“Ow!” I whimpered to myself as she lifted me up and tossed me over her shoulder and to the ground with a hard thud. I felt all the wind shoot out of my lungs as I lay on my back with my entire head spinning. We had been going for two minutes and in that time she had caught my hand three times and each time flipped me over her shoulder and into the wet ground. My clothes were annoyingly soaking wet now as she had at one point ducked under a punch and a solid kick sent me stumbling and slipping into turtle pond, much to her enjoyment and laughter. My face was growing pink from angry embarrassment as I slammed a hand on the ground.
“Aren’t you supposed to be teaching me how to fight?” I forced myself to look up at her with annoyance. As she stood with her arms crossed and a smug little smirk planted across her face. “I expect a bit more from someone from the island. Or are you just learning?”
“I am trying to be nice,” I growled, flipping up to my feet. My clothes felt heavier and stuck against my skin now. I was uncomfortable, angry, and my back and sides hurt from where she kept throwing me. I had to admit that she was good at redirecting blows and where others would go for a counter shot, she relied more on throwing you like a judo fighter. “So I am done playing nice, don’t get mad if I end up hurting you a bit.”
“Isn’t that the point of this lesson, to teach me protection so I don’t get hurt tomor-” Her voice trailed off a bit, and that fear began to spill across her face once more. She shook her head a few times before that smirk returned but it wasn’t that powerful anymore. “Come on and show me what I need to know already.”
I was allowed to help train people back home that were my age or younger, I often had to put someone in place for thinking they knew more than did. I was trying to hold back here cause I didn’t want Katherine to find out, however… if I couldn’t fight like her, and my momma style that I was trying to mimic didn’t work. I would use the next best thing… I would fight like my daddy. I took a deep breath before bringing my left arm down to bend at my waist and my other hand I held straight out, my fingers curled in like claws. “See now we are getting-'' I didn’t let her finish as I ran towards her, nowhere near as fast I could move but enough to show that this was not a game. I dodged one of her punches and began to tap on her sides with a fury of punches mostly to annoy her and fill that spot with a dull pain. She tried to elbow me but I was quicker and ducked under it onto her left side and began to do the same thing, running a fast series of light jabs up her sides. I finally finished before ducking around her so I had her back and gave her a small kick knocking her onto her face.
As I turned around to see if anyone had seen that. I noticed that her two large body guards were standing up now and making their way over very quickly. For a moment I was worried that they were gonna hurt me. However a loud voice spoke up. “Sit back down or leave!” They stopped in their tracks and I turned back to find Trinity standing up, wiping a bit of grass off her dark face. “She is helping me learn, not trying to kill me. So just sit down already!” Trinity was rubbing her sides, probably trying to get the sting out. “Okay… so I wasn’t expecting that.”
“You wanted me to start taking this seriously so I am.” I answered, still annoyed from my earlier dip in the pond water. It had tasted nothing like the water back home, this was more murky than fresh. “And I owed you from throwing me in the water.”
Trinity rushed me again, she dived down low and took hold of my legs to try and pick me up. However, I was quicker this time and forced my weight to my legs to keep my footing. We slid backwards a few feet and I began to tap my knuckles against the more tickless parts of her sides, her sudden yelps quickly turned into loud laughter. I kept this up until my finger came into contact with a very weak but noticeable layer of hard jepei. The protection coating, a technique that hardened jepei like body armor. It could block and deflect weapons, stop bullets if quick enough and could save us from a very long fall. Her’s was very weak, so weak that when I dug my fingers into it. I could easily tear this off like it was a thin layer of drywall.
Trinity stood to her feet looking a bit embarrassed as I held a shard of her red jepei aura before it started to fade into smoke. “What did I do wrong?”
“Well aside from it being really weak, why did it take you so long to summon it?” I asked as we started to circle each other for a bit.
“I don’t know how to summon the protection coating any quicker than I just did.” Trinity explained, she kept doing fake jumps at me to try and catch me off guard. I had a feeling if one of those she would be on me quicker than I could recover. “I am much better at amplifying my attacks.” Amplification could make our attacks stronger especially if we put all of jepei into one part of the body to deliver a blow. We could amplify our legs to run and jump better, we could amplify our lungs with jepei to swim underwater longer. We could even use it to speed up the healing process, but that was more dangerous than it sounded.
“The best way to speed that process up is to get used to fighting with it up.” I stopped our circular dance before settling back into my previous stance. I first summoned the projection aura and than as soon as my jepei had finished surrounding me. I forced it to harden and it surrounded me like light armor, my body now had a bright purple hue surrounding it. “My momma says that this technique is the most important one you could have. It can and will keep you safe from harm if used properly.”
“Prove it.” Trinity ran towards me. I could see the veins in her arms pulse red as she swung at me with all her strength. I held both my arms up and as it connected there was a small shockwave of purple and red jepei that flew in all directions. I held back a wince as my weaker protection coating I used for this lesson began to shatter a bit leaving parts of my arms exposed. She could pack a serious punch, and against normal people she could knock them out at minimum or break their jaw at worst. She quickly followed this powerful punch up by ducking down and grabbing my waist, she let out a roar as she lifted me up. I let out a cry of surprise as she slammed me onto the ground with a side slam like a wrestler would on television. She didn’t let go as she rolled back to feet and lifted me up with strength no tween should have and threw me across the field. I landed hard on my side and rolled across the dirt. I quickly stood up to my feet and found myself on the receiving end of a power series of blows from the girl. Each one tore off chunks of my protection shield leaving my body exposed for a few seconds while I quickly replaced it with a new coating.
Eventually I managed to duck away and started to unload on her with another fury of blows from the tips of my knuckles. Mostly hitting her stomach and sides, cause if those were tight and weakened, she couldn’t lift me up that easily anymore. However, I also had to hold back enough so she would survive training with Katherine…. No that wasn’t gonna be training, this girl was on strike two, so it was just gonna be a beating disguised as training.
I couldn’t let her go unprepared into that.
I eventually flipped away. My own body feeling exhausted from her previous blows and all the slams and tosses she loved to use. Trinity was gripping her stomach and taking deep breaths. Right as we were about to go into another round, my phone began to go off from my alarm. I had restarted the timer when we had gotten serious again, even then those five minutes went flying by. And judging from the collective sighs of relief that came from us, we both were okay with this outcome.
I flopped down onto the ground and relaxed for a moment on the grass. A moment later Trinity sat down beside me and offered me a sip from her large pink water bottle. “I-I am sorry for kicking you in the water.”
“You got my clothes wet.” I said with a pout.
“I will treat you to the best day of your life if you want.” Trinity said. “After you teach me how to do protection much better… I am gonna need it. If your jabs hurt that much and you were holding back, I don’t want to see what Katherine can do.”
“Holding back?”
Trinity let out a scoff. “Come on we were both holding back during that, I had to hold my strength back so I didn’t hurt you.”
A sickening thought spread through my mind. “If she was really holding back, then just how strong was she?”
Way stronger than I could have ever imagined.
Who would have guessed that I would have ended up sharpening the weapon that this girl was, making her even sharper and even stronger than before.
How could I have known that I was training a soon to be killer.
That I was training, Katherine’s second attempt at the fighter she had been wanting for a very long time.
I should have known better.
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We spent the entire morning training, I taught her what I could without drawing too much attention my way. The thing she struggled with was hardening her projection aura into the protective shield as well as hardening certain parts of the protection shield. It was understandable that she struggled, she was incredibly good when it came to amplifying her attacks that it only made sense that she struggled with protecting herself. It was a struggle at first but then when her frustration and anger faded, her true colors seemed to shine. She was a very fast learner when she was focused, she absorb information like a sponge. Without her bratty attitude holding her back, she was really a good student and it took the entire morning, but by the end of it. She had the basics down to at least manage to protect herself from too much harm tomorrow when she trained with Katherine.
“Come on,” Trinity said once she had gathered the rest of her belongings. “I wanna take you somewhere to say thank you.”
“Where are we going?” I asked following her towards the expensive limo that she had arrived in. To be honest I really wanted to just go home and take a long shower or bath, my clothes clung to my skin making it uncomfortable to even walk. My skin was covered in grass stains and I was sure a few of the braids had come undone.
“I am taking you to a spa.” My eyes practically lit up as I climbed into the back of the limo. It had nice looking black leather seats that stretched across one side of it, as had a small pink minibar and there was an older looking woman in the back already shaking a metal thermos in her hands. It even had a small television above the bar that was playing some Disney Channel show I didn’t recognize. “It’s the least I could do for you helping me. My daddy always says repay kindness with kindness.”
“I suppose I can go.” I look back out the window to where a certain dark green cheetah was sitting. Joshua’s animal spirit had been assigned to follow me around, just in case something happened. I gave a slight nod before sitting down on the towel that had been provided for me, I guess she didn’t want these seats wet. “How long will it take to get there?”
“Not long,” Trinity clapped her hands twice. A moment later the limo started moving and behind us another large car was following, I could just barely see one of the faces of her bodyguards as we drove into the busy mid day traffic. “Why do you have jepei and Aailyah doesn’t?” She suddenly asked. “And why didn’t she tell me she had family that lived in Spain and on that island?”
I was prepared for her second question as I had come up with a good reason why. “Our moms had a falling out a really long time ago. So they broke contact, my dad has jepei so it was passed onto me from him.” I let out a small chuckle. “It’s funny, we just met for the first time about 5 months ago at our grandma’s funeral. Our mom’s made up and we got to know each other more.”
“I suppose that makes sense.” Trinity kept on looking out of the windows, and than said. “I really do like your cousin, I just like teasing people a bit but I don’t dislike her.”
“It’s hard to tell when you make fun of her weight.” Trinity tensed a bit at that and her face fell a bit more. “You made her cry when you left to get ready.”
“I know,” she replied sadly. “But we made up and she got to sing with me on stage to fix my problem. I do really care about her, I promise I do.”
“You have a weird way of showing it,” I responded with a bit more attitude than I wanted. “Just because you make up for nastiness with kindness doesn’t make the bad things go away.”
“Isn’t the phrase supposed to be sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me?” Trinity tried weakly.
“That phrase is stupid. I have been hurt, kicked and slapped before, but it was words that hurt more than anything. Pain goes away, but words can be heard forever.” I quickly thanked the woman that had given me a red slushy-like drink. “I’m not gonna tell you how to be a good friend, because I’m not a good friend either.” The smiling face of Beatrice spread across my vision for a moment, it was then replaced by her tearful eyes as she tried to stop me from leaving. “It’s hard to make up for the bad things we do, we can only try our best to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“You are annoyingly wise,” I saw her wipe a tear from her eye before straightening up. “I wish I had more friends like you, everyone needs someone to call them out and not be afraid of doing so.”
“Hard to call you out when you act like a brat.” I thought to myself as I sipped on this raspberry flavored drink. “You are lucky to have all of this.” I said hoping to change the subject, maybe get her talking about her daddy. “What does your daddy do to earn all of this money for all of this stuff.”
Trinity paused for a moment. “Ummm…. I’m not sure really, I know he owns a lot of buildings and stuff, his nightclubs and restaurants are popular.” She answered softly, she was lying. She knew what he did. I could tell it, my father told me that when people lie or are withholding other facts, they tend to look away or avoid eye contact. She seemed more interested in her drink than looking me in the eyes. “I haven’t known him long enough to see how he grew his empire.”
“Hasn’t he always been with you?” I knew the answer but hearing it from her might shed better light on this girl.
She shook her head. “I didn’t know him and he didn’t know me, but when my-'' She got choked up for a moment. “When my momma died, she told me to go to his nightclub with my birth certificate and a letter that she had written. I was so scared when I stood in front of him, the music was so loud and everyone look at me like I was a street rat. Then he dropped both items and before I could even react he dropped to his knees and hugged me. That was the last time I saw him cry in my life. I cried too, and I knew he was my daddy the moment he hugged me. From there he took me to his mansion, hired female staff to take care of me, got me the best clothes and toys. He played with me, took me to parks, got rid of certain people that scared me or called me the daughter of a hoe. He did so much to make me feel at home.” A smile spread across her face as she added. “I love my daddy and he loves me.”
“When did you meet, Miss Katherine?” I asked, my stomach always sunk a bit when I said her name.
Trinity rolled her eyes. “My daddy met her a year ago, she works for his boss I think. I was being rude when we first meet and she offered to teach me before I got in serious trouble with someone.” She moved closer to me and whispered. “I am ninety percent sure they are sleeping together.” She said before breaking out into light laughter.
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” I thought to myself, joining in with her laughter.
Trinity smiled at me for a moment. “Where are you leaving, New York?”
“I am not sure, I’m just here visiting Aayiliah while my parents are doing work for their company.” I explained.
“Well then, I owe it to you for your goodness to show you the wonders of New York. I am gonna take you to my daddy's restaurant. Me, you and Aailyah can go to the movies and take you to see plays so good that you would think they were made by God himself. By the time this is done, we are gonna be the best of friends.”
“I think I would like that very much,” I said with a large smile.
“And to start I am taking you to the best spa in the city. I am gonna show you what being rich is all about.” Trinity pounded on a small mirror that separated the driver from the rest of the limo. “Hurry up already!”
I jolted in my seat as this limo seemed to pick up speed. Looks like phase one of our plan was working out well. Get on her good side.
Turns out parts two and three were gonna be the hardest things in my life.
Cause how can you lie to a man… that already knows who you are.”
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