis noticed this time being that the police didn't show up at all.
They were setting them up, knowing that the IPB was required to show and that would leave just a few people to handle a potentially angry mob. It worked as a plan he decided. For the IPB at least.
All Denis had to do was watch for people starting problems and subdue them, making them sick or feel so cold they wanted to leave instead of agitating. They just chanted for a while, all three thousand of them or so, marched around for a bit and then got bored, since they weren't managing to draw any attention to their plight. Poor bigots.
It was just so much easier without the police mucking it all up. No Infected tried to attack either. The biggest problem being that it rained. Just a light sprinkle of water from the gray clouds above. The Pacific Northwest crowd wasn't daunted by that at all, they just showed up with ponchos and rain jackets ready to go. The lack of televis
ion cameras seemed to have a lot more effect.
Interesting. No cops and no TV meant no real riot? Cool. Too bad they didn't have control over either of those factors in general.
In the future though, Denis could at least get the cameras to go away. That would help a lot.
Almost as if the police were tracking their movements going back they got stopped three more times. Lancaster collected up tickets for a dozen imaginary moving violations, nodding politely each time, even when the officers got more than a little hostile, though they didn't give them any reason for it. They both drove the speed limit and signaled perfectly each time. Denis had to wonder what the hell was going on, but Marcia already knew it seemed.
Her first mode wasn't paranoia, not really, but it made her hyper aware of potential threats. They called it suspicion, but it was different than that, almost a power in itself. So careful and observant by nature she was nearly half psychic or something. It made Denis jealous for a bit. She got cool super strength and couldn't be hurt and her first mode made her really careful and pushed her to solid forethought all the time? While he had to sit and just want everything like a moron?
Then...
No one ever said he couldn't use caution himself did they? He smiled slightly and shook his head as she spoke, giving him a funny look. Yeah, it would take work, but no one ever said things would be easy, did they?
“It's our plates. They're marked as government, with a three-seven code, that's IPB. They're hassling us because of the terrorist attacks. They don't like the fact that nearly an entire police department got taken in or that they keep consistently being thwarted by us. Proxy alone has made them look incredibly bad. After them nearly killing him twice like they did and his telling the world about it...”