Chapter 83: Kung Fu Human II
Freya had prepared several plans, drawn from all the knowledge she had accumulated over the course of an arduous journey undertaken during her first life, a path whose name remained entirely unknown to the inhabitants of this world, which suited her rather well as it happened.
The name of that demanding path she had walked on a great many occasions was, it must be said, a film marathon.
The first plan therefore took place in the forest, by the river.
The spot had been chosen with the greatest care, because it had to be admitted that the setting mattered every bit as much as the rest. The water ran down between the stones in a continuous trickle that filled the entire space and covered even the sound of their own footsteps, the leaves detached one by one from the branches to turn slowly on themselves before settling on the surface where the current carried them off at once, and the morning light cut through the canopy in long slanting beams that lit patches of the bank and made the dew still clinging to the tall grass glitter.
The two women stood facing the water, a silk band tied around their foreheads, barefoot in the damp grass.
"Close your eyes."
Laïa complied immediately.
"Now breathe."
Freya slowly raised her arms above her head, palms open toward the sky, before lowering them just as slowly along her body while exhaling through her mouth, and Laïa copied her with absolute dedication, her small hands following the exact same path a second behind.
"Empty your mind, my student. A cluttered mind is like a cluttered river. The water always gets through in the end, but it gets through badly."
"But sensei, the water still gets thro—"
"Be quiet and empty your mind!"
"Yes, sensei!"
They stayed like that for a long while, breathing together facing the current, while the sound of the stream ended up covering absolutely everything else and the morning mist rose gently off the water before dissolving between the trunks.
Then Freya opened her eyes.
"Watch closely."
She stepped back, set her footing in the grass, and performed a complete sequence, a wide circular sweep of the arm followed by an open-palm strike, all of it finished in a perfectly stable stance, weight on the rear leg, shoulder low and gaze fixed straight ahead.
That was, in broad strokes, what she had seen during one of her kung fu film marathons.
"The movement is not in the arm. The movement is in the ground. The arm is merely the last to learn of it."
"...Ooooh."
"Go ahead."
Laïa took up her stance and reproduced the sequence with a seriousness that would have brought any self-respecting master to tears, except that Freya immediately gave her a light tap on the wrist.
"No. Not like that. Your elbow leaves before your hip."
"But they leave at the same time!"
"It leaves first. Again."
She started again.
TAP.
"Your shoulder is high. A high shoulder is a mind that doubts."
"Yes, sensei!"
She started again.
TAP.
"Too fast. Speed comes at the end, never at the beginning. He who runs before he walks falls twice."
"Yes, sensei!"
She started again.
TAP.
"Your back foot moved."
"It didn’t move!"
"I did not ask you to answer me! A good student is a student who does not question the words of her sensei! Is that understood, my student?"
"...Yes, sensei!"
And so it went, over and over, while the sun climbed above the trees and then came back down the other side, while the leaves kept falling onto the water, while the river kept running between the stones, and while Laïa kept receiving light taps on her wrists, her elbows, her knees and once even on her forehead, without Freya ever deigning to explain what that last one had been for.
Then came sunset.
And there, at last, the two women performed the sequence together.
They stood side by side at the water’s edge, perfectly in time, every movement setting off at the same instant, the arm tracing its arc through the air, the hip following in the same breath, then the palm opening at exactly the right moment. The low light cut through the mist and washed the whole bank in orange, the leaves fell around them without ever touching them, and the only sound accompanying all of it was the stream and their two breaths, which by now had become a single one.
When it was finished, Laïa pressed her fist against her palm and bowed her upper body.
"Thank you, sensei! My mind is empty, my feet are the earth, and my fists are the sky."
Freya looked at her, motionless.
What the hell have I taught her? Is any of this actually going to help her?!
"...Sensei?"
"Hmm... hmm..."
She recovered at once and performed the same salute, fist against palm, with all the gravity she could muster.
"I am proud of you, my student. One day you will surpass me."
"Really?!"
"But do not be in too much of a hurry. The wind is only the wind, for it is the wind, after all."
She said this while watching the leaves lift under a gust that swept across the bank at that precise moment, which, it had to be admitted, was remarkably well timed.
"I understand, sensei!"
Laïa had answered with total conviction, entirely lobotomized by her master’s words and by a full day of training.
"Now the time has come, my student. The time for your revenge."
Freya had spoken those words while staring at the setting sun, and when Laïa turned around, the other three girls were already standing there, a few meters behind them.
So the little one walked past all of them, head high and step steady, and the girls followed without a word, moving up along the river before heading in under the trees.
They walked like that for several minutes, through a forest where the light was fading by the second and where the only sounds now came from leaves crushed beneath their feet, nobody daring to break the silence Laïa had evidently decided to impose.
Then she saw it.
The young iron bear.
It stood at the center of a clearing a little further on, and it was roughly the size of an adult bear of the sort found back on Earth, with a uniform grey coat in which every hair seemed to have the rigidity of metal, which, come to think of it, probably explained the name of the species.
That’s a young bear?!
Freya began seriously wondering whether the training hadn’t been a touch on the short side.
But Laïa, seeing nothing whatsoever of her master’s profound misgivings, stepped alone into the clearing, and it was plain to see at that moment that her small hands were trembling slightly at her sides, without her slowing her pace in the least.
"I’ll make you proud, sensei."
She performed an impeccable salute in the bear’s direction, and the creature tilted its head to one side without understanding in the slightest what was happening.
Then she began the sequence.
And it must be said, it was magnificent. Her footing was perfect, her shoulders low, her elbow left exactly after her hip, and when she completed the movement with an open palm, a leaf falling just in front of her was pushed aside by the displaced air and went spinning off to the side through the last rays of sunlight.
"WOOOOH!"
"That was beautiful!"
"GOOD MISSION!"
"...She really has improved, madam."
The girls’ cheers echoed across the entire clearing, and Laïa drew herself up with absolute poise, cheeks red and chin high.
"I am the wind, for the wind is slow and not fast. I am one with it."
What on earth is she talking about?
Then the bear stepped forward.
It rolled itself over in Laïa’s direction, stopped dead a few meters from her, slowly rose onto its hind legs until it stood a full head above her, and very visibly set about reproducing exactly what it had just seen. The circular sweep of the paw, the weight shifting forward, then finally the open palm thrust straight ahead of it.
Except that its own released a blast of air that crossed the entire clearing, flattening the grass in its path, and sent Laïa flying backward several meters.
She landed in the grass and stayed there on her back, saying nothing, arms spread and eyes fixed on the branches above her.
Then, after a long moment, she turned her head toward the others, tears welling in her eyes.
Naïa shrugged.
"Simply 0-2, I suppose..."
"NAÏAAAAAA!"
"GOOD MISSION, THE DUNGEON WARRIOR!" Kaguya added, applauding wildly.
What was she expecting, really, given the size of that thing?
Freya walked over to Laïa, who was still sulking on the ground with her eyes full of small tears, and rested a hand on her shoulder.
"My student, here is the second lesson. It matters little to lose a battle, so long as one wins the war."
And so ended the failure of Freya’s first plan, which consisted essentially of making her repeat the same movement over and over and reciting philosophical lines lifted from second-rate kung fu films dating back to her first life.