"The bone is definitely broken," Spencer said.

Srinivas moaned and turned away from his bent shin. Judging by the number of injuries, their hardening exercises had not been a huge success. Mike prodded his friend. "Fix the bone, Srinivas."

"Sorry, Mike, but I don't think he is able to do that." Spencer glanced towards the line of parked cars. "We might need to visit a hospital."

"Not a chance," Mike said. "I'll take care of this. You run the troops through a game of flying follow the leader in the woods."

Spencer tilted her head to give him a severe look. "Are you sure that's wise, sir?"

"I'm sure it's what we're doing."

"Your decision. But maybe in the future we shouldn't shoot bricks at each other?"

"Good advice, Spencer. Now get the rest of them training." Mike turned his attention to the leg of Srinivas. Using animas and gravitas, he aligned the two ends of the bone and welded it back together. With some more effort, he massaged the soft tissues back into a reasonable facsimile of a normal leg. The moaning from Srinivas reduced to a soft humming sound. "Good as new," Mike proclaimed.

"Still hurts," Srinivas muttered.

"You'll be fine. Try standing and walking around."

"Mike, I do not want any more to do army stuff."

"Sorry, Srinivas, that option isn't on the table. I'm going to lift you up and put you on your feet now." As Srinivas floated into the air, the sound of a car approaching up the driveway startled Mike. He set his friend back down and then rushed over to begin moving the cars. One at a time, he levitated each vehicle out of the bounds of the driveway and under the surrounding trees where they would be hidden by a dense buildup of undergrowth at the edge of the woods. He had almost hid the final one when Varanelli's car rolled into view.

Mike's racing heart began to slow as he let the levitating vehicle touch back down. He was walking over with the intention of giving Varanelli a solid verbal smackdown for her unannounced visit when Marius emerged from the passenger side door. The Angmari deserter tipped an imaginary hat to Mike. "Excellent job with the car. I'm pleased to see you continue to grow stronger."

"Right. Look, boss, we need to have a chat to make sure we're on the same page about this army we're putting together."

"This chat will need to brief. You have . . . five minutes. Go."

Mike bit back a sarcastic comment. He couldn't waste his five minutes. "First, we need a rank structure."

"We're using the Angmari one. I'm the Imperator of the army. You . . . let's say Sergeant for now. All the rest are Soldiers."

"I don't even know what an Imperator is."

"The top guy of an army. I thought that would be obvious from context."

"So the equivalent of a General."

Marius shrugged. "That's a stupid name for a leader's rank. General is a synonym for common. Imperator sounds much grander, you will find."

"Fine. Next issue. You didn't provide us with much in the way of funding."

"Then go get more money. I taught you how."

"No," Mike said. "I am training soldiers. We're spending our time on training exercises to improve our talents and develop combat tactics. We're not playing at petty thievery."

"Well, well. Give a man some rank and he immediately assumes he can talk back to power. I'll look at the money problem. What else do you have?"

"We need you to spend more time with the troops. When you drop off troops like last time, the transition is not smooth."

Marius held up a hand. "Enough, Mike. As important as all this seems to you right now, it's not. The two of us are leaving to hunt kinetics. I need to show you how to corona wrestle and give you some instruction on clearing before we fly off to catch some bad guys."

Varanelli interrupted the conversation by stepping between them and pointing at the dilapidated building. "That dump is where you have them staying?"

"Limited budget, Varanelli."

"I bet it's full of spiders."

"Not what I'm worried about at the moment, Varanelli. Boss, who are we leaving in charge if I go away with you?"

"Does it matter?"

"I suggest Spencer. She has military experience."

"Then I'll put Erica Spencer in command while we are out of town." Marius looked over at the reclined Srinivas. "What is he doing?"

"He's resting after having his leg healed. Go yell for the others to come back to base, Srinivas."

While Srinivas got to his feet and shuffled away, Mike felt the corona of Marius expand to surround him, the more powerful kinetic field suppressing his own. A stone from the driveway floated up to hang between them. "Take control of it," Marius said.

Mike's corona snapped back in place as Marius released the pressure and he snatched the stone before it could fall.

"Coronas exist in more than three dimensions," Marius said. "Don't think too much about the dimension thing. Just understand that your corona can crowd another out of alignment with our space. There are two axes we can work with. The first we call the 'open dimension' because it there is a lot of room to maneuver through it. The easier direction to move in that dimension we refer to as 'downwise' and the direction with more resistance is 'upwise'. The other axis is known as the 'loop dimension' because it wraps around on itself like a circle. We call the two directions 'clockwise' and 'counterclockwise', but there is no consensus on which direction is which. Honestly, I can't keep them straight myself.

"Most of the corona wrestling you do will be done in the open dimension. Typically if you move first, you want to stage your corona upwise and then attack downwise back into normal space. That lets you push the opponent corona into a downwise position. If someone is untrained, you will have a few moments where you can do anything you want unhindered. If there is a significant strength disparity, you can hold them downwise for a longer time. Now, to complicate the matter, your entire corona doesn't have to move in unison. You can selectively maneuver portions in isolation. Watch."

As Mike held the stone aloft, the corona of Marius seemed to go ephemereal as it extended once more, just barely perceptible to him. Then Mike's corona around the stone went numb as a tight region became overwhelmed. All around it, Mike's corona remained free, but that one section of space had been denied him. Just as quickly, the stone returned to his control as Marius withdrew.

"The other common attack is to play in the loop dimension. You can cycle through the circular loop to take your opponent's corona out of play. Unfortunately, you do this at the expense of being able to use your own kinetic talent. You essentially null each other out in a region."

Mike felt an electric buzzy tingling encroach on his corona and the stone dropped, neither party able to grasp it.

By this point, the others had begun to return from their game of flying follow the leader and were surrounding Marius. The Angmari man winked at Mike. "We'll continue the training after we get to Virginia." Then he turned to raise his arms in a welcoming gesture towards his army. "Ah, my soldiers! I have heard excellent word of your rapid progress. I have already promoted Mike to the rank of sergeant, and now Erica will become a senior soldier. I am sure the rest of you will shortly gain promotions as well. For now, though, I have to leave again. No doubt you have heard that there are criminals with the kinetic talent causing problems. Mike will be joining me in eliminating these targets, so Erica will be in charge of continuing your training. I have a lot of faith in her ability to continue the good work I and Mike have started. Kendra Varanelli will keep you informed of our progress by watching the news every day." Marius glanced back at Mike. "Do you need to pack a bag? I have a few thousand dollars and the ability to get more very rapidly."

"I'm ready to go any time you are, boss."

"Good. Let's go kill some kinetics."