Master and Apprentice

  “I’m going to light myself on fire!” I said, ecstatic. This was one of my best ideas yet. “You’ll have to use the blanket to put me out. Each time you’re successful, we’ll cut it in half and sew the two halves together. Once it’s down to the width of my sash, I’ll start to do more than just dodge and poke your openings” I tapped my temple, “Pretty clever, right? A natural progression.”

  Annie gave me an exasperated expression, her face poking out from where the fifty-pound king-sized weighted blanket was draped over her. The thing was considerably larger than the woman and almost half as heavy. A week ago, I would have been worried it would tear her shoulders to ribbons to swing around. Today, that was somewhat of the point.

  “Sorry, can you repeat that?”

  “You heard me, woman – I said I’m going to light myself on fire! Why do you think I’m dressed like this?” I pointed down at my rokushaku fundoshi, which was essentially a traditional Japanese dick hammock and the only thing I was wearing.

  She pouted. “You said you had something lighter and hotter in mind for a break, you jerk.”

  “It is. The blanket’s like a sixth the weight of the Battle Bell, and I’m going to literally be on fire.”

  “You wagged your eyebrows and brought out a five-gallon bucket of vaseline!” Annie sighed. “It’s going to be an entire week of me falling for it, isn’t it? Can I at least take the,” she blushed, eyes flicking to where two of Papes’ girls were having coffee on his patio, “egg out? It’s driving me crazy.”

  “Surely, my darling senior student isn’t complaining about such a trifling distraction. It weighs, what, twelve ounces at most? In terms of training weights…”

  “My issue isn’t with the weight of it, shifu. It’s more the width and the little ball bearing inside; I swear, I can hear it in my head when it rolls against the side walls. I’d like to see you deal with that.”

  I smirked. “Sounds kind of fun, honestly. Butt stuff for dudes is in vogue right now. I’d offer to show you, but I’ve already got my lucky Silver Dollar in my ass as we speak.”

  Annie blushed, the fantasies rolling across the inside of her eyes visible in her suddenly abashed demeanor. “What, really? Why?”

  “For luck, duh. Where else was I supposed to put it?” I gestured down to my distinct lack of pockets. “Anyway, quit stalling. Unless you’ve got any real questions, let’s hop to it.”

  “S-Sorry.” She shook off the perverted haze. “Uh, what about all the fence stuff? Shouldn’t we at least get an extinguisher out here?”

  “Don’t worry about it; modern lumber all comes soaking wet from the store. Stingy fuckers don’t dry it properly anymore. Who knows, knock me into enough of the piles, and the sticks might be able to take paint by Friday.”

  I waved dismissively at the stacks of fence posts and pickets ringing my outdoor gym on all sides. This morning, I'd had the Greene boys digging post holes with small spades – to train their dexterity – while their sister broke through the bigger rocks with a heavy steel stonebreaker – to train her strength. Annie had been doing the same on the other side of the yard but using just her hands to dig and a rusty railroad spike to break the rocks. It was high time I got a proper privacy fence in the backyard. The chainlink hadn't been cutting it since taking Annie on as a student, and the physical labor was better than weight training for where the Greenes were at in their development. Marianne would no doubt have something to say about the number of cuts and scrapes they'd left with, but how else did she expect me to condition their skin? Kung Fu is pain.

  “Fair enough.” Annie shrugged, wincing as the weight of the blanket strained some of the injuries she’d taken battling the Bell, but otherwise accepted my explanation. Either spending so much time around me had subverted her midwestern core of sensibility, or she’d learned that expressing it was a guaranteed way to get me to up my antics. “Any tips on how to use this thing? I haven’t done ribbon gymnastics in ten years, and I don’t think it would translate anyway.”

  I started scooping out the petroleum jelly from the bucket at my feet and began slathering myself up – upper body only today. When she got better, I would up the coverage to include my thighs and legs. "Think of it less like a ribbon or a lasso and more like you're trying to beat the fire to death with a very wide flail or whip. You don't have the strength in your wrists and arms yet to make the blanket furl in the air like you want to, so you'll have to learn to compensate with your core and hips, hence the added benefit from the egg."

  “Beat the fire to death…” Annie mulled that over, correctly identifying that I’d chosen my words carefully. “Okay, I think I understand.” She nodded. “Right. Ready when you are, shifu!”

  Distant sounds of gulls squabbling were carried by the wind from the shore. It was a breezy Jersey day; a fire would spread quickly if it did catch on one of the larger fuel piles. I put the thought out of mind. This was all firmly under my control.

  “One more thing, if you can’t put out the fire before the jelly burns off, you’ll have to eat a chili forfeit – standard Li-family stuff. Fuck up enough, and I’ll bust out the ghost peppers.”

  “Ha! Bring it on. I barely notice heat since you awakened my Qi.” She paused and pursed her lips. “Why did I say that?”

  “Really? Alright, we’ll go straight to the ghost peppers, then.”

  “Yeah…yeah, of course.”

  I shrugged my shoulders, limbering up a little. Annie was loose and warmed up, but I’d spent hours now just instructing and watching, making sure no one got hurt. The most excitement I’d had was when Shania nearly punched through her older brother’s wrist with the stonebreaker on accident, but even that had been solved with telekinetic Qi sorcery.

  “Okay, Shine, give me everything you’ve got!” I gave her a big thumbs up. “Let’s rip each other apart and put ourselves back together stronger!”

  I ignited the jelly with ease, its high flashpoint irrelevant before the might of my titanic Qi. Annie wasted no time in spinning her entire body to try to lash me with the blanket, shouting as she put all her might into the attack – hopeless. It failed to reach, and as its bulk sailed far to the right, even her superhuman balance could not keep it from pulling her dramatically to the side. She side-lunged to stop herself from falling but utterly exposed her back and part of her abdomen to me, something I chided by darting in and jabbing my finger into both kidneys and a pleasure point before darting away.

  Annie dropped to one knee, gritting her teeth against the pain. My treasured senior student would never voice a complaint, but her face told me all I needed to know. Greater than the pain, she was suffering from an acute sense of imposter syndrome – the question, ‘Can I even do this?’ was written out in the lines of her furrowed brow.

  Out of the corner of my eyes, I could see Papes' girls breaking their phones out to record. That was fine; Annie and I couldn't put this particular training out on our accounts for fear of outright encouraging copycats, but the spectacle was welcome advertising. The redhead had herself stripped down to a fairly skimpy white sports bra and boy shorts combo, making me confident it would do the rounds for that alone. Would someone probably still light themselves on fire when it went viral? Probably, but I wouldn't have to feel as bad about it as I would if I were personally responsible.

  I projected my voice, half because the fire was kind of loud in my ears, and half to make sure it was clear on the recordings. “It feels impossible, doesn’t it? Good! Remember this moment later, after you’ve overcome the challenge!”

  Annie rose and tried to tackle me, holding the blanket wide in front of her. I stepped to the side and used the blind spot the blanket created to stomp on her foot and send her falling onto her front. My other foot snapped out, poking her in the knee joint hard with my big toe on the way down.

  “James…” she said, pushing herself up to one knee with her knuckles, hand curled into a tight fist.

  “Yes, my dear?”

  “You’re the devil.”

  “The devil doesn’t have half my steez.”

  She whipped the blanket low, forgoing the fire to try and entangle my feet and bring me to the ground, but it was too slow to ever work. I jumped over her to the other side, clipping her ear with a toe as I did. Annie looked like she was about to cry – to go from forty-five minutes of taking repeated body blows from a swinging three-hundred-plus pound weight to this was unspeakable brutality. Her nervous system and every muscle in her body must have been screaming for her to stop. Perfect, not much more of this, and she'd get the Experience discounts I was looking for.

  “Oho! A dirty trick – I like it!”

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  I toyed with her, though obviously not to the degree I could have. I kept my dodges just above where she could have had a fighting chance were she not wielding a fifty-pound sail as her only weapon, and focused less on not getting hit and more on moving with intention. The goal was to push Annie, not to 'win'. I sawed in and out of what I knew to be her range, letting her hide my movements for me with her wild attacks and the flapping of the blanket. When her shoulders looked like they were going to give out, I stayed low to the ground so she could still continue the training by leaning on her legs and obliques to keep the blanket swinging. When the pain was too much, I tempered it with a pleasure point. When the pleasure was too much, I tempered it with pain. Anytime she managed to push me into a box using the various equipment in my outdoor gym, I stayed in the box, hoping to encourage the Black City principles of environmental fighting, only escaping when the openings were too big to ignore.

  Two chili forfeits in, and she managed to finally understand what I meant by ‘beat the fire to death'. Annie stopped focusing so much on me and started aiming for the thin layer of burning jelly. She'd been taking enormous swings, trying to nail me as hard as possible with her unorthodox weapon, but glancing blows were all that were needed, and the big, telegraphed attacks were too easy to dodge. If the blanket so much as touched the jelly, its cotton shell would quickly absorb the upper, burning layer, and if she was snappy enough, what was left of the vaseline would either burn away or stay unlit as it dripped off me. Petroleum jelly's flashpoint was high enough, and it burned low enough that without my initial ignition, it was fairly simple to deal with when not soaked into cloth or cotton balls. The training wasn't sane - I'd be the first to admit that - but it wasn't completely crazy, either. There was a method to the madness, even if you had to squint your eyes to see it.

  Four chili forfeits in, and Annie either got what we were working towards or was just so mentally and physically battered that she no longer had room in her mind for self-doubt – or anything at all beyond the goal at hand, really. The blanket was still largely cumbersome and graceless in the air, but Annie began to flow. She started to use the momentum from the swings to throw herself under and through the blanket’s trajectory, becoming the liquid center of a stilted but constant storm of attacks. There was room for improvement; she was more jelly than silk at the moment, but we were getting there.

  Five forfeits in, and on the edge of collapse, she surprised me. Face blank, mouth slightly open, and eyes unfocused, Annie used her inhuman hamstrings and glutes to unfurl the blanket in the air wide and flat, as if she was making the bed, and let it fly free from her hands. I was well outside her range and so stayed still, curious as to what the plan was. Dashing and diving under it, she jumped, rocketing straight at me as the blanket was falling between us. Looking like a shuttlecock or a child's ghost costume, Annie struck me headfirst, knocking me to the ground and covering me in the heavy cloth, before raining down blind palm strikes at approximately where the fire had clung to my chest.

  The stone tiles of the backyard gym were soaked with a mix of sweat and petroleum jelly. I kicked the ground with my heel, using a bit of telekinesis to slide out from under her and the blanket alike. There was a mental ‘click’ as the Experience Annie had earned from the training exercise became realized and available to spend, some wordless knowledge filtering in that told me what discounts she’d earned during the session.

  She rose to her feet wild-eyed, rushing forward but stopping confused when she saw the lack of burning petroleum jelly on my body. A flash of terror at the thought of another ghost pepper crossed her face.

  "Woah, there, easy," I said, palms outstretched, slowly turning around to show my back. I was fire free. "It's over. You did it."

  Her breathing was shallow and rapid, and she was wavering on her feet. She blinked at me, baffled by the sight and my words. “I…huh? I did it?”

  “You did it. Level one complete!”

  She breathed out a mix of a long, “Yessss,” and a sigh, immediately collapsing to her knees before letting her back hit the ground, legs still bent flat beneath her in an impressive display of flexibility. Her chest heaved, partly visible through her sweat-soaked white sports bra, and her hair, half-undone from her ponytail, covered a face wrought with agony.

  “Whooooo! Great job, Annie!” yelled one of our spectators.

  Annie lolled her head in their direction and flapped her wrist weakly in the imitation of a wave. “Thanks, Tammy!”

  The crowd had grown to all four of Papes’ in-house girls, each with a phone in hand pointed directly at my waist.

  I looked down. The fundoshi was gone. "Thought I felt a draft." I shot them a finger gun and a wink. "Keep the fun stuff to yourselves, will ya, ladies?" Getting laughs and acquiescence from each, I gave the situation no more concern; Alan's aversion to being watched was well and truly crushed by now, leaving only James' deep love of showing off.

  I knelt by Annie on the side opposite the cameras so that they could see all of her glistening, athletic body. It was red from head to toe, her muscles beginning to break down into her bloodstream and covered in finger-wide bruises from my repeated jabs. Brushing the hair off her face, I gave her a proud and reassuring smile as I opened up the highly limited character sheet I had for each of my students. I could see what I'd bought her and how much Experience she had, but her full abilities were largely opaque.

  Annie beamed up at me. “You’re so pretty.” Her hand snaked down and grabbed my cock, shaking it side to side. “I like your penis,” she giggled, fully into the silly phase of exhaustion.

  “Thanks, it likes you, too.”

  She got half a laugh out before clutching her abs in pain with her other hand. Sucking in a sharp breath, she said, “Ow. I’m dying, shifu. No. I’m dead. Sorry. Sorry, James. Sorry, penis.”

  I chuckled and shook my head, focusing on the system windows instead. She’d be better in a minute. The brutality of this exercise after the Battle Bell had been equal parts to teach her combat skills and to push her body into a crisis state. Just a cursory medical pulse of Qi through her told me that she was suffering from rhabdomyolysis, had slipped two discs, and had cracked all of her ribs. Frankly, it was pretty cute that an Annie on the verge of death from overtraining was the loopiest and giddiest version of herself.

  This was my third Teaching roll for the day, and in combination with her unspent Experience from past sessions, Annie had a good chunk aching to be spent. I’d gotten her Martial Arts to 6 Dice, and her strange biology, our training, and my magic jizz had raised her Attributes to 4 Strength, 5 Endurance, 6 Agility, and 2 Aura. Just in the short time since she’d become my student, Annie had already become someone day one James Li would have struggled to match, though she still lacked the Feats to distinguish herself.

  With Annie’s body fighting to survive our training, she received an Experience discount under the new Teaching rules, giving her ten percent off as I bought her Aura to 4, Endurance to 6, and bought her the Major Feat Circular Breathing.

  There was an immediate shift; a healthier pallor came over her skin, and she seemed to sag into the ground as the subtle cloud of death hanging over her vanished. At some level, even if it didn't comprehend it consciously, her brain understood that she was no longer at risk of dying.

  Annie took a slow, deep breath, but it was not the mystically infused healing charge that I knew it could be. I put my hand over her lower dantian, fingers slipping partially under the waistband of her boy shorts to do so, and exuded some of my own Qi inside, ready to help guide her.

  “Again. Breathe like I taught you.”

  “Mm…no.”

  “No?”

  “Nope,” she said, popping the ‘p’ and tittering. “Make me.”

  “Wha—Annie, you have severe rhabdo. You’re literally dying.”

  She grabbed my wrist and tried pushing my hand further down her shorts, a goofy smile plastered on her face. “Better act fast then, shifu.”

  “I—surely, this can wait. I’ve had rhabdo before. I am intimately familiar with how awful you must feel right now.” She stuck her tongue out at me. I groaned. “Annie, I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but be reasonable.”

  She pursed her lips and hummed, pretending to think and breaking into lunatic giggles every few seconds. “I don’t know, James. I’m feeling pretty great, actually.” She squeezed my dick lightly for emphasis. “It’s hard to believe I could feel better.” Pouting innocently, she added, “Do you think I could feel better, James?”

  “Woman, I promise you whatever fun we could have will be better after you take a Breath.”

  “Aha! But will that fun occur? You have a tendency to tease, Mr. Li. I’m going to need some strategic guarantees.” She wagged her eyebrows.

  “I’ve created a monster. Yes, Annie, I promise we can blow off some steam after. Now, can we please do something about your impending kidney failure?”

  “Hmm.” She started tapping her chin. “Hmmmmmmmmmm—”

  “Annie!”

  “James! Let’s start a RedDoor account together!” She started rubbing her thumb in slow circles on my frenulum and tucked the hair covering the side of her face in view of the girls’ phone cameras behind her ear. Her smile found a way to grow more mischievous.

  This was equal parts funny, infuriating, and impressive. I could feel her muscles start to spasm and cramp, the salt in her blood hitting critically low levels. The fact that she was capable of not only smiling but conniving through that degree of pain probably spoke volumes about the training I'd put her through. It was very Black City for Annie to use her own organ failure in a negotiation.

  “Where the hell is that coming from? You want to get into amateur pornography?”

  “Yep! I’ve been thinking about it since you told me about the obscenity laws. We should totally take advantage of the heads up to get ahead of the curve, incorporate it into our training, even!”

  “Oh, you mean you want to start RedDoor now? Annie, we’re meeting your parents next week.”

  "Pshh. Who cares? If they aren't going to respect my decisions either way, then I might as well do what I want. Think about it, James; we can elevate pornography into an art form and invent a new genre. Not only will we have great lighting, audio, and cinematography, but we can incorporate martial arts into the mix – use the videos to teach pleasure points, invent erotic partner forms for Black City Kung Fu, film in positions that would be impossible for others, that sort of thing. Imagine fucking me standing up while I'm holding myself in a perfect dragon flag with only my thighs wrapped around your hips. That would be crazy cool! And hot!"

  I cleared my throat and had to remind myself that these were the words of a psychotically exhausted and horny woman. My dick had hardened under her ministrations, my mind assaulting me with all the potential scenes we could do together. Erotic partner forms – why had I never thought of that? Martial arts pornography was extremely in my strike zone. That said, I didn’t want to get too attached before I returned Annie to her full faculties.

  “I’m not opposed, but is this—”

  “We’ll be the performers that everyone thinks about when they think about this new era of sex in media,” she continued with a slight air of mania. “It would be dumb to not do it, you know? There’ll be a rush to signal to the industry that you’re down with whatever after the laws get repealed, but we’ll already be established. Everyone will be competing just to catch up. What other stunt actors do you know doing porn right now that are as talented as we are? It’s genius, James, genius!”

  “I know, Annie. I agree. It’s awesome. But what I was going to say is, is this really the time to be discussing it? I can feel your quads cramping, and your heart is beating irregularly.”

  “Yeah…” She shuddered; a surge of lust energy filled the air. “You’ve totally destroyed me – it’s so hot. Doesn’t it make you want to fuck? You think you could fit with the egg still inside? I really want to feel you try.”

  “Holy—okay, look. I’m down with all of it. I just want to deal with your rhabdo before we get to it, alright?”

  “Really? You promise?”

  “Yes, Annie, I promise. Now, can you please let me teach you how to heal yourself?”

  “You double, triple promise?”

  “Annie!”

  She giggled. “Just kidding, just kidding.” Annie closed her eyes and started directing her Qi towards her core. “Oh! Wait, don’t help, I think I get it.”

  Pooling the revitalizing Qi in her lungs, Annie took in a deep, full-bodied breath, pushing the energy through her body with a great pulse. Her back arched dramatically, almost into a full bridge, and she let out a throaty moan. I could relate. The first time feeling your Qi stitch you back together at a cellular level was life-changing. Your will, tangible and real, coming to life to answer your call and return you to fighting shape – every serious competitor had dreamed of something like that in their lowest moments, when their muscles failed them and when their mind could not triumph over physical reality. For most, it would forever be fantasy, but me and Annie were among the privileged few to live the dream.

  And all it took was mind-warping agony and a brush with death, not bad, honestly. Annie certainly wasn’t complaining.

  “Wow.” Her blue eyes stared into my own. “Thanks.”

  “Nice, right?”

  There was a pregnant pause while she studied my face. “It’s everything I wanted it to be,” she said, about more than just the technique, I thought.

  I kept my smile from growing bittersweet. There it was again – she’d been good about keeping it out of our training, but since I told Annie I’d asked Maki out on the weekend, there had been this invisible thing between us. I didn’t know how to classify it. Yearning Song, and simple observation, told me she wanted more from the relationship, more of the same, as in to deepen the master-student bond, more romance, and, of course, more sex. Yet, something hovered in the way, some pride or expectation of Annie’s that I couldn’t quite grasp telling me to slow down.

  My various Social and Special Feats would take care of whatever it was in time. Cult of Personality and Sexual Icon, not to mention the FFM threesome fetish I’d given her through Erotic Sorcery, would work on her in her sleep to transform her into a willing harem member. Sister Wives and Heroes Harem would, in time, make managing an ordinarily complex relationship easy and harmonious.

  But, call it honor or pride, I didn't want to wait for the Feats. In fact, their inevitable effects hung like a blade above my neck, a threat pushing me to 'solve' the problem before they could, if there was even a problem to be solved. I just couldn't stand the idea of the Producers interfering in one of my closest relationships. It was a losing battle, to be sure, but Annie deserved more. She deserved me, my energy, and my attention. If there was something keeping her from realizing or pursuing her desires in our relationship, then I – or, we – needed to figure that out before my faceless overlords could sink their claws into the problem.

  “I’m glad. It means I can push you a hell of a lot harder now.”

  “Lucky me. Speaking of,” she grabbed the wrist of my hand still pressed against her abdomen and pushed it lower.