Chapter 11: Juggling Training

The juggling thing was not a joke: when Rick was exhausted from all his physical and lucrim training, he picked up the rubber balls and learned how to juggle. Most of his routine was completely coherent, but not that.

Every morning he took a number of pills along with breakfast, which proved challenging on their own - he could feel them burning through his system. Most of the morning was spent on fundamental lucrim exercises, trimming the fat and gathering free lucrim for a new Lucore. Or a foundation, if his performance proved inadequate.

In the afternoons H trained him mercilessly with sparring sessions that ended with a burst of aura the instant he fell into old habits. It would take a long time to retrain old habits, so whenever H became too frustrated, they switched to training his new footwork. That captured Rick's attention easily, helping him move more freely with the Bunyan's Step and smoothly use it in multiple directions.

By the evening he was exhausted and battered, risking overtraining. Though he technically had the evenings free, he was given reading to complete and he wanted to do some training of his own. He couldn't risk pushing himself past the breaking point, but he could draw up the Dark Blood Kettle to absorb what he'd experienced in the day.

After all of that, he collapsed exhausted every night. Fortunately their rooms were nearly completely sound-proof, and he controlled the lights, so there was nothing to keep him from getting great nights of sleep. Which meant he could rise early to begin the next day.

There seemed to be absolutely nothing stopping him from leaving, so Rick didn't mind his seclusion. He had internet access and had done enough research to find out that they were staying at a perfectly normal, if expensive, training center. They had half the top floor entirely to themselves, forming a series of bedrooms and supply closets alongside the main training room.

Occasionally through an open door he heard staff in the hallway, but they never disturbed him. It was actually possible to order room service, though Rick decided that was unnecessary extravagance. He kept eating the awful nutrient bars and whatever else he was given to balance his diet. If he was here to train, he was going to train.

H himself came and went, aside from their core afternoon training sessions. Though he had set up in one of the other bedrooms, and it was the only room that was locked, when Rick got a look inside it was completely empty. Most of his mentor's time was spent away from the training center, monitoring the developing Showdown events and looking for other talent. It made Rick wonder if H had been training anyone else while in Branton, but H refused to answer irrelevant questions by simply ignoring them.

Overall, Rick was reasonably comfortable, both with his situation and his decision. The one fly in the ointment was the Midas Foundation, which bothered him in a way he couldn't quite pin down. Research online turned up absolutely nothing, so either it really was extremely proprietary or it was going by another name. Either way, Rick was more comfortable strengthening what he already knew than abandoning it for something else.

Though his life was mostly training, it was satisfying enough. He could still video chat with Melissa from time to time and there were no longer any major distracting concerns about his life. So long as he kept up with the brutal training regimen, he was getting paid to train and padding his investment Lucores. It didn't get much better than that.

Juggling proved a little obnoxious, since it seemed irrelevant, but Rick set himself to it. After a few video tutorials and some practice, he managed to get the basics. Since he only had three balls, it wasn't overly difficult. A week into their schedule, when H arrived for their sparring session, Rick was waiting for him and juggling three balls.

"Congratulations on your basic hand-eye coordination." H reached out and snatched all three balls from him. "I'll have a heavier set of them for you tomorrow."

"Obviously there's no Showdown juggling event." Rick was never sure how far he could push H, but he decided that after a week of being obedient, he had some slack. "I assume you're doing this as some sort of classic indirect training, as opposed to just busywork."

"If that's so, then why question the wisdom of my training?"

"You're just going to give me slightly heavier versions? That's too easy. If you want me to grow, you should challenge me. Show me your endgame here."

For several long seconds H glared at him, and then, to Rick's shock, a tortured sort of smile passed across his face. "Maybe you're right. Fine, take them back and we'll do this in a different order. Start juggling again."

Blinking, Rick caught the balls as they were tossed to him and began his usual pattern. It went fine until H tried to punch him in the face.

On instinct Rick dodged away, but that meant that the rubber balls fell to the ground. H merely grunted "Again" and kicked the balls at him.

The second time, Rick managed to shift just his head to avoid the first punch, but the second was a body blow. Somehow he managed to jerk his elbow down to deflect the strike in between throwing one ball and catching another. Yet the next moment H kicked him directly in the chest, sending him falling backwards and obviously losing his juggling pattern.

"You'll be ready when you can keep juggling through all of that." H ignored him and walked over to his room, dragging out his case of tools. Rick stared at him a while, and when no further explanation was forthcoming, decided to object again.

"Do you mean that my defenses need to be so good that I can stay completely in place? Maybe I could do it with enough defense or speed, but even if I could, wouldn't that be forming weird habits?"

"I may not be a hand-to-hand specialist, but you're not going to become strong enough to stop me that way. No, you need to keep juggling through taking hits."

Rick narrowed his eyes. "That's not possible. The physics of it don't make any sense if you're knocking me around, not unless you mean anticipate what will happen so far ahead..."

"No, you're going to juggle with pure aura. Like this." H found what he wanted and rose, holding three silver spheres in one hand. He started to juggle them one-handed... until they began to spin on their own. While H kept his hand flat and approached him, the spheres spun in a circle above his hand. "The problem with this technique is that it requires you to be able to multitask far better than most warriors can. So we started with normal juggling to get you used to it."

"But these weren't the spheres you wanted me to use?" Rick reached out to snatch one of them, his hand easily breaking the aura sending the spheres circling. When it touched his palm, however, a shiver passed through his entire body.

Gasping, Rick dropped down to one knee, struggling to hold up the silver sphere. It buzzed and vibrated strangely, but the worst part was the ripples it sent through his lucrima soul. As if it had been designed to disrupt the normal smooth flow of his lucrim and his aura... and that was probably exactly what they had been designed to do.

"Now you're seeing it. Try all three." H dropped the other two spheres into his hands.

Though Rick made a couple abortive attempts to juggle, he soon realized he'd just humiliate himself. Simply holding his balance and maintaining his aura was difficult while holding the disruptive spheres. Just gaining the ability to do that would be training of a sort, though he suspected there was a deeper meaning still coming.

Instead of pushing further, Rick decided to focus fully on advancing. He was eager for the challenge for its own sake, plus he'd actually impressed H a little. Best to not waste any of that. Rick stopped trying to juggle and just rotated the spheres in one hand, struggling against their effect.

"I obviously need more time to adjust to these," Rick said. "So the final goal is to be able to juggle these with my aura while engaging in real combat?"

"That will be the sign that you're ready, but it's not the goal." H glanced toward his case of supplies, his face again sour. "I don't have them on hand, since I still think this is an inferior path for you, but in the end you'll create tools in place of the spheres. Instead of fighting you, they'll assist you. But if you try to use them without sufficient presence of mind, you'll just hurt yourself worse than you usually do."

"Got it. Knowing what I'm going for makes this a lot more interesting." But the spheres were starting to make his entire arm numb, so Rick had to set them down. "You're right that those are a bit much for me, so maybe it would be better t-"

"No, I was softballing you. Let's take this up a notch." H flicked a finger and the rubber balls flew to his hand. "I have two more exercises for you: maintaining normal juggling while releasing fully powered strikes, and juggling using aura. Try to master the disruptive effect in your own time."

"And then we fuse all three together?"

"Don't get ahead of yourself. See if you can kick me without falling over."

H shifted into a defensive stance and urged him to strike, so Rick began with the new exercise. It felt bizarre to be juggling while trying to kick at an opponent, but now that he understood the true purpose of the task, he was far more motivated. Keeping proper form with his kicks while simultaneously juggling felt impossible at first, then simply a bizarre contortion, but he could feel the mental workout.

After he had the basics down, H showed him the basic technique for juggling using aura. Rick had expected it to be the simple application of concentrating aura into "hands" that could manipulate matter, a common trick to those who could afford it. Instead, it proved to be something much more fascinating.

Instead of his aura flowing with his breaths, H taught him how to develop a swirling pattern. His aura surrounded the spheres and caught them up in it, so they rotated completely naturally. At least that was the idea. Rick couldn't crack such an unusual technique in their first session and H only pressed him until it was clear that he truly understood the underlying premise.

Rick smiled and dropped back onto the floor, letting his aura relax. It had been a strange workout, but he could understand the benefits. He was unclear on what purpose the final spheres would serve, but he theorized that they would be part of the technique that would improve his sensory capabilities.

"What are you doing?" H glowered down at him.

"We've been training for a while." Rick groaned as he got back to his feet. "Just taking a little break."

"We haven't been training at all. This was extracurricular work because you got too big for your britches, so the clock hasn't started on our usual sparring." H cracked his knuckles on one hand. "Today I think we're going to work on your defensive footwork. Thoroughly."

Though Rick winced in anticipation of the bruises to come, he found himself grinning.