Medea

  Coach’s gym looked more like a military fortress than a place to exercise. There were some typical features, such as a weight rack, padded boxing gear, and a running track that circled the outer perimeter of the room, but the similarities stopped there. The punching bags ranged from typical sand bags to concrete and reinforced steel. A sand pit in the center of the room lined with glimmering mana crystals. Evokers over all different shapes and sizes mounted to the wall, even some less common forms such as gloves or belts. The place was empty, as usual. It seemed big enough to handle twenty at a time, but Switch never took on more than one fighter at a time. Something about competitiveness, he said.

  I sat on the edge of the wall around the sand pit, dangling my legs down. It was a 20 foot drop or so, but I’d jumped in enough to know it wouldn’t hurt if I fell down. I took a bite out of my apple. The edible part, anyway. The other side had been mashed to a pulp. I’d been trying all morning to peel the apple with no success. When I threw that dumpster, it clicked for me only because I thought of it like one of my gauntlets. Moving the apple using the same method was easy now, and I’d even practiced picking up multiple. At a stretch, I could pick up twelve or so at once, but keeping track of the spatial arrangement of that many objects was a bit of a nightmare. A lot of the apples came back bruised from bumping into each other in the air. There was this feeling in the back of my mind, like a thought on the tip of my tongue, that I felt I could snap into place. Instinctively, it felt like that was what Fyron mentioned about the Universe handing some details of the spell. Maybe it would make controlling them easier, but after seeing Wyll acting all weird after his little tangle with the Universe orchestrating his spell, I’m staying well away from that. Something wasn’t right about him.

  My current approach to apple peeling had led to a bit of a breakthrough, though. Instead of treating the apple like my gauntlet and somehow maneuvering its peel off, I instead interacted with it as if I was holding it in a hand. The fact that the hand wasn’t there was a minor detail. It was much easier to work with, but I struggled to picture anything moving the apple that wasn’t ‘hand shaped’. I even pressed the telekinetic power into the sand and left an imprint of a palm, thumb, and four fingers. The good news was that I could make more of these hands than I knew what to do with. I could even make them bigger or smaller than I’d ever really need. My biggest success with the apple task so far was making dozens of tiny hands to scratch away at the peel - an idea I’d stolen from some ants I saw chewing apart a leaf.

  I sighed, finishing off what was left of the apple before floating the core over to a nearby bin. I picked up the large sack of apples I’d bought and crammed them into a locker on the side of the room. Training would start soon, and I had to think about how I was going to reassure Coach while not giving away the real source of my new powers. I pulled my solution out of the top compartment of my locker - four completely mundane steel gauntlets. Ani had made them, so the quality was top notch. Some kind of reinforced metal alloy that was stronger (and much heavier) than steel, plated joints, spiked knuckles. The type of glove you’d expect to see some evil villain shake his fist in at a meddling hero in a story. Ifelt a bit disappointed about using them, though.

  Making my gauntlets had been something me and Ari did together. I did the runework and blood binding, Ari made the gauntlets themselves. But these had not a scratch of runework on them. No blood bindings. Instead, I floated all four with just my telekinesis. A huge improvement on paper - they were stronger, faster, far less expensive, not to mention the fact I could now manage four of them, but I just didn’t feel the emotional attachment to them that I had with Lefty and Righty.

  “Holy crap Dee, you weren’t kidding about improving your game.” Coach’s voice echoed a bit across the gym. I hadn’t noticed him come in.

  Coach had his shirt and cheap suit jacket draped over one arm as he came in, just wearing wrinkled pinstripe trousers and a sleeveless white tank top. The tattoos he was so proud of were on full display, each worse than the last. Poorly drawn silhouettes of curvaceous women, a worm-like thing that was meant to be a dragon, and a large, poorly drawn yet realistic drawing of a smiling baby’s face on his shoulder. His daughter was all grown up now, and as far as I knew she didn’t have a great relationship with her dad.

  “I’m in it to win it, right?” I said, giving him a smirk. “Still wish you could tell me more about who I’m fighting though. ‘Projectile user’ isn’t much to go on.”

  “Ah, yeah, about that…” he said, tossing his shirt and jacket into a locker. “Good news is I have more info for you, bad news is there’s been a change of plan. After it got out Alabaster tried to snuff you, the other gyms in the tournament got real antsy. I’ve never seen so many ex-boxers riled up in one place. Someone even took a swing at Alabaster, you believe that? Ex-boxer or no, Al’s boys ported him out of there faster than he could unclench his fist.”

  “Good.” I said. “I’ve still got a score to settle with Alabastard.”

  “Yeah, well to cut a long story short, Al’s fighter has been barred from fighting. Unanimous vote. We’re skipping straight to the finals.”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “No kidding.”

  “None. Congrats kiddo, you’re a finalist!”

  Something was fishy about this, but I didn’t dwell on it. I wanted to win that thousand gold prize, and now I’m one step closer. I had originally planned on spending it on making a final, completed form of my gauntlets. I had so many ideas limited by budget, and I could only skim so much off Ari’s supplies before Well of Wonders came knocking. Now I’m thinking of giving it all to Ari, to pay her back for her support all these years. She’d never take it, of course. But if I bought her some shiny new tools and materials for the workshop, not to mention a replacement healing potion, that would be much harder to turn down. I know for a fact that she’s been using the same old set of gem cutting tools for about 15 years now.

  “So, who’s my last opponent, then?” I said, kicking off my shoes and heading towards the sand pit.

  “Bit of a weird one. Guy himself is mundane, but his team is exceptional. Every buff under the rainbow woven together so professionally there are practically zero clashes. The stuff he’s packing must have cost quite a price, I’ll tell you that much.”

  “Stinks of corpo.”

  “Eh, maybe. Not sure what they’d want with our lil’ gang of ruffians, though. Corpo execs spend a thousand Gs every time they go out for brunch. But it is weird though - that many enchantments would easily cost more than the prize money. My reasoning is that they’re trying to get their money back then work through other tournaments. Maybe go international.”

  “How are my chances?” I said, hopping down into the sand pit. Coach followed, strapping up his gloves. As he did, various flashes of colour flickered over his body like lightning through a cloud as the enchantment effects activated.

  “A lot better if you’d let me buff ya. But not zero without.”

  “Not zero is good. Let’s see how you rate me after we spar.”

  ---

  Coach gasped for breath, his last enchantment flickering weakly before sputtering out. He slumped back against the concrete wall that surrounded the pit, and slid down it until he was sitting.

  “God damn. You’re a beast, Dee. I don’t know how you doubled your hands so fast, but it’s working for ya. Even buffing my speed and perception didn’t let me block ‘em.” he gasped.

  I was still standing in the same spot I’d started, not needing to take a single step. Having four hands honestly felt a bit unfair - I could attack from two different directions while still keeping my guard up, hold back arms and pummel the torso, even fight a bit dirtier by using a hand to block his vision while I went all in for an attack with three hands. This was starting to look like much more of a workout for Coach than me.

  I had figured out a few valuable things, though. By picturing the telekinetic hands as overlapping the gauntlets, I could reinforce the already considerably durable metal with my kinetic powers while also getting a background awareness of any damage or scratches on the material. Some kind of psychic sense of touch, that was a bit tricky for me to get my head around. I could also carry the gauntlet inside the hand, like a glove wrapping around it, which lets me soften the impact of the hits. Good to know I can control the strength fairly reliably, since I was starting to worry about accidentally punching a hole in someone with the strength of a cannonball.

  It still felt inefficient.

  I was attached to the idea of these gauntlets. They were a lot of my identity. Something I was known for. I even had a few other people visit Ari’s shop who were also missing limbs, and asking for advice on making their own prosthetics. It was something I was proud of. But for this fight, it felt like an unnecessary bit of theater. I could have flattened Coach in an instant with a hundred invisible hands, and it probably wouldn’t have been difficult.

  Still, the gloves had their uses for now. I didn’t want to draw any more attention than I needed. If I rocked up to the final and buried my opponent ten feet in the sand without moving a muscle, it might raise questions I’d rather were not asked. Maybe, just maybe, there was another way to gain a subtle edge.

  “Think I’m gonna call it there for today Coach, get some rest before the fight tomorrow.”

  “Hah! Get some rest from what? You coulda taken a nap during that fight and you know it. I’ll have to up my game if I’m going to find anything else to teach you.”

  “I’ll always have stuff to learn from you, Switch. I’ll use some of the prize money to get you some new buff gloves.”

  “Pssh,” he waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t waste your money on that. Just tell everyone who trained you when you’re the champ, yeah?”

  I smiled, giving him a gloved fist bump. “Deal.”

  I climbed up the iron rung ladder to get out of the pit, then grabbed my bag of apples and coat from my locker. Headed towards the exit, I caught the sight of Switch still in the pit, chuckling quietly to himself while he took off his gloves.

  Another bittersweet thing. I should have been proud of my growth, but Wild Magic almost feels like cheating. I once got so much joy from being able to lift my first prototype glove off the workbench, enjoyed learning new things about boxing from Coach, but now things were coming so easily that there was no joy in succeeding. I could see someone else settling for this kind of effortlessly easy life, but not me. I was someone defined by overcoming the impossible, and now I want to know what summits there are left to climb.