-A Battle, Returned To-
Had Christopher been fighting something actually nasty, Exquisite Corpse was basically meant to be swinging around a food processor, a cutting, grinding storm meant to find holes in guards and turn meat into ground meat and bonemeal. As it was, the blade just poked and hooked the girls, but even these small strikes affected their attacks enough that Christopher was now completely stonewalling them.
“Oh no!”
“Vimmy, switch!” Venny barked, changing her angle of attack to come at Christopher’s front. Her Radiance didn’t quite groan, but it did jerk her hard to the right so she could shift to that direction. She wasn’t charging her punches up or bringing out her own claws, but she did try to batter through the shards and the floating blade to make her way forward while Vimmy had swung herself behind him and to his left. It still left her having to deal with problems of her own, but as it was a matter of finding the right track to follow…
Venny’s blows were turned aside right as Vimmy closed in, having to lower her head to take a piece of ‘glass’ to the horns, but Venny kept up the pressure, not stopping in one place to fight back and consistently repositioning herself and punching or kicking as she did; It robbed her of some degree of power, but it helped her to avoid some of Christopher’s return redirected strikes and challenge the floating blade even as she took chip damage to her front and face.
Vimmy had closed in right into the path of more floating glass, but she’d expected it, and one of her two drones had trailed after her before she directed it to intercept bodily. Metal made a thin sound as it was impaled and cut, but she’d drawn as much of the hazard to it as she could before taking advantage and throwing a punch that saw her leave the ground this time. Her teeth were bared like Venny’s had been, although she didn’t realize it, too caught up in doing the best she could in a desperate struggle.
Venny had found herself losing the exchange, but splitting Christopher’s focus was the ideal way forward, and so she took her lumps to keep Vimmy’s path as open as she could. And it paid dividends, as Vimmy managed a flipping kick in the vein of a crazy haired blonde American street fighter, the impact knocking Christopher backwards, his feet dragging along the grassy ground…before his left ankle caught a knot and he tripped, partially falling down.
The two zeroed in on him nigh instantly, as they both tried a gravity ‘smash’ and to use their tails to get each of his arms, pinning him down so they could potentially fire off more gravity and…
Christopher didn’t do any motion this time. The ground simply exploded, spewing out black, choking smoke…from six or so spots, the dragons plunging into them and immediately losing their target.
“...Vimmy, no!” Venny had done an immediate hard upward flight snap turn to get out of the smoke. Vimmy’s instinct had been to stay on the ground and go horizontal instead of vertical. She also cleared the smoke, only to find Cull, back to its ‘core’ flying out of the smoke at her.
So she tried to think outside the box and, instead of just dodging, grabbed at the blade as it flew past. If she could plant IT in the ground with gravity…
Not a bad idea. She just underestimated how much momentum the blade still had.
And the fact that her hand stuck to the sword like a magnet as soon as she grabbed onto it, pulling her along for the ride.
“ACK!”
The sword zipped and jerked around, Vimmy along for the ride, trying to get her hand to stop holding the blade. It burned hot in her grip, semi painful but not slicing or actually burning her hand. A small comfort…and she swiftly had other issues, as it yanked her to the treeline…and the tree opened.
The sword left Vimmy’s hand as the metal wire net was fired out, wrapping around Vimmy before the weights at the end plunged into the ground. Once more, Vimmy could sense that she was being subjected to a very blunted attack. Had she been flesh and blood, and an actual danger, her readings told her, this wire would have been the type to cut to the bone. Instead, it just restrained her on the ground, as she struggled to cut her way free. The metal had to be weakened so it didn’t do her actual harm, she could do this-!
Then Cull came in, flipped over, and bonked her upside the head with its hilt. Ow.
“-Vimmy!” Venny was too late with her warning. She’d flown down low to try and help…
Then snap-turned herself, her hands grabbing Christopher’s wrist as he came in from around the smoke and lanced at her like a thrown spear, stopping his metal fist half a foot from impact, somehow, barely, even though her systems SCREAMED to blunt the force she’d just managed to intercept and stop.
“VERY good.” Christopher said.
He might have reconsidered the praise when Venny opened her mouth and exhaled a cone of white flame directly into his face.
Christopher both recoiled and was shoved backwards by the strike, coming to a stop fifteen or so feet away, the man slapping at his smoking face.
Scorched metal was now visible, the false skin and flesh that Christopher worn to hide his mechanical right eye and the part of the skull his cybernetics had replaced burned away. Venny saw the eye spin and narrow, a deep blue glow in the now exposed robotic eye.
“...ouch.” Christopher said.
Venny ducked as Cull came at her from behind.
Which let the Leowolf leap in from the side and firmly head butt her, sending her for a tumble. Vimmy, still trying to escape, found her own Leowolf friends…who began zapping her with mild electrical shocks, more stunning than painful.
“Battlefields are not fair! Battlefields are chaos! This is part of the lesson, young ladies!” Christopher said, his hand reclaiming his sword. Ie, the man had begun ‘cheating’. He’d rigged the area with traps, and the Leowolves were helping him now.
How well can you respond, girls?
---
-One Morning at around 3:30 AM-
“GIRLS! UP! UP! WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!”
If the door violently slamming open into their room hadn’t roused the sleeping Castle girls, the loud commanding yell sure as heck would.
“GO GO COME ON! WITH ME!”
“GWAH!” Vimmy squawked as she jumped out of bed, wingblades spreading as she whipped around without her bearings, trying to see the whole room at once. Venny had sat up and then immediately stood, wiping her face with her hand as her Radiance activated behind her. Vimmy took a few steps toward her and then toward Christopher, dithering while Venny nodded to herself and ran a check to make sure her systems were fully ready. She felt like her mind had slipped a gear, but she tried to focus on the important matter at hand at full speed anyway. Even though bare seconds had passed it felt like minutes.
“What’s happening? Who is it?” Vimmy asked, missing a step but hurrying to catch up while Venny grabbed her wrist and brought her next to her to form up. “Come on, no time!” She said, tail lashing and still sort of fuzzy. Vimmy yawned and then whipped her head side to side to clear it, the both of them trying to go from zero to wakefulness as fast as they could.
“DOWN THE STAIRS! OUTSIDE! GET IN THE AIR WE NEED RECON NOW!” The emergency lights shone their dull red, Christopher’s form vanishing down the stairs and out of the girls’ sight, though there was a sound of another door slamming open.
“Understood! We’re going now!” Vimmy called to his back, both the girls running out of their room and tense. Their shoulders were up high as they headed toward the lower level, Venny’s heart pounding loud enough she felt like she could hear it. She’d have never imagined the house in the woods coming under attack, from anyone, but it was happening and they needed to defend their home and their family. That was what mattered, the two jumping from the top landing and hitting the floor to skip the stairs entirely. The noise had been the front door being kicked open, and the two were out it and in the air within two seconds, trying to synchronize their vision modes and assess the best height.
Where was the danger?
WHERE?
In their haste they almost missed the whistle from down below somewhere, Vimmy baring her teeth in worry over what was happening as they paused and looked toward the source of the sound.
“What was that?”
“Does it matter?” Venny returned, refocusing. A reticle had superimposed itself over her vision, searching for movement and heat signatures to focus on.
“It might!”
The whistle came again, louder this time.
“That’s time, girls.” The voice reached them from below…as the girls realized there was a lot of silence for this attack. And a lot of darkness: it was a night of deep clouds that blocked the moon, and there was no extra light from any sort of fire, explosion, or anything in that vein.
They took a few more seconds to look around. No heat signatures save two, and they knew them, as they headed down to where Celeste was standing with a stopwatch.
“26 seconds. Not a RECORD, but good.”
“Sorry girls. I lied. There’s no attack. I decided to see how well you’d handle being suddenly jolted out of sleep for a crisis. The answer is, pretty good.” Christopher turned on a flashlight, while the red emergency lights in the house turned off and the normal lights went back on. “You kept your heads enough to also note the concluding whistle. Now, you would have done better if you’d paused to ask questions, but that’s making the perfect the enemy of the good. If we WERE under attack and you picked this response, I wouldn’t complain.”
A burst of wind reminded the girls that it was early winter, there was snow on the ground, and they were in their equivalent of night clothes.
“Really?” Celeste was addressing the wind, it seemed. “Come on girls. Back inside. We’ll brew up something to relax you and warm you back up so you can calm down the adrenaline and get back to sleep.”
“...Wha- The- huh?” Venny blinked, feeling like her thoughts were moving too slow. Hanging just above the ground before setting down on it, she looked around again and then opened her mouth before closing it. Vimmy was staring at Celeste before she also blinked, after a few more seconds slotting in that there wasn’t any actual danger. She’d been very keyed up and sharp, and it took her a few moments to switch gears from being combat ready.
“Oh, my gosh… Whooo.” She put her hand on her forehead. “So, we- We did good, right?”
“26 seconds isn’t bad, I don’t think. Could be better, but could be worse.” Venny seized on, before she hugged herself. The cold hadn’t bothered her until it did… “That was- I believed it.”
Vimmy narrowed her eyes and grumbled, not so much words as just grumpy sounds, and it got Venny at least to laugh a little. She put her arm around her sister and led her back inside, Vimmy’s wings sliding closed again across her back.
A roaring fire, blankets, and the drink, which tasted low-key sweet, was good for getting rid of the chill, in both cold and mood.
“Now…I’ll let you know. I’ll never do that again. That is, kick in the door and yell ATTACK unless, well, there’s an attack. And I choose to do that. So you don’t have to worry that I’ll pull this stunt again.” Venny’s rapid exit had resulted in her tail gouging a chunk out of the wall at the top of the stairs, and Christopher was repairing it.
“Key word: THAT.”
“Yes…I might kick in your door and yell you awake, but that would be more general practice for the harsher side of this life. Better to have practiced it some and never need it than otherwise.”
“Yes, we did this with our children. Only when they were nearly adults though.” Celeste said.
“And they didn’t say there was an attack.” Patricia wandered in from the kitchen, holding a massive mug of some kind of fizzing liquid.
“Because you’d know we were lying.”
“Reading.” Patty clarified. “We’d do it automatically if we got roused like that, to get a…read on what was happening. Mother and father can block us, but THAT would just be another sign that it was fake: why would they be blocking us at a time like that?”
“Though…how do you feel, girls? When you were woken up, in the sky before we called it off, and now? Your bodies might have some differences that we should note.”
Bundled up and just sort of watching, both the dragons looked at each other as Vimmy two handed her cup to her mouth, communicating silently with their eyebrows and small expressions. Venny was the first to reply. “Uh… I’m sorry about that spot on the wall, when we’re excited our tails get all- well, you can see it for yourselves. Anyway, when we first woke up we were pretty confused, I think. Surprised and all that, mostly just because we were going from asleep to on our feet in a moment.”
“Hey, Patty. Well, I’d agree with that. Our cybernetics are always on, but when we sleep or stuff like that they’re at a low power or a resting state. So it was pretty much like anybody going from eyes shut and deep sleep to being woken up like that and right into a situation, just, we were both feeling pretty slow and dumb.” Vimmy acknowledged, mirroring when Venny had wiped her face with her hand earlier.
“Flying wise, by the time we were outside we were ready to go. We both were mostly afraid someone actually was attacking and that we had to do everything we could to fight them off, and I don’t think either of us even felt the wind. We were too intent, just, totally focussed on taking our places in the air so we could do our part.” Venny said, Vimmy nodding. “Yeah, our systems were running at the standard rate, all our subsystems too. They don’t take long to boot up once we get them going, it’s- Well, for situations like being attacked while we’re sleeping and things like that. Otherwise we might break a bed or something from tossing around on it.”
“We’re fine now, it’s not a big deal or anything.” Venny shrugged. “From the readouts, our heart rate and that sort of thing has totally calmed down, we’re not screaming right into combat anymore so there’s no need for our strength to be multiplied and all that. I don’t think Vimmy is quite the same, but I have to turn some of mine on mentally along with my Radiance, so it’s sort of like flipping a switch with my thoughts.”
“I’m pretty close even without your mental mind machine. NOW I’m fine, but if I had to go back to 100% I could do it pretty quickly. I guess it’s like anything, though, if I know something’s coming it’s going to be easier for me to get there than if I’m surprised.” Vimmy admitted, before she sighed. “Mostly I was just worried and frantic. I was thinking, who’d be dumb enough to attack here? But then I remembered there are plenty of dumb people everywhere.”
“Well, still. I guess you could say our motors are running but no one has a foot on the throttle. We’re fine.” Venny said, briefly bowing her head.
“Reminds me.” Christopher said, heading down the stairs. “I might take them to see Chalice.”
“Chalice is mostly a doctor, why?” Celeste said.
“She’s in a partnership with a Hemel trio. I want her to take a look at the simulations of muscles and bones the girls gave. See if there’s something we don’t know, or missed, or the girls could discover by themselves.”
“You’re right, by the way, Vimmy. No one has ever been dumb enough to attack here.” Patty said.
The family settled down, speaking on more casual things, Patty turning back in first. The dragon girls found the drink was quite effective, their shock fully supplanted by their further desire for sleep.
“She’s not wholly correct.” Celeste said, having seen the girls back to bed. “She’s right that no one ever attacked here…while she’s been alive. Otherwise…there was that incident with the battle giants that first introduced us to the Kobbers. That was just a misunderstanding though.
“And there were others. Before our children.
“They did not succeed.”
Celeste did not elaborate on that. The girls suspected they wouldn’t have liked the details.
---
-Another Day Under The House-
“Today’s very basic. No combat or danger stuff. Do either of you have any experience with gardening?” Christopher said.
“Who, us? No, not at all. It’s never been something we’ve tried our hands at.” Venny shook her head and then glanced at her sister. “Vimmy, do you-”
“No, I’ve never grown anything either unless you count weeds outside our old house. But they do what they want without any help.” She said, blinking. “We haven’t tried before.”
“What I expected.” Christopher produced two bags. “These are basic yellow bean seeds. And in this particular room…”
A makeshift greenhouse/garden. Well, basically a garden: it was hard to have a greenhouse without natural sun, but the room had been set up to simulate what was needed when it came to light. Two long rows of soil set into the floor, along with a table that held books, bags of other materials, and gardening tools.
“Is your field. The task is simple. Grow your seeds. That’s it. I put the day aside because you’ll probably want to do some reading and the actual planting. Obviously this will take weeks to show results. The clock is very long, anyway. Now, when I did this with my children, I also showed them how to plant, but I think you’re old enough and mature enough to be able to learn the process from these materials. I will be down the hall in Room 4-L if there is some issue. Happy harvests, girls.”
“Thank you- understood!” Venny said, bowing her head.
“We’ll get right on it!” Vimmy promised, the two looking at the seeds and then making their way to the books to find out what to do. While they thought they knew the rough basics- dig a hole, put the seeds in, and take care of them while waiting- they weren’t going to give it any less than their best efforts, and that meant actually learning the particulars. Sitting across from each other, Vimmy and Venny had quietly busied themselves in just that, one occasionally talking to break the silence and the other either nodding or shaking their head as they replied. When they were ready to finally initially plant the seeds after an hour or two, they’d done exactly as the books suggested, including tilling the soil with the tools provided. It was sort of fun, their expectations manageable but both quietly happy just for the work itself.
In the days after they kept to it, either together or on their own, both of them knowing there was no real way to hurry the process up and along but still committed to doing the best job they could. Christopher had wanted them to grow their gardens, and that was exactly what they’d do come hell or high water. Venny had to restrain herself from adjusting or fine tuning things frequently, knowing if she tried for perfection she’d just make a mess, while Vimmy eventually had taken to first making sure she was alone and then quietly talking to the seeds under the ground. She didn’t want the family to think she was weird, but she knew mostly all plants took in carbon dioxide to breath, so maybe it would help…
Days passed, and then weeks, the dragons going down to the room at least once a day but usually more often to water the soil or check on the plants’ progress. As time had gone on Venny had relaxed a little over the project, not as worried at the start as she had been. The only thing to really do was trust that nature would take it’s course, and accept she couldn’t force the seeds to grow any faster… Vimmy likewise had relaxed, going back to just enjoying having something she was responsible for doing and making sure it was doing well.
Vimmy’s were the first to finally sprout, the very small stalks poking just out of the soil before they’d continue to grow upward; Venny had expected hers to follow suit, although she was surprised that none of her plants had shown themselves yet. It didn’t bother her at first, but as time had gone on Vimmy’s plants had straightened and grown very small leaves while her row of soil was still barren. Venny took it on the chin because she knew they weren’t competing, not really- she just assumed she’d done something wrong or her seeds were still catching up. Maybe she’d overwatered them, or planted them an inch or two too deep?
She started to spend more time down in the makeshift greenhouse in between her days and her nights, reading through the books and then re-reading through them to figure out what she either hadn’t done or had messed up; There had to be a reason, especially once she’d gotten
concerned enough to dig one of the seeds out of the ground to see it hadn’t even sprouted. Not sure what exactly the problem was, she’d tried again, tilling the soil again and digging little mounds with a dip in the center so water could collect while it drained downward.
It hadn’t helped. As Vimmy’s plants had started to get knee high, Venny’s had remained just little seeds. It irritated her to be failing at something she didn’t have all that much control over, especially since she was putting in all the work and the only thing the dumb seeds had to do was what they were made to do- they just refused to cooperate. She kept it buried deep, because she didn’t want to be seen as sore over it, but it was still there. Coming off as second best wasn’t the source of it, she just hated to fail at something that should’ve been simple.
Vimmy had joked around at first about being the gardener in the family, but she’d picked up on how Venny felt eventually and offered to help however she could. Getting a little desperate, Venny had accepted it, leading to her doing the same thing Vimmy had; Making sure she was alone, and then leaning down to talk to the seeds, thinking it was ridiculous but unable to deny the proof that it maybe did work a little since it was right in front of her.
Still, her plants weren’t growing. She tried everything she could think of, planting them again, changing up the order, digging some shallower than others, and different water levels… all to no avail. Once Vimmy’s had begun to grow actual beans on their branches she’d narrowed her eyes and dug up one of her seeds before washing it clean, putting it on the table, and opening it up with her fingertips… Only to see that it was brown and black inside, dead.
Feeling pretty stupid, she’d paused once she was holding it in her hand to turn around and stare at her barren row. They couldn’t have all been dead, that would have been- She considered this a little more after the thought had entered her mind, knowing it was very unlikely but not impossible. Seeds had to have a lifespan like anything else alive, if they didn’t grow then the only thing left for them to do was die… Digging up another two, she once again washed them and then opened them up to check, only to see the same sort of black and brown on the inside.
Venny slumped a little on the stool and made a face at them. Unfortunately there was no way to read the situation other than she’d somehow killed her crop before it had even started to go. Maybe she’d overwatered them on the first day, or there had been something on her hands that had leached into the soil when she planted them the first time. Even if it was low stakes, the stakes had been important to her, and she didn’t like that she’d blew it. It sat ill with her.
Checking each of the seeds, hoping maybe she was wrong, once they were all open in front of her she put her hands on her hips and bit back the urge to talk to them again in a much less pleasant way. They were all dead, they couldn’t care about her opinion of them.
It took her some more time to suck it up; able to get past how she felt over things once she’d thought through them, trying to let go of the irritation she’d had toward the seeds, she was able to narrow it down to either overwatering them and letting the seeds get moldy or just planting them a hair too deep for them to sprout in the first place, those were the likely culprits. She’d squared herself for the hard part. It wasn’t exactly going to break Christopher’s view of her, she knew that- but what should have been easy had turned into a struggle, and she’d failed to get even one plant out of the mess. Venny sighed to herself and looked down, folding her hands and alone.
But eventually she’d resolved herself, gotten up, and went off to find him and ask for more seeds to try again. There was no way this would happen twice in a row, the odds were way too long… Or so she hoped, anyway.
“So the seeds didn’t grow at all.”
“No, sir.”
“Well…I would have been quite surprised if they had. I boiled those seeds before I gave them to you.”
…what? Venny had mouthed, looking like she’d run headfirst into a wall.
“Vimmy’s seeds were normal. It was to teach something else, namely, to see how you’d react when hers grew and yours didn’t, what you’d do to try and handle the problem, and how long before you came to me. And since you’re going too far down the path of self-blame, I’m telling you this up front. You did consider many possibilities, and the fact that none of them included damaging or swiping something from your sister’s plants is good. I know, I know, you’re probably outraged that I’d even THINK that…but frustration and pain breed thoughts that are utterly against us. It’s best to see them and feel them, know that they’re there, so you can handle them. The last lesson, though, is what you didn’t consider. Namely, that I tampered with the seeds. I mean, thank you for thinking so well of me, it is not remotely a failure…but there’s a saying about when you hear hoofprints, you should think of horses, not zebras. It’s much more likely to make the mental mistake of wanting the hoofprints to be ‘zebras’ because that makes it seem more special and interesting, but those who are smarter, well, a real nasty trick that can come along is that you go too far the other way. That you NEVER consider anything but horses. To learn if and when to consider it might be a zebra is a hard thing to learn, and it’s something that rarely comes up in this life, but if it does…it’s often tied to very, very big things. And it’s little things like THAT that can make all the difference in spotting them.
“My life…it’s all because, just once, it was a ‘zebra’. I never want anyone I know to be as hopelessly trapped by that fact as I was. Hence, this lesson. I will at least TRY to plant THAT seed in your mind.
“One last thing. Go get Vimmy and come with me.”
Christopher led the two, once Vimmy had gotten the story, to another room in the below that was normally locked. Inside, among other things, was another plot of land, with its own growing yellow beans.
“I kept an eye on what you were doing, Venny. I replicated it on this plot, up until you started uprooting parts of your rigged field to try and puzzle out what was going on. So, as you can see, you did nothing wrong when it comes to actual gardening. Now that you’ve found that out, this is your plot now. Sorry that it means you and your sister have to go to separate rooms, but I’m sure after all the mental headache over my test, that will seem positively easy.
“Also, you grow plants better than I do. It took me four or five attempts to get anywhere growing my own produce back when I first was having this place built. I thought, how hard could it be? The reason I provided all those tools is because I learned THAT lesson firsthand.”
“I…” Venny had started, having gone through a rollercoaster of emotions. The thing she kept coming back to was that it was a lesson she’d needed to learn. A lot of their lives’ ills were exactly because of what she hadn’t considered from her superiors in the past, or their reasoning for ordering her to do what she’d done; Sore or not, it was an effective reminder that sometimes hoofbeats were just horses… except when they were zebras instead. The real trick was knowing the difference.
“I think I can live with separate plots… Thank you. I’d just about driven myself up a wall, wondering if I was- I’d probably still be trying to grow them even now.” She admitted, putting a hand on the back of her head.
“Let me know if you need any help.” Vimmy offered, looking up to her. Venny was able to smile back. “Yeah, this time I will.”
---
-After a night of unexpected pain-
Left with the need to make adjustments to the ‘shackles’, and not wanting to just cut off what training had started, Christopher made a judgment call and kept the training going with both the girls ‘as normal’, replacing the wood they’d practiced on with block-lengths of very thick, dense ice summoned up by Leowolf spellwork. As hard as bedrock, it proved an effective ‘upgrade’, and Christopher kept the practice going, letting the girls use their natural strength, but making sure they only had the fingerlength to strike.
In some ways, seeing and feeling the difference between their cybernetically boosted strength and what a fully normal arm felt like had galvanized both the dragons; They hadn’t quite taken it for granted, but it had been brought home to them that what they had was a significant advantage they weren’t going to let go to waste. Living with it every day and growing used to machine assisted power had made them a little blind to it, so when they returned to the punches they didn’t slacken at all.
While either could have used their systems to line up blows or assist them further, they made sure to keep going on their own steam instead. The tiny distance of the punches themselves were what they focussed on over the days, not letting themselves slacken or distract from the economy of the motion. It wasn’t just the power they could pack into the punches, it was the surety of the process, and they kept that in mind as they kept at it.
Stronger than her sister by almost default, Venny had narrowed her eyes as she punched the ice, hitting it hard and then resetting easily once she’d fully grasped the movement from fingertips touching the surface. No matter how much power she could pack into her blows, now that she understood the difference of what she’d been given she made sure to continue trying to improve, not just do the same thing over and over. Perfect was the enemy of good, but she still wanted to get as close as she could.
Vimmy hadn’t been prepared for the aftermath of their first series of punches at all, despite being more familiar with a human level of strength having almost forgotten what real aches and pains that were bone deep were like. She wasn’t ashamed, but she did feel as though she had something to prove even if only to herself now, keeping the blows coming and making sure not to hesitate or waste time by lingering before punching. She was very intent, privately grateful Celeste hadn’t made a big deal about her arm. She’d tried to keep from making a fuss, but the pain had proven a little more than she could stand, and that helped fuel her desire to crack through the ice. She wasn’t a baby, she could do it if she worked hard enough…
Tails flat but occasionally twitching as they went at the blocks of ice, the pair silently communicated in between punches, both assessing the other’s efforts and encouraging one another without saying anything through the process. Neither would let the other one stop first, and as they hit the ice again and again they were quietly focussed on doing their best once more.
It took them time, and they went to it every day, but after around two weeks or so the small cracks that developed into deep cracks groaned as they delivered their blows, Venny the first between the two to finally drive her fist the small distance and go through a block. She blinked, startled at what had happened before taking a deep breath and wiping her hand on her shirt before grinning. Seeing it happen, Vimmy had redoubled her efforts to catch up until she realized she was getting slipshod with her own blows and made sure to do them right.
“...That was a lot harder than other things I’ve punched. A car’s engine used to be my go to training dummy, but this makes that look like a pillow tied to a pole.” She said, raising her eyebrows.
“Yeah, no kidding. I think we both got used to hitting so hard we forgot how to hit the right way.” Vimmy opined in between punches. “...Or maybe that’s just me.”
“Keep going! You’ve almost got it.” Venny said, giving her a thumb’s up.
“Oh, I’m going to, you can bet on that!” Vimmy promised, able to smile even if she was a little disappointed in not being first to break through.
It was proving even more difficult two days later, when she still wasn’t getting through. Oh, she’d end up with a severely cracked block each time, but Venny had managed to actually do the strike well enough that she’d broken through, and had been given a thicker block to resume her efforts. Though she tried not to, Vimmy felt the faint scratchings of ‘I am failing’, which refused to go away no matter how much she re-assured herself.
On the fourth day after Venny’s first break, Christopher called her away to attend to something else, leaving Vimmy alone. Well, until Celeste joined her, overseeing the leowolves freezing up her latest block. Vimmy went back to work.
As the minutes ticked by, she tried to keep the irrational sense of failure down. Bad enough she hadn’t done it yet, but with her mother here watching…
“Let me tell you a story, Vimmy.” Celeste said. She didn’t need the Read to know.
“Okay. Keep punching?”
“Yes.” So Vimmy did.
“Once upon a time…there was a king, who heard of a wise man. So he brought the wise man before him, and asked the wise man…how many seconds are there in eternity?”
Punch. Punch.
“The wise man thought on it, and said…there is a mountain made of pure diamond.”
Punch. Punch. Punch.
“It takes an hour to climb over it, and an hour to walk around it.”
Punch punch punch.
“And every hundred years, a bird comes, and sharpens its beak on the top of the mountain.”
CRACK.
“And so the wise man said, when the mountain is worn away to nothing…the first second of eternity will have passed.”
SMASH!
“Some people would say that’s a really long time. Me…
“...I’d agree with them.”
The ice block cracked in twain. Not QUITE as impressive as punching a hole straight through it, as it suggested there were a few weaker areas, but deadlifting 300 pounds was still pretty impressive even if your peer could do 350.
“Whoa!” Vimmy gasped, eyes widening. Only now did she really, truly feel the aftereffects: How hard her heart was pumping, the way her arm shook slightly even when she opened her hand from the fist it had been. It underlined the moment for her in ways that made it that much more worth it. “...Me too. There’s time, there’s a long time, and then there’s eternity. It’s not even the same league…”
She circled the block, craning closer to squint at the break itself as she shimmied in place. Even though she’d done her best not to listen to her private thoughts or let them bring her down, it was a bit of a contrast between them, that she was very strong while Venny was enormously so… but she’d done it, successfully, on her own, and that made those same thoughts seem that much smaller and less important to her on retrospect.
“You saw that, right? How I did that? What am I saying, of course you did… But, I get it. It’s not so much about the size of the mountain as it is the persistence of the bird, right?” She asked happily, putting her hands on her hips and looking from the block to Celeste and then back. It wasn’t entirely out of pride, she was just cheered by finally being successful. “It took time, but I’m glad for the time it took, if that makes sense. That just meant I got it down pat instead, if it had been easy it wouldn’t mean as much.”
“...I was maybe a little worried, but I’ve got a lot to live up to between Venny and… All of you. I wasn’t going to give up no matter what!” She was able to admit, in a similar way as Venny looking down at her hand and smiling before she shimmied again.
“That’s all we ask.”
-A few days later-
“Annoying what different contexts will do for asking, isn’t it?”
The ‘shackles’ had been returned, all the kinks ironed out, and the two dragon girls had resumed ‘basic’ training on wood beams. And once again, their arms were floppy and their fingers were not working so good, ice placed on both their arms.
“If it makes you feel any better, you were taxing the Leowolves’ efforts to make proper strong ice blocks without the shackles. So what you two broke through, it was something.”
And that night, there was no awakening to utter burning agony.
Just a simulated soreness, that the girls had to work out.
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