Season 1, Episode 6 - The Tree Plot XXX - "Audrey vs Eight Steps Killer Sam"

Lynn and Audrey headed up the stairs. As they ascended, they heard a rumbling sound from behind them. Lynn glanced back just in time to see the exit to the dojo disappear, replaced with a wooden wall. They couldn't hear anything coming from the other side, either.

“She’ll be alright,” Audrey encouraged Lynn, or maybe it was just herself. “She’s got that freaky endurance thing.”

Lynn nodded alongside her. “It’s certainly freaky.”

They continued onwards. Just as before, the staircase only went up a single floor. Now on the third story, they departed the dead-end staircase and entered another dojo. Unlike Brandon’s dojo, this dojo featured purple metal floors, purple metal columns, and a purple metal ceiling. Torches illuminated the otherwise pitch-black room.

Just as Brandon did, a man sat cross-legged in the center of his dojo. In addition to the usual black gi, he wore a United States Army M1 helmet modified to include a scope over his right eye. Red paint circled around his other eye; overall, his face looked calm.

The man introduced himself. “They call me Eight Steps Killer Sam,” he said in a raspy voice. “I am the Third and final Peak of Mt. Tai. One may pass. One must fight.”

Audrey placed a hand on Lynn’s shoulder and gave her a reassuring smile. “I bet Hikari’s on the top floor. You go on ahead. I’ll take care of this guy.”

Lynn swallowed and looked over at the helmeted man. He waited patiently, almost serenely. “You sure?”

“I’ve gotten in my fair share of fights before,” Audrey said confidently. “I’m not as scared as I used to be.”

Lynn rested a hand on Audrey’s shoulder. “You got this.”

Audrey smiled back; Lynn, almost reluctantly at first, stepped away, then headed past Sam, toward a back staircase. Once she disappeared from sight, the door to the staircase suddenly closed. Audrey didn’t see the door shift across the opening; instantaneously, the door was shut.

Sam cracked his neck; the sound echoed across the metal dojo. He stood up; he had a short and stout frame, with honed muscles visible in his chest and other areas not covered by the gi. The torchlight flickered across his face - his visible eye narrowed, while the scope over the other eye peered at Audrey with metallic coldness.

“They gave me my title because I use the unblockable forbidden technique known as the Eight-Step Flying Heaven Style. Only masters of Silk Road Jujitsu know this technique, and only Rddhi users may apply it to its full destructive tendencies.”

Isn’t Silk Road Jujitsu the martial arts style we learn at the Academy? Audrey reflected. That means I know some kung fu too!

Audrey raised her hands in a boxer’s pose, fists closed around the seeds inside them. “Surrender or face my kung fu wrath!”

Sam grinned. “It’ll be you who faces the wrath of the Shaolin masters.”

One moment, Sam was there, scope and eye staring her down. The next, his fist pounded her in the stomach. He had somehow gotten past Audrey’s defenses in the blink of an eye - no, even faster than that. Faster than sound. Faster than light?

The strong blow knocked the wind completely out of Audrey and blew her away. She bounced across the purple metal floor while struggling to breath until finally skidding to a halt. When she caught her breath and looked up, she saw red Rddhi crackling through the helm. There was a good fifteen feet between them.

“Step 1,” Sam called out, almost lazily.

Audrey stood back and tried to analyze his technique while he was still halfway across the dojo. But then he was on her again, just like that. Just as Audrey sparked up Rddhi in her right arm, Sam delivered two strikes to it. Audrey spun away; the vine emerged in her hand, but the Rddhi gave out, just as her right arm did. The diminutive vine fell to the ground, and her right arm slumped uselessly at her side.

“Step 2,” Sam said.

Audrey poked her at her limp arm, but she couldn’t feel it.

Think, Audrey! What makes something do something you don’t want it to do!

She gasped and as she looked at him, her eyes widened. “You brainwashed my arm!”

More Rddhi sparked through Sam’s helmet. “Not quite. Perhaps a further demonstration will help you.”

Audrey immediately sent flickers of Rddhi down her left hand, but Sam was faster. But fast wasn’t the right word for it - it’s not like he sprinted across the dojo to cover the distance between them. A proper word for it would be -

Witchcraft!

No, that wasn’t the right word, either. There had to be a logical, or at least, Rddhi-related, answer. Sam would be at one point in the dojo; then he would be right in her face. As if no time passed between them. Audrey continued to think, even as Sam avoided her vine, clapped her on the ears, then kicked her away.

Sam’s mouth moved. Presumably, he was saying “Step 3”, but Audrey wasn’t sure - she couldn’t hear anything anymore. A sort of a gray static covered her eardrums, enough to make her feel disorientated. She slumped over and placed her good hand on a column to support herself. It felt cool, cool enough to at least get her settled down and in thinking mode again. As she looked at Sam, who was gathering energy, she felt the spare seed still in her palm as she put her smarts to good use.

Logic, Audrey, logic! The right word for going from one place to another without any time passing is…time travel! But time travel is impossible, even for the Rddhi. That’s a rule. Therefore…the right word is teleportation!

She looked at him, trying to confirm this. Instantaneously, he moved from across the dojo to right in front of her.

Audrey received a sudden roundhouse kick to the stomach followed by two strikes to each thigh. When she landed on the ground, the world still silent, she realized she could no longer move her legs. She didn’t have enough time to activate the seed, either, but at least she held it in her hand.

She gritted her teeth and used her good arm to sit up. She tapped on her legs, but neither responded.

He must be hitting parts of my body to make them shutdown. Like those pressure point thingies. The masters discovered this eight part technique, but only someone with Rddhi can pull off the strikes quick enough. Isaac would love a Hong Kong movie based on this!

But think harder, you’ve already lost an arm and both legs! The metal helmet must help him do all that math stuff to teleport correctly. If I can just knock that off-

Between each step, Sam’s energy build-up time took longer and longer.

His technique must rely on me being down for the count. Well, sorry to disappoint!

Having orientated herself faster than Sam expected, Audrey immediately sent a vine towards his helmet. When it got halfway, Sam appeared in front of Audrey. He grabbed the front of her throat, crushed it, then tossed her away like a broken ragdoll, knocking the vine out of her hand in the process.

Audrey saw stars when she bounced off the metal floor. She rolled over metal tiles until finally coming to a stop. She rested her face against a tile for the moment, grateful for its coolness. Her breathing was ragged and pained; when she touched her throat, she sighed in relief that it was still there.

He didn’t crush it completely. He doesn’t want to kill me just yet. He's like a cat playing with his food.

As Audrey debated that metaphor, she then noticed something odd about the vine she just used.

That’s downright peculiar! When Sam teleported, my vine was only grown halfway, but now, it’s fully grown. What happened? His teleportation should be instantaneous, so he should've arrived here before my vine grew to full length, yet it did anyway.

She looked at the helmet and gasped again.

I’m a goddamn genius!

Audrey sat herself up. Since he’s taking his time by gradually disabling me, I bet his next target will be-

Audrey recognized the end of the energy build-up and immediately sent a spray of sharp thorns upwards. When Sam appeared right in front of her, he reached for her eyes - exactly as Audrey predicted. The thorns cut up his hand and knocked it away. Sam immediately readjusted in an attempt to strike her elsewhere, but Audrey fell back down...right on top of the diminutive vine from before.

The moment her good hand touched it, red Rddhi coursed through into the vine; as its cells grew, it rose upward, faster than Sam, because Sam actually wasn’t all that fast once you knew his trick. The vine wrapped itself around his neck and hoisted him upwards; he struggled against it, but the vine constricted itself like a snake and Sam found himself sputtering for air.

Audrey loosened the vine just enough for Sam to breathe. She then directed the vine to cover his left, red-painted eye.

“The helmet was just a distraction,” Audrey informed him, always enjoying the opportunity to explain her findings in battle as Rddhi users are wont to do. “The real source of your technique was your eye with the red paint around it. You don’t teleport. You just have some weird Rddhi power in that left eye that locks me in place and makes me think no time has passed at all. Right before each step, I made eye contact with you and I got put under your spell.”

When Sam kept struggling, Audrey tightened the vine once again until he coughed in pain and the fight temporarily left him. Audrey sat herself up and looked at the defeated Sam. “There’s just one thing I don’t get, though. You could’ve killed me right away. Why go through all this effort to use this Eight-Step technique on me?”

Sam’s mouth moved. “I used to be the strongest man in my village. Nobody could best me. That made me do…things, terrible things, until all the local villages united together and cast me out. After that, I wandered the lands, seeking to find my equal. My travels took me to Pan-Asia, where I came across a tiny mountain sect. But when I faced the Elder…his grace and magnanimity overwhelmed me. He could’ve killed me immediately - instead, he used the Eight Steps. The point of the Eight-Step technique is to leave hope for the victim. A hope that they can succeed in this fight. When they inevitably lose, the sheer crushing of this hope will help with the destruction of the old mind and growth of a new one. A better one."

Audrey imagined the Elder looking over the fallen Sam in some mountain meadow. “The Eight-Steps don’t kill. They force submission. After getting all Eight Steps used on me, my old body and mindset was destroyed. But this destruction created a blank canvas where an art-i-san like the Elder could mold me like clay. He made a better man out of me.”

Audrey imagined Sam throwing on his knapsack and saying his farewells to the Elder before heading down the mountain path. “I couldn’t stay there forever. I had to return home and do to the same to my beloved country. With the Sect of Steel, I’ll break New England down - but not kill it. I will destroy the old, but allow the formation of the new. Very much like with you. I would’ve destroyed your old life, and in that blank canvas, we would’ve built a new you.”

Audrey flicked her head to make her blonde hair temporarily flow in an imaginary breeze. “Too bad you ran into the immovable object known as Audrey Adzinoki!” She clutched her stomach as she laughed. “Literally! Until my legs get feeling again, I’m stuck here! And so are you - with me!”

Sam narrowed his eyes as Audrey kept laughing.

“I wonder how long it’ll take,” Audrey thought aloud, deciding on what story to tell Sam to pass the time. It’s not like she could ask him about it - she still couldn’t hear. And it wasn’t like Sam could tell her his backstory, either - Audrey made it up herself. It sounded cool and typical of the villains she usually fought.

Maybe I should've wrote that book with Isaac and Reed!

As for telling a story - there's not much else to do when you’re temporarily paralyzed in several body parts and currently have the man who tried to kill you trapped in your clutches.

Audrey brought her good hand to her cheek. Her eyes shone. “Oh, I know! Let me tell you about the time I fought an evil microwave! It all started with me and my friends walking to school - you know, the usual, and I had this great surprise for them..."