As it was her cloud, she could see through it well enough to target those inside, but she hadn’t noticed something very important until he almost hit her. His eyes were closed. How could he possibly see her attacks coming? Was he extending his other senses? Which ones? She kept dodging his moves, the cloud barely affecting her sight at this range, and returned a few blows of her own. The Monk managed to barely dodge all of them, then grabbed her arm. “I apologize for what I must do.” he said, then grabbed her shoulder and pulled on the arm. She tried to resist, but after he quickly boosted his strength there was a loud pop and her arm was dislocated from its socket.

  She screamed in rage and swung with her functional arm, and he grabbed it. “Surrender, and I won’t need to continue.”

  “You bastard.” she said. “When I’m done with you…” There was another pop as her other arm left its socket and she cried out in pain.

  “I do not wish to take another human life, but if you continue to kill the people of this world, I will have no choice but to stop you.”

  “Another?” she asked. “A good Buddhist shouldn’t have taken any.”

  “Blood Red Scorpion was too much of a threat, so I had no choice.” Her eyes widened in shock. “While it was not I who landed the final blow, I caused more damage than most could survive.”

  “You were one of those that fought him? Then tell me, where is he?” The Monk saw the wooden bracelets on her arms start to pull on them, to try and put them back into their sockets, but he let it happen. Even if she recovered, if she attacked again, he could dislocate them again. While he was harming another living being by doing so, it is something he must do to protect far more, and is something she can fully recover from. “Even if he died, he should have returned through the gate. We had a body prepared in case that happened.”

  “Then I must inform you that Blood Red Scorpion has been purified and returned to the cycle.” The Monk waved his arm and a strong wind blew which made the cloud disappear.

  Adams and the man exchanged several blows, with Adams taking most of the damage, but every time the man paused Adams started to prepare a Singularity, forcing the man to continue his attack. Eventually the man built up enough momentum that he decide to try something big. He surrounded his body in blue flames and flew at Adams. The blow landed and a massive explosion lit up the night sky.

  The man panted, his body feeling the stress of having used half of his energy in one attack, and looked at where Adams was floating. Adams appeared unharmed, with a massive smile on his face. “I was just hit with your most powerful attack, but am uninjured. Are you sure you want to continue?”

  Adams was, of course, bluffing. His barrier belt, which he had barely activated in time and had been saving for emergencies, was at 3% strength, and he had spent 90% of the energy he had before the attack powering a one-man barrier formation. The other points of the formation were items which he wore, but which appeared mundane, like the spirit wood in his shoes, the canteen of spirit water on his waist, or the Eternal Flame charm in his pocket. The formula for the nascent level formation was given to him by the Monk as a reward for advancing, and only needed his own energy to use, but the energy demand was still too much for him at this level. Blocking a single attack had almost completely taxed his reserves.

  The man looked like he was going to say something, when they heard the woman scream. “You bastard!” she bellowed as she flew at the monk. One of her arms flopped uselessly at her side and the Monk barely needed to try to dodge her clumsy, anger fueled attacks, making it look as if an angsty teenager was attacking a professional fighter.

  The man noticed this and flew towards his wife. Adams let him go without following. In his current state, if the man landed a single good blow he could be killed. As the man neared the two, screaming with rage at the man who dared to injure and mistreat his wife, he was suddenly struck by an object moving with great speed. The impact sent him flying into a nearby ten story building. He must have hit a support pillar or two because the building soon began collapsing as if in a controlled demolition.

  “I’m sorry for the delay, Master.” said a man from where something had hit the man. “I mistakenly sent myself to Chicago, and when I tried again, I was on the other side of the city. I decided to use Slipstream to get here as quickly as possible.”

  The woman stood there in shock. Had the young monk really just tackled her love into a building?

  Adams flew up. “Colonel Jacob Adams, Protector of this city.” he said, holding out his hand to the new man in orange monks robes. “And you are?”

  “You may call me the Apprentice.” the new man said, shaking it. He then turned to the woman. “We have you outnumbered three to one. It would be wise if you ceased your attack.”

  She was about to respond when The Man appeared behind The Apprentice, stepping out of a portal covered in bruises, minor cuts and large amounts of concrete dust. The Man then grabbed the young monk and flew at one of the nearby buildings with as much speed as he could manage. “You like throwing people through buildings? Why don’t I show you what it’s like?” he held the Apprentice in front of him as he started flying though walls and pillars.

  The woman smirked. “I think I like my chances.” She said, then flung her hand out towards the weakest of her opponents. A bolt of blue energy flew from her palm and hit Adams in the chest, as he had turned off the barrier so that it could charge faster, every fraction of a percent more damage blocked being critical. Adams immediately developed a shell of ice and every cell of his body froze solid. The Master level Absolute Cold technique, like its Lesser level cousin the Ice Entombment technique, surrounded the target in ice so that the target could no longer move, but it did so with far more ferocity. With this technique the target’s cells would have all of the heat removed from them in a matter of seconds, rather than hoping that the person remain encased long enough to get minor frostbite.

  As being frozen had instantly stopped his brain from functioning, Adams lot consciousness, and as it and his meridians were frozen his core couldn’t send out any qi to continue the flight technique, so he fell from the sky. Unlike in a television show, he didn’t shatter into a million pieces upon landing. Instead, he bounced a few times, the Nascent level natural body enhancements and large amount of qi in his body keeping him for breaking. He did however, end up stopping in a bizarre position, his head and two arms in the ground and his legs in the air, making it look like he was doing a headstand. Soon tiny droplets began to form on him as even the oxygen and nitrogen started to reach the right temperature to liquefy.

  “Now.” she said to the Monk, “What was that about surrendering?” She flew at him and they started swinging. At first her moves seemed fluid, like they were flowing effortlessly from one position to the next, but when the Monk’s disciplined moves managed to block them all, she decided to switch to a style which used more rigid but more powerful moves.

  This time she blocked with solid limbs much like the Monk was doing, but all of her attacks were chops or jabs with her hands or feet. “You have studied your Ice style quite well.” the Monk said, noticing the idea behind this style. He knew that she used Ice techniques and therefore had a water root, so that was the most likely source of inspiration. “I would say that you are better with it than that Flowing Water one.”

  She caught his fist, using the force to flip up and kick him in the face with her toes. “It’s more useful in most fights.” She responded.

  The Monk nodded then reached up and popped the bones of his nose back into place, ignoring the blood pouring out of it. “You know, I never asked your names. That was incredibly rude of me. People call me The Monk. I know, it isn’t very descriptive, the way Dao names are, but it works for me. Do you mind telling me your names?”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  The woman thought for a few minutes. “I suppose I can. You may as well know the name of the one who killed you, for when you return. I am Mist Crane, and the one beating your apprentice to death is Blue Phoenix, my dao companion.”

  The Monk nodded. “Thank you.” he said. “Do you prefer Mist or Crane?”

  “Mist,” she responded. “And he prefers Blue.”

  The Monk bowed slightly. “In that case, may I ask why you attacked this nation’s base?” To the outside observer it may seem strange that he was asking questions, but in his own way it was keeping her busy without having to harm another living being.

  ---

  The little girl shivered from the cold, blowing into her hands to try and warm them. As she had no winter clothing she had wrapped a blanket around herself, but the air coming from under it and through the holes prevented her from actually warming up.

  She entered the cabin and closed the door behind her, pushing a cooking pot against it to keep it from blowing open. Her six year old body could barely manage to move it with as hungry as she was, but she eventually managed.

  She then pulled a rabbit out of her bag along with a good number of sticks, small branches that had fallen off of the trees thanks to last night’s snow fall. She stacked the sticks to the side of the fire place to dry and so the snow would melt off of them, then picked up a wooden object from the other side. She pulled out her small knife and started shaving it into the fire place. After she thought she had enough she set the wood to the side and pushed the shavings into a pile before using one of the larger ones to push a few embers into them. She blew on the coals and the shavings started to burn, so she started adding a few sticks from what she had already dried.

  The Blizzard had hit the shack six days ago. They had run out of food that morning, the trader coming late this year, so her father had left to hunt, only for the storm to appear and freeze everything, covering everything in ice. She wasn’t sure if he was alive or not, but she couldn’t accept that he was dead. After all, she had never known her mom, as she died when giving birth to her, so her father was the only family she had.

  She added another chair leg to the fire. She wasn’t able to find enough wood outside to keep the fire going, so she had been forced to break down what wooden items the house had. She carefully tended the fire for the next ten or twenty minutes, until it was large enough to slowly heat up the cabin, then started cleaning the rabbit. While she didn’t want to keep the entrails, she couldn’t clean them outside due to the weather. It had been much warmer today than yesterday, so maybe tomorrow it would be warm enough that she could bury them like she was supposed to. When it was this cold, she doubted any coyotes would be out, but she still didn’t like keeping around something that would attract them.

  She cooked some of the rabbit meat and ate it, careful not to eat too much. She didn’t know for certain that she would catch another rabbit tomorrow, so she had to be careful with how much she ate. After eating she laid down in front of the fire, added one more piece of wood, and rolled away from the fire, so that the light wouldn’t keep her awake.

  When she woke up she heard a bird chirping outside. She moved the pot to look outside and saw that much of the snow had started to melt. While it wasn’t that warm, it was enough to melt the snow, and some of it fell off of her roof and in front of the door, so she realized it.

  It was already mid morning, but she went out into the woods anyway to check her traps. Once of them was damaged. It appeared that something, maybe a coyote or wolf, had found the rabbit it had caught and taken the meal for itself. She repaired the trap and set it up again, then moved on to the next.

  Three days and only one rabbit later the weather had grown warm enough to go outside without the blanket. She gathered her things and started searching for her father. After all, he probably got trapped in a cave and may be injured or need her help.

  Eventually, she saw smoke rising from a nearby clearing. Was that him? She made her way there, but when she entered the clearing she saw an Indian. Or rather, she saw three. Pawnee, she thought her dad called them. She started backing away. She had heard some bad stories about how some Indians had hurt settlers.

  “We aren’t going to hurt you, child.” The man said.

  “You speak English?” the girl asked.

  The man nodded. “Father was white. When I grew up, the tribe accepted me, but I was still raised as a white man.” He pointed to a fire, where something was cooking in a pot made of leather. “Are you hungry? We were just about to eat.”

  For the next several weeks she would visit them every few days, changing the area of her search to go near them whenever she got lonely. She found out that Joseph was separated from his tribe after some sort of conflict and only had his wife and son with him. The boy was a year younger than her, but sometimes they would play together. It was nice to have a kid near her own age to play with.

  A month later she mentioned that she wanted to plant a garden, but didn’t know how, and the next day she had to call off her search as Joseph brought seeds for her and taught her farming. Throughout the spring and summer they would come by at least once per week, her trips to search the area growing less frequent, even helping her bring in the harvest when it needed to be done. When fall got there and it started to get colder, the girl asked the family if they wanted to stay with her. Joseph’s wife was pregnant, and it wouldn’t be right to ask a pregnant woman to sleep in a tent.

  By the time the spring got there they had grown so used to each other that they were basically a family. Things continued in this manner for over a decade, with Joseph being able to pass for a white man well enough to deal with the traders and occasional visitor, though it helped that he had taught his wife and son English.

  When she was sixteen the girl fell in love with Joseph’s son, and he felt the same. They had grown up as childhood friends, and one thing lead to another, resulting in her getting pregnant. She had her child in the same cabin where her mother in law had, thought the bed had been replaced several years earlier. And so she lead a peaceful life, though she never figured out what had happened to her father. She did, however, name her first son Joseph, after his grandfather, and many years later, as she laid in her bed dying, she received word that her great grandson, Joseph III, had received a letter of commendation for his actions on the beaches of Normandy.

  ---

  A wave of qi washed over Jacob Adams, as he awoke from a very unusual meditation. He must have been watching too many Westerns. His mind even remember to insert his WWII hero grandfather, Joseph Adams III into the end of it. He felt chunks of ice fall off of him and, though he was extremely cold, he didn’t shiver, as his recent advancement gave him complete control over his body and its functions. He simply hadn’t figured out how to do anything impressive with that ability yet.

  He looked up to see the Woman talking with the Monk. Was the Monk trying to buy time? He wondered how much time had passed since her attack had knocked him out, but hadn’t brought a cell phone with him, as it would have just gotten broken. Instead, he checked his qi level. He knew how quickly his vest refilled his reserves, so he could figure it out from that.

  What he saw surprised him. His reserves were completely full. More than that, he was slightly stronger than before, about one to two percent stronger. Had his strange dream helped him to understand life more by that much? He had never imagined he was a different human before, so he supposed it was possible. Now he knew what it meant to be a woman. Well, a settler woman. One living in a city probably had a much different life.

  Seeing as how the Monk had the woman locked in conversation, Adams decided to help the other one. He looked around and saw the Apprentice being used as a flail to take out light posts and flew at the Man. He launched a kick, hoping to hit the man while he was distracted, but the man caught his leg. “Did you really think I didn’t see you coming?” he asked. Adams was about to say something when the Man spun in a circle, building up as much speed as he could, then threw them both down the street.

  Adams flew through the glass of an office building, just barely missing the ceiling, then hit a support column of a parking garage after passing through the other side. The pillar was destroyed, but the garage didn’t collapse. The Apprentice hit the ground just in front and to the left of him bounced enough to fly past him, then hit the ground and rolled until a parked sedan stopped him.

  Adams pulled himself off of the post, then went to help the Apprentice. Adams had barely managed to keep his barrier up when he impacted the post, the barrier belt still only being at ten percent due to the extreme amount of energy it required to function. He couldn’t imagine how the Apprentice's barrier had managed to stay intact through all of that. The man started to lazily fly their way.

  “Are you alright?” Adams asked, helping the Apprentice stand up. “I can’t imagine your barrier was able to stop all of that.”

  The Apprentice was covered in bruises, minor cuts, and concrete dust, but seemed mostly unharmed. “It did more than you would suspect. Perhaps my spiritual roots boosted its effectiveness, as it is based on the five elements?”

  The Man reached the edge of the Parking garage. “Interesting that the two of you find yourself in such a place.” he said. “I suppose it would only be fitting that I drop an artificial stone building on you as well.” He reached towards two of the support pillars and started to form two qi bolts which would obliterate the posts if they hit.

  The Apprentice stepped forward and waved his hand, five items flying from his storage ring. “Penance Cage.” he said, and the Man soon lost his connection to reality.