We travel another couple hours past the beetles and camp for the night. Camp setup is mostly Miguel. He builds the dome, sets up the night defenses, and layers traps in the ground. While he gets camp ready, Priya and I practice fighting. It kinda sucks that we have to, but that's the world we're in. She’s a good match for me with her skill, and while what she knows has a lot of overlap with what Flynn taught me, there’s a lot of different stuff too.

While Escrima and Flynn’s general familiarity with martial arts all focus on hard counters and rather aggressive moves, Priyanka’s aikido focuses on not hurting either the attacker or the defender. Certainly there are ways to hurt an attacker with aikido, but as we practice, Piyu explains.

“My sensei always used to explain that our art was built to discourage violence. It was built to make violence ineffective. Aikido is a martial art. As with all martial arts, the goal is to be able to protect yourself from harm. However, unlike with many other martial arts, the goal is not to defend oneself by opposing your opponent. Instead, the goal is to make violence ineffective, while protecting both parties in the martial dance. At the end of the day, the only thing hurt in either attacker or attacked should be the ego.”

“Dude. Is it hard?”

“Very.”

“So why? Why’d you do that instead of carrying a gun. Or studying something else. Maybe MMA? Flynn said that MMA was too clean of a fighting approach, and not much better than the old-school purists for a potentially lethal fight. Krav Maga was supposed to be good for real defense. Or what was the other one? Vale Tudo maybe?”

“I’m a doctor, Snake. I heal people. I don’t think I could make all the stuff work out right with me if I was hurting them too.”

“Did aikido work? Did you ever get mugged?”

“Once. All they wanted was my money. I gave it to them.”

“And you got away unscathed?”

“Maybe a thousand bucks poorer, but it was ‘55, we live in a rich country, and I’m, well I was, a doctor. I made that in a few hours.”

“Dude.”

“It’s better not to fight when you can avoid it.”

“What about in this world? These monsters?”

“I haven’t met anything evil yet. Just giant animals that look funny, maybe a little aggressive.”

“Don’t you have to fight back against a grizzly bear that’s trying to eat you?”

“You absolutely have to protect yourself. The best way to do that is to run away.”

“What if that doesn’t work?”

“Then you can seek minimal violence. Back on Earth…

“Isn’t it funny to say that?” Priyu continues. “Back on Earth, when an animal was violent, what did we do? Almost all the time, we civilized people took the animal, tranquilized it, and set it free.”

“But you fought the monkeys in the tutorial.”

“I was given no choice. Violence is not never the answer. But it shouldn’t be the first answer, nor the second. It is a last resort, only taken when all others are exhausted.”

“Sounds like a lot of work to protect your opponents as well.”

“It’s less work than being a doctor. I hated myself for two months after having to kill the monkeys. Then I met Miguel, and he got hurt by a giant Rhino the next day. I figured out that I’m a healer all the way through. When there’s fighting to be done, Miguel and Steve fight. If they get hurt, I fix them up. It works for us all.”

“It was kinda like that for me too. I hated fighting the animals. They weren’t doin’ anything wrong. Just livin’ in their world, mostly. But then when the monsters came and were aggressive, I kinda had to help. It was a bit us or them, ya know?”

“I would suggest there were other options. But what are we doing talking philosophy? Shouldn’t we be practicing?”

“I think Miguel’s mostly done. How about some more music tonight?”

“I think we can do that.”

We end up spending the night playing songs from Fleetwood Mac. There aren't a lot of bands that used all our instruments, and both male and female lead vocals. Stinky does a better impression of Stevie Nicks than any of us guys do for any of the male vocalists in the band. They're really old, but I like the songs. I even like the Fleetwood Mac version of Landslide better than any of the covers, even if it’s a little light on drum parts.

In the morning, we head out on our westward voyage across the sea of grass. It's similar the next day, and then the next few. Some days we avoid the monsters. Other days we don’t.

One day we encounter a swarm of a couple dozen sparrow-sized mosquito-bats. Neither Steve’s bolts nor Miguel’s spears are terribly useful. However, Steve’s static electricity field does wonders. Also, they're used to being the fastest things around, and today they're not. I can see them coming from behind, and I can both dodge and club them. Sound blasts help as well, just like with all flying critters. Priya got bit once, and Miguel did twice, before his defenses were finished forming. Priya was able to heal them both though.

Another day, we encounter a large rock that turns out to be a fifteen foot tall carnivorous armadillo. It’s armored, and completely deaf so far as I can tell. I’m nearly 100% useless in that fight, except to help guard Priya by moving her out of the way. Even though I’m no bodybuilder, she’s tiny, and I can carry her piggy-back and run a three minute mile. She likes that better than the fireman’s carry, which I can do at a 2:30 pace, because it hurts less or something.

Even Steve’s lighting bolts don’t do a lot to the Armadillo's heavy-duty shell. We eventually solve the problem by going all Scooby Doo all over it’s armored ass. I’m in the role of Shaggy-bait, and Miguel’s playing Fred the trap setter. The difference is that Miguel’s spear trap is considerably more lethal than any of Fred’s were. I run in front, teasing and leading the bitey boulder, and it follows me over the spike trap. It turns out that unlike their outer shells, Armadillo undersides are softer than Miguel’s metal.

Those are the weird fights, though. Mostly, we play it the way one would expect, with Miguel providing defense, me providing distractions, and Steve doing the killing. Probably once or twice a day on average, we end up in an altercation that’s either unavoidable, or one that the guys aren't sufficiently energetic to avoid. Piyu doesn’t complain, but she doesn’t like their unwillingness to avoid fights.

Once, some sort of giant bipedal otter bites off Michael’s foot by surprise at a river. We recover the foot with prejudice, and Priyanka’s healing manages to re-attach it safely. Similarly, a big poisonous snake, King Cobra or something, gets Steve by surprise once. Again doc does her magic and Steve’s up and moving pretty fast. The snake skin is pretty at least, even if it’s not very practical to carry about.

Traveling with the crew, I’m going a lot slower than I was. Not a little bit slower, really a lot. I was putting down over seven hundred miles a day solo. With the team having neither super speed nor a good method of navigating the dark well, we travel about forty miles each day while it’s light, then rest for the eve.

It’s good, though. I don’t really care about travel speed. I’ve got music and friends to play it with. That's so much better, and Priyanka is really smart. She’s already working on ways to get extra effects out of my sound. Steve has gotten some benefit out of her thinking too, but he mostly likes guitar and the giant lightning strikes he can call down. I’m fascinated by Priya's wealth of knowledge about sound.

Ultrasound is a great internal imaging technique for people. It’s used all over in medicine. I can’t believe I haven’t done anything with it. Princess Pea also talks about acoustic levitation, and how you can use synchronized sound waves to levitate small particles, or even water.

We spend a bit of time each night on the ideas, but it seems like her moves are still a little bit out of reach. I can’t quite see the sound waves clearly enough to perfectly synchronize them for the levitation. Regarding ultrasound, I need to have better sound collection from solids before that really works. And I don't really know how to display the image for someone else. Overall, her suggestions are fascinating, but not helpful until I can get better senses. Once we figure out that I'm stuck on her big ideas, I go back to more thinking-speed practice, and she goes back to just thinking.