Dunner’s answer was to call Ravi’s attention back to the front doors. “Tell that to him,” he suggested and nodded in the direction of Kelerin, who had just come through the gymnasium doors himself and was closing in on the line at a dead run. Dunner darted around the next corner and was gone from sight, while Ravi, seeing Kelerin’s approach, turned to face him, coiling his body in preparation to meet the charge head on.
“Don’t even think about it, Kel,” warned Ravi.
Kelerin was clearly thinking about it. “Better duck,” came his own warning in response.
Telegraphing his intentions by pump-faking upwards with his arms, Kelerin baited Ravi into lunging forward in expectation of colliding with the assumed line-clearing somersault at full force. However, rather than leaping over Ravi and the line of Students, Kelerin tucked and rolled underneath, leaving Ravi tackling nothing but air and belly flopping hard on the stone surface with a grunt. The line of Students burst into laughter.
Having finished his roll, Kelerin turned in his crouch to wink at the sprawled out Ravi before springing to his feet and continuing on with the chase. A red faced Ravi looked to Bram, the supervising Teacher at the head of the line, to complain. “You’re just gonna let him get away with that?”
Bram was a short, barrel-chested slab of muscle and the head WateRen coach at the Academy. Kelerin had been his star pupil for the last four years. “When you go undefeated in WateRen for a full four seasons you can get away with it too, Ravi. Now, who’s next?” A fresh bout of laughter broke out all along the line.
*****
Kelerin had lost sight of Dunner in the short corridors of the gymnasium. Seeing a pair of Student’s approaching from up ahead, he called out, “Which way, WHICH WAY?” They seemed to know what he was referring to and pointed up the stairs. He hurdled the railing and bounded up the flight. Several more students directed him up another two flights and around two more corners before the chase concluded with his barreling into one of the WateRen sparring rooms known as Cubes: enclosures of 16x16 meters with matted floors to prevent bone breakage from hard throws, and crystalline glass walls providing both resistance to Deflection Wave lashes as well as a 360 degree viewing experience for instructors.
There waiting for him was Dunner. Already changed into a Goja, the standard attire for WateRen sparring, he sat cross legged on the floor with a massive smile stretching across his face, ear to ear.
“What took you so long, Kel?”
Kelerin was leaning forward on his hands and knees, sucking in big gulps of air. “Where…,” he asked between breaths,”… is it?”
Dunner padded the document on the floor behind him. “Safe and sound. And if you want it, you’re going to have to challenge me for it.”
Kelerin took a few more seconds and twice as many breaths before throwing Dunner a sidelong glance from his doubled over position. “WateRen? Are you serious? I’ll trounce you.” Dunner may have been the faster runner but Kelerin was by far the better WateRen artist.
“Perhaps, Champ. But, you have to do it using the principles you describe in this rag,” said Dunner, plopping his pointer finger down into the middle of the stack of papers. “That’s the deal.”
“My thesis is for Wave Whip combat, Dunner,” said Kelerin, pointing out the flaw in Dunner’s proposed test.
“Nevertheless, you will trounce me using these principles or you will not trounce me at all, and you don’t get your thesis back in one piece.”
Unamused, Kelerin turned to the lockers at the entrance of the room and ripped another Goja off the shelf. “You’re crazy,” he said as he stripped down to his underwear.
“No points for name calling.”
The Goja they wore was loose and flowing. It not only served as ideal combat apparel but was also another source of instruction for the Student, guiding him to mimic its flowing nature and harmonize himself with its Wave-like qualities. Kelerin pulled the baggy pants on one leg at a time. He gave a short hop so that he could hoist them up to his waist, cinching them tight with the drawstring. Lastly, he pulled the loose flowing tunic on over his head in one fluid motion and he was ready to go.
“Standard rules,” stated Dunner. “Three knockdowns or a knockout wins.”
“Shut up and put up.”
Dunner smiled, his impish smile. Kelerin was clearly no longer anxious about his duel later that day. Nope, defiantly not. This was a different Kelerin, fired up and ready for battle. Mission accomplished, thought Dunner. Next mission, survive. “Bring it, brother.”
From his very first lesson as a young Student Kelerin found he excelled at the soft art of WateRen. Its principles were intuitive to him and its movements came naturally. The Faculty thought he might prove the next rising star to look out for at the Academy. However, his strength eventually became his downfall as his affinity for WateRen continued in earnest long after most of his peers had lost interest, moving on to the more ‘advanced’ art of Wave Whip combat.
An avid reader and fan of Professor Ren’s work, and not just the popular years, Kelerin bought wholeheartedly into the theory that WateRen techniques and principles could be applied toward Wave Whip combat, hence his chosen senior thesis topic. His Teachers might have let such flights of fancy slide if it weren’t for the fact that Kelerin stubbornly insisted on experimenting with the Professor’s theories during actual duels. In his last two years as an upperclassman, the years when Students were introduced to Wave Whip competition, Kelerin had yet to win a match. Quite a fall from grace for the once four-time WateRen champion and the only upperclassman to have ever gone undefeated in the sport for four years straight.
It was a rather upsetting situation for everyone involved, most of all the Academy’s Wave Whip coaches who had been salivating from the sidelines all of Kelerin’s WateRen years, waiting to get their hands on the Student whom they thought might just prove to be the most promising prospect to come their way in quite some time. One need only imagine their frustration at how things had played out.
About a quarter of the Faculty still believed Kelerin’s true potential lay just beneath the surface while another quarter had given up on the kid altogether. For the fifty percent majority, though, judgment had yet to be passed. The duel later that day was expected to shake up those statistics drastically, tilting the scales definitively in one direction or another.
Dunner made his way over to the middle of the Cube, leaned back on his rear leg and whipped out his forward arm into the standard ward-off position. Turning that palm over, he beckoned Kelerin come closer with his fingers, an inviting motion loosely translated as, come and get it. Kelerin rolled his eyes, walked over and dropped into a deep stance opposite his roommate. As he slowly lifted up his own guard both fighters were aware of the fact that the instant their wrists touched the match was on.
Dunner had been in many duels with his longtime best friend and knew he was no match for the champ in a straight up competition, so he decided to make it not-so-straight-up by cheating. When Kelerin was only a few seconds away from making contact at his current hand speed, Dunner gave him a wink and jerked his hand down, touching Kelerin’s wrist prematurely and exploding into action. Kelerin was not surprised.
Thrusting forward, Dunner attempted to overpower his overly talented roommate, quick and messy-like. Kelerin responded by pushing back and baiting Dunner into pushing harder. The counterforce only lasted for a fraction of a second, at which point Kelerin shifted his hips forward while arching backward and to the side from the waist. Dunner was set off balance, twisting in the air. He would have flown for some distance making for a softer fall but Kelerin was not about to let Dunner off that easy after a cheap-shot attempt like that. Instead, he held on a bit longer, guiding Dunner’s kinetic force in a downward arc, accelerating his body and slamming it into the mat. To his credit, Dunner slapped his hands down in what was the proper break-fall technique, taking much of the edge off the throw. Had he not done so he may very well have crushed his own br
eastplate, possibly collapsing a lung.
Dunner groaned in pain. “Nice throw.”
“Nice cheat,” countered Kelerin with a smile.
Dunner returned the smile knowingly, a thief caught in the act. “But you didn’t use your thesis,” he charged, placing the throw back into the perspective of the overall challenge.
“Fine.” said Kelerin, settling back into his stance again, waiting for Dunner to touch wrists and re-engage. If Dunner was itching for a beating, Kelerin was perfectly happy to oblige by supplying it. They squared off and touched wrists for a second time. Now it was Kelerin’s turn to press the attack. He advanced steadily, the soles of his feet caressing the mat as he glided forward with a seamless flow of footwork. Dunner kept pace and a deadly dance ensued of grabs and escapes, palm strikes and counters.
At one point, while Kelerin gripped Dunner’s Goja, Dunner spun around to break the hold, tracing his foot along the mat at the same time and threatening to sweep Kelerin’s legs out from under him. Kelerin followed Dunner with a parallel twist of his own, avoiding the sweep while crouching and seizing onto Dunner’s leg, locking it to his chest. Turning his 360 into a 720 and spinning around for a second time, Kelerin tossed Dunner by the leg through the air, face planting him onto the mat.
“How about that?” asked Kelerin, arms folded and wearing a satisfied look on his face.
This time Dunner pulled himself up. His whole front side ached. “Definitely a nice move,” he admitted, “but still nothing from off those pages, brother.”
“Oh, please. When have you ever seen that move before?”
“You. Kelerin vs. Shyerson, second year. A classic, I might add.”
“Liar!”
“I call it like I see it.”
“Yeah, right. How do you just stand there and lie like that?”
“I’ve got a good team behind me. Parent’s always supported me. Can’t really take all the credit. Now stop whining and show me something special.”
“Fine!”
“You keep saying that. Fine, what?”
“Fine.” Kelerin walked right up to Dunner, nose to nose. “Hit me,” he dared, arms hanging limply at his sides.
“Put up and I’ll smack you from here all the way to lunch.”
“Do it.”
“Put up!”
“DO IT!”
Dunner threw a fast, straight right to Kelerin’s solar plexus. Kelerin arched his shoulders forward while sucking his chest into the small of his back and forming a kind of pocket with his upper torso. The pocket smothered the attack as it came in and before Dunner could fully extended his elbow, Kelerin thrust his hips up and out, launching a double palm heel strike that caught Dunner in his own solar plexus as well as the abdomen.
It was like being hit by a Wave Whip set to Deflection. Dunner rocketed back a full four meters before being reintroduced to the floor at an odd angle where he skidded along the mats, the air thoroughly knocked out of him. As he lay there coughing up his lungs, Kelerin strolled over and sat down by his side, waiting for his best, and now thoroughly defeated friend, to catch his breath.
“OK,…” managed Dunner at last, still struggling to fill his chest cavity with enough air on each breath. “... take the thesis.”
They both laughed at that. In between coughs, Dunner croaked out, “Oh man, it… hurts… to… laugh.” Swallowing and wincing he added, “So… that was new.”
Kelerin was waiting for Dunner to acknowledge something to that effect. “That, my friend, was the true power of WateRen. That was tapping into the universal current and creating Waves from energy’s original source. That’s how the Prophets Prophesy. That’s how I launched you across the room, and by the Creator, that’s the true way to wield a Wave Whip. Tonight I prove it.”
“Wow, you really believe in this stuff, don’t you?”
“You’re really going to ask me that? Are you angling for another demonstration or something?”
“Ha! Yeah, I think I’ll pass. My spleen’s still trying to reconstitute itself. But seriously, hear me out. You’ve got something here, Kel.”
“So you don’t think I’m crazy, then?”
“Oh, certifiable-”
“Ha!”
“But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re on to something and that one day you’re going to change things.”
“Everything.”
“Umm, yeah, maybe we just shrink that head of yours down, just a little bit for the time being.” Kelerin smiled. Dunner continued. “I’m just glad I’m going to be around to witness it.”
“What’re you talking about, my brother? You’re going to be part of it.”
“That’s not gonna happen, Kel.”
“Dunner, you can’t think like that.”
“It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not. You gotta stop with this defeatist attitude. We’re both going to make Faculty. Together. And that’s that.”
“OK, let’s visit a little place called reality for a second. How big was our class when we first started? What, two thousand Students?”
Kelerin nodded. He knew where this was going. “Yes, but-”
Dunner cut him off, “And then we dropped down to a thousand. Then five hundred. Two fifty. And now we’re in the last quarter semester of our final year. There’s twenty five of us left-”
“And you’re one of those twenty five.”
“Yeah, but how many do they ask to stay on as Faculty from each graduating class? One? Two? They never took more than three, Kel. I’m not even in the top ten.”
“Don’t say that, Dunner.”
“It’s true. And I’m fine with it, by the way. A top twenty five graduate of the Academy, are you kidding me? I’ll have my pick of anywhere I want to work, public or private sector. I won’t even need Daddy-Deep-Pockets to call in any favors for me.”
Kelerin frowned. “Dunner, your father loves you.”
“Uh huh. You can even quantify by how much. All I have to do is check my account balance each semester to see exactly how well I’m faring in the favorability department based on how much Coin he holds back, or offers up as a bonus, if I just ‘Make this old Alum proud.’” Dunner pumped his fist across his body with mock enthusiasm.
“At least you’ve got a father.”
“Hey, listen up sob story. This is my sympathy moment here, alright.”
“You’re right. Sorry.”
“You know what? No. Because now the moment’s ruined. You don’t have to go flaunting your tragic, pathetic life around every second, making everyone else’s life feel inadequately tragic and pathetic. It’s not a contest, Kel.” Kelerin laughed and shoved his friend over from where they sat facing each other on the mats.
“Awww, look at this love fest over here,” the unpleasant but familiar voice killed Kelerin’s and Dunner’s good cheer almost immediately. Both of them knew exactly who the voice belonged to even without turning to look. Valix had walked into the Cube and sucked all the attention his way in typical Valix fashion. Everything about him, from the perfect side part of his blond hair to the way he walked, talked and flashed razor sharp canines when he smiled, it all seemed to say, I’m better than you.
As usual, trailing just behind was Jorin, the thick slab of meaty muscle, and Klade, the brown haired self-styled carbon copy of Valix with a man crush so strong he may be the only one to love Valix more than Valix loved himself. They placed themselves on either shoulder of their demigod leader like pets waiting to be scratched behind the ears.
Dunner sat up, scrunching his nose and sniffing the air. “You smell something, Kel?”
Kelerin stared straight at Valix, unblinking. “Yeah. Smells like trash.”
Valix sighed. “Oh Kelerin, what are we gonna do with you. Still playing your WateRen games, are we? Don’t you think it’s time you graduated to more... mature endeavors?”
“Shut it, Valix,” snapped Dunner, quick off the draw as usual.
“Relax, Dunner. I think
your friend here can handle himself. Isn’t that right, Kelerin?” Valix switched to a more reasonable tone. “I’m only trying to help you. You know that, right? You must be aware of what you come off sounding to the rest of the class, Kelerin? To the Academy? What everyone says behind your back while you’re running around and ranting about WateRen like it was the key to the Creator’s secrets?” Valix answered his own question with a wide eyed, whispering hiss. “You sound crazy, Kel. Seriously. I mean, imagine what your father might thin-well, actually, first try to imagine what it would be like to have a father, and then imagine what he might think if he could see you acting-?”
Dunner knew it. As soon as the word formed on Valix’s lips - F-A-T-H-E-R - Dunner knew Kelerin would lose it. Part of him, a very small part, wanted Kelerin to lose it and steamroll this kid. Unfortunately, that small part was plenty enough to delay a possible intervention by Dunner for a fraction of a second. By then Kelerin had already closed half the distance of the Cube on a collision course with Valix.
Kelerin could care less about the consequences as he charged the arrogant Final Year Student and two-time Wave Whip champion in front of him. He didn’t care that he would get his chance to pound Valix’s head in later that night if he could just wait it out for a few hours till their duel. He didn’t care that he’d been training for this duel for three months straight, ever since he found out the Academy coaches had pitted the two of them together in an attempt to break Kelerin out of his stubborn, career endangering downward spiral by proving his worth to his peers, his Teachers, and himself.
In that moment, all Kelerin saw was red.
“LOOK OUT!” she screamed.
The words cut into Kelerin’s thoughts like a knife. He looked up to where he thought he’d heard the voice come from only to find the naked lighting of the crystalline glass ceiling shining down on him. He looked back at Valix, and that’s when he noticed the danger. Valix was distorted, and it wasn’t due to his seeing him through a veil of anger:
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