Back from training

I was tapped awake from my nap by Karson who looked completely giddy and shaking with excitement.

"You need to see this!" he said pointing to Steven who was standing completely still.

I slowly got myself up and looked over at Steven who looked to be in an almost meditative state, his eyes were closed and he held the small knife in front of him with both hands.

"What am I looking at?" I asked turning my vision back to Karson who had a smile on his face and a finger to his lips motioning for me to be quiet.

Karson unsheathed his sword, readied his arm and threw it at Steven like a javelin. I expected Steven to yell out in pain or at least for Steven to react at all.

What happened instead could only be described as miraculous...

Excalibur hurtled towards Steven at an incredible electric pace, Steven who still had his eyes completely closed, yet just as it was about to reach Steven it just stopped. Excalibur fell to the floor losing all of its momentum and Steven didn't even need to move a muscle.

As the sword let out a few metallic clangs as it dropped to the ground of the warehouse Steven finally opened his eyes and relaxed his posture.

"So what do you think?" Karson said turning to me with a cocky grin.

I took a long moment to think about my next words before finally saying, "It's nothing too special. You, Skinny, Clarisse and possibly even Vicki could use your skills and training to emulate the exact same thing. I understand Steven has come a long way with his training that I have been in charge of adminstering but he is still only at the first stage of his inherent skill, Null. If we want to have even a sliver of a chance against our enemies, who by the way just continue to keep piling up, he needs to work harder."

"What do you mean training you have been adminstering? I've been doing him all the work to get him this far!" Karson exclaimed.

"Then you need to work harder as well!"

Karson just looked at me shocked before finally dropping his head in defeat.

"I promise I'll work harder!" Steven called out.

"No you won't. We're going home."

"But..." Steven and Karson started.

"I said we're going home! You can't just train all the time it will lead to worse results." 

They nodded in agreement.

"Plus I'm hungry and my ass hurts from this warehouse floor!"

We all left the warehouse and I could see that whatever training buffs that had been in effect wore off the second we walked outside because Steven and Karson instantly collapsed to the floor wheezing and coughing up vomit.

It was a stark contrast to how energetic and motivated to train they were just seconds ago.

"Actually guys I changed my mind maybe we should train for a little longer what do you think?"

They groaned and managed to get to their feet slowly on weak legs. It looked like I was heading back with a couple of zombies. 

I briefly considered getting my phone and calling Skinny to come and help me carry them back but I ultimately decided that it would be good for them to learn that when I said 'stop training' then they should stop. Nothing was better for learning than living with your mistakes after all.

We returned back to the old hospital as the sun was setting and even though I wasn't expecting a parade on our arrival, I really wasn't expecting Skinny and Clarisse to walk out with sad looks on their faces.

"What's wrong?" I asked Skinny walking far ahead of the zombified Steven and Karson.

"It's Vicki..." Skinny started with a glum look.

"... She hasn't come back." Clarisse had to finish for him.

Only a day and a half had passed whilst we were gone but Vicki should have only been gone with her brother for an hour or two.

"That asshole kidnapped his own sister!" I said thumping my fist down onto the table.

We were currently all in a staff break room we had cleaned out. Clarisse, Skinny and I were gathered around a table whilst Steven and Karson were completely unconscious on chairs in the corner of the room. 

"We need to get her back!" Exclaimed Clarisse.

"We cant." Skinny muttered.

Clarisse turned to him getting angry, "What are you talking about?! We need to rescue her! If Karson was awake he'd tell you we need to save her!"

"Then it's a good job he's not awake. Because Skinny's right, we can't save her. She isn't even a guild member." I said to her in a commanding tone.

"Yes she is she-"

"No! There's nothing official that says she's a member of the guild so the association can do whatever it wants."

"Then we need to go to the association and save her!" Clarisse tried to rouse us using confident arm gestures.

"Listen to yourself. We cant save her. One of our strongest members might be out cold for a couple of days and we just don't have the strength to go against the entire association." 

"Then what do we do?" Clarisse and Skinny looked at me pleadingly.

"Here's what we do: we try to find out exactly where she is, Steven and I sneak up to her and kidnap her back, we bring her back here, anoint her as a guild member and then we all go get ice-cream... I'm still working on the last step but that's the plan so far."

"Steven?! Your plan is riding on Steven?!" Skinny raised his voice in indignation. Apparently Clarisse and Skinny had gotten very close to Vicki and already saw her as a member of our little family.

"Yes his Null skill is the only real weapon we have that the association isnt aware of. I will go with him as back up and all we really need to do is sneak in there and steal her away. Nothing can go wrong."

I tried to act confident with my plan in front of Skinny and Clarisse but the second I stepped outside of the break room I began to freak out.

I knew Vicki didn't want to go, I should have tried harder to save her but how could I have known her own brother would actually kidnap her. I mean what is this a shakespearean tragedy?!

I had to try to calm myself down and focus on the problem at hand. Just take it a step at a time.

The first step (to the mission that I had come up with on the fly) was to find out exactly where she'd be so we could head straight there. There had to be some way of locating her.

After a little research I had found that there was a few locating skills: such as tracking, finding, hunting, etc. But there were also many different hacking skills: such as hacking, breaching, technopathy, etc.

We needed someone with either of these two skills to help us and for that we would need a list of people with these skills.

I told Skinny my idea and he immediately started blackmailing as many of his association contacts as he could and after an hour they managed to send him a list which all 3 of us began to pour over.

There were thousands of names for each specific kind of skill and after a day of looking through all of them they all started to just blend together.

"I physically can't look at any more of these. I need a break." I said tossing my phone onto the table. I didn't just have to look at names and skill names, I had to read an entire file on each person and every skill they had and their rank and guild affilitations it was so mind numbing.

"Have you found anyone with potential so far?" Clarisse said with her nose firmly in her phone.

"I only have two guy's on my list, one is a part of the Templar guild and the other is some kind of popstar idol."

"OK so really you haven't been able to find anyone?"

"Yeah I just need a break. Who do you have so far?"

Skinny piped up, "No one. Most of the ones I've seen are either out of our league or dead."

"Yeah same. The only one I managed to find was some little girl who's on her deathbed." Clarisse said looking over what she had written down.

"Oh yeah I heard about her." Skinny said before looking over at me and my confusion, "Her name is Tamara. She's a 6 year old girl with some kind of intelligence based inherent skill which gave her skills like hacking and tracking but she has some kind of cancer in her arm that meant she had to get her arm amputated but the tumour spread. Guild's all over the world were bugging her for help but once the cancer surfaced again they all left her alone."

"It was major news a year ago. It's really sad."

I heard a sound coming from my system.

"We need to go and meet with her. Skinny you keep piling over the names on the list. Clarisse and I will go visit the girl."

The sound that came from my system:

{Recruit Tamara's help}

{Rewards: +10 seconds of time}