28-4

(It made Rin wonder what exactly her normal role was, the one that she was being pulled away from for half her days to train Khoura’s ‘pet project’, but she figured that if it was something she was supposed to know, she’d have been told).

They’d spent most of their time so far assessing Rin’s basic level of skill, which Park seemed mostly happy with. She didn’t have much in the way of formal training, some martial arts lessons her parents had packed her off to when she was younger to get her out of the way, and then a few tussles here and there, but she was fit and light on her feet, which apparently counted for a lot. The exact words Park had used had been ‘the best I’ve ever seen from someone with one eye and no training’, which was condescending and overly-specific, but still a little nice.

Today, though, they were finally getting round to the actual point.

“Here,” Park said, passing her the handle of a blunted training knife again. Rin took it, testing its weight as she shifted it through a few grips – it was shorter and lighter than the knife she’d been using. “We’re gonna work on effective ranges after this, but let’s run down why that last round went so poorly for you.”

“Because I’m just an     ordinary person?” Rin quipped, a little sarcastic. “With lungs and a limited stamina?”

To her surprise, Park didn’t brush off the joke. “In part,” she confirmed. “You’re joking, but if you’re going to be fighting chromats, it’s important to understand your own limitations. Even the most unskilled, fresh-off-the-block burner is gonna be stronger and faster than you, gonna last longer and go down harder. What’s your counter to that?”

“Overwhelming force,” Rin answered instantly. “Preferably from a distance.”

Park laughed. “Okay, yes, ideally. But if it’s just you, up close and personal?”

Rin thought she knew the angle this was tilting in. “Fighting smarter, not harder, right?”

“Yep,” Park nodded. “Trite but true. You’ve got a pretty good grasp of that already with the regular stuff, but you’ve got to turn it right the fuck up for situations like this. One good hit and you’re down, maybe permanently. So you’ve gotta make sure you don’t get hit, and the longer a fight goes on, the harder that gets. Which means…?”

“Hit hard and fast before they can,” Rin finished.

Park laughed. “I was gonna say ‘play it safe and wait for an opening’, but, well… you ready to go?”

“One second,” Rin said, closing her eyes.

In previous sessions, they’d established that seeing shades was more of a psychological trick than a specific action. Apparently, most people thought of it as something related to focal length, un- and -refocusing or ‘focusing beyond focusing’, whatever that meant. None of those really worked for Rin, though; her single eye didn’t really do any of that to begin with. After the first few tries, though, she’d found a trick that was more her speed.

Rin raised her head and opened her eyes.

Both her eyes.

Not literally, of course – not only was she wearing an eyepatch while training, but opening or closing her right eyelid involved doing so manually with her fingers. But focusing on the phantom sensation of an eyelid pulling back, still familiar enough after two years, was apparently sufficient enough a mnemonic.