18 Where is he?

Early in the morning when Natasha woke up she first thought about going to saying goodbye to Jamal, but after meditating on it she concluded that it would be better if she didn't go as she knew that seeing him leaving would make her emotional side taking the lead, she would beg him to let her accompany him or she would just decide to sneak and follow him in secret in case of rejection.

Instead, she made up her mind, jumped out of her bed and she started her morning practice; some push-ups and other supplement room workouts. After she finished warming up, confident that her body was now fully awakened, she went straight to the bathroom. In the end, it took about 45 minutes to be entirely prepared, she was wearing her usual sports clothes, a sleeveless T-shirt, mini leggings, and a pair of comfortable sports shoes. And in last, she took her knife which was resting on her table and put it in its pocket.

[ Well, time to go ] she said to her reflection in the mirror.

She passed by Matteo's room and seeing that the door was still locked she supposed that was still sleeping and thus she didn't insist on disturbing him. The day before Lina mentioned that starting that day it would be assigned to him a lot of work, so it was better for him to have a good rest as she knew the hell it would be to work with Lina.

When she arrived in the kitchen, she took an apple and her special drink a cup of ginger tea. After she finished her quick breakfast she left the house. As she remembered having left the motorbike at the factory, she didn't have other choices but to walk to the factory, there she would take the motorbike and head to the city barrier and some minutes after she would reach it.

She was convinced, when she would arrive, that there would be no any case of someone crossing the barrier, however, Jamal had taught her to always be prudent and cautious, so she decided to not overlook it. She took her time to inspect the entire barrier but as she had thought along the whole barrier there was no sign of vandalism.

She went back to the control post where she restarted the security system, then she moved outside to start her training of the sword.

She picked her knife, held it before her with her two hands, she slowly took the fighting stance she has learned, what Jamal called 'the opening position', the one fighters would take to show to the opponents that they were ready for the fight, then she focused and transformed the little knife into her long katana. Just she expected, flames appeared suddenly on the blade of the knife and began to grow slowly along with it until the shape of the knife changed into the katana.

In the first half of her training time, she was repeating the basics and other techniques she already knew to warm up her body, and later, after she thought she sweated enough, she dedicated the other half to try to reproduce some complicated moves and combos Jamal had shown her.

There were more than one hundred moves and more than 80 combos. He told her that once she would improve more of her mastery of the sword and assimilate completely those moves, she would be able to create her own combos but before that she should get in her mind the series of basic techniques and let her body get used to them until they become entirely natural.

That was what she did, for about three hours she repeated, again and again, the sword techniques Jamal showed her. After those hours passed, she found out that she had already assimilated almost all of them and remained only a dozen of other moves, the most complicated, that needed a little more time for her to be able to reproduce them. She decided that for the moment, it was enough and that it was the time to switch to the other part of the training, the combat simulation.

The last time they trained together, Jamal started by the combat simulation without taking the time to show her some moves. However, he later confessed to her that, normally, they should have done the opposite, because it's during the simulation she could unleash herself and test all the techniques she learned, but he did it that way because Natasha's case was special.

She held her Katana straight, took again a combat stance, the opening position, and closed her eyes to start the visualization. The object of there with the combat simulation consisted to create a situation of a duel where the partners would fight each other with their full strength, in theory as Jamal always ends up going easy on her, but since she was all alone for that training without any partner, she had to imagine almost all the situation, from the form and the equipment of her imaginary foe until the techniques the foe used and how he moved when they would fight each other.

From the outside, it might look like she was fighting against the air, but within her mind, she was immersed in intensive combat against a formidable opponent. Depending on the level of concentration of the person using it, that simulation of combat could be more realistic than normal.

Since it was her imagination that was working, the moves of her foe were more expended and might look faster than hers and her body was finding difficulties to follow the rhythm. And there was all the benefit of that training, which was somehow better than to train with a real partner, but again that's in theory, because, though she would do her best to make her imaginary opponent match Jamal's strengthen, in the end, he would, all the time, seem stronger.

She had to make her body be able to respond quickly to her mind and be able to move exactly in the way she had been visualizing in her imagination.

When Jamal explained to her the concept of the simulation she thought that, with the help of her exceptional body, it would be easy to respond no matter whether it was in terms of speed, strength, or execution. But when it came to putting her words into action, she didn't feel like it was easy at all. After one hour and a half she was already totally exhausted, [ I have to work on my stamina to improve it too ] she put on a note for herself.

She rested a little while before she went to lock the control post and head back to her home. When she arrived at the core of the city she realized that she didn't have much time left before the course she had to give to the other youngsters began, [ I certainly, a bit, overdid it no wonder I'm late ] she thought [ well, I didn't want to go there all sweaty and dressed like this but it seems that I don't have any choice ]. She, then, changed her path in the direction of the gymnasium.

As she expected, she found that everyone was already there. She also noticed that they took the initiative to start the warm-ups while waiting for the teacher.

Karen was the first one to see Natasha coming in, she immediately stopped what she was doing to run toward her while screaming her name making all the attention revert to the young woman. She jumped on her arms and hugged her while all the sights were turning toward them.

" I missed you, " Karen said to Natasha.

She was a bit embarrassed as she disliked being the center of the attention, " don't you think you are overreacting? we literally saw each other yesterday, " she responded kindly to Karen.

" Yeah... but it doesn't change the fact that I missed you, " she shrugged, when she released her from the hug she started to look here and there behind Natasha as if she was looking for someone, she was about to ask the question when someone in the crowd overtook her.

" Hey Nat', where is Jamal? It's not like him to be late, " said a boy in the crowd.

All the others beside him followed and started asking the same question to each other and a few seconds later the gymnasium became really noisy. Natasha stepped forward and shouted, " shut up! " and immediately the calm returned, she stared at them for a while before she announced, "listen to me carefully, I have something important that I would want to share with you. First of all... " she paused " Jamal won't come on today's training, neither tomorrow nor the day after, to say the truth you will not be able to see him before one week ".

The noses of the crowd were about to overrun the gym when Natasha quickly rose her hand to calm them down. She pointed to a girl who was rising her hand to ask permission to talk, she stepped forward and asked " where is he? Did he get injured? "

" Don't worry, he just got a mission to do from our mayor which forced him to momentarily leave the city but as I have said he will be back the next week, " Natasha responded calmly before she gave the talk to another girl in the crowd.

" So should we consider that from now on you will be the one who will replace him in his daily tasks... even patrolling the barrier? "

Natasha nodded " yes, that's exact ".

" Will you be alright? I mean... we all know that Jamal's job is far to be easy but he still finds some time to care about us ".

[ But during this little period it will turn out to be easy though, as no one among the outlaws will come over here until the next week ] Natasha said to herself.

" You don't have to worry, anyone of you. I will do my best to fulfill all his duties on his behalf, protect you, and to take care of you until he returns, " she responded loudly, however, she knew that mere answer would not be enough to reassure them and they would remain worried until the town's guardian, in whom they believed so much, came back.

However, Natasha didn't intend to give up just because she was not the one people reclaimed, she would anyway do her job in the best way she was able to do, " if you don't have any other questions, let's start the training, " she paused and seeing that there was no other objection she added, " So here we go, start by taking your position, we will do as usual ".

It was obvious that some of them were slightly reluctant to obey, but she couldn't help. Some of them had moments of hesitation but in the end, they all obeyed her order to take their marks what made her smile in her heart.

[ Now the course can finally begin ] she thought.

She gave her the lessons and even though it was not as dynamic as it was when they were with Jamal, she still managed to make them work hard, reproduce the techniques they had learned again and again to suppress their mistakes on the executions until they finally showed some ameliorations at the end of the session.