Chapter 26: - An Easy Path to Strength
'Sometimes it is more worthwhile keeping people's minds at ease than being efficient and sticking to a plan, which is what I hope to have done here with you.' The words Dorrian had uttered stuck in Gus's mind throughout the equipment class and into the combat class afterwards, preventing anything new from going into it.
He was pulled back to the present thanks to a fist that crashed into his face, throwing him to the side.
"You alright? I was kind of expecting you to block that," Connor said. "If I knew you were out of it, I would have pulled back a bit. My bad," he said, finishing with an awkward smile.
"Yeah, I'm good," Gus said, rubbing his jaw. "I needed that, in all honesty. I'm not focused, I'm thinking back to this morning."
Connor's face changed to show his confusion. "What happened on our way here?"
"Nothing," Gus said. "I wasn't talking about that far back, anyway. I don't know, Dorrian's closing words stuck with me, I guess."
"Dorrian's words? What did Dorrian say to make you so intrigued in your thoughts?"
"The thing about keeping people's minds at ease. I don't know, I guess it really resonated with me."
"Really?" Connor said, thinking for a short while before continuing. "Well, I guess it's a good thing that it did, considering you're meant to be our leader."
"Yeah, I guess I am. But, if I knew about last night, I wouldn't have agreed to it."
"Last night? You mean the game? How did you not know about it? It gets broadcasted everywhere."
"Yeah, the game. I don't know, I never cared about things like that before, so I didn't know about it or its popularity."
"Why not? Don't want the attention or something?"
"That's pretty much it," Gus said with a slight nod.
"Braye, Dowell, less talking. Get on with it!" Cain yelled. "Allen, loosen up on the agression! Watell, pay attention!"
Since it was early in the year, the combat classes were fairly simple. Currently. They were practicing their hand to hand combat skills. As Cain had said at the start of the class, "sometimes you can't shoot a gun, or swing a sword, but you can always hit something with your body."
For Gus, fighting with his body was as simple as breathing. He had got pretty good at it during his time with his father and the other scientists as a part of the Evolution project, not that he had much of a choice. As the only one who had failed as part of the experiment, Gus was often singled out and attacked by most of the other children, and while their powers had not fully matured to the point of them being dangerous to his life each individual was still problematic. Learning to fight was little more than a necessary adaptation to survival for Gus. He was someone who did not need to practice the bare fundamentals, although there were areas he could improve on overall.
Looking around the room, Gus saw that some of the others were having a hard time. While he had missed all of the fights the day before, it was clear that for many he was not missing much. Most of the people here were evidently not from a background where fighting was needed, as they took awkward stances and did not know what to do with their limbs.
Gus was pleased to see that, for the most part, his squad was doing rather well. Kyle and Faye's movements exhibited some sort of understanding of what to do and, while they desperately needed improvement, Claire, Krista and Emmy at least showed promise compared to some of the other people in the room. Kyle especially did not seem bad, considering he was against Anten, who definitely had experience.
Anten, Joel, and Teala caused no complaints from Gus, with the latter two paired off against each other. The squad had wanted to stick with each other, and no one else had a physique to match either Joel or Teala than the other, so they were the obvious choice.
Cain was allowing each pair to train how they wanted this session, so they opted to just fight each other. Their fight was engrossing, drawing glances from the other pairs around the room. Fist slammed into body with a huge amount of force, only for the same attack to go back the other way. It was brutal, yet still appealing to look at. While most people worked on things like technique or stance, and only threw out attacks as a way to build the memory of the correct way to do it, they went out as though they intended on harming the other.
The one that Gus had the best view for was Connor. A couple of things needed work, as Gus found out, but for the most part he was a solid fighter. For example, he was good at recognising when his opponent made mistakes, even if Gus was making them obvious, however he lacked the skill to successfully punish them without leaving himself exposed to counters. Gus only hoped that Connor's ribs would teach him the lesson later, after exploiting this weakness over and over.
'That's a dangerous weakness to have,' Gus thought. 'If you're up against someone smart, they only have to exploit it once and you're dead.'
After a surprisingly short time, Cain called them over to the far side of the room. Under his feet was a door that had previously gone unnoticed.
"Underneath me is the Pits. An arena under the training hall designed to allow students to fight, the Pits is somewhere where anything goes. Use it to train, when being up here simply won't suffice, to settle grudges, or to generally just punch people. You might think, 'why not just use the training hall?' Well, there are certain regulations we have to meet, especially since we're sponsored by Solus Supplies, so having this down here keeps the blame off us. Now that you've done the intro fight and had a lesson of sparring, you have access to it.
While there was a mixed reaction among the group, Gus was excited. Considering he got rewards from last night, he should be able to get rewards here as well.
'Looks like I've got an easy path to strength.'
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone