Grit started to work out his frustrations on the dummies, first with slow moves, but as he got more and more angry his moves became more cold and calculating, more fluid, more deadly, suddenly he looked as firm and as immobile as a mountain, the next instant he seemed fluid, as if his moves had no beginning and no end, and so he practiced.

Michael caught up with Grit in the gym. He'd not missed the man's reaction to Shya's death. That bastard Grunt was involved, that much he knew, but there was someone else in on it too. The method was far too well planned out for it to have been the mindless oaf alone.

The one person Michael thought might know who else was responsible was Grit. He seemed a decent enough guy, one of the few guards who had never abused their position of power. Michael walked in to see him violently assaulting a dummy. "Excuse me," he said politely.

Matthew had left soon after Shya had died. He was shocked and as he swept the broom trembled slightly. He envied Grit for being able to practice his martial arts openly, oh how he longed to borrow one of the swords on the sword rack. The only time he got to handle them was when he needed to oil them and clean them. Once when the guard watching him fell asleep, he permitted himself a quick practice, but hurriedly put it away when the guard woke up. Still he practiced with what he could, broom handles, imaginary swords, anything. But now he was back to his job, sweeping and maintaining the gym and training room.

Even though Grit was practising martial arts, as he calmed down he became more and more aware, as any good martial artist should, of his surroundings, there was old man Ice, or Matthew Ice in the corner sweeping and cleaning. Something about Matthew always struck Grit but he could never seem to place what it was
Grit noticed when Michael walked in, but currently he was in flow.

“Excuse me.”

Inwardly Grit sighed. He spun to concentrate his attack on one dummy. The dummies were nothing fancy, composed of a mock human and a heavy base. Grit curled his hands into fists with the first joint of his middle finger sticking out like a blunt protrusion and threw a rapid series of punches, which if done on a live human would most certainly break most if not all of his ribs, each punch was accurate, precise, never overpowered. He stood in a semi archer’s stance, legs apart, and right foot slightly in front of the left. Then he curled his right arm around and used his right hand to form a lose cupped palm facing him, he twisted his waist slightly to the left, and at the same time shifted his weight to his left foot, bringing his right foot first to touch his left ankle then to step forward. At the same time as he stepped forward, he brought his left hand as a palm and placed in on his right wrist and pushed. The move was smooth, it was in flow, and it was natural.
Impact.
The dummy did not fall over it just was shoved back horizontally a reasonable distance. Grit returned to a loose yet ready stance, then straightened up. Taking a breath he turned to face Michael. “Yes?” his tone was not friendly, nor w3as it unfriendly it was the tone of one who is working through his emotions, yet is disciplined enough not to show it.

"Sorry to intrude," Michael said, as it was clear that right now Grit would rather be left alone to work out his feelings on the training dummy, "But I overheard the conversation between you and Grunt. I wanted to ask you something. Who helped Grunt kill Shya?"

Michael has asked in a completely level tone, not revealing his underlying emotions or intent. He was quite seriously considering finding out who was responsible and going to beat them to death.

Inwardly, Grit froze at the tone, he had heard it before, he knew what it could indicate, the unusual calm before the storm. Michael was usually a calm kid, perhaps this might have pushed him a bit to far. In any case this took precedence over his own personal feelings.

“Woo, woo, woo, hold up there son. It is Michael isn’t it? First, I am sorry but I do not know you that well. Then again if you are thinking of doing what I think your thinking of doing, you may need a weee bit of help. I mean God knows I agree with it. For a mutant to not use any powers, Grunt is possible, he may not be Einstein material but he does know how to handle himself in a fight. As for the other person, well if you wanna take on him you gonna need a lot of help. I could train you if you are interested… besides I could use a hand, and Shya’s life is not the only one who was, and will be threatened, so I could do with a extra set of hands. That is if you are interested?”

Grit left the offer hanging, he then turned away slightly as if he was going to go back to training, but actually he was watching to see how Michael would react.

Sara’s chin was tucked down as she walked in. The news of death hadn’t taken long to spread to her. It was still unreal. Life went on. And so did the need for fresh towels everywhere in the camps. It was amazing how many places used them as well. Deliveries took her for quite a daily tour of the camps.

Upon entering she could hear the last two exchanges, lips tightening at Michael’s question. So the rumor was true.

Without looking up, she made her way past Grit, and Michael, past where Matthew was. Now he was new. Her eyes flicked up and to the side before focusing back down at the task at hand. She set her sack down and began folding them in front of the case of weapons.

Grit's words seemed to snap Michael out of his trance and back to reality. Especially the part about someone else being at risk. "I'm in," he said simply. He'd not quite recovered fully enough to be his usual polite self, but he was more than comitted to bringing down the bastards responsible and stopping them from hurting anyone else.

Sara's entrance went largely unnoticed by Michael as he was now focused on his new goal, helping Grit protect people and punish those who deserved it.

“Very well then, come and follow me.” Grit then lead Michael into an adjoining room. This room had a series of concentric circles in the centre and one separate small circle in a small corner. He directed Michael to stand in the centre of the concentric circles while he stood in the smaller one a reasonable distance away. “This,” he said indicating the concentric circles “is called the training wheel, while the one I’m standing in is called the masters circle. The wheel is your world, out side it there is nothing, nothing!”

“First things first, lets teach you some simple self defence moves, after that we can move on to how to shield and protect others, how to knock them out and calm them without hurting them, how to save someone across the room, how to shield others and yourself from thrown weapons, shrapnel, the like. You ready?”

Matthew’s thoughts were in a whir. Death! Killing! Murder! Horror! Anger! Cruelty! All these thought whirred around and around puzzling and confusing. Having finished sweeping the area, he slowly sat down next to the girl, Sara, who was folding and changing towels. He was glad of the company, and needed to sit down anyway.

"I'm ready," Michael answered, "but we can skip the self defence bit, I don't really need it." The skeptical look on Grit's face made him see that he'd need to prove it. "Attack me, all out. Like you were on the training dummies."

As he spoke Michael used one of his perks as a guard. As a guard he was allowed access to his powers without the bracelet shocking him. Taking full advantage of this he immobilised himself. Now, no matter what Grit threw at him, he would not move from his spot in the centre circle.

(Apologies for the long wait.)

Sara was on her third towel when Matthew had come over. She hadn’t run into him at the camps before, but the guards kept her running around. Thinking laundry kept her hands from getting into trouble. Their plan hadn’t always worked. Something that she held some pride in.

She finished folding the third towel, setting it down on the short stack. Then let her eyes flick up to glance at Matthew. “So do they keep you busy as well?” It was an odd sort of greeting, but anything else felt odd.

“Do they keep you busy here as well?”
It was asked by a girl who he thought he had heard people called as Sara.
“Yeah they kinda do, I am in charge of mostly maintaining and repairing the gym and training area for the guards. And what with so much cruelty and aggressiveness around I am kept pretty busy repairing damaged stuff. Sorry if I seemed out of it, Shya’s death… it just stirs up a hornets nest of emotions. I am Matthew by the way.”

Sara nodded. “At least you can stay in one place, they have me running all around the camps.” He’d mentioned Shya and Sara’s head dropped slightly, letting her eyes rest of the floor in front of where she was working. It was hard to explain, but Sara wasn’t ready to accept that the blind girl was gone yet. Still, the mention of the name, just seemed to hit her oddly. “It’s alright.” She finished folding the latest towel, and before grabbing another, she pushed her right hand out in Matthew’s direction. “My name is Sara.”

Her eyes traveled around the room. Checking out the different parts and equipment. “At least you get to do something more interesting then the camps laundry. Presoaking other people’s skid marks is not my idea of a fun packed afternoon.”

“Really?” he paused for a minute, then stepping forward he said “Excuse me.” That said, the second joint of the middle finger stood out of his fists, and he rapidly struck Michael’s chest. He did a similar attack to what he had just been doing on the dummy, but a bit more restrained. His attack hit the base of every rib bone in Michaels chest, in an attack intended to do more pain than damage. This was an attack that he had trained long and hard to perfect, and to ensure that your fist could properly deal the attach it involved training against a stone wall.

Imagine Grit’s surprise when he felt like he was hitting his training wall. Slightly disconcerted, he stopped. “ooook… right then that is settled. Very well let us begin teaching you how to block things, but to do that you will need to use the same defence moves that you use on yourself but just used in a different concept.”

And so the training began.
First Grit started to teach Michael the basic moves for defence, and then how to deflect projectiles away from himself, and then how then to deflect them from others. They first started with big knives. In one exercise Grit would put an in creasing number of dummies behind Michael.

“Michael, use your feet, remember the three consecutive moves. Demonstrate that for me. Now! Attack! Slow it down.”

He would then patiently correct Michael’s position.
A little bit later…
“Hey Michael I need to go on shift now, but you can stay here and train if you want. Just keep practicing the moves that I have taught you until a point where they become reflex. Meld them together so they flow into one another. Ill be back later.”