*BEEP BEEP*
M1ke: Master, I've found the boy.
King: As expected of my brightest student. Is he okay?
M1ke: Yeah, he's alright. I had a favor to ask.
King: What is it?
M1ke: I was thinking of training the boy...
King: Oh really?
M1ke: Yep. I wanna apologize firstly. I found the boy much earlier today but didn't report it back. Call it me trying to have dumb fun but whatever but when I let him off the hook, much to my surprise that when I found him again, he did really well against some crooks trying to kidnap him. I was sort of impressed.
King: Hahaha that's my grandson right there. But is his raw talent the only reason for you to train him?
M1ke: Well... He seemed... Upset about the whole incident. He thought of himself as "weak" which totally wasn't the case... Maybe if I polish his raw talent into skill, he'd feel better about himself. And it can be a nice distraction from all that trauma he has to deal with.
King: Hmm... That reminds me of another boy I used to train haha.
M1ke: ...huh?
King: I'm talking about you of course. You used to be pretty upset in the old days yourself. You clearly weren't weak so to make you aware of that, I helped you hone your skill by training you.
M1ke: THAT'S WHEN I WAS JUST A KID!
King: And so is Tommy right now. No need to be embarrassed M1ke, I'm actually proud to see a student of mine pick a student up like I did.
M1ke: Well, he is the next in line to be the king after all. What good is he going to be for the kingdom, his family, his friends and his future subordinates if he isn't able to even defend himself.
King: Well said. In fact, I was about to ask you to train him myself. He is growing up after all. There's a lot of things in life he hasn't seen. I want him to be prepared for that. Make sure he becomes as strong as you are.
M1ke: I aim higher master. I want him to be even stronger than me!
King: I like the sound of that. Also, no need to be so formal! Just call me Willy!
M1ke: Uh... Sir, it's a matter of respect for me! I can't just call someone with more experience than me, especially my own teacher, a name like that!
King: Ah you take me too seriously. I'll inform the military Ciao later bro!
M1ke: Uh... Thanks... And see ya later...
*Phone hangs up*
"Willy...? Bro...? This old man is trying so hard to look young... It's just sad at this point..." M1ke sighs while seeing Tommy snore near the campfire.
"I always wanted to do this hehe." M1ke says to himself with a creepy smirk on his face.
"WAKEY WAKEY SOLDIER! DO 200 PUSH UPS!" M1ke screams and kicks Tommy in the gut while he's asleep.
"OUCH! WHAT WAS THAT FOR? AND 200 PUSH UPS OFF THE BAT? ARE YOU INSANE? I'VE NOT EVEN EATEN YET!?" Tommy screams.
"Well, usually, people aim for 200 push ups. I believe in being ahead of the usual curve. So doubling that sounded like a sweet spot for a rookie like yourself. NOW GIVE ME 200 PUSH UPS!" M1ke replies.
"Sir yes sir..." Tommy screams with lack of enthusiasm.
"One... Two... Three..." Tommy counts as he starts his exercise.
"Damn that's only gonna take him 200 seconds at this pace..." M1ke says to himself and drops a 20 Kg weight on Tommy's back which makes him fall SPLAT to the ground.
"WHY DID YOU DO THAT!?" Tommy screams.
"As I said, I believe in being ahead of the usual curve. Usually, people start with weight training later on but I think you should do it off the bat." M1ke explains with a nerdy expression having two of his teeth out.
"How heavy even is this...?" Tommy asks as he struggles to complete his push ups.
"Around 20 Kilos, not bad right? Usually people start with 10 Kg but-" M1ke explains but gets interrupted by Tommy replying, "Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, you want me to start with 20 Kg because double is a sweet spot for a rookie like me and that you believe in being ahead of the usual curve."
"Good. You're a fast learner haha." M1ke replies and sits down on a rock reading a magazine and laughing hysterically at it.
"Hey is that the new WSJ magazine!? What happens in the new Lightsaber Man chapter?!" Tommy exclaims while sweating intensely and doing his push ups.
"I'm done reading now, the chapter was great. How about you read it yourself? I hate spoiling people." M1ke says as he keeps the magazine on top of the weights and makes Tommy fall SPLAT on the ground again.
"HEY WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU GOING!?" Tommy screams again.
"I'm hungry. So I'm getting myself something to eat." M1ke replies.
"Hey I'm hungry too... I haven't even eaten breakfast... Can I go too?" Tommy asks with a tired and sweaty expression.
"Sure!" M1ke replies and Tommy gets a really happy expression on his face. Much to his dismay however, M1ke immediately continues, "Once you finish the warm up exercise of course!" and leaves
"WARM UP? I'M GONNA DIE AT THIS PACE" Tommy replies but by then, M1ke had already left.
Around an hour later...
"One hundred and ninety nine... Two hundred..." Tommy continues counting until his last assigned push up.
"Nicely done!" M1ke shows up clapping.
"That was hell... I don't think I can get up anymore..." Tommy says as he falls SPLAT to the ground again after finishing his push ups.
"Well I've got food for you!" M1ke says to Tommy.
Tommy gets an excited look on his face and gets up slightly but M1ke drops the food box on the weights which makes Tommy fall SPLAT to the ground again and starts eating an ice cream.
"Finally... Breakfast!" Tommy says in excitement and starts eating.
"So... When am I gonna learn all those cool fighting techniques they show in movies?" Tommy asks M1ke.
"After you finish eating of course!" M1ke replies. Upon hearing that, Tommy quickly finishes his food and gets stands up fired up.
"Now that you've eaten..." M1ke says as he puts a 40 Kg weight on Tommy's back and continues, "I've commissioned some construction sites to have you work there. Then I've got some delivery work for you to do."
"HUH!? YOU SAID WE'LL DO SOME ACTUAL FIGHTING PRACTICE AFTER I EAT." Tommy exclaims.
"I said after, not when after, know the difference. And besides, it helps you get ready for what's next." M1ke explains.
"What has chores got to do with getting stronger!?" Tommy exclaims again.
"Alright, let's go to another area then." M1ke says to Tommy and takes him to an empty place on the hills.
"Alright. I want you to run from this point, to the higher hill. That should be around 400m of distance. Depending on how fast you are, I'll start what you call, real training" M1ke explains.
"ALRIGHT! LET'S GET TO IT ALREADY!" Tommy screams all fired up again and gets into a stance better suited for running.
"Patience Tommy. Alright. On your mark, get set, GO?" M1ke replies.
Tommy completes it in a whopping 35 seconds in one go.
"So, how was that?" Tommy asks M1ke while panting.
"35 seconds. Not bad, but not great either." M1ke replies.
"NOT GREAT? HOW FAST ARE YOU THEN?" Tommy replies loudly.
"Hold the stopwatch for me." M1ke replies as he gets into a running stance and runs at an insanely superhuman speed.
"So, how much time did I take?" M1ke asks.
"What the- 20 SECONDS!?" Tommy replies.
"Huh? That's kind of slow. I've gotten a bit rusty I guess in these times of peace." M1ke replies back.
"That's... Slow...?" Tommy thinks to himself.
"Anyways, while I want you to be faster than I am, for now, I'll settle at starting your actual combat training when you can complete it in at least 25 seconds. How about that?" M1ke continues.
"25!? ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? I CAN'T EVEN IN A THOUSAND YEARS!?" Tommy replies.
"Well, then you better get back to it already. Who knows how many years it'll deduct." M1ke replies.
After two weeks of waking up early, delivering newspapers and various other supplies like food and plumbing materials to workers and then helping with construction work, M1ke gradually increased the weights Tommy had been carrying to a whopping 100 Kilos.
"Sensei! SENSEI!! WAKE UP!!" Tommy says to wake M1ke up.
"Earlier than me today eh? Love that enthusiasm." M1ke replies as he wakes up.
"Anyways, you can take the weights off today." M1ke continues.
"Yay!" Tommy replies.
M1ke then takes Tommy to the same hill and asks him to take another run. Tommy sweats a bit but gets into his running stance.
"On your mark. Get set. GO!" M1ke says again as Tommy starts running.
Tommy returns back much faster this time and isn't even panting.
"Wow, that felt much easier than the last time. So how fast was I?" Tommy asks.
"Count me impressed. You did it in 20 seconds just like I did." M1ke replies with a smirk on his face.
"Damn. I feel like I can go faster than that now." Tommy says with a smirk on his face himself.
"Anyways, looks like we can finally start your real combat training." M1ke replies.
"Hell yeah!" Tommy replies back with a determined look.
"By the way. How did you get those goons thay were trying to kidnap me, up in the air? That was really fast. While you sprint fast, you weren't sprinting as fast as that day." Tommy asks M1ke while they walk to another area fit for training in the hills.
"Well, that's quite an advanced thing to do but since I'll teach you about it's fundamentals sooner or later anyway, I guess it doesn't hurt to explain." M1ke replies as they finally reach the training ground.
"Alright, listen to this carefully. At the start, there was nothing. But then a phenomenon known as the Big Bang happened." M1ke starts explaining.
"Ooh! The one in which the universe got created?" Tommy asks.
"Correct! During the big bang, tons of energy was released and at any point of space-time, only a certain amount of energy can be present individually. In simpler terms, think of energy like potato chips." M1ke continues.
"Potaro chips!?" Tommy replies in utter confusion.
"Yep! Potato chips! Imagine you have a thousand potato chips in one place. It'd be complete chaos! It'd end up rotting before anyone could eat them! That's why at any given point of space and time, only a certain amount of energy can exist by itself! Like a limited number of potato chips in a bag of potato chips!" M1ke continues explaining again.
"Woah! No wonder I love potato chips!" Tommy replies with some degree of understanding and interest.
"Uh... Yeah... Potato chips taste real good! But that's besides the point! Now imagine these packets of energy like a metal! A metal can be used to make many things! Like a car or even a house! The metal just has to arranged in some way! If you arrange the energy in a certain way as well, you get quarks! Arrange those in a certain way and you have atoms! Arrange those in a certain way and you get molecules! Keep arranging these around and soon you get living beings like us or giant celestial bodies like planets and stars! In short! Everything in the universe is made up of the same thing!" M1ke explains further after a brief moment of awkwardly being side-tracked by Tommy's sudden intervention during his explanation.
"That's so cool!" Tommy exclaims in excitement.
"That's just the start of the fun kid! In pursuit of war, us living beings have constructed various weapons using metals, rocks and what not, but one day, an ultimate breakthrough was made! As soon as we found out that all of existence is comprised of the same energy, living beings were on a race to see who can harness it first! This very energy I've been talking about is called the Binding Energy!
Like why rely on the limited pieces of non-living matter in the universe when you can control the very devastating nature of the energy makes us itself! This energy can quite literally be used to replicate natural phenomenon like flow of air, electricity or the flow of force itself! And what do you need to use this energy? Your intelligence!" M1ke smugly continues his explanation further.
"Intelligence...?" Tommy asks.
"Well, we as living beings, just like non-living matter, are very distinct. Think of it like ice cream and pizza. They both contain products synthesized from milk but the taste couldn't be any different! One is really sweet while the other is salty! Similarly, we're both human beings but our personalities couldn't be any different from each other.
It's like comparing a doctor and a mechanic. A doctor can heal people to an extent a mechanic can't while a mechanic can fix machines to an extent a doctor can't. A doctor understands a human body better while a mechanic understands technology better. They've both become what they have because they had a strong interest in their respective fields. You can't force a doctor to be a mechanic like you can't force a mechanic to be a doctor.
Another example I have is wood and iron. Both are solids but cannot be any more distinct from each other. If you slam down on wood, it'll break while iron would bend. That's because wood is brittle while Iron is malleable. A piece of wood would catch a fire while iron would await melting. But out of these, one is a metal while the other isn't.
Let's compare two metals this time, gold and iron. Both are shiny and malleable. However, if you pass electricity through them, iron would act like a magnet, gold wouldn't. Similarly, iron is more reactive chemically and thus rusts while gold doesn't.
Similarly, like ice cream and pizza, humans also tend to have sweet or salty personality like their tastes. Generally, people who like sweet food are agreeable, sociable and friendly, people who like sour food are overly critical of others, people who like bitter food are narcissistic, sadistic and anti-social, while people who like salty food are overly anxious.
Back to doctors and mechanics, doctors are more likely to be extroverted while mechanics are more likely to be introverted. That explains a lot about why they choose what they do. Now focusing more on doctors, the population of doctors who are likelier to be introverted are surgeons and tend to operate on the mechanical parts of the human body sort of like a mechanic. Family doctors on the other hand who we usually vocally consult to, are likelier to be really extroverted because they tend to talk a lot to their patients.
That's just the scope of biology though, coming to physics, engineers who build various structures are likelier to be extroverted because they do a lot of communication with their colleagues and clients. A theoretical physicist however, who does conceptual and written research off of the field is likelier to be introverted." M1ke answers.
"Hmmm..." Tommy replies while still being confused.
"Looks like you're still confused but I get why... You need to see a demonstration!" M1ke says with a sigh and continues, "Tommy, stand with your back close to the tree for me."
"Like this?" Tommy replies.
"Yep. Just like that." M1ke replies back and prepares his fist to punch towards Tommy's direction.
Right as he is about to hit, Tommy closes his eyes but notices that he wasn't hurt at all.
"What's going on...?" Tommy asks.
"Look behind you." M1ke says with a smirk on his face.
"WHAT!?" Tommy screams as he sees all the leaves from the tree behind him on the ground.
"I have an affinity for controlling sound and pressure. Sound is nothing but a sort of wave. It conducts best in solids. All I did was manipulate the pressure of the punch to be conducted from your body to the tree." M1ke explains yet again.
"THAT'S SO COOL!" Tommy replies.
"It sure is kid. Sound also has properties of rhythm to it, which is why I carry these fishing hook looking things on my belt. They release a string so thin that it's invisible to the human eye. The rhythmic control of my sound simply moved the strings in the air towards the crooks in the blink of an eye and dragged them towards the bridge above to hang. They may not look it but they have a high amount of tensile strength." M1ke boasts to Tommy who is left speechless.
"Anyways, let's get onto some combat training shall we!" M1ke exclaims as he prepares his fist to punch Tommy for real this time but Tommy dodges it immediately and stops the other fist from attacking.
"See? This is why I made you do all those obscure chores. Your speed and reflexes are much higher than they used to be. Which saves me the time from teaching you defense. Back to the topic of personalities, as you know, I've always been blind... Even then, I wanted to explore the world in my own way... That's why I let sound guide me... When I first used the power of my binding energy, it was a sound based push and it made me realize my true affinity right then and there...
I'm a pretty laid back guy and sound is considered by many as something that creates harmony. The other side of the same coin is the raging sound of thunder when my emotions are pushed to the limit. It's usually laid back people like me who have a liking for sound and music... That's why we end up partaking in something related to sound.
Your affinity all comes down to your personality and the more you study and understand your affinity, the higher the impact and the more diverse the range of your abilities will be. HOWEVER! You're not limited to only one affinity in your life. As people grow and mature, they change but their roots won't. That's why a person's first affinity is their strongest.
As people grow, they learn new things. The more you study and experiment, the more affinities you have. This would take years though. Only after years of intense training have I managed to gain affinities like flowing forces and electricity. Notice how flowing forces steam from retracing mechanisms of sound while electricity stems from my limited knowledge of retracing thunder.
I could try and manipulate something like chemical reactivity like your father but that's too far from my own affinity. Sound can't cause organic compounds to forcibly change fundamental structure. It could take years for me to understand it and I'd only be wasting my time on an affinity that's probably making me weaker if anything. I can only learn so much and it's better to understand affinities stemming from your roots if you aim to be stronger.
The more you learn the phenomena you have affinity for like building blocks, the more you can use variables involved to form newer techniques. For example, I learned so much about wavelengths from sound that I can now even split white light into its seven colors with mere use of binding energy!" M1ke smugly explains yet again while splitting the rays of the Sun into seven colors by forming a transparent light warping sphere of binding energy above the palm of his hand.
"AWESOME!!" Tommy screams with glowing eyes.
"I know right!" M1ke reacts with a similar degree of excitement.
For the next few days, Tommy practices offensive stances but M1ke notices that he has trouble changing between offense and defense and usually resorts to defensive stances which give opponents room to keep attacking harder or running away.
"This isn't it Tommy. The opponent doesn't wait for you to attack. You gotta change stances faster. While you do hit really hard, it's no use if you can't literally use your hits." M1ke sighs while sparring with Tommy.
Tommy gets tired and falls to the ground while panting while M1ke starts drinking water.
"Anyways. For your next test, you'll be heading to the deeper parts of the forest called the Forest of Terror." M1ke says to Tommy.
"Forest of terror? Sounds kinda lame and generic for a scary forest's name." Tommy replies.
"The name sounds generic but the record of beasts in there hasn't been fully surveyed. I think it'll be perfect survival training as well as use of skills that you've already learned. Plus there's a lot of crimes like murder or sexual assault that happen there due to it being an unexplored part of the planet and the soldiers being more concentrated towards the kingdom. It simply cannot excuse the crime that happens there so it'll be like hitting two targets with one stone by sending you there." M1ke explains.
"Wait..." Tommy says.
"What? Scared already?" M1ke asks.
"No... It's just... What will I eat then...? There's no kitchen and the terrain is unexplored. Who knows what's edible or not...?" Tommy replies.
"THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE WORRIED ABOUT? GET SERIOUS ALREADY!?!" M1ke screams.
"Well I can't really cook... That's it..." Tommy replies.
"Listen kid, even outside of times of war, us living beings have been explorers. We took our time, discovered fire, discovered cooking and what we can and cannot eat. On the battlefield, especially on planets you've never been to before, you gotta make compromises and eat what you get. If it's poison, force yourself to find a cure. It's what cavemen did, it's what us soldiers do and ita what you gotta do now by hook or by crook." M1ke replies back.
"Or you can just starve to death." M1ke says with a creepy smirk.
"Okay okay fine... I'll do my best..." Tommy replies with a scared expression as they both head to sleep for the night.
It's finally the morning of the next day. M1ke drops Tommy off at the exact location.
"You've gotta stay here for a month. Got it?" M1ke says to Tommy.
"Got it." Tommy gulps as he steps foot into the forest of terror.
To be continued in Chapter - 5