Fledgling God: Book 4

Chapter 3, Pow Pow

I sat there for a few more moments, enjoying my happiness, and then I called an end to the test. I stood up and brushed all the sand off my clothes. I was covered in a lot more than I'd realized.

"Since we're here and in the testing mood, I have an idea," Tyler spoke up.

"What did you have in mind?" I asked.

"You have two great runes that work with progressive resistance for defense. How about you see about tweaking them so they work for attack? After all, progressive resistance is just the defensive side of relax-and-tense-on-contact."

"That is an excellent idea," Annabeth said enthusiastically, "and I already have an idea of what you need."

She sat down in the sand and started sketching.

"You'll only need these attack runes on your striking points, like your knuckles, as well as any area you're going to use for hard blocking. Those areas are still going to need defense, so I don't think you should go with a completely different rune variation. Instead, I think you should just take out the deflection part of what you're using now. After all, you want your punches to land solidly, not slide around on your opponent."

She finished up her sand drawing and sat back so I could get a good look. It was the four birds rune, except the connecting lines didn't have a left or right slant. Instead, they radiated out smoothly from the horizon line.

"That is an excellent idea," I replied. "Let's give it a shot."

"One thing to keep in mind," Tyler said, "is that timing is going to be everything. If the force rune triggers too early, it will slow you down and rob your punch of its power. If the force rune triggers too late, it will hit when you're starting to relax and withdraw your punch. I think that would mess up your wrist and your arm muscles. The force will have to grow in power at the same time you do, so it needs to start exploding with force as you start tensing."

"You're right," I nodded. "I hadn't thought about that yet. Give me a minute while I make the changes and work with Red and his team on timing."

I sat back down on the ground and focused on Red.

'Did you get all that?'

'I got it,' he said quickly. 'You wanna pack a punch. Bring the hammer. Pound them into the ground. It's slamming time!'

'I think you got the basic idea,' I chuckled. 'Now, where are all the places we should change the rune?'

We changed it on my knuckles, of course, as well as the edges of my forearm where I did all my hard blocks. Then it dawned on me that for this to be the most effective, I needed to change it anywhere I used to block. It would suck to do a slap block and slide off my opponent's arm!

We modified the runes on my palm as well as the outside edge of my hand. Then we started working on timing. I mentally punched over and over again until the Hex Network was triggering at exactly the right moment. After that, we started working on my blocks until those were also timed right.

Once I was ready, I opened my eyes to see there was a three-way sand battle going on between the Surfers, the Grannies, and the Tangle. I checked in to make sure they weren't really mad at each other-but they were just having fun. I was surprised to note that all my soul creations were now using the new force rune, not just the Surfers. Nobody was really getting hit, but they were having a blast chasing each other around and slinging sand balls. They seemed happy, so I just let them play. They'd been doing a lot of work for me and deserved to have some fun.

"I'm ready to test this out," I told Annabeth and Tyler, "although I'm nervous and excited. I've been so focused on defense today that I never considered offense. If I could increase my punching power, that would be incredible."