Play Test: Stuck in Another World as a Reality TV Contestant

The artisanal churro truck on her block was a doomed endeavor but at least it overpowered the smell of the fish market across the street. She still wasn't paying six dollars for a churro, but the warm cinnamon-sugar scent was a welcome change, nonetheless. The air coming out of the fish market's HVAC exhausts had made it all but impossible to enjoy the roof deck for the entirety of the summer.

Annie tried the door; the handle turned but it wouldn't open. She frowned. "What the hell? Did they install a latch?" She wouldn't have put it past the building super to jerry-rig a solution instead of simply replacing the lock; the man was an alcoholic and a tweaker. And just when she was getting into roof running too, she thought, shaking her head.

Oh well, it was still faster than walking from where she'd parked. Slagtown was a thin crescent of a neighborhood designed for industry from a time before cars, not the largely residential streets it now harbored. Shrugging, she clambered over the side of the roof and lowered herself onto the brick sill of her kitchen window, her weathered hands having no trouble with the wet ledge. Nice, Jess was home, editing wedding photos from what she could see on her laptop monitor. It looked like she was avoiding the five flights of stairs after all.

It took a few raps on the glass to get her roommate's attention; the brunette had her headphones on, likely listening to one of the rotating true-crime podcasts she was addicted to and was taking tiny hits off a dab pen. Probably not the best time to be interrupted by knocking on your fifth-floor window, Annie noted, watching her poor roommate nearly fall out of her chair in surprise.

"Hey, girl!"

"Christ, Annie, don't 'Hey, girl' me! Are you insane? It's raining!"

Jess opened the window delicately and stepped to the side, looking ready to spring into action if needed, a kind but entirely unnecessary gesture. Since starting her training with James, her balance had become inhuman, beyond even what her master was capable of. Not that she believed the advantage would last – James's ability to improve himself was matched only by rogue AI from science fiction.

Annie threw her bag in first and climbed in after. She had strongly contemplated throwing the old duffel bag out; there was a hole in it and the contents, including her beloved Hammo plushie, had been trashed by their School's archnemesis, Mr. Squishy. It wasn't a large hole – a simple patch would do – but the reminder of her brief betrayal irked her. Still, that was all the more reason to keep it. Seeing the patch every day would motivate her towards vengeance.

Jess offered her the vape pen, its cartridge branded with the logo of the recreational dispensary down the street. Annie wasn't a stoner by any metric, but a little did wonders for fatigue, and it had been a long day. The morning started with dual cultivation, quite vigorous today, followed by training with James, and then a busy day on her feet at work. But those were small beans compared to the mental fatigue of her disastrous first encounter with the rat; she had bathed him in the kitchen sink – oh god, the shame the memory brought was almost too much to bear. The stress of keeping the secret from James had made her truly feel her family's predisposition to heart disease for the first time. Her blood pressure could have been measured with a tire gauge.

"Sorry, the only open spots were six blocks away, and it really is so much faster by roof. The door was stuck, by the way. Did Paul try to fix it or something?"

Her roommate rubbed her eyes and leaned back against the countertop, tired but invigorated by the company. She had been editing photos when Annie had left this morning for James' and that had been almost twelve hours ago. "No, it's weirder than that. I kept hearing the door swing open, but, like, only swing open. I never heard it close, which was so crazy. Really eerie, you know, to only hear half the expected sound. It was driving me crazy, so I went and stuck a chair under the handle."

Annie had to pause and replay the words in her head. "You mean you heard the hinge squeak like it was opening or the handle turn—"

"The click of the handle, the little noise it makes when it grinds against the floor in that one spot, everything!" Jess grew more animated. She must have been dying to tell her since it happened. "But, never closing. And no, before you ask, not the sound of someone closing it quietly. You can hear the door close, you know what I mean? And there would have been other sounds too if it was a person doing it."

It was true, you could hear everything in minute detail that occurred in hallways. Their apartment was a fifth-floor walk-up and the closest to the stairs. The building was pre-war and like any of its age, was the source of all manner of creaks and groans. The floorboards reliably announced the comings and goings of their neighbors, and the stairwell was particularly noisy. Its marble steps could carry a sound to their apartment all the way from the bottom floor.

"Yeah, but how would that work?"

"I've got no idea!" She leaned in, wide-eyed. "Here's the freaky thing, the door was closed when I went up there. And worse! It felt like something wanted me to open the door as soon as I got near, like the sounds had been psychic requests or something. Creepy, right?"

"So creepy!"

"I know! Anyway, how was your day?" she added with a yawn, stretching out her back. Her shirt rode up, exposing a tattoo of a lotus flower on her abdomen and her pierced belly button.

Annie nearly got whiplash from that transition. Jessica Manning was not an anxious or nervous person. She was outgoing, adventurous, and had been, despite her daily consumption of true crime content, equally as enthused as she was to move to Black Harbor. There was a reason they had hit it off immediately at Penn State. But still, confidence aside, this was borderline irresponsibly incurious.

"Wait, hang on. You can't drop something like that and move on. I need to know more."

Jess was amused but obliged her. "Exactly what it sounds like. The door would open, but I never heard it close. It took a few times for me to even register it as something strange. And then when I did, I thought maybe the neighbors were being nice enough to not slam it, but I mean, you know how squeaky it is. There's just no way I wouldn't have heard it swing back, no matter how careful they were being. And I never heard anyone on the stairs either…" Jess shivered. "I will admit to being high for all of this, but unless the dispensary got some nasty shit, I don't think that's applicable."

The Annie of a few weeks ago might have attributed a story like that to a mix of stress from overworking coupled with an inadvertent auditory illusion. Sound waves and the way they propagated through air was the domain of fluid dynamics, and fluid dynamics could be fucking crazy. They were perhaps the least intuitive of the non-quantum and non-astronomical physical sciences; at the scales at which humans existed, few things could get as weird as the study of liquids and gasses. Last week, she might have told Jess about the so-called fear frequency, a 19hz standing wave that could cause dizziness, sweating, paranoia, panic attacks, and even visual hallucinations by vibrating the fluids within the human eye.

Nowadays, she wasn't so sure. "Very creepy. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, of course. Like, I was spooked for a little bit, but it stopped after I blocked the door, so…" she shrugged, letting the sentence hang there unfinished.

Annie was familiar with the unspoken sentiment. Strange, creepy things happened all the time; typically, they didn't even rise to the level of campfire tales. Once at a summer camp, she'd heard the camp counselors calling her name from the woods when she knew they were in the cabin. She'd walked back inside, scared, but that was it, nothing else happened to escalate it from anything more than an 'odd phenomenon'. She'd moved on, just like her family had moved on when they'd discovered three of her younger siblings had named their imaginary friends after local children who had been missing for decades. It was disturbing, but life continued; people had responsibilities. Jess, for example, wouldn't get the last 50% of her fee until she delivered those photos and videos; she may not have even investigated the sounds if they hadn't been disturbing her work.

But Annie had a different perspective now; earlier today she'd been bamboozled by a master of ninjutsu who just so happened to be a rat. That was the sort of experience that expanded your horizons. "Could be Qi-related, maybe we should get James involved. You've been wanting to meet him; he'll be way more likely to open up his schedule if there's a martial arts mystery involved."

"Oh god, absolutely not, Annie. What am I going to do, lure him to a meeting, tell him a three-sentence anecdote, and then go, 'Hey, while you're here, mind if we do a photo shoot?' That's so unprofessional."

"Jess, if you're being targeted by a Qi-user—"

She scoffed. "To get me to do what, open an unlocked door for them? Were their hands full?"

Annie opened her mouth to respond, but she was struggling to compose her thoughts. As a novice to the Martial World, she had nothing but vibes to share. She had no facts or examples to point to, no reasons to suspect something might be afoot.

Her roommate tilted her head to the side. "Though…that does make me feel better, thinking of it like a Qi thing. Did you know Alexander's army heard bells tolling in every direction for days as they approached India? It turned out to be the sounds of two Kshatriya warriors dueling. And people see and hear all kinds of things at martial arts tournaments that don't get picked up by cameras and mics. I was actually reading an article yesterday about recent improvements to lens technologies aimed at bridging the gap between what a human eye can see and what a camera captures."

Annie stopped herself from rolling her eyes. Why did people, her past-self included, feel so comfortable putting Qi techniques into these neat little boxes? Was it a coping mechanism, a comfortable fiction normal people had to construct for themselves in order to function? Oh, Qi, that was how martial artists moved so fast and how they could control the elements. If a Qi-user was projecting a sound or a thought to open a door, then they must have been trying to get you to open the door, right? Wrong. Anything was possible through Qi. Perhaps the act of opening the door would have primed Jess's spirit and mind for some follow-up technique, or maybe that had been her brain's way of informing her that someone was trying to read her thoughts.

Or, Jess was right and it was an unintended consequence, like how Annie had accidentally lit her shoelaces on fire this morning while trying to tie them telekinetically. It was impossible to say without looking into it. Maybe there had been a thief unsuccessfully trying to crack a safe using their Qi on the roof, and Jess had scared them off when she'd gone up. Anything was possible after all.

"At least let me text James. He might already have an answer."

Jess put her hands on her shoulders and smiled. "Annie, relax. If it happens again, I promise I'll take it as seriously as a heart attack. But I work from home a lot, you know? I'd like to keep working from home without jumping at every sound I hear. Overfocusing on this sort of thing is the fastest way to drive yourself crazy."

"Alright," she said with a sigh, "if that's what you want. But tell me if anything freaky happens, not just those specific sounds, okay?"

"Of course. When have I ever kept a good story from you? Now, are you going back to your not-boyfriend's apartment, or do I actually get to spend time with my best friend?"

"Ha ha. My 'not-boyfriend' is busy on a ghost adventure tonight, whatever that means."

"What, like Zak Bagans style? He's walking into dark rooms and challenging ghosts to fights? Getting blinded by a demon? Cry-yelling at his friends while having meltdowns?"

"It's unclear, definitely not the last one, maybe on the first two. He might have just been teasing me; I couldn't tell."

"Huh, okay. Well, damn, now I want to watch Ghost Adventures. Should we do an old-fashioned wine and trash TV night?"

Annie giggled, remembering the unintentional comedy of Zak Bagans and friends falling over themselves in supposedly haunted locations. "I'm down. I've got Taekwondo class tonight, but for sure after."

Jess looked taken aback. "Wow, you're still doing Taekwondo? You're pretty serious about this martial arts thing, aren't you? I sort of assumed this was just a way to get dicked down by your crush."

She shrugged. "It scratches an itch for me in a way that gymnastics and cheerleading never did. You should give it a try; it might change your life, you never know."

"What, getting dicked down by your crush?" Annie blushed at that, only ensuring that there would be more jokes in the same genre in the future. Jess laughed; it was her solemn right and duty to tease her best friend. "I'm kidding, fighting's not for me. I'm a lover, Annie. Speaking of, are you taking the subway to class? I got you some heinous romance novels from the used bookstore. They're horrible, you'll love them."

For as eager as she was to get as much use out of her van as possible, she ended up taking the subway after all. She had tried to stretch the math to justify the van as an economical choice, but no amount of daily driving would recoup what she'd put into it. In the end, she decided it was best to treat it as a luxury she could semi-afford herself and nothing more. She enjoyed working on cars and always would, even if life in Black Harbor was slowly making her hate driving them. Taking public transport was exponentially less stressful, and the only danger of reading on the subway was that you'd miss your stop, whereas you could barely listen to an audiobook while driving next to New Jersey's most psychotic commuters. The most reasonable of them took 'One Way' signs as suggestions here, while the rest considered them challenges.

Jess had embarrassingly bought her three books in the poly-romance genre, finding a way to tease her non-verbally over the recent looks that Annie had been giving her. At least she was being cool about it all, but still, like the brunette with her phantom door sounds, Annie was trying not to think about her suddenly fluid and confusing sexuality. She'd gone from being the most vanilla girl in the friend group to having daydreams of laying on top of her roommate while James took turns fucking them both. And never before had she wondered what Jess's bellybutton piercing would taste like, or if she'd be able to feel it when James' cock pushed it up into her mouth.

The recurring intrusive thoughts made it difficult to get into the book she was reading. Which was a shame, because it was delightfully unhinged in a way that only niche romance could be. Jess had struck gold with this one; it was the story of a woman who moved back to her rural Canadian lumberjack town to start a high-end cupcakery only to fall in love with her former gym teacher, a were-bear, and his fairy queen wife. It was a trainwreck of a plot that would have been perfect 'so-bad-it's-good' entertainment if it didn't constantly make her mind wander to all the forbidden threesomes she could be having in real life.

A scene in which the protagonist, Grayse, joined the two love interests in their pool after catching them mid-blowjob during a cupcake delivery made her so uncomfortable that she opted to get off at an earlier stop and roof-hop the rest of the way to her gym. She should have rightfully been reading jaw agape at the total lunacy, but instead, she found herself casting different friends in the role of Denisse, the Fairy Queen veterinarian, and her beloved himbo master as Jerald, the were-bear high-school rugby coach.

The sting of raindrops on her face as she raced across the roofs, ran along telephone wires, and used hanging signs like stairs, helped snap her from her unwanted reverie. Annie had always loved movement, sprinting, dancing, balancing, leaping, those were her drugs of choice. When her body felt light and free, her mind followed.

She was smiling when she arrived at Master Kwon's Korean Fighting Academy, the burdensome thoughts replaced by a desire to show off her gains and Black City Kung Fu. Kwon's KFA was a chain of dojos boasting over sixty thousand concurrent students worldwide, many of whom were working as stunt actors in Hollywood. She had joined for that reason alone even though there were closer and cheaper gyms, and stayed for the networking opportunities despite her initial disappointment. The KFA had been overly corporate for her tastes from the start, and everyone was just a little too cultish about the eponymous Grandmaster Kwon, whom she had never actually seen in person and didn't expect to anytime soon. But cynical opportunism had won the day, and she continued to pay monthly even as she attended fewer and fewer classes.

There were still twenty minutes left of the kids' class when she arrived. A 'disadvantaged' teen working the front desk perked up when she entered. Kwon's offered a work-study program for those who couldn't afford the two hundred dollars a month.

"Shit," she said to the girl at the desk. "I forgot my key fob." Her subconscious must have been trying to spare her the pain of carrying a Hammo-less keychain.

"O-oh, hi, Ms. Shine," stuttered out the girl, flashing her braces with an awkward smile. "That's okay. Do you remember your membership number?"

"Um, sure, let me pull up the join email."

Annie expertly kept the annoyance off her face and out of her tone. The girl had recognized her, and since Annie was sure they'd never shared a class, she was probably a fan. That said, this ritual of signing in was more annoying than ever after the laid-back attitude that James took with Black City. She doubted he'd ever be so formal, even if they did one day grow to have tens of thousands of members.

She made idle chatter with the women in the changing room, steering the conversation quickly to her training in Black City Kung Fu. It was an even split between lifers, those whose parents had brought them in young and who had stuck with it, and women just here for the workout and to feel a bit safer walking around at night. The only real friend she'd made so far, Kerry, was a stewardess who had joined specifically because the KFA had locations in all three of the cities that she overnighted in most frequently. She was absent today, leaving her with only her friendly acquaintances, or as she liked to think of them, her future friends.

Naturally, like a parody of an influencer, she shamelessly pulled up her own videos for the others. Did it help that she was self-aware? She had to hope.

The responses to their partner forms, the elaborate, tightly choreographed fights James designed to teach specific lessons, were unanimous. First, was horniness. Politest of these was a simple and breathless, "Oh. Wow." There was also, "Lucky girl." And, "It would be helpful if we could see more of his quads…and hamstrings…and maybe glutes," followed by shared laughter.

Least polite was the, "Does he charge by the hour?" She had to force herself not to glare at the woman who made that remark. Jess would definitely be hearing an angry rant about it later though.

Don't objectify my shifu! UGH.

The second universal response came in several tones, but it boiled down to, 'I don't think that's for me.' She tried to defend James' vision and reassure them that his goal was to make an art that could elevate anyone from any starting level. This was the product of what they could do together, she said, and you had to remember that they were both professional athletes. The argument fell flat with the casuals, who couldn't imagine themselves reaching that level of fitness, but the lifers were the most annoying. They didn't see the practicality of it, the explosive brutality lurking behind the veneer of absurdity. One of them, an American-born Korean woman around her age, even had the audacity to laugh and say, "Annie, I'm glad you've found the novelty style for you, but there's a reason Taekwondo has millions of practitioners, and Martial Arts Badminton doesn't."

There was nothing she could say to that, so she plastered on a tight smile and resolved to let her fists do the talking for her during sparring later.

I'm going to beat your ass, Cathy.

Class started with Annie standing next to her fellow green belts. She had cringed tying the belt around her waist tonight. It was supposed to signify that she was at an intermediate level in Taekwondo, a completely ridiculous claim that she felt embarrassed to be making. She had considered asking for a white belt, but she didn't want to make a scene of things. Maybe next time she'd conveniently 'forget' her colored belts and dig up her old white one.

They 'warmed up' with high-knees, a little jog, and some dynamic stretching, a relaxing change of pace from the sheer agony of what James considered to be a warm-up. It was here that she realized the problem with enrolling in a dojo with sixty thousand members. If Grandmaster Kwon included even one class one day of the week for his students where they truly trained at the level required to develop their Qi networks, many would die. Every year, there would be a handful of deaths, and you didn't make it to sixty thousand members if you had people publicly dying in your classes. She assumed that the training that she was after, as a professional athlete, was gatekept to the small group sessions, running in at $75 per, or private lessons, which started at $150. Presumably, if she joined as an instructor, she could also work her way up the ranks slowly and be given that training for free, but that would require her to spend years in the system to get to 1st-dan black belt first.

After the warm-up, the gym was big enough to allow the class to split into skill levels and begin drilling for different aspects of their next respective belt tests. The drills were fun! She got so much more out of them now that she had her own goals in mind. Practicing the hop step hook kick and the jump front-leg side kick was entirely pointless; James had already pounded the muscle memory of the kicks into her nervous system through what he called the 'deliberate application of pain'. But this was the first time she'd been able to gauge where she was at in developing the man's true ultimate technique, his 'eyes', the ability to visually internalize body mechanics in seconds.

Annie wasn't, it turned out, close at all, but she could finally see the path up the mountain, and the first step started with assisting her peers. The green belts partnered up under the supervision of a second-dan black belt named Garrison, and while he was enthusiastic and supportive, he obviously had no idea how to coach. Well, that wasn't quite fair. She had been spoiled by James, who was an alarmingly good teacher – alarming, as in, studying under him could make an athlete reevaluate the entirety of their careers and every past relationship with former coaches.

It was up to each instructor how they went about teaching a skill or move. Garrison, who wasn't much older than her and had real sales-guy energy, focused on the thwack a good kick made against the pads and pushing his students past the physical pain with high-rep drills. As long as the kicks were thwacking, he didn't so much care about the form. Annie and James used the methodology themselves; rote repetition would help train the nerves and toughen the tendons so long as a student continued to train the motions regularly. However, as her shifu emphasized many times, in their limited time together it was better to focus on proper technique and skill building. He trusted her to get the reps in on her own time.

"Hey, Garrison, hold the pad for a sec," she said, frowning at what she was seeing from her partner. Casey, the girl who had been working the front desk, had run over and excitedly asked to join their group despite being a red belt, under the excuse that she needed to practice her hook and side kicks.

"Sure! Need a break?"

She ignored him and stood behind her teen partner. "Okay, Casey, throw the kick again."

Casey, who couldn't have been older than sixteen, had been anxious from the start, respectfully holding back a fan-gasm by opting for a cool, casual demeanor instead. She stiffened under Annie's attention but did as she was told.

Annie hip-checked the unexpecting teen as she hopped forward into the hook kick, sending her flying forward into a surprised Garrison.

"Woah, Annie—"

She ignored the instructor again. "Alright, now try it again, but hinge your hips an inch."

A mortified Casey quickly extracted herself; she looked like she wanted to say something, but Annie gave her the old 'German gymnastics coach' stare she knew so well from her childhood, and the girl returned to position, a bit paler in the face. Annie put a hand on the girl's hip and moved her gently into a slightly lower, more stable stance.

Both girls looked at Garrison expectantly. "The pad, Garrison."

He jumped a bit, having forgotten himself. "Oh, yeah, sorry."

Casey threw the kick again. This time, when Annie hip-checked the teen she was able to sink down, take a second hop forward, and land the kick. There was no satisfying thwack, she would have to learn how to throw with power from the new position, but her balance was night-and-day.

"Feel the difference?"

"Yes!" The girl beamed. "Wow, thanks, Annie! Was that something new you guys are working on?"

She felt herself blush and waved it off. "Oh, ha! Aww, it's nothing at all. And kind of, James and I do work on balance but that one was all me. Not to brag, but I was once Queen of the Beam in gymnastics."

"This is so cool! I can't believe I get to train with you! My friend and I have been following along to your videos. She's going to die when I tell her about this."

"What! No, that's so cool! Send me a video of your next practice and I'll stitch it!"

"James?" asked Garrison.

Casey answered before she could, a little louder than she might have. "James Li! He's making a martial art that's straight out of a movie or video game, and Annie's his first student! It's based on kung fu, right Annie?"

Annie gave a nervous laugh at the small frowns she received from many of the higher-ranked students and instructors, silently admonishing James for downplaying the reaction to her being a part of two schools. "Yep! James left his Eagle School Kung Fu school because he said his family style looked too villainous for a chivalrous hero like him. Funny, right?"

The joke seemed to break the tension as people returned to their drills, but she could sense that she'd be hearing small jabs and pointed comments for a long while. She had bucked that cultish devotion towards Grandmaster Kwon's methods by taking another master, and the gym's more militaristic culture by stepping on Garrison's toes.

James had told her that people in the modern era changed schools and disciplines all the time. They either moved for work or were looking to incorporate different techniques into their personal style, something more acceptable now with the rise of MMA gyms. But he probably hadn't had in mind an organization like Kwon's; the KFA had gyms all over the country, with one in almost every major metropolitan area, and it also taught Hapkido and Ssireum, traditional Korean wrestling. Those excuses didn't apply to it. Worse, Annie hadn't moved, nor had she bothered to try to take lessons in the other styles, she had instead joined a new school in the same city. She could see why some of them might take it personally.

It was still annoying though and by the time the class moved to the sparring sessions, she had decided to make the cancellation appointment – because, of course, the KFA made you schedule your cancellation. She'd wait until a few days before the next month's payment to keep things from being unbearably awkward, but she wasn't leaving the gym tonight without adding an alert to her calendar.

With that in mind, she felt completely comfortable with ignoring the accepted rules of the club and walking over to the black belts, who were the only ones allowed to do full-contact sparring.

"Hi! Do you guys mind if I join you tonight? I'm not going to get much out of point sparring with the lower levels."

One of them, a middle-aged man shaped like a barrel, started to answer, "Sorry, kiddo, but it's black belts only for a reason. Rushing the proper methods is how people get hurt. But, hey, you're less than two years away now."

"Yeah, I don't think she's sticking around that long, Bill," said Garrison.

Bill, who had been working the bags in the corner of the gym during the drills, looked confused and a little offended on her behalf. "Sorry to hear that. If it's a money—"

"Are you planning on sticking around Annie?" interrupted the head instructor, smiling neutrally. "What does James Li think of you continuing here? I know his background is extremely traditional."

Jeanine Bottaro was a compact, very short, Italian woman of indeterminate age with the skin tone and rigid musculature of a bronze statue. She had seven yellow bands on her black belt and while this may have been a Master Kwon's Korean Fighting Academy, the gym on 478 Gully Avenue was firmly Jeanine's domain.

Annie put her hands up, not immune to the little spike of fear that the little woman's superficially friendly tone inspired. "James was the one who said I should continue here, actually. He said that two of the primary aspects of martial arts were building community and developing friendships, and since it's just the two of us…"

Master Bottaro let out a dramatic sigh of relief and mocked wiping the sweat from her brow. "Little James grew into a wise, sensible man, did he? How he managed that with his parents is nothing short of a miracle. I can only imagine what a nightmare he might have become – I've been quietly worried about that since his birth." She chuckled and shook her head.

She didn't know how to feel about the dig at her master's family but at least it had been paired with a complement for the man himself. "You know the Li's?"

"Not the Li's, no, but I've had the misfortune of calling his father a…friend for almost thirty years. Dog of a man—" she scowled, before smiling and continuing. "I won't hold it against his son though, especially if he chose to rebel by becoming reasonable and responsible. I'm honored that James Li would entrust us with his senior student. That's high praise," she said; Annie realized that it was more for the benefit of the others than her, and indeed, the mood shifted completely, the rest relaxing at the words.

"As for sparring with us, am I correct in assuming that if I make you go through the belt progression before allowing it, you will find another school to build a community and develop friendships with?"

She scratched the back of her head. "Haha, uh…not necessarily?"

Jeanine smiled knowingly. "Then I have no choice but to say yes. I can't deprive my students of the opportunity to train with the senior student of—what's he calling it?"

"Black City Kung Fu, ma'am."

"Hm, good name." She bowed. "Then, for the purpose of training with the senior student of Black City Kung Fu, please join us in full-contact sparring."

Annie bowed low. Maybe she wouldn't quit the KFA after all. "Thank you! I'd be honored to."

Bill the barrel bristled. "But Kwan Jang Nim, the Grandmaster—"

"The rules of a sixty-thousand-person organization must necessarily allow for exceptions, Bill. Besides, I might have to fight James Li in the Qualifiers next month, are you going to deprive me of the chance to study his style up close and in person?"

To everyone's surprise, Bill didn't back down. "I'm not trying to be a rules stickler, Jeanie, but they do exist for a reason. The last time we let someone spar early, he left with a fractured orbital bone and his mother tried to sue."

Jeanine shrugged. "That's fair. Well, Annie, would you be willing to show off your skills for us to ease Master Bill's mind?"

"Sure! Can I use anything, or do you want me to stick to taekwondo rules?"

"I insist you use everything you can." She looked at the gathered black belts. "Would anyone from the first-dan like to volunteer?"

Annie mentally fist-pumped when Cathy stepped forward, a confident and dismissive look on her face. "It should be me. Annie's been wanting to hit me since I laughed at her Art in the locker room."

She gave the woman a toothy grin. "Guilty."

Cathy rolled her eyes. "I stand by what I said, Annie. You're wasting your time with a novelty Art for some himbo. He's hot, but is he 'throw your life away becoming the martial arts equivalent of a clown' hot?"

"Oh, Catherine, sweetie, bless your heart. You spent your life taking kickboxing-for-fitness classes. The first thing my shifu taught me was to attack with the intent to kill."

Jeanine Bottaro barked a laugh. "It sounds like one of you is about to learn an important lesson. Go on, everyone, give them some room. I'm putting five minutes on the clock."

The black belts formed a semi-circle around the two while the rest of the class watched out of the corner of their eyes like voyeurs. They should have just paused to watch; the spectacle wasn't going to last long.

Cathy squared up in a traditional, balanced stance, ready to kick with either rear or front leg. Annie crossed her arms, unimpressed. If James was in that stance, it could have meant literally anything, he may have been about to cartwheel into a knee to the clavicle. Cathy was going to kick, and since her head was unguarded, she was going to throw it high.

Wait – holy shit, was this how James saw the world? That had felt so natural to her.

The beep of the clock went off, and sure enough, Cathy took a second to see if she was really just going to stand there before entering with a huge step into a haymaker of a roundhouse, trying to kick the head off her shoulders. Annie jumped – Cathy had made the timing easy by overcommitting – and used her opponent's ankle as though it was terra firma, jumping again into a front-flip turned axe kick to the woman's shoulder. She doubted even James as he currently was could have mimicked the feat; it required the same superhuman balance that allowed her to run along clotheslines and telephone wires.

Cathy had enough instincts to turn what could have been a shattered collar bone into merely a dislocated shoulder, and the grit to keep fighting through the pain. Annie landed in a low crouch and had to immediately use her elbow to block a front kick to the skull. The taekwondo fighter was quick though; she pulled the kick at the last second, and turned it into a fast low roundhouse to Annie's temple.

The redhead was suddenly, for the first time, grateful for how hard James hit her in practice. She was unfazed by the pain or the burst of visual static from the kick, and had the wherewithal to recognize that Cathy was momentarily off balance. Annie wrapped the other girl's rear leg in both arms and jumped straight up as hard as she could. Cathy fell forward on top of her as her foot left the ground, putting herself between Annie's skull and the ceiling.

The loud boom and rattle of two women rocketing into the ceiling was followed by the horrible cracking of ribs as they came back down. Annie not only spun them around in the air, but kicked off the ceiling as she did in a semi-mirror of her master's most famous fight, and landed knees first onto her opponent's abdomen, one elbow striking her sternum.

She rolled backwards away, doing one of teenage James' reverse kip-ups for style, the ones she'd watched a dozen times over while stalking his socials before they'd met. Looking around, there were still over four minutes on the clock, and unfortunately, no one had been able to get a phone out in time to record.

"Should I keep going?" she asked Master Bottaro with a faux-innocence. "I don't think Cathy's enjoying the clown show."