Hey there, Everyone! I know it's been a long time since I've updated this story, but not to worry I will be updating it as often as I can from here on out. This chapter will focus more on some character development and the interaction between Daikon and the Saiyan siblings before the Vytal tournament.
As such, to begin volume 3 here is the new opening:
Opening theme: Black Rover (Black Clover Opening 3)
Visuals: The camera pans from the sky down to just above Beacon Academy as a bird perches on top of the Beacon Tower's Spire as the title card Flame and Crimson flashes upon the screen. Following this, it opens up to Teams NDTSA and RWBY walking alongside each other and laughing before Weiss begins to chase Daikon for some comment he no doubt made. It flashes to a panel of JNPR, some of the other Vytal Tournament Participants and Beacon's faculty before it zooms in on Ozpin briefly.
The bridge is a compilation of the Saiyan characters and team rwby training against each other before the screen darkens with Cinder, Emerald, Neo and others smirking darkly before rushing into the screen. The chorus is a scene of the main cast fighting back against a horde of Grimm invaders before transitioning to a scene of Nova and Turuk fighting Cinder with their ki surrounding them. Nova kneels briefly and breathes in slowly as a menacing shadow of an oozaru (Saiyan Great Ape) is seen behind him as he charges towards cinder again.
The song ends with Ruby and Nova entwining their hands together as they stare at the sunset.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Training, Rest, and Relaxation?
Part I — The Morning After Tenkawa
Location: Beacon Academy | The Following Morning
Ozpin had told them to rest.
He had said it with the specific quality he brought to instructions that were actually suggestions — the quality that communicated this is what I recommend while leaving sufficient room for people to make their own decisions, because he was, above all, a man who understood that the recommendation and the decision were separate things.
Team JNPR rested.
Team RWBY rested, with the specific thoroughness of people who had spent an afternoon in a situation that had comprehensively cashed all available reserves and was now calling in the debt.
Team NDTSA had a different interpretation of rest.
They were in the common room the morning after, and Nova had said training, and the way the word landed in the room was the way certain words landed — with the quality of something that had been expected but had arrived sooner than anticipated.
"Training," Scarlett said.
"Training," Daikon confirmed.
"Training?" Aiko said, which had more question in it than the previous two.
Nova looked at them with the expression he used when he had already assembled the argument and was deciding how much of it to present.
"You all remember Tenkawa," he said.
The room absorbed this.
Aiko shuddered in the small, controlled way of someone who does not want to be seen shuddering but whose body has not entirely cooperated with this ambition.
"We remember," Daikon said. "What of it?"
"Would any of that have gone the way it went if we'd been better prepared for what we found there?" Nova asked.
The silence that followed was the specific silence of people who did not have a useful counterargument and were deciding whether to attempt one anyway.
"No," Scarlett said, which was the honest answer.
"No," Turuk agreed.
"Right," Nova said. "So we train."
He laid out the distribution with the focused efficiency of someone who had been thinking about this since approximately the altitude at which the bullhead had crossed back into Vale's airspace.
Scarlett and Aiko would find Yang.
"Train the blonde?" Scarlett asked.
"She needs it," Turuk said, with the quiet seriousness of someone who had been awake for a portion of the night thinking about the specific thing he was describing. "You saw what happened when she didn't have control. What Turles used against her, what she became without an anchor — she needs someone who understands what she's working with. Someone who's been there."
Scarlett looked at Aiko.
Aiko looked at her hands.
"We've both been there," Scarlett said.
"Yes," Aiko said, quietly.
Scarlett sighed in the way she sighed when she had already decided something and was only sighing to acknowledge the effort involved. "All right. She gets us."
Nova looked at Aiko. "And I need a favor from you specifically."
Aiko's tail straightened slightly in the involuntary way it did when someone addressed her directly with something that sounded important. "Y-Yes? I mean — yes, what is it?"
"You've been managing your hybrid saiyan nature for a while now," he said. "You've figured out the things that needed figuring out — the power, the instincts, the balance. You did it without anyone explaining it to you first, which means you did it the hard way, which means you know what the hard way teaches."
Aiko processed this.
"You want me to help Ruby," she said.
"She's not going to be human much longer," Nova said, which he followed with the specific quality of someone who has something to account for. "That's... somewhat my fault."
Scarlett turned to look at him with the expression she used when she was about to be an older sister despite the technical inaccuracy of the title.
"Nova," she said. "What do you mean by somewhat your fault."
"I may have accidentally—"
"Accidentally."
"—introduced enough Saiyan ki into her system over the course of our training that her blood has started converting," he said, in the tone of someone delivering a complete sentence as quickly as possible. "It's happening gradually. She's going to need someone who can walk her through what it means. I can't do it — she needs someone who isn't her boyfriend for this, because the conversation will be different. And you—" He looked at Aiko. "—you know what she's going to need to hear."
Scarlett pressed her fingers to her forehead.
"I," she said, "am going to pretend I didn't hear the part where you accidentally converted your girlfriend's blood by being too close to her for too long. Because if I think about it too hard it's going to give me a headache."
"Thank you," Nova said.
"I'm not done."
"I know."
"Next time something like this happens—"
"I'll tell you before it becomes an irreversible situation," he said.
Scarlett pointed at him.
"That," she said. "Yes. That."
She put her hand down.
"Aiko," she said. "You're with Ruby."
Aiko's tail was wagging in the involuntary way it did when she was trying not to seem excited and was only partially succeeding. "I'll do my best."
"You'll do fine," Scarlett said. "She's easy to talk to." A pause. "Mostly."
Nova and Turuk would train with Tarro.
This was the information they offered their teammates, along with the fact that Tarro had specifically requested them, which Daikon noted with the expression of someone filing information for later use.
"He requested you specifically," Daikon said.
"Yes," Nova said.
"Not the team. Just the two of you."
"Yes."
"And you don't know why."
"We have some guesses," Turuk said.
Daikon looked at them both for a moment. "All right. I'll find my own training."
"Don't get into too much trouble," Scarlett said.
"I make no promises," Daikon said, which was the honest answer.
They dispersed.
Before Nova and Turuk turned toward the cleared ground where Tarro had told them to meet him, Turuk was quiet in the specific way of someone organizing something before it had to come out.
Nova noticed. Nova usually noticed.
"It's about Yang," Nova said.
"You never let me have my moment," Turuk said.
"You were going to take a while."
"I was going to take the appropriate amount of time."
Nova smiled.
"You're worried about her," he said. "About whether what happened in Tenkawa left something behind. Whether the Berserk state did damage that showed up later, when she had time to think about it."
Turuk looked at the ground for a moment. "When I was holding her in the aircraft, she was asleep, and she looked—" He stopped. Found the word. "Small. In a way she never looks."
"Scarlett's with her," Nova said.
"I know."
"Aiko too, later."
"I know."
"And you can see her after we finish with Tarro."
"I know," Turuk said, a third time, which was the specific inflection of someone who is aware that their concern is being managed and is ambivalent about whether they appreciate it.
Nova put a hand on his brother's shoulder.
"She's not small," he said. "She was exhausted. There's a difference."
Turuk looked at him.
"😏 Besides," Nova added, "if you're still worried after training you can always go see her. She'll probably be very glad you did."
Turuk turned away.
"Let's just go," he said, which was the response of someone who is not going to have this particular conversation right now.
Nova followed, not visibly smiling, which was a specific and deliberate choice.
Part II — What Scarlett Told Yang
Location: Beacon Academy Grounds | That Morning
Scarlett found Yang the way you found people who were technically present but were doing their best not to be noticeable — sitting slightly apart from her teammates on a bench near the fairgrounds' outer edge, her hair loose and her jacket half-done, watching the festival preparations with the specific quality of someone who is looking at things but not seeing them.
She was also, Scarlett noted, holding her lower back slightly, in the way of someone who has noticed an unfamiliar physical sensation and is trying to locate the source of it.
"Yang," she said.
Yang looked up. Something rearranged in her expression into the version she usually wore — the bright, present, ready-for-anything version. It was a good arrangement. Scarlett had done the same thing enough times to recognize it.
"Hey, Scarlett. What's up?"
"I wanted to talk to you for a minute," Scarlett said. "If you have one."
"Sure." The bright arrangement held. "Something wrong?"
"Nothing wrong," Scarlett said. "Just something that needs saying." She sat beside her. "How are you actually doing. Not the version you tell your teammates."
A pause.
The bright arrangement softened.
"I'm..." Yang looked at the fairgrounds. "I don't know what I am, honestly. Which is sort of the problem."
Scarlett waited.
"I've been Yang Xiao Long my whole life," Yang said. "I've known what I am. What I'm made of. And then this guy shows up and tells me—" She stopped. "I mean, I heard it. I understand the words he used. But there's a difference between understanding words and having them be real."
"Yes," Scarlett said. "There is."
"When did it become real for you?" Yang asked. "The Saiyan thing. When did you actually believe it?"
Scarlett thought about this honestly.
"When I stopped trying to make it fit with what I already believed about myself," she said. "And started trying to understand what it was on its own terms." A pause. "That took a while. It might take you a while too. That's all right."
Yang was quiet.
"Also," Scarlett said, "there's something specific I wanted to mention. That itching feeling near your lower back—"
Yang blinked. "How did you—"
Scarlett stood. "Turn around."
Yang looked at her.
"Just trust me," Scarlett said.
Yang turned.
Scarlett found the lump in the back of Yang's jacket with the practiced attention of someone who has done this search before — not for Yang specifically, but for the general phenomenon of something trying to exist in a space that clothing was not designed to accommodate. She found it, and she pulled, and what she pulled was golden and furry and attached to Yang, and the effect of the pulling was immediate and comprehensive.
Yang's knees hit the ground.
Scarlett released it.
Yang came back in stages — the strength returning in the specific sequence of something that had been briefly removed and was reasserting itself. She was on her feet in a few seconds, and then she was very close to Scarlett's face, and her expression was communicating several things.
"What," Yang said.
"Look behind you," Scarlett said.
Yang looked behind herself.
The tail was golden yellow and curling with the specific autonomy of something that had decided it was here and was settling in.
Yang looked at it.
The tail looked at her, in the way that tails look at people when they're actually just doing what tails do.
"That," Yang said, "was not there when I went to sleep."
"Bodies are efficient when they're catching up," Scarlett said. "When the change starts, it moves fast. Especially in someone your age with your reserves." She sat again. "The craving for larger portions?"
Yang's eyes widened. "That's a Saiyan thing?"
"Very much so. The body's recalibrating its fuel requirements. You'll adjust." Scarlett looked at her. "The fighting instinct that's always been there. The need to know who's stronger. The specific quality of your temper—"
"What about my temper?"
"Your hair has gone red twice," Scarlett said, "and your eyes have turned red approximately forty times since I met you. Yang. Normal humans with the semblance you have don't have quite that specific response profile."
Yang opened her mouth.
Closed it.
"Your Saiyan nature was talking," Scarlett said, "even when it was still dormant. It's why you were always drawn toward fighting and strength, and—" She paused deliberately. "—toward people who had it."
Yang's face did something specific.
"I'm not talking about Turuk," Scarlett said.
"I didn't say you were," Yang said.
"Your face said I was."
"My face says a lot of things without my permission."
"Yes," Scarlett agreed, "it does." She looked at her friend. "The Saiyan part of you recognized what he was, and it found it—"
"Scarlett."
"—relevant."
"I'm going to push you off a bench."
"You can try," Scarlett said. "But I'd like to finish first, because the point is actually important." She looked at Yang directly. "Your feelings for him are real. The fact that your Saiyan blood helped you along toward them doesn't make them less real. It just means you had a biological assist." A pause. "Which, for the record, he also had. Saiyans have a specific recognition for compatible partners. He's been ignoring the recognition and working through it with his actual personality, which takes more effort than you might think."
Yang was very quiet.
"He's a bit of an idiot about feelings," Scarlett said. "Affectionately. It's a family trait. Nova took a year and a half to admit he was in love with Ruby, and she had to do it for him in the end."
"Yang almost smiled."
"Almost," Scarlett confirmed. "Now. Training."
She explained it the way Rhubar and Sala had explained it to her, years ago, when the power had first made itself known: not as something to be frightened of, but as something that was going to be present regardless of whether she engaged with it, and that engaging was therefore the more useful choice.
The ki control basics.
The breathing techniques.
The specific practice of feeling where the energy was and learning to direct it rather than simply experiencing it.
Yang was a surprisingly attentive student when she was interested, which Scarlett had suspected and was now confirming. The questions she asked were specific — not why does this work but what does this feel like when it's working — the questions of someone who processes learning through sensation rather than concept.
By the time they rejoined the others, something in Yang's posture had changed.
Not dramatically. Just the specific fraction of a degree that separated someone who was carrying something alone from someone who had handed part of it to another person.
The tail was still visible.
She had stopped trying to hide it.
Part III — Aiko and Ruby
Location: Vytal Festival Grounds | That Morning
The festival was doing the specific thing that festivals do when you are the right kind of distracted — providing enough texture to exist in without requiring much engagement, the way comfortable music existed in rooms where the purpose was conversation rather than listening.
Ruby was walking through it with Weiss and Blake and Aiko, and she was present in the way that people were present when something was absorbing a significant portion of their background processing.
The tail was the main thing.
She had been managing it under her cape, which worked until she turned quickly, at which point it did not work. She was developing a specific combination of awareness and tension about her lower back that she had not had yesterday morning.
Weiss and Blake peeled off ahead at some point — Blake suggesting it with the specific gentleness of someone who has understood the situation without being told about it — and Ruby and Aiko were walking together, and the silence between them had the quality of two people who were both waiting for the other to begin a conversation they both knew was going to happen.
Aiko began it.
"How are you adjusting to things?" she asked.
"What things specifically?" Ruby asked, which was a question that was also an acknowledgment.
"Being a Saiyan now," Aiko said.
Ruby thought about this.
"I mean," she said, "when you say it out loud it still sounds—" She made a gesture that communicated large and difficult to fit in a normal sentence.
"I know," Aiko said.
"Because I've been Ruby Rose my whole life and Ruby Rose is a huntress-in-training who's good at going fast and using a scythe, and now apparently she's also..." Ruby gestured again.
"Yes," Aiko said.
"The tail didn't help," Ruby said.
"When did that happen?"
"Overnight," Ruby said. "I woke up and it was just—" She made a there it is gesture behind her. "There."
The tail in question, hearing itself referenced, moved in a small and involuntary way.
"Has it always done that?" Ruby asked.
"Tails have a degree of autonomy," Aiko said. "You get used to it. After a while it responds to your moods without you having to think about it." Her own tail was moving in a slow, calm arc. "It's actually useful — it's a pretty accurate external indicator of what you're feeling."
Ruby looked at her tail.
Her tail looked at the festival.
"Great," Ruby said. "So everyone can tell when I'm nervous."
"They probably could already," Aiko said, which was delivered with such gentle honesty that Ruby couldn't quite find it in herself to take offense.
"Okay, fair," she said.
They walked.
"What else has changed?" Aiko asked.
Ruby thought about how to itemize the past twenty-four hours. "I was really hungry when I got back. Like — really hungry. I ate more than Yang at dinner, which has never happened in my life."
Aiko nodded.
"That'll be a permanent change," she said. "Your body's recalibrating. Saiyan metabolism is significantly higher than human standard — you'll need more food, especially after fighting. The good news is your recovery rate goes up proportionally."
"So I get to eat more and heal faster."
"Yes."
"That's actually fine," Ruby said.
Aiko smiled.
"The main thing I was asked to help with," she said, "is the Saiyan-specific parts of what you're becoming. Nova said—" She paused. "He said you could already fly. A little."
"A little," Ruby confirmed. "I can get off the ground for a few seconds and then I sort of... lose the thread of it and fall. Nova's been trying to help me figure out the mechanics but we keep getting interrupted by things."
"I know that feeling," Aiko said. "I had the same problem when my power first came in. Would you like to work on that today?"
Ruby brightened in the specific way she brightened when a thing that had been frustrating her was about to become a practice problem rather than an unsolvable mystery.
"Yes," she said. "Very much."
"All right." Aiko looked around at the festival around them, assessing its suitability as a training ground. "Maybe not here."
"Definitely not here," Ruby agreed.
They found a quieter space at the edge of the festival grounds, where the city gave way to open park and the foot traffic thinned to the occasional passerby who had decided to take the scenic route. The late morning light came through the trees at an angle that was specifically the kind of light that made things feel possible.
Aiko turned to Ruby.
"The first thing about flight," she said, "is that it's not actually about pushing off the ground. Most people think about it like jumping — like you're fighting gravity. But you're not." She paused. "You're telling gravity that you've made other plans."
Ruby stared at her.
"Nova said something like that to me once."
"Did it help?"
"Not at the time," Ruby said. "But right now it's making slightly more sense."
"That's usually how it works," Aiko said. "You hear the thing, and it doesn't mean anything, and then one day you're in the middle of doing it and you think — oh, that's what they meant." She settled into a light stance. "The ki is what makes it possible, but the ki responds to intention. If you intend to stay on the ground, the ki accommodates. If you intend to—"
"Make other plans," Ruby said.
"Exactly." Aiko rose, gently, off the grass — three feet, four, settling at approximately eye level with Ruby, her arms at her sides, her expression entirely calm. "Feel where your ki is right now."
Ruby closed her eyes.
This she could do. Nova had taught her to find the ki, to feel for it the way you felt for a heartbeat — not looking for it with your eyes, but listening for it with something else.
"I feel it," she said.
"Good. Now — don't push it anywhere. Just let it know that you're thinking about being somewhere other than where you are."
Ruby opened one eye.
"That's the instruction? 'Let it know?'"
"I know how it sounds," Aiko said.
"It sounds like you're asking me to have a polite conversation with my own energy."
"That's actually quite close to what I'm asking," Aiko said. "Try it."
Ruby closed the eye.
She found the ki.
She thought at it, in the specific way of thinking at something when you don't have a better word for what you're doing: I would like to be elsewhere than the ground. Slightly. Just a bit.
Her feet left the grass.
Not by much — an inch, two inches — but they left, and she was still there, not falling back, not scrambling, just there, an inch off the grass with the specific quality of someone who has figured out a thing that has been resisting figuring out.
"There," Aiko said.
"I'm not — I'm not going to—"
"You're not going to fall," Aiko said. "You're thinking about falling, which is different from falling. Don't think about the ground. The ground has nothing to do with you right now."
Ruby redirected her attention.
The two inches became four.
Four became six.
"Oh," Ruby said.
Part IV — Tarro's Clearing
Location: A Reinforced Training Ground, Beacon Academy | That Morning
The clearing Tarro had chosen was wide.
This was the first thing Nova noticed, and he catalogued it with the automatic attention he gave to spatial information — the width of the space, the quality of the terrain, the specific way the vegetation had been maintained at the perimeter in a way that suggested the clearing had been deliberately kept rather than accidentally occurring.
Someone uses this regularly, he thought.
Tarro was already there when they arrived, which was a thing they were learning to expect from him — that he was always already where he was supposed to be, having arrived through whatever process he used to move through spaces.
He looked at them with the evaluating attention he brought to everything he looked at, and the evaluation was of the specific kind that came after a significant event — the kind that was asking not how capable are you but how has capability changed.
"You made it," he said.
"You didn't give us much choice," Nova said.
"I gave you a direction and a time," Tarro said. "Whether you chose to meet them was entirely up to you." He moved to the center of the clearing. "Though I suspected you would. Given what happened in Tenkawa."
"That's why we're here," Turuk said.
"Partly," Tarro agreed. "What happened in Tenkawa was a demonstration of something I've been watching develop for some time. You are both considerably more powerful than your chronological age or your training history would suggest possible — and you are both, at the moment, operating significantly below your actual capacity because you don't fully know what that capacity is."
He looked at them steadily.
"Every battle you've fought has told me something. The one in Tenkawa told me the most." He paused. "Nova. That thing you were navigating, below the surface, during the fight with Turles. What was it?"
Nova was quiet for a moment.
"I don't have a clean name for it," he said. "It felt like something that had been there for a long time and was responding to the fight by wanting to come through."
"But you didn't let it."
"No."
"Why not?"
Nova looked at him. "Because I didn't know if I'd come back from it the same way I went in."
Tarro nodded, with the specific quality of someone who has received the answer they were expecting and is processing what it means.
"That restraint," he said, "is the reason I'm here and not someone else." He looked at both of them. "Most Saiyans who encounter what you encountered in that fight open the door and deal with the consequences later. You held it closed. That tells me you're ready to learn how to actually control what's behind it, rather than simply contain it."
"And if we hadn't held it closed?" Turuk asked.
"Then you'd be learning something different," Tarro said, "from someone with considerably more patience for crisis management than training." He moved. "But you did. So. Let's begin."
He talked while he moved, which was a teaching method that Nova had come to recognize as specifically Tarro's — the belief that the body learned more when it was engaged than when it was merely listening, and that the two could be done simultaneously.
He talked about what Saiyans were, in the way of someone who was not reciting information but was sharing understanding — the difference between knowing a thing and having lived adjacent to it for a very long time.
He talked about the power and how it worked — not in the mystical terms that some people used for ki, but in the practical terms of someone who had spent decades figuring out what it actually did.
"Your power comes in waves," he said, appearing between them with the specific speed he used when he wanted to demonstrate something, "because you've been placing limits on it without knowing you were placing them. Not out of weakness — out of the very reasonable instinct that power without understanding of its extent is power without control."
He sent a blast between them — not at them, between them, splitting the air precisely.
Both brothers moved.
"Good reaction," he said, already somewhere else. "But you responded like Huntsmen. I want you to respond like what you are." He appeared again. "Again."
The morning passed in exchanges.
Not fights — Tarro was not fighting them, exactly, though the distinction was subtle enough that the terrain was not always clear on it. He was creating situations and watching how they resolved. He was identifying the places where the Huntsman training took over from something older, and showing them, through the specific pressure of moment, where that older thing lived.
"Your power responds to emotion," he said, after an exchange that had left both brothers breathing harder than they preferred to admit. "Yang's power responded to rage, without the framework to direct it. Yours responds to it too — you felt it in Tenkawa. The difference is that you have the capacity to maintain yourself while the emotion drives the power. You just haven't practiced it."
"How do you practice it?" Nova asked.
"Carefully," Tarro said. "And honestly. The emotion has to be real — you can't simulate it into a useful training tool. But you can engage with real things and practice maintaining your center while the ki responds to them." He looked at Nova. "Think of something that matters to you. Something the loss of which would be genuinely significant."
Nova thought of Ruby's face when the blast had gone toward her.
His ki flared without him choosing it.
The grass around him bent away.
"That," Tarro said. "That's what you're working with. Now: keep that present, hold the center, and tell me what you notice."
The morning continued.
Part V — The Tails
By the time the sun had reached the specific position that communicated late morning with intent to become noon, both brothers had removed their outer layers and were operating at the specific temperature of people who have been working hard enough that temperature has ceased to be something they're managing.
Tarro was, as far as either of them could tell, entirely comfortable.
"One more thing," he said, "before we break."
He looked at their tails.
Both tails had been doing the thing tails did during intense activity — expressive, reactive, corresponding to the emotional content of the training in ways that were sometimes useful and sometimes distracting.
"Those," he said, "are currently your most significant liability in a fight."
Nova looked at his tail.
His tail, perhaps sensing the critique, curled slightly inward.
"Blake's always worried about them," Turuk said.
"Your sister has good instincts," Tarro said. "Any opponent who knows Saiyan physiology — which, as yesterday demonstrated, some opponents do — knows that the tail is a vulnerability. A single grab and your ki disperses, your strength drops, and you're significantly less capable than you were a moment before."
He moved without further warning, and both brothers found themselves on their knees before they had fully processed what had happened.
He released them.
The recovery was the same recovery it always was — the strength returning from the floor upward, the ki reasserting itself, the specific quality of having been briefly turned off and turned back on.
Nova rubbed his wrist.
"You were in combat the entirety of yesterday," Tarro said, "and neither of you had your tails grabbed. That was partly luck and partly instinct. You shouldn't rely on either." He moved to a position where they could both see him. "Watch."
His own tail unwrapped from his waist — where it had been secured in the specific way of a trained warrior who had learned to keep it out of combat — and moved with a control that was obviously the product of extended practice. It deflected a small ki blast he sent at it. It wrapped around a stone and crushed it. It moved with the specific fluid purpose of something that had been trained rather than simply possessed.
"A Saiyan's tail contains nerve clusters that, when conditioned, can enhance rather than compromise combat performance," he said. "The vulnerability you're familiar with is the untrained version. The trained version is a different tool entirely." He looked at them. "We're going to train it."
"How?" Nova asked.
"The first phase is conditioning the nerves to maintain ki flow under pressure," Tarro said. "We start with meditation."
Turuk looked at the word meditation with the expression of someone encountering something in an unexpected context.
"Saiyan training uses meditation?" he asked.
"Everything that requires the mind to cooperate with the body uses meditation," Tarro said. "Sit."
They sat.
He walked them through the practice — the specific kind of focused attention that was not emptying the mind but was directing it, asking it to locate a specific part of the body and maintain awareness of it while other things continued to happen.
"Your tail is part of your power," he said. "Not a vulnerability to be protected and not an inconvenience to be managed. It's an extension of what you are. Treat it that way."
Gradually, over the course of the next hour, something shifted.
Not dramatically — there was no moment where the tail went from liability to weapon, no transformation of its function from one thing to another. It was more gradual than that, more like the specific quality of understanding that arrives incrementally, the way something you've been trying to learn becomes first possible, then easier, then eventually automatic.
Nova held the focus while Tarro applied pressure to the tail.
He stayed on his feet.
The ki kept flowing.
"Better," Tarro said.
He produced two small weights.
"You'll wear these," he said. "Both of you. Attached to your tails. You increase the weight incrementally as the conditioning progresses." He looked at them. "Your sister is going to have opinions about this."
"Many opinions," Turuk agreed.
"Invite her to watch the next session," Tarro said. "The protective instinct is understandable. But understanding what this training is for will make the concern more productive."
He stepped back.
"Same time tomorrow," he said. "And Turuk—" He looked at the younger brother with the specific look of someone who sees more than is being shown. "Yang should come. Her situation is different from yours in several ways that require specific attention. Bring her if she's willing."
Turuk nodded.
He did not ask how Tarro knew about Yang specifically, because he had come to understand that Tarro's information about the situation was always approximately one step ahead of what had been told to him.
"I'll ask her," Turuk said.
"Don't ask," Tarro said. "Tell her you'd like her to come. There's a difference, and for her specifically, the difference matters."
Turuk considered this.
"All right," he said. "I'll tell her."
Tarro inclined his head. "Good. You've both made real progress today. The sessions ahead will be considerably more demanding — but you've already shown me that you have what the demands require."
He picked up his thermos from where it had been sitting against a tree for the duration of their session.
"Rest this afternoon," he said. "Genuinely. Your bodies are integrating today's work and they need the time to do it." He looked at Nova. "And see your girlfriend. She had a difficult day yesterday and she will have appreciated your absence today somewhat less than she would like to admit."
He walked out of the clearing.
The brothers stood in the aftermath of the morning — the weighted silence of people who have done significant work and are now feeling the full accounting of it.
"He's perceptive," Turuk said.
"Very," Nova agreed.
"The Ruby thing — you didn't tell him."
"No."
"How did he—"
"I don't know," Nova said. "I've stopped asking how Tarro knows things. It's more efficient."
Turuk looked at the weighted object that was now attached to his tail, which was expressing opinions about the addition.
"If you're not going to ask how he knows things," Turuk said, "you might want to ask yourself why you haven't told Ruby that you're training."
"She knows I'm training."
"She knows you're with Tarro. She doesn't know what for, specifically. Or how much of it is about something you felt in Tenkawa that you haven't fully explained to her yet."
Nova was quiet.
"You said I should see her this afternoon," Turuk said.
"Yes," Nova said.
"I notice you said that about me."
"Yes," Nova said again.
"I'm making the same observation about you."
Nova looked at him.
"I know," he said.
They walked back toward the academy.
Their weighted tails registered opinions about the additional work.
They managed this, and each other, and the specific weight of the afternoon ahead of them, which was going to involve two separate conversations with two separate people about things that were important and somewhat overdue.
The sun was still morning.
They had time.
★ END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR ★
Next: Chapter Twenty-Five— "Relaxation and Training, Part II"