Chapter 312: Resorting to Relaxation

Molly so doesn’t need me to connect her computer gear. She is using me to reach out to do the scans.

When we arrived, multiple people came out to greet the car. Chrissy’s new friend for the next two weeks introduced herself before putting Chrissy in a golf cart and heading to parts unknown. April and my siblings each had a nanny. None of the ones I met were wet nurses. Mom decided to completely wean the babies off breast milk once and for all. It was the best way she thought to do it. Part of the process would be only to give them sippy cups from now on, no more bottles.

None of the others were here yet, so after showing me one of the presidential suites, I had a woman who could make an almost blind old man cum in is his pants on sight, take me around the entire resort. The place was many times larger than I envisioned. My tour was practice for her. She guided me around to see the solar panels, a wind turbine, and one of the dams. I didn’t find going to see the battery rooms all that exciting, and let her know, but did like the control room where it showed all the power generated by each source, the surplus they stored, how much they were using, and how much excess electricity they had. She explained to me how someone suggested how they could use that extra power to pump water from the sewage treatment plant into the test holes drilled back when the developer was digging wells. The ground filtered the water as it eventually drained into the large aquifers the resort and residential areas tapped as sources of water.

We toured each spa, restaurant, pool, shop, and at least one suite at each of the targeted sections of the resort. At the end of the tour, she took me by one of the onsite gyms. My reservation noted that I wanted to work out with free weights. Because I was under eighteen, they had to have their certified trainers check me out before I could lift there. I choose to do it differently than they expected.

A man in a tracksuit went about directing maintenance workers to where he wanted different weight machines placed before bolting then into the concrete. He was getting frustrated by the slow process of removing the weights, partially disassembling the device, moving it, and doing the process in reverse. Seeing tape marking where he wanted a machine to sit, I went over to one of the heaviest ones. It took a minute or two before I found the best place to get a hold on the machine to lift it. Once I was sure that was the optimal spot to use to move it, I picked the machine up, carefully walked it over to where he wanted it, positioned it according to the tape on the floor, and then went to move another.

“Hey. You need to wait for the others to help relocate that machine,” the man in the tracksuit said as I was moving one of the lightest machines in here. “You don’t need to hurt yourself. The resort doesn’t want to lose a good worker injured on the job because of their impatience.”

I got the machine placed as he wanted and then said, “That machine isn’t likely to cause me an injury unless I drop it on my foot. It doesn’t even weigh a quarter of those I already moved. Since I’m not an employee, you have no worries about worker’s comp claims. My tour guide said someone must evaluate me before I’m permitted to lift weights because I am under eighteen. You looked very busy. I decided to move the equipment while I waited to keep me from being bored and reduce the time I had to wait.”

“Huh? What did you say? You moved the equipment by yourself?” he asked. “That isn’t possible. Some machines weight upwards of half a ton.”

I didn’t want to bother arguing. I went to one of the combination machines, found some lift points that let me get it up off the floor enough maneuver it, and moved it to the marked location. A few adjustments got it matching the tape marks exactly.

One of the trainers appeared from somewhere to ask, “How much can you lift, kid? I can’t even push it enough to get part of it to come up off the floor.”

“Dunno. Everywhere I tried to find out an upper limit, I exceeded the maximum weight limit for the bar, or they ran out of weight to add to the bar. I don’t look all that big, but for some reason, I can lift way more than someone my size,” I told them.

Ok, they weren’t convinced and decided it used some tricks to move the machine. I am only a bit bigger than them.

The trainers started me on the bench press with a hundred pounds, and I did that with one hand. I lifted all the weight, to six hundred pounds, with only one arm.

They seem very surprised, but I don’t blame them since I’ve seen pictures of the world record holders that lift around a thousand pounds. I’m not anywhere near that big, but I bet they aren’t anywhere near as fast or flexible as I.

I stopped bench pressing at twelve-hundred pounds even though I knew that was nothing for me. We went through curls, squats, deadlifts, and a range of other ways they used to assess someone’s weight lifting ability. With each type of lifting, I stopped when they started talking about how I was lifting a lot more than they expected. When one of them wanted to know how I worked out to get this strong, without being a walking slab of huge muscles, I cast my phone to the big TV they had on the wall.

“You probably heard about the crash a few years ago shortly after school started back up. My best friends were in that car. Back in elementary and middle school, they watched out for me when I was ignoring everything. I wasn’t going to let them be wherever they took us without having a friend to be there for them. It took them a long time to heal. They spent most of their time sedated, in surgery, drugged with pain meds. A high school guy can only jack off so much before getting bored,” I told them as I played the vides of my starting with the first exoskeleton.

Covered in rubber and hooked to a machine at the time, there was no way they had videos of me in any of the exoskeletons until the final one. That didn’t mean they faked what we saw in the videos. I hadn’t seen these versions, but I liked them. Each clip overlaid colored graphics on the muscle groups with the amount of resistance and conversion to the equivalent pounds of force I needed to overcome to move that muscle group. I watched as the notes on the video indicated each kata I was doing and the time to complete it. For impact, I noted that I was always naked. I got to see my dick grow along with the rest of my body.

Each time I broke parts on an exoskeleton, they had the weight and force required to break it. I liked seeing the speed of the katas increasing until I needed a new exoskeleton suit. Once the clip of me in the final exoskeleton played, it showed how I was exerting forces equivalent to twenty-five hundred pounds. The downside was that I was moving so fast doing the katas that their sensors didn’t have time to get a good reading before I stopped putting force on that part of the exoskeleton suit. I was juggling twenty-pound barbells when they turned away from the video.

“I can’t exactly go out there to compete in weight lifting without getting the attention of the wrong people who want to study me, via dissection, to see why I don’t look like the Hulk,” I explained. “I’ve been so focused on finding out my limits that I never thought how much attention it would draw. Do you happen to have a Dojo somewhere at the resort? I could use a bit of sparring practice and evaluation of my form.”

One of the female trainers commented, “Now we have the answer to why we have Chinese, Japanese, and Korean grandmasters at the resort to evaluate the martial arts instructors being in the various disciplines. It looks like either David or they are going to be training dummies. Follow me. I will show you to the dojo where they are testing to prove they have met the requirements for each degree of black belt in the disciplines they claim to have.”

I found a group of forty-five men and women in the large dojo. Sets of them were off testing while the others replenished their fluids, stretched, and patiently waited to show their mastery of a discipline. My shorts and shirt were loose enough that I didn’t have to worry about ripping them. I took off my shoes and put my things in one of the lockers.

No one is going to mess with anyone’s possessions and risk getting their asses kicked.

Once the group testing finished, I was curious to see which style and discipline to test next. I never got the chance. One of the grandmasters noticed me and waved me over.

As he bowed to me, he said, “David San. It is a great honor to be in your presence. While visiting a remote town in Japan, a family gifted me with an exquisite and unique Katana. It bears the marks of a Toledo swordsmith and that of a Japanese swordsmith who trained under world-renowned master swordsmiths whose families have made swords back before the middle ages. It bears this swordsmiths signature along with those of the masters under which he trained. The master swordsmiths granddaughter Hinata explained that their artisans only detailed the designed the swordsmith made with his own hands. It also bears my name. Other grandmasters find themselves unable to comprehend why I still train, spar, and compete with it. To them, my sword is something that belongs in a place of honor in my dojo or a museum. Few have heard Hinata speak. She honored me by telling me my sword is to be used, not displayed. My sword breaks all others against which it strikes. Only the trained eye of a swordsmith can find the tiny indentions of contact with another, inferior sword. I made a promise that should our paths ever cross that I tell you that Hinata misses your company.”

“Hinata? She who is a fierce fighter, an almost master swordsmith, and who desires the touch of only one man upon this Earth?” the Chinese grandmaster asked.

“It is she, Grandmaster Lee,” the Japanese grandmaster told him.

“She summoned me to their family’s workshop to also present me with such a masterpiece of traditional Japanese swordsmithing,” the Korean Grandmaster explained.

The Chinese grandmaster also received a sword made by me. I didn’t remember making their swords. I knew not to question if Hinata’s grandfather went to the trouble of taking each to Alex to have her sign it as well.

“What brings you here today, David san,” the Japanese grandmaster asked.

I explained that it had been a while since I had some mat time. When I heard we had grandmasters here, I wanted to see if they could evaluate my form on the katas for various martial arts that I knew. There were some poorly hidden chuckles from the various high degree black-belt and masters here testing to prove they earned their current rank.

The Chinese grandmaster said, loudly, “A proper test of skills a competition gives. Lessons remained unlearned.”

That is how I ended up getting mat time, at least a bit. Those below master lined up opposite of me. We bowed, and then they worked in groups to try to show that I was below their skill. None managed to do more than have their kick or strike blocked before they were on the matt. I didn’t cause any permanent damage, but they would not do any more testing today. Quickly taking down those who were to prove their skill by sparing with me amused the masters watching the competition, at least until the grandmasters told the masters it was their turn. All were much faster, conserved their energy, and only tried to attack me when they felt sure they were going to be successful. None were, though I did have to block their attacks more than with the non-masters.

The Japanese grandmaster knew of my skill, but that didn’t mean he and the other two grandmasters didn’t wish to try their skills against me. I didn’t want to cause any of them an injury, or even hurt them at all, but them not having some soreness would be dishonoring them. How easily I defeated the grandmasters, with all three on the offensive at the same time, clearly earned me the respect of everyone in the room.

Once the grandmasters had time to rehydrate, they asked if I still wanted them to evaluate my various katas. I did.

Damn! I thought needing to hold back and make mistakes was hard. Doing katas slow enough for them to be able to see each step was excruciating.

I had no form issues that they could find on any style they had mastered. I didn’t count the number of other katas I did at full speed, only that I chose those having the most acrobatic moves. It made sense to demonstrate that someone with my muscles could also be extremely agile and graceful.

“Master,” the Korean grandmaster used to address me. “You are a man who is the master of many skills. Few men obtain a mastery of a portion of the martial arts that you’ve mastered in your life. I have dishonored you by misjudging your mastery by evaluating your youthful appearance.”

We bowed, and I then told him, “You have not dishonored me, Sensei. I appear young because I am. My seventeenth birthday was last week. I am fortunate to have been a lab rat for a company that designed an exoskeleton to aid the recovery of those with traumatic brain injuries. The program included a proprietary visual feedback system that guided me through katas, repeatedly, as I fought the resistance of the exoskeleton to do the katas faster, as well as correctly. Being in the right stage of puberty allowed me to build muscle quickly as I grew. I can’t even tell you the ingredients of the various shakes I drank whenever I finished a kata or the hours that passed since the last one. I’m pretty sure it was all-natural from how my body seemed to absorb nearly all of it. The system did wonders for keeping up with my studies as well. When I find I can move so quickly and demonstrate my mastery of different disciplines, I feel that I have cheated somehow. Grandmasters spend lifetimes practicing and mastering their skills. I learned nearly everything in less than a year.”

“Becoming a grandmaster in any martial art cannot be cheated,” the Japanese grandmaster said. “Hinata began training shortly after learning to walk. I find that she is a challenging sparring partner one on one. Her grandfather explained his method of testing your skills. That level of skill requires muscle memory and incredibly fast reflexes to pass.”

That is interesting. Hinata is good, but enough to keep a grandmaster challenged?

I excused myself to go for a run. Before I made it out of the dojo, some men and women asked if they could run with me. The women ducked into the changing room to return wearing shorts and their sweat-soaked sports bras. Each man had on a jockstrap without a cup and a t-shirt or tank. Already stretched and warmed up from the dojo, they guided me out to the start of one of many running trails. The one they chose was perfect for them because it had one-mile, two-mile, and five-mile courses that peeled off for those who couldn’t run that far or wanted to do smaller circuits. The best part is that they had plenty of places to get water and bathrooms that required a key-card to enter. The bathrooms had a design that caused them to lock down if someone pressed a button as they tried to escape a would-be attacker.

Anyone trying to attack someone on the running tracks is likely to get shot or beaten to hell.

I let them set the pace as I ran in the middle of the pack. As we ran, people peeled off to the shorter tracks. When we stopped for water at the stop just past the path for the two-mile route, the others with me asked if I could keep up if they kicked it up a notch. I commented that I hadn’t even broken a sweat yet, so I was ok if they were. Much like when I was at the college running with the girl chaperoning me, their fast pace wasn’t all that fast to me. We had three women and two men remaining when we took a water break before doing another five miles. At halfway around this lap, they all wanted to take a break. A path led off around the bathrooms into some trees. A few of the group quickly used the bathroom while the rest of us drank water to wait for them. A short walk through the trees led us to an outdoor seating area with fire pits, chairs, and couches.