: Heartbeat

Having your body forced to run through Synchro is a strange, uncomfortable feeling, it's like there are ropes between our limbs and Kaz's, pulling my arms and legs.

Fortunately Kaz seems to be using Ki himself to help us, to force us to move, to not injure ourselves from overexertion.

Come to think of it, he doesn't want us hurt for another reason, pain is only torture when intentionally prolonged.

Arghh, despite the Ki boost that Kaz gives us, I still feel my fatigued body crying out for rest, real rest, something like sleeping for twelve hours straight.

Unfortunately we won't be given a break anytime soon, Kaz warned that he'll only stop when he thinks one of us has reached the absolute limit.

I think this was the first moment since I became a Synchroner that I was grateful that I was still in the first stage.

After nearly an hour of Kaz turning us into marathon zombies we finally stopped running, then Kaz broke the connection.

We felt the invisible ropes snapping, and relieved Mingten and I dropped to the grassy ground without thinking, and tried to regulate our heaving breathing, to no avail.

"Fuck you gallon drinker!" Mintten tries to yell at Kaz by raising his middle finger to the sky.

"Isn't Emperor's Killer a nickname that better conveys the essence of this monster?" I grumble without considering whether either of them can hear me.

"Wouldn't that make him look like someone dangerous and fearless, almost respectable, since drinking gallons makes him look like an old drunk, who would respect that?" It seems Mingten heard my grumbles.

"Don't underestimate old drunks, never heard of the drunken fist style?" Kaz also heard my grunt, unsurprisingly the few times we were in sync with him it's pretty easy to understand that he's super human.

"Drunken fists, made-up stories the common folk tell, a martial arts master so unpredictable it's impossible to sync up with him or hit him, ridiculous. It's easier for me to believe in fairy tales." Mingten unknowingly answers a doubt of mine, what the hell is a drunk fist?

For a common folk story, it's strange that I've never heard of this drunken fist style.

No, considering that some places posed my little challenge to spectators and stealing daylight in kind, I didn't actually get much of a chance to learn about local folklore and customs, unfortunately.

Since I left the village where our family lived, the times I interacted with people were limited to three situations: bargaining at the inn for a cheaper stay, the same thing for food and interacting with the public in my presentations.

Compared to the few times I've interacted with this team of misfits, who nearly killed me, I almost miss this life.

Almost, despite how much they talk about the risks of getting involved with other Synchroners, there's something that is a well-known fact: Synchroners have a lot of money, spend a lot, and make a lot of money. And well, I need a lot of money.

I just wish my mentor over that part of society was, well, a mentor?

Instead I have an arsonist sadist and a fugitive to guide me through this other layer of the world, lucky for me.

Okay, end of the monologue 'The Lamentations of Baha Anun', because now comes something truly devastating: the break is over.

I feel the non-material instruments of torture connecting to my arms and legs in complex ways, Kaz starts to run as soon as the connection is stable and we his victims chase him, although at least from training I want to run away.

"There was no other exercise in the sequence besides running?" Mintten asks, for reasons beyond my understanding, about more training.

"Yes, but I'm going to 'carry' you a little further so we don't delay our... schedule too much? Well, it's almost one if you take all the planning out of it." Kaz, this is not a schedule.

"And then?" Mintten, please don't make excuses for him to torture us further.

"You go to sleep when it gets dark I'll keep watch, and we start another round of exercises when you wake up." Kaz, saying something that sounds normal even to me. Where's the trap?

After the conversation Kaz 'carried' us, as he puts it, for another two kilometers when it finally got dark, thanks to the eight saints of good fortune.

Finally I'm going to sleep!

Kaz, like the night before, kept watch while Mingten and I went to sleep on makeshift beds, it's not the best mattress in the world, but it's the best we have.

*******

I wake up when the sunlight hits my eyes, Mingten seems to have woken up in time to be in a cultivating trance, which reminds me of my homework, not that I'm in a house anyway.

Practice sixth sense filtering, method: heartbeat.

As there are only two people here besides me, I'll have to test this on one of them. Kaz, out of the question, I don't need extra torture, so that's just Mingten left.

I'm supposed to be able to accomplish this feat through trial and error, but considering how much time I wasted the last time I tried something like this, let's think a bit before trying.

My target is Mingten, what I want to synchronize is our heartbeats, using the improved control over the body that a Synchroner gains conform one gets used to the sixth sense plus a few tricks with my breathing I can adjust my average heartbeat, Which leaves me with another question: What is the average heartbeat of my target?

Well actually there are two questions: is my target still, or moving? And how old is the target? Answer: Meditating, counts as a stop, age fourteen years, likelly.

Which gives me a range of seventy to one hundred beats per minute.

Now how to do this? Honestly, part of me just wants to get this over with even if it means testing the beats one by one, but if I'm going to take the warnings of the only two Synchroners I know seriously, I need something faster and more stable.

Another option would be to use the circulatory system but due to the gender difference with the target, this approach is doomed to fail, which also exposes another problem with this approach: it only works with people of similar stature.

Should I just go with the brute force method?

No, think a little more Baha.

I have a known range to work with, I can start from the middle and split trials like that sequentially, there's probably a better method, which I unfortunately don't know about so this will have to do for now.

Without further ado, I start putting my plan into action, setting my heart rate to somewhere around eighty-five per minute, maintain this pace for two minutes, and I can't feel anything like the connection that forms when Kaz uses Synchro in me.

Next test, ninety-five beats per minute, two minutes later nothing again, actually I gained something from it, the revelation of the obvious: if my target is calm and still the most likely scenario is, his or her heart is close to the lower values.

I can't argue if someone calls me an idiot after this one, I think about it as I hide my head in my hands to try to alleviate some of the frustration of having overlooked something so obvious.

After three minutes of discreet self-pity, or at least my fellow travelers pretended not to notice, I go back to trying to synchronize my heart with Mingten's.

Hughh, how uncomfortable that sounds. All the more reason to regret the damn bet with Mingten? Absolutely yes.

This time using seventy-five beats per minute, I can finally feel the connection form, I open my eyes to my sixth sense perception, I can 'see' Mingten's heart beating, I can feel it in my veins with how much force, or the lack of such strength as my only comparison is a monster blacksmith, her heart pumps and I hear the faint beats of it.

Now I have to learn how to do it fast and with all kinds of opponents?

No, thankfully, the sixth sense is something that seems to ask you to use all the connections you can hold simultaneously, really, everything that has a beating heart, I feel.

Which for my question from before means, that as long as I keep in sync with at least one person I'm fine.

When I can synchronize with Mingten's heart I can also see the rhythm of Kaz's heart, like a pulsating red light that revolves in itself. Is that what he meant by highlighting information in my sixth sense? With that it would be easy to dodge the last blow and Mingten in fact, now winning is another story.

"Finally" Kaz says just as he was about to ask what to do next "I thought I was going to have to force a filter in your brain." I know my progress isn't the best, but do you have to start attacking?

"Now go do the exercises." He speaks without worrying, or caring if I have something to ask.

Sigh.

This trip is going to be a long one.

Mingten stops the meditation and looks at me with a face of 'what are you waiting for?'. I had no idea that it was possible to convey a sentence with just one look.

But she's right, I have nothing to gain by standing here, and if it takes too long it will irritate the Arsonist. With my thoughts a little more organized I start the push-ups, the same rules as yesterday, go to the limit count to thirty and repeat.

An hour later when Mingten and I finished our workouts, ignoring all our muscles' warnings, this monster is just slowly killing us isn't it?

"Looks like there's been some progress, so let's change things up a bit today. This time I'll just let you guys stop running when you get to the next town." Kaz speaks with an almost devilish smile in my eyes.

He is indeed trying to kill us, but whether he is slow or fast doesn't matter, all that matters is that we suffer.

After two hours of zombie running, a new athletics modality invented by Kaz. If you think you're going to die from running, go ahead and die but keep running.

Or at least that's how my brain is processing fatigue, back to what matters after two hours in athletic hell we finally make it to another city, and as promised our bodies are allowed to rest.

Not to arouse suspicion, due to our state everyone would wonder what kind of monster we are running from, unfortunately the monster is our guide, we stop out of sight of the guards who are on watch while we rest our bodies and minds.

"And now?" I ask, simply to distract myself from the pain.

"You guys enter town normally when you're rested" Kaz starts talking with an oddly sharp look, but obviously not aimed at us. "Stay at some random inn and try not to make trouble. I have some urgent matters to attend to, I'll meet you as soon as I'm done dealing with it."

After saying that he walked towards the city, but not towards the entrance, with a slightly firmer step to create momentum he jumped over the wall, and entered the city anyway.

As there was no commotion, I think everything went well.

"This is normal?" I ask Mingten, who has an extremely worried face.

"No, let's just do what he asked us to do" Mingten actually gives orders without a second thought "I don't want something that even he considers a problem paying attention to us so the quicker we get out of this town the better."

"Okay, Chief."