Lippy found CJ in the Barscape Prime’s private training and exercise room. She had changed into her workout clothes and was busily beating a heavy punching bag into submission. Around the matted area of the floor, three other heavy bags were waiting in each corner.
“CJ?”
CJ responded by backing away from the bag and giving it three swift kicks. She spun then on her grounded foot and faced Lippy, giving her her best “not-the-frell-now” look. Lippy nodded and left the room.
CJ stood still for a second before launching herself into her Dance of Death drills. As seconds became minutes, the four heavy bags around her were pummeled viciously amid a slew of punches, kicks, body slams and violent grunts. Faster and faster she ranged among the padded victims of her wrath in an ever complex display of power and agility. Finally, at the breaking point, CJ stopped before her original opponent and proceeded to punch the bag a dozen times in quick succession before leaning on it and dropping her head.
Lippy, now dressed in her exercise clothes, stood quietly at the side admiring her friend’s martial prowess. “Was that last bit for the tralk out there?”
CJ raised her head and looked over at Lippy, a look of sweaty, grim determination on her face. “No. That was for Feld, that sonuvatralk frellwit.” Leaving the bag, CJ walked over to Lippy, who threw a towel to her. As she wiped the sweat off her face and neck, CJ quietly said to Lippy, “Earlier back there, you said that trouble follows us around like a shadow. I think you’re wrong. Sometimes, I think that we are the shadow.”
Lippy’s face darkened considerably in response, her own ethical battles always fresh in her memory. “Be careful who you include in this ‘we’ of yours, Peacekeeper. Some of us fight those battles on a daily basis. If you need to find religion to sort things out, then I suggest you do so soon.”
Lippy abruptly turned away and walked to a different exercise mat, near which stood her plasma-sword, sitting in a specially-made case of exotic wood. After stretching the muscles in her wiry, dancer’s frame, she stood in the center of the mat and said aloud, “Shockers Progression, Level 16.”
Within seconds, sixteen small, metallic orbs flew out of a hole in the wall and levitated around her expectantly. Lippy simply stood there with her eyes closed and let the powers of The Third Eye flow through her. She could feel everything. She was everything.
“Begin.”
Two of the orbs left the formation and flew around Lippy blasting the air around her with blue energy bolts. In response, Lippy danced and twirled and flipped her way around the mat avoiding the beams. After a minute, a third orb entered the fray, then a fourth, then a fifth. When the eighth orb joined in the attack, Lippy deftly avoided its attack, reached her plasma-sword and counterattacked. Blue bolts from the orb met hot ionized plasma in a shattering white-hot shower of super-heated air. By the time the twelfth orb was ready to take its turn, all remaining orbs began a concentrated attack. In response, Lippy became a whirling dervish amid a shower of light and flame with multiple orbs being physically knocked far afield and disabled. CJ could only watch in awe. She’d seen Lippy go through these types of drills before, but never with this many orbs in flight and never with this much intensity.
“Enough!” came the cry and the battle stopped immediately with Lippy in a crouched stance on the balls of her feet, one arm stretched forward, the other overhead with the sword. It was one of the most impressive martial exercises CJ’d ever witnessed from her, from anyone on this rock, up to that point.
After the required “Exercise finished”, the orbs returned to the their home in the wall.
As Lippy walked back, CJ threw her a towel in return.
CJ spoke first, “I’m sorry, Lipps. I shouldn’t have -”
“No, no. I overreacted. My battles are my own. On one level, I knew what you meant. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”
CJ smiled then, and nodded. Motioning back toward Lippy’s mat, she said seriously, “Then you think this is going to be more difficult than anyone’s let on?”
Lippy frowned. “Yes. Yes I do.”
Budo’s voice interrupted them from the doorway. “You girls don’t know the half of it.”