Lucas isn't in the training room when I arrive, so I drop the bag on the bench and pull off everything, then slip on some shorts. Until today, I didn't even own shorts, and was pretty surprised to actually find them in a shop. I suppose some people have warmer homes and wear them around the house instead of pants?

It's pretty cool in here, making my nipples hard within moments of me pulling off my shirt. I'll tolerate it since if Lucas is to be believed, I'll be warming up with some physical exercise, anyway. I only even put the shorts on in case someone came in while I was waiting for him.

Deciding to do some stretches, I run through some of the ones he had me do yesterday. Only the stretches, though, not the exercises. Each stretch makes my body ache more. Lucas wasn't kidding yesterday when he said I'd be sore as heck.

Just as I'm finishing up the stretches, Lucas enters the training room, and this time I actually catch him locking the doors, swiping a card in a reader beside it pretty swiftly, the card disappearing back into a pocket almost as soon as it was pulled out. No wonder I missed the movement on Tuesday.

"Stretching?" He asks.

"Yeah," I answer. "Is doing the agility training you mentioned a good idea when I'm feeling this sore?"

"You'll be fine, don't worry," he tells me. "Once you're moving about, it'll recede a little. Then come back in full a little after. Within a week or two, though, you'll be fine."

"Okay," I say. "So ten five-foot jumps, then the agility stuff?"

"Yeah," he answers. "I'll walk you through the agility stuff after you do the jumps."

I pull off my shorts and set them on the barrier and, now naked, I climb over the barrier and step into a shadow, performing my first shadow-step. I select another shadow and repeat, continuing until I'm out of magic. Lucas grabs my shorts and light-walks over to me, handing me the shorts.

"Feeling dizzy at all?" He asks.

"No," I answer as I pull the shorts back on. "Maybe a little light-headed, but that's it."

"Alright," he says. "Let's start the agility training. First, let's move back to the barrier."

I follow him over to the barrier, then he turns and faces the other side of the room.

"Go from here to the barrier on the other side," he points. "Use a brisk walk to do it, and navigate around the blocks, but don't go over them. It'll probably take a few minutes."

"Just walking?" I ask. "Not running?"

"Yeah," he answers. "Start."

A little bit confused by this, I do as he instructs, navigating my way from this end to the other. Because of the arrangement of the blocks, I do sometimes have to completely alter my path in order to make it to the end, and it takes me almost four minutes despite the short size of the room and the brisk walk I'm doing. Needing to navigate around things really hinders me a bit.

Once I reach the barrier, I place both hands on it just because, and Lucas light-walks himself over to me.

"Alright," he says. "Let's move over about twenty feet."

We walk to the right about twenty feet, needing to move around a couple of blocks since some do touch against the barriers.

"Now go forward," he tells me. "And this time, navigate around any block that's taller than two feet. Any that's either two feet or less tall and at least two feet wide, navigate over. Don't try to jump over, just climb onto them. Try to keep the rhythm of a brisk walk."

"Okay," I follow his instructions.

My knees and thighs really start to feel it by the time I'm halfway across the room, needing to step up so much. Once we reach the other end of the room, we move closer to the other side, then he has me head back, telling me to walk a little faster.

Over the course of an hour and a half, Lucas works me up in speed for this, though I never jump over the blocks because he explicitly instructs me not to. When my magic is recovered, I perform the ten shadow-steps that I can manage, then Lucas gives me my shorts and resumes this training.

Why he wanted me to start slowly has become evident to me. If I'd immediately begun by trying to run through, I'd have probably tripped and slammed into a lot of blocks. There's only two to three feet of walking space at most between the blocks, which isn't much room for movement at all, I find.

Anytime we pick up the pace a little bit and I start messing up more, Lucas pulls the pace back a bit, finding the speed at which I can navigate through here with minimal errors but still while pushing myself.

This is just as exhausting as yesterday, and it's honestly kind of boring. But with Lucas encouraging me on, the repetitive training isn't all that bad. I think I'm going to want him here for all of these sessions, or I'll probably call it quits if left to myself.

At eight o'clock, I perform as many shadow-steps as I can. I only have enough magic recovered to do two at five feet.

"Do one as far as you can manage," Lucas tells me. "Regardless of how short it is. Always finish off the last one with the rest of your magic."

I nod, then perform one last shadow-step, only managing about three feet this time.

"Congrats," he says. "You've officially finished your first day of training your ability, since Tuesday counts as just an assessment."

"Thanks," I walk over to the barrier and climb over it, grabbing my shorts from him and stuffing them into the bag before getting dressed. "I wasn't expecting to actually warm up a bit."

"Yeah," he says. "That's normal. When someone's training with one of us, we like to give them something to do between when they can do things. It makes it easier for them to stay interested and not lose the will to continue."

"Same with the encouragement?" I ask. "During that 'other thing'?"

"Yep," he grins. "Did it work?"

Just you being here worked, that was an even better bonus.

"Yeah," I answer. "That definitely worked, Lucas. I don't think I could have done the agility training if you hadn't kept encouraging me and giving me tips."

"Neat," he says. "By the end of the month of training, we'll have you running across this room, jumping and scaling over and bouncing off the blocks like a pro."

"In a month?" I ask.

"Yep," he answers. "If you're doing it for almost two hours three days a week, and you put in as much effort as you did today each time, you'll definitely be pretty decent at it. And, to be honest, it'll help you with some of the skill training."

"How?" I ask.

"You'll see on Saturday," he tells me.

I look out across the arena of padded blocks, then shake my head before looking at Lucas.

"I don't think I'd be able to navigate that like a pro by the time I find out if I get the job or not," I tell him. "We barely made any progress today."

"Maybe," he says. "But you'll get used to it."

"How fast can you do it?" I ask.

Instead of telling me, he pulls his walkie off his belt, sets it on the barrier, hops over it, then takes off. Rather than running straight across, he runs around the edges of it, navigating over and around the blocks. A few times, he even jumps off the blocks.

The arena itself, I learned through inquiring at the desk when I arrived today, is two hundred and twenty feet along the length and one hundred and ten feet along the short side, exactly, on the inside of the barrier. It's a quarter of a mile for the lap, though extra time has to be factored in because of the blocks that block his path which he needs to navigate around.

Despite that, he manages to finish the whole thing in a little more than two minutes. He just ran an eighth of a mile, while having to navigate barriers, in less time than it takes me to cross only a third of that length.

When he reaches me, his breathing is only slightly heavy, though his face is flush from the movements. Instead of speaking, he just gives me a grin, and I feel my heart skip a beat at it. Calm down, Kieran. You just met him two days ago. Regardless of how attractive he is and nice he seems.

"Okay," I say. "You've also probably been doing this for years."

"Definitely," he says. "It might take you a few months to build up to that. I was a bit restricted 'cause of the pants. If I were wearing just a pair of shorts, I could probably manage it about twenty seconds faster."

Jeez, that's fast.

"What's your time for a mile?" I ask.

"My personal best," he answers. "Is five minutes, thirty-eight seconds, though my average is five minutes, fifty-one seconds."

Yeah, he's got a bit of an advantage there, too.

"However," he says. "That doesn't necessarily translate into this. That's just straight running with a little bit of turning. This is something different. Navigating the barriers adds time, and you aren't straight-up running, either. You're dashing maybe a couple of steps at a time."

"Yeah," I look across the arena again as he clips his walkie back onto his belt. "I still don't think I can do just across decently within a month, though."

"Want to make a bet?"

Does he seriously think that I'll manage this within a month? Is he really confident enough in this that he wants to make a bet? What if I sabotage it so that I win just to get the reward?

"You're going to lose."

"I'll take that risk," he grins. "If you can manage the length of the room and back in under four minutes by the time you're contacted by the potential employer, then I win. If you fail to manage that, then you win."

Both directions?

"Bets usually require someone losing something," I say. "Or putting something on the line."

"Yeah," he flashes that killer grin. "If I win, I have to do any one thing you want. If you win, you have to do any one thing I want. Barring illegal things, of course, and if it costs money or makes us uncomfortable, we have the right to refuse. So if I win, you can't tell me to, say, strip naked and run down the street. That would make me uncomfortable and I'd refuse."

"Uh," I say. "I think you mixed up who gets the instruction for who wins."

"Did I?" He raises an eyebrow. "Pretty sure I got it right. I win, I do one thing for you. You win, you do one thing for me."

"Shouldn't it be reversed?" I ask. "That means the loser gets something."

"Are you sure I'd be the loser?" His grin widens. "If I win the bet, that means you managed it, Kieran. So my reward for winning the bet is getting to reward you for that success. Your reward for winning the bet is getting a punishment from me."

His logic on this is twisted a little from the norm, but I actually like the idea now. Whatever his 'punishment' for me failing to manage to traverse the room and back in under four minutes, it probably involves a harsh training session that will last several hours.

"I don't think I've ever imagined saying this to anyone," I tell him. "But you just gave me motivation to lose a bet with you."

"I should warn you," he turns his grin into a sly smile. "I've never lost a bet when it comes to training unless the person didn't follow my training schedule or didn't put in the effort, or both."

"And I bet," I tell him. "That every single one of those 'winners' either turned their back on the bet after losing or regretted it after whatever training hell session you put them through."

"So you understand!" He grins again. "Got an idea of what you'll do if you lose?"

That's probably confirmation of my suspicion about what will happen if I win the bet between us. If I'm this sore now, I really don't want to find out how I'll feel after his training session from hell.

"No," I tell him. "But I'll think it over. I'm sure I can come up with something."

"Excellent!" He exclaims. "So, before you go, I was wondering what you thought of the orange chicken?"

"It was pretty decent," I tell him. "And, uh, a fair bit simpler than most of the other recipes in that binder. After looking through them earlier, I think there's a good chance I'll screw everything up."

"As long as you follow the directions," he tells me. "That shouldn't be a problem."

"I tried following the directions for breakfast this morning," I tell him. "Four strips of bacon, two eggs. I burned the bacon and the eggs were chewy."

"Ugh," he shivers in horror. "Okay, you probably had the heat on a little too high, and cooked them for a little too long. Next time, try turning the heat down a little bit and cooking for a bit less time. The eggs should still be slightly-glossy if you're going for scrambled."

"I was."

"Yeah," he says. "If they don't have a slight shine to them, you're going to have chewy eggs when you finish. That's my experience, anyway. As for the bacon, yeah, burnt is a no-go. How did you let them get that far?"

"Uh… I don't know?" I ask. "I was trying to pay attention and only let them get crispy, but it seemed like they burned while I did."

"Well," he says. "At least that's something that's more easily remedied. Just cook a little cooler and for a little less time. It'll take a little bit of experience to get bacon and eggs done properly, so don't worry over that too much, alright?"

"Alright," I say. "I'll give it a try again, then. Thanks for the help, Lucas."

"No worries," he says. "Heading back now?"

"Yeah," I answer. "I want to eat a bit as soon as possible, since you said it'll help me recover and optimize the growth of my abilities. Plus, I'm starving."

"Alright," he says. "See you tomorrow, then."

"See you."