Chapter 13: LEARNING TO FIGHT
[DEO Headquarters, Combat Training Room — October 2016, 6:02 AM]
Alex's fist connected with my jaw before I finished saying good morning.
I stumbled back, more surprised than hurt. The strike had been pulled—human strength, human speed—but the intent behind it was unmistakable.
"Rule one," Alex said, settling into a fighting stance. "Training room, no pleasantries. You're here to learn, not socialize."
"Point taken." I rubbed my jaw, filing away the lesson. "What's rule two?"
She came at me again. A jab, a cross, a hook that I barely blocked. My back protested the sudden movement—still healing from the Kelnarian fight—but the TK field absorbed most of the impact.
"Rule two: I don't hold back. If you can't handle human speed, you can't handle alien threats."
She was fast for a human. Trained, precise, economical in her movements. Every strike had purpose. Every movement flowed into the next. This wasn't bar-fight brawling—this was military-grade combat technique.
I blocked another combination. Stepped back. Tried to find an opening.
"Stop defending," Alex barked. "Hit me."
I hesitated. She swept my legs out from under me. I hit the mat hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs.
"Up. Again."
We reset. She attacked. I blocked, dodged, retreated. Every instinct screamed to protect rather than harm. This was a human—fragile, breakable, someone I could accidentally kill with a careless punch.
"You're pulling your strikes." Alex circled me like a shark. "Why?"
"You're human."
"And you're an idiot if you think that matters in real combat." She feinted left, struck right. I barely deflected. "The things we fight don't care about proportional response. They'll kill you while you're busy worrying about hurting them."
"I could put my fist through your chest."
"Then learn control. But first, learn to actually throw a punch."
She attacked again. This time I tried to counter—a slow, telegraphed jab that a child could have avoided. Alex sidestepped and drove an elbow into my ribs. The already-tender bones from the Kelnarian strike protested loudly.
"Too slow. Too obvious. You're thinking about every movement instead of letting your body work."
"My body's instinct is to not kill the nice lady trying to help me."
Something flickered in Alex's expression—might have been amusement, might have been frustration. She stepped back, changed tactics.
"Punching bag. Over there." She pointed. "Hit it. Full strength."
I moved to the heavy bag. Synthetic materials, reinforced mounting. Standard gym equipment, nothing special.
"You're sure? The last one I hit—"
"Hit. It."
I hit it.
The bag exploded. Sand and synthetic filling erupted outward in a spectacular fountain, coating a ten-foot radius in debris. The mounting hardware groaned but held—barely.
I stared at my fist. The TK field had activated unconsciously, protecting my knuckles from the impact. But the force had been real, devastating, the kind of power that could shatter bone and rupture organs.
"Now," Alex said, brushing sand from her shoulder, "imagine that's someone trying to kill your partner."
The image crystallized. Kara in danger. A threat I could eliminate. The hesitation evaporated.
"Again?" I asked.
"We'll work up to it. But that—" she gestured at the destroyed bag "—that's the energy you need to find in combat. Not rage. Not desperation. Focused intent."
Winn's voice crackled over the intercom. "Uh, do I even want to know what just happened down there? Seismic sensors registered that as a minor impact event."
"Equipment failure," Alex called back. "Standard testing wear."
"Right. 'Standard.' I'll just update the requisition forms for... what is this, the third bag this week?"
"Fourth," I admitted.
Alex almost smiled. Almost. "Let's work on technique. Power you have. Control is the problem."
We spent the next two hours on fundamentals. Stance, guard, basic combinations. Alex moved at human speed, letting me track her movements, learn the patterns. When I blocked, she corrected my form. When I struck, she adjusted my angle.
It was tedious, repetitive, frustrating. My body wanted to move faster, hit harder. But Alex was relentless about precision.
"Combat isn't about overwhelming force," she explained between rounds. "It's about efficiency. The right amount of power applied at the right moment to the right target."
"Like the Kelnarian. The weak spot."
"Exactly. You found it through observation—now imagine if you'd known the technique to exploit it cleanly instead of just throwing yourself at the problem."
By the time we finished, I was covered in sweat and sand residue from the exploded bag. Alex looked barely winded.
"Same time tomorrow," she said. "And don't come expecting mercy. If you can't take hits from a human, you're not ready for anything worse."
"Understood."
She headed for the door, then paused. "The instinct to protect—that's good. But protection sometimes requires violence. You need to find a way to reconcile those things, or you'll hesitate at the worst possible moment."
"How did you reconcile them?"
Alex was quiet for a moment. "I found something worth protecting more than my own moral comfort. The rest followed."
She left.
I grabbed a broom from the supply closet and started sweeping sand. The mundane task helped settle my thoughts. Alex was right—my hesitation was a liability. But she was also wrong about why.
It wasn't just fear of hurting humans. It was the lingering echo of my old life, where violence was something that happened to other people. Where strength meant emotional stability, not the ability to punch through steel. The human instincts didn't map onto Daxamite capabilities.
I needed to build new instincts. Forge new patterns. Become someone who could protect through force without losing himself in the process.
Winn appeared in the doorway, surveying the sand-covered disaster zone. "So. Training going well?"
"Destroyed a punching bag."
"I heard. From my office. On a different floor." He picked up a second broom, started helping with the cleanup. "You know, when I imagined alien training, I pictured more lasers and less... custodial work."
"The glamour is overwhelming."
We worked in companionable silence. The routine was grounding—something normal, something human, in the midst of everything impossible.
"Hey," Winn said eventually. "That thing you did. With the kid, during the Kelnarian attack."
"What about it?"
"That was cool. Scary, but cool." He dumped a dustpan of sand into a bin. "Kara talked about it. She doesn't talk about things unless they matter."
"She talked about me?"
"Don't get weird about it. Just... she noticed. That's not nothing, coming from her."
I absorbed this information. Filed it away. Progress, maybe. One more small step in the right direction.
"Thanks for telling me."
"Sure." Winn grinned. "Now help me fill out the equipment replacement form. J'onn gets cranky when the budget reports don't match the destruction logs."
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