Chapter 360: Time to Exercise

I see that look and know it well. You will see I’m not full of shit. Didn’t you get the briefing on what I did to get April back?

“April sleeps through the night, but if she wakes up, she may crawl into bed with us. I have no idea when I will finish sparring tonight. It has been a while, and I do enjoy it when the time permits to have someone with the skills,” I told Winter as I put April on the bottom bunk in our quarters.

I changed and began to head down to the part of the ship where I would spar. Carla grabbed me to help her get the improvised bra off. I overdid it a bit on the spirit gum.

When I got to where I went to spar, I found the guys working out with weights. I went over to do some curls. It had three hundred pounds on it.

“You do know that is one of the bars we set up for doing bench presses?” one of the guys asked.

“Does anyone need it right now? I want to do some curls while I waited for twenty-hundred to spar a bit,” I replied.

You won’t have that look on your face long.

I started curling using both arms. When I switched to one arm, I soon had a small audience. They could see my arm moving as I did each set of ten reps, but my muscles weren’t even flexing. I knew that the pole sticking up with weights on it was to transport them around between ships. No one had removed the cables in the top that they used to lift them with a crane or forklift. A quick check showed each had somewhere around five-hundred-fifty pounds.

“Not perfect, but these will work,” I said as I began doing sets of curls using the cable as a handle.

I know it pisses you off, but you are cocky too.

One of the guys threw a ball at me as I was doing another set. I sensed it coming more than felt it. I waited until it was almost to me, set the weight down, caught the ball, threw it back at him, and then picked the weights back up. It could have been smoother, and I could have used the place in my head to slow down the speed that the load dropped to the floor, but it still looked like I didn’t miss a beat.

“I promised the Commander that I would match each of your skill levels. If you are going to play dirty, then I won’t,” I told the guy that threw the ball.

Keep thinking that I am full of shit.

Another guy replied, “time to put that mouth to the test. It is twenty-hundred now, but we can go as long as you can get back on your feet.”

“Sounds good, but I do have PT at O-four-hundred hours with the Marines. I don’t want to be late,” I told him as I put the weights back where they stored them.

I could have changed into something else, but the clothes I had on allowed me a full range of motion without binding up, so I kicked off my shoes and stretched a bit. I knew I didn’t need to limber up, but they were doing a bit, so I went with the flow.

I should have expected they wouldn’t do any formal bows or announce for me to get into position on the mats. The guy five feet away from me went from touching the backs of his feet to swinging a foam-covered bat at my chest. I barely felt that blow, and my shield didn’t even need to absorb the impact. He was trying to hit a ball out of the park. I didn’t focus on slowing myself down when I snapped the bat from his hands and tossed it back on the mats where he had grabbed it.

I did slow myself down, noticeably, when another of the guys swung a chair at my back. I heard it hit, more than felt it.

I can’t even begin to explain the dozens of small moves I did to get the chair on the floor in front of me with my leg on it as I continued stretching.

Different guys took their shot at hitting me, sweeping out the one leg I had on the floor, and similar attacks. All their attempts were easy enough to dodge while making it appear that I barely moved. I stretched my other leg before turning to face the guys around me.

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t know we had started. I thought everyone was still stretching,” I told the guys. “I’ve been ready to spar since I came down here.”

There were no rules to their sparring practice, or so it seemed.

I can understand their reasons. Someone isn’t going to bow before attacking you with whatever they have handy out in the field.

Some of their hits and kicks were allowed to connect. I wasn’t using my shield either. I felt them make contact, but no pain or discomfort.

“So you are all talk. A brick shithouse who can take a beating all day long, but that is all,” one guy taunted me as he came at me with a flurry of hits and kicks.

My conscious mind was part of a second behind my muscle memory. My subconscious got my body moving how I wanted. When the guy was close enough to land one of his attacks, I moved one hand under his left hand and the other on the arm on the opposite side of his body. I could have slammed him right to the mats, but twirling and spinning him around, like a light-duty training dummy, before smashing him onto them, was much more effective.

He had a “What the fuck just happened and how come I am on the floor” look on his face.

I reached down to offer him a hand to get back up when two of the guys came at me in a coordinated attack. I jerked the guy up off the mats before lifting him and tossing him toward one of the chairs against the wall. I dropped my knees to the mats for the two guys attacking me, grabbed for their nearest foot, lifted them off the floor, and then slammed them down onto the mats.

“I can do this all night if you want,” I told them. “I haven’t even broken a sweat, but I am going easy on you. I don’t want to cause you an injury that would have you pulled from the field. Do any of you want to work on getting better at any specific technique or discipline?”

One of the guys, who hadn’t yet attacked me, commented, “Parlor tricks. Nothing more. Show me what you got.”

Some of these guys have seen some of the various death moves used by aged martial arts masters. Maybe this will have them cut the shit.

I had him on the floor, with his arms and legs paralyzed. I found one of my hands positioned in a specific way that would cut through both of his jugulars as I tore out his throat. My other hand sat ready to jab into his abdomen and rip out his heart. Six seconds had elapsed from when he said to attack him until I stopped moves that would ensure that no medical staff in the world could save him.

The Commander walked in and told the guys, “You are very fortunate that David is not an arrogant asshole and that he refuses to kill anyone. My sensei showed me demonstrations of each fatal strike that David stopped a fraction of a second before completing. The person in the video was a seventy-year-old grandmaster, who did each on cadavers. Sensei told me that I should steer clear of any I saw who could do either fatal strike badly. Each takes a significant amount of strength and skill. David could easily have killed you where you stood in under ten seconds.”

“I suspect closer to five. I wouldn’t need to cause temporary paralysis or hold back to ensure I didn’t injure your soldier,” I said conversationally. “It is one of the advantages of helping test out a prototype exoskeleton designed to help people with traumatic brain injuries learn to walk again. Once they are mobile, the physical therapists then add in resistance to help rebuild muscle. When I wasn’t learning new katas or doing them entirely from memory, they also used me to test their relearning rig. Right out of a sci-fi or spy movie, it uses a helmet to flash up images in front of that person’s eyes and earbuds to provide auditory information tied to what they put on the screens. I was a perfect test subject. My body decided that puberty would wait a few more years to kick in. Four of my best friends were in a near-fatal car accident. I went with them to some private hospital with advanced technology to save my friend’s lives, if possible. I told my parents that I wasn’t leaving until my friends walked out on their own or left in a body bag. I went from around five feet and maybe a buck-twenty to how you see me today.”

One of the members of the team asked, “How is it physically possible that you are that big and yet move like a cat?”

“I had this asshole in high school decide I was his punching bag one day. He wanted to use my stomach to keep him from hurting his hand as he punched the locker behind me. I manage to deflect his punch, so he only hit the steel between two doors. It broke the dick’s hand, too. Our principal went all out trying to make it my fault because I moved out of the way and didn’t let that dumb fuck tenderize my internal organs,” I explained. “Two of my best friends weren’t about to let that happen again, so they started me alternating between their dojos. After my friend’s accident, I had nothing but time. I only knew the katas for the few levels I had advanced at each dojo, but I started doing them repeatedly when wearing the exoskeleton. I focused on fighting the suit to do them flawlessly, as quickly as possible. High-calorie, high-protein shakes worked wonders for helping me buff up as my body grew. They began using the helmet and earbuds to add other katas, four or five at a time, into the mix.”

I knew they wouldn’t believe a word, so I cast the videos from my phone to the TV in the room next door. That provided them the proof they needed.

“Is that exoskeleton aiding in increasing the speed of your katas? You appear to be moving faster than I would believe possible,” the Commander asked.

I put up the videos of my breaking the exoskeletons and said, “Actually, it was the opposite. There is no power on that exoskeleton. Every direction I moved, I had resistance pushing against me. This video also shows a visual record of my growth and muscle development during my time at this private hospital.”

A female physical therapist for this group asked me to go through a complex kata that takes the better part of a lifetime to master to the point of going through the entire kata quickly and cleanly. She seemed interested but not impressed. I went through only as fast as a master would run through it.

I wanted you to see that I could do it correctly, first. Now I will do it as quickly as I can.

My speed was two and a half times faster. That did impress her.

“I haven’t practiced that kata as much as the others, so I’m a bit slower at it,” I explained.

Her reply wasn’t what I expected.

She gave a hard look at the guys and said to me, “Don’t you dare do more than make them sore and hurt their pride. As you must know, moves in that discipline are very efficient at debilitating an attacker by ripping tendons and ligaments from the bone. If you did that to any of this team, they would be driving a desk for the remainder of their Navy career.”

Her concern that I may hurt her team told them much more than anything I could demonstrate.

“I don’t want anyone getting hurt. That isn’t the point of sparring unless you are working out some differences of opinion. I think it wouldn’t benefit you to spar with me. If you don’t mind a seventeen-year-old instructing you, I can show you ways to do what you intend but hit harder with less energy and motion,” I offered.

The one who seemed to have the biggest problem with me earlier told me he would be interested in seeing if I could help him put someone down quickly with less energy expended.

I found they had multiple training dummies. Without any other ideas on how to help, I had the guy attack using his preferred sequence of moves. He could put someone on the ground quickly with what he showed me. Right off, I noticed that it wasn’t fluid, and he hit three or four times where only once was needed.

“How many times in a row can you do that before you need to rest for a minute or two?” I asked.

He replied, “Four to five, sometimes more depending on the situation and adrenaline.”

“Let me show you a more efficient way to accomplish the same takedown with fewer moves and expended energy,” I told him.

I cut his eleven moves down to three, four if whoever the guy is trying to take down is a bit tougher or can block the attack. His walking through the person when attacking hit twice as hard and ended at the exact location when using his technique as before. At a run, he struck with more force. The best part is that unless the person knew how to counter it reflexively, it would be over before they knew it started. After getting a feel for how I changed his technique, the guy first walked through the dummy, using his momentum. He knocked the rubber man to the floor. When running at the target, we could hear and feel and hear the impact with the mats.

He came over to say, “Holy shit, kid. I’ve done that my way since high school and never put the training dummy on the floor. I don’t even feel like I have done anything, and my hands don’t hurt even a bit. I can do this for hours. I can’t argue with the results, only how it can work this way?”

“Physics isn’t something I studied in college,” I joked. “The best way I can try to explain is that when you do it your way, you keep using your energy to move your arms and legs from a standstill. When walking through the target, your body already has the forward momentum, so no need to create it. You use your body’s motion to push them off balance and then put your body mass into the equation to slam them to the floor. If they are more my size, find the right place to lean forward to kick out their knees and use your body weight to add to the force of the impact. You can change to using your forearm instead of your hand or fist. It allows you to slam their head to the floor if you hit them in the chin. If you hit their breastbone, you will knock the wind out of them. The technique is non-lethal, as I won’t kill anyone, no matter what. I’m confident that this will knock nearly anyone you use it on, in the field, unconscious for at a minimum of five minutes.”

He went back to do as I suggested before doing it slowly with one of his team in full pads. It just so happened that the guy he used it on was the largest in their group and close to solid muscle. Knowing what was coming didn’t do anything to keep that guy from hitting the mats hard enough to daze him for a few seconds.

“That is sick, David. Simple, efficient, effective, and brutal. How do you even defend against it,” another guy wanted to ask?

I laughed and said, “Get out of the way? If you drop down, you are at the perfect spot to get a fist or shoulder right into the attacker’s gut. Now should they be at a run, your shoulder will provide a pivot. Straightening up as you stand puts you ready to move once their momentum drives them head-first into the floor or wall behind you. That does require you to expend energy and risk injury. If you have the room and time to execute, you can go back to a middle-school technique so simple that people forgot. Twist your body back out of the way and stick out your foot. They won’t be expecting it, and you have a wide range of non-lethal and lethal options with someone flailing around trying to keep from faceplanting.”

The big guy in pads wasn’t agile enough to drop down quickly or twist to trip the guy practicing the technique. Other team members were able to do both.

I went through some of the moves that each person preferred to use in different situations. Some were already fluid or doing minimal steps, but I could do simple tweaks that changed the impact points to hit harder while using less energy. Others, I was able to remove steps or replace them with a variant. Many of the changes I made came from the wealth of martial arts moves in my head. Grandmasters learn how to move and attack efficiently to have the stamina to outlast a less skilled opponent.