Chapter Four - Ctrl+Alt+Delts

The gym was called Ctrl+Alt+Delts. The owner was apparently an IT-tech of some sort turned body-builder. In the literal sense of that word. There used to be a section of the gym that sold cyberware, but that had been removed some time ago to make more space for weights and cardio machines and just more floor space.

As it turned out, the highly competitive cyberware market was far tougher to break into than the subscription gym model.

I walked into a small antechamber at the front of the gym and nodded to the bored man behind the counter. It took some doing, but I soon had a one-month membership to the gym. There went $120 of my remaining funds. It wasn't too bad, for a lower-level gym.

Past the antechamber was the gym proper. It had a large L-shaped room clearly divided into two sections. On one stretch there were free weights and barbells and machines to work muscles. On the other were cardio machines; treadmills and mechanical torture devices to target every muscle group.

I glanced past that. There was a room at the back that had padded mats across the entire floor, and which was usually used for training and sometimes for dance choreography or small gymnastics.

I walked over that way, then poked my head into the room. The exact person I was looking for was there.

Her name was Natalie, and she'd been one of the instructors that Luna Corp regularly hired for martial arts training.

That had been a weekly thing, where she'd walk into one of the floors in the HQ that we had to convert into a training space, and then she'd throw us around before showing us the bare basics of Jiu-Jitsu and traditional western wrestling, along with a smattering of boxing and more 'strike' focused training. She also taught some amount of sword fighting, mostly using batons but she had clearly known what she was doing.

It was... vaguely useful. Luna Corp sometimes had to do policing duties on top of the usual work, and that meant that having armed and armoured E-rankers that could maybe take out a perp and put them in a lock was handy.

Against the kinds of monsters that came from a portal, it was less useful.

Most Jiu-Jitsu holds worked under the assumption that your foe had no more than two arms and didn't have knives for legs.

Still, some amount of physical training was good in specific scenarios, and more cardio was always good.

Luna Corp alternated martial arts training with CQB, room-clearing, and firearms training.

Guns were still guns. It didn't matter that a D-ranker could move faster and heal quickly. A 9mm hole through their skull would take them down all the same.

C-rankers... might be able to live through that. Which is why God gave us lowly mortals the .45 ACP.

And for rogue B-rankers, there was always prayer.

"Hey," I said as I stuck my head into the room. "Natalie, right?"

Natalie looked up, which was a feat considering her front was almost flat to the ground, legs out in a wide V-stance that hurt my hips just to look at. "That's me," she said before moving up, then back. She rested on her back for just a moment before folding her legs then kipping up and into a squat that she stood from with practiced ease.

Natalie was a taller woman, almost six feet barefoot, which meant that I was looking slightly upwards to meet her gaze. Still, her height was second to her musculature when it came to intimidation. Natalie lived in the gym, and it showed.

"Need me?" she asked.

"Ah, yeah, a bit," I said. "I heard that you did training? Martial arts classes and the like?"

She nodded. "Yup! Two days a week. There's a paper by the front and I have a site too. The courses aren't part of the gym's whole thing. I'm private, but I rent the space often enough that I'm always around if you need a private instructor for something."

I tried a smile on. "Yeah, that's perfect. Actually, I was wondering if you could spare me a lesson or two? I need to get, ah, stronger."

Natalie eyed me for a moment, her brows drawing together. "I do group sessions, mostly," she said.

"I know, that's fine," I said. "But do you mind private instruction too? I just need someone to spar with, to show me some of the basics. I know a little, but not enough."

"Uh-huh," she said. "One-fifty an hour is my rate."

"That's not too bad," I said, swallowing past a lump in my throat.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"For group work," she continued. "I don't do private. Did your boyfriend smack you around or something and now you wanna be all tough?"

I blinked. I'd almost forgotten how... direct, she could be. There had been a few complaints about her, back at Luna Corp, but other than throwing me on the mat a few times I'd never felt any hostility from her.

"No? I mean, nothing like that," I said. "If it's too much... oh, nevermind," I said.

One of her brows perked up, but she didn't say anything as I slipped out of the room.

Crap. That was...

Actually, no. If there was ever a time to test my powers, it was now. I closed my eyes for a moment and reset my Save to the moment.

It felt dangerous, in a way. Why not keep my Save point as far back in the past as possible? What if I missed an important opportunity?

But then, what if I missed an even bigger one by not using the power? I didn't want to have misgivings later when I failed to practice with my abilities now, when it was still safe to do so.

I walked back into the room. "Let's fight," I said.

"Pardon?" Natalie asked.

"One fight. Look, if I'm going to hire you, I need to know that you're the real deal," I said.

"No," she replied.

I Reloaded and stepped back into the room. "How much?" I asked.

"For?" she asked in return.

"A bout. A spar. Just the one. I can take you."

She scoffed. "No," she said.

I Reloaded, then again, then again. It was on my sixth attempt that I found the magical words.

"Five hundred," I said. "But only if you win."

Natalie snorted, almost said no, but then shrugged. "I could use the cash," she replied. "But... nah."

"Come on," I said. "I've got so much energy to burn here."

She looked up at that, then met my eyes for a moment. That had resonated with her, maybe. It felt like it might have, in any case. "Okay, then," she replied. "What do you want to train? Boxing, grapples, sword fighting?"

"Sword fighting?"

"There are training swords here, and some old face-guards and the like," she said. "But nah, I'm not doing that kind of thing with a rank amateur."

I hesitated, then suggested boxing, which meant ten minutes of prep time. There was a ring at the back that I hadn't been aware of. It was smaller than regulation-size, and in a room that smelled a little mouldy. The ring was only a half-step from the floor as well, and the ceiling wasn't all that tall, but it was good enough for training.

Natalie watched me put my gloves on, then called it off. I was clearly an amateur, and she didn't want to go on with it.

The next try worked, mostly because I took five minutes to watch a video on how to wear the damned gloves correctly.

She beat the shit out of me. She was faster, and hit harder, but mostly she just read me like an opened book.

So I Reloaded after taking a few licks, then tried again.

Now the 'prep' stage was annoying me, but it gave me a repeated fifteen minute gap to consider what to do, and to get used to being in a body that didn't have eyes full or tears and a nose that stung.

It took six repetitions before I got a single good punch in. Ten before I was feeling like I had an idea of how Natalie was moving.

I... wish I had the patience to repeat things over, and over, and over again, until I was on the same level as Natalie. But she had hundreds of hours in the ring. Maybe thousands. In five-minute increments, it would take me tens of thousands of repetitions to catch up.

My gut told me that that wasn't impossible. That I absolutely could keep going back forever.

My mind told me that I'd lose patience long, long before that ever happened.

I did another ten repetitions, counting them off in my head until I'd reached a solid twenty attempts in the ring.

That had been enlightening. I was starting to get an idea of what I was doing wrong, the lessons reinforced with Natalie's fists.

Then I switched to Jiu-Jitsu, a martial art that I knew a little bit more about.

Didn't change the fact that I spent most of the time I was training it eating the mat.

Yeah, this was basically torture, of a sort, but I figured that one real-time day's worth of this was worth a lot. If repetition was the mother of learning, then I was learning that my mom was a mean bitch with a wicked right hook.

***