Snap 27: Refining

"Let's try that again." Jupiter said.

"What kinda Mom lets their kid run straight into a wall?" I said with a groan.

"The same Mom who's training you to save the world. Come on, it'll be fine." She said, grinning.

I stood up. It was still kind of hard to move at all. Either I couldn't move, or I would go as fast as possible, which is to say, as fast as Lightning.

"Try dialing it down a bit." Jupiter said.

I exhaled and loosened up, bit by bit. Until I was able to move properly.

"There, that's more reasonable." I said.

"Hm... times seven."

"What? Not good enough?" I responded.

"Well, using times ten you'd be equal in power to Ai, is what I'm noticing."

"Huh?! How'd she get that strong?!" I said in disbelief, powering down.

"Like I said, even the most standard training for her can make her much more powerful. Though her growth is dramatically slowing down to more reasonable levels. You can only temper a vessel so much." Jupiter explained.

"Vessel... you're acting as if she's just a container for the Faeries." I said.

Jupiter looked at me for a bit. Talking slowly she said:

"In a very, very literal sense, yes. If you were to view the world extremely basically as if humans had no real distinction, then yes, one would think that."

"But, by being an individual person," She continued "She is so much more than that."

"Well since she's so much more strong, what more can I do?" I asked.

"You accel in one particular category: technique. On an equal playing field, you'd win every time. You're a much better fighter."

"There's one thing you need to master. The Art of Moving without Thinking. Your thoughts are clouding your mind. You have so many techniques in your arsenal it can be hard to chose, so you need to learn to do all that without thinking."

"This sounds like one big copyright violation. That's just a thing in shows and games right? No one's instincts can be that good." I responded.

"But they can! It's called Mushin, and it's a real technique martial artists use where they close off their minds and attack and dodge without thinking, or minimal thinking!" She said excitingly.

Now that she mentions it, Dad did say they watched lots of those cheesy martial arts movies, I guess that's where the excitement comes from.

"But that would take years to master wouldn't it? It's not something I can do so easily." I said.

"That doesn't mean you shouldn't try, come on."

"Alright, let's give it a try. HRAGH!" I powered up back to Times 7.

I struck a battle stance and closed my eyes.

Jupiter fired several blasts. I felt them coming and dodged out of the way, she followed up with attacks that went behind me and ducked right in time.

"There, how's that?!"

"Not good. You're just sensing them. But it will make for good practice."

For several minutes I dodged and weaved around each of the attacks. A few grazed me, but no direct hits.

"Alright that's enough. You have a greater challenge ahead of you."

"Which is...?" I said cautiously.

"Another spar with Ai, of course. But not now. In 7 days. You'll have some time to prepare until then. Spend the rest of the day training on your own. After that day of sparring, you'll have 1 day before the battle."

"No pressure, yeah?" I said sarcastically.

"All of the pressure!" She said jokingly. "Now, I'll be on my way."

After that, I trained for a few more hours. Once I finished I went to the locker rooms and took a shower. On my way back home I ran into Ai.

"Hey! How'd training go?" I asked.

"Oh! Pretty fine I'd say. I'm not making so much progress anymore. I'm plateauing right now."

"Heh, can't say the same. I made a lot of progress today."

"Well, I suppose we'll see next week, yeah? Don't hold back!" She said excited.

"Yeah, of course. Hey, if you don't mind me asking, how about... we hang out the day after that?" I said nervous.

"Oh! Sure why not. I suppose I'll see you there." She was surprised and got a bit red.

And with that, the week passed by, training and training, until...