A week had passed since the last time I went out as a hero — longer than I had planned.
I had only decided to take a one-day break. Somehow it turned into a full week.
During that time I stayed away from everything. No patrols, no crime maps, no late nights on rooftops. I spent more time with my school friends, kept my schedule normal, and didn't use the Omnitrix even once. Most of my free time went into thinking — going over every mistake I had made and working out how to fix them.
I replayed the last fights again and again in my head. The oil trap especially. The moment my claws slid across that pavement and every advantage I had disappeared in one second — I kept coming back to that. How fast the whole situation had flipped. How unprepared I had been for the possibility that someone would study me and build a counter specifically for my abilities.
I planned different scenarios. Different ways to deal with Tombstone or anyone else if something similar happened again. What I would do if XLR8 was neutralized. How to transition forms under pressure without selecting the wrong one. Whether to engage at all in certain situations or pull back and scout first.
But the honest conclusion kept coming back the same way every time.
"I'm not a genius."
The thought came back every time, no matter how I tried to work around it.
Most of my plans still had obvious flaws. I could see them myself. And the bigger problem was that planning only covered so much — when things went wrong in the field they went wrong fast, and no amount of thinking in my bedroom was going to replace actual skill.
Even in fights, I didn't have abilities at even a top human level. That was a real problem. The aliens covered a lot, but every time the Omnitrix timed out I was left standing in my own body — average, untrained, exposed. If anyone had been watching closely enough during that last fight, the moment I reverted to human form behind those containers could have ended everything.
"I need to improve that."
The first practical decision was a mask. Nothing special — just something simple I could keep on during patrols so that if the transformation ended unexpectedly, my face wasn't the first thing anyone saw. It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was immediate and it was enough for now.
The second decision was the dojo.
I found it during the same week, on the second day of the break. Gwen came over that afternoon and we spent a few hours talking, which helped more than I expected. But after she left I sat down and started researching seriously — martial arts training available in the city, instructors with actual credentials, places that focused on practical combat rather than sport competition.
That was how I found Colleen Wing.
Peter found out about the dojo the next day — and immediately decided he was coming with me.
He said he wanted to improve himself too, which was probably true. But I knew the other reason — he just wanted to be supportive. That was Peter. He showed up for people without making a production out of it.
We invited Gwen and MJ as well. MJ said she had acting classes and couldn't fit anything else into her schedule right now. Gwen had already picked up a lot of self-defense training over the years from her father, so she passed too. In the end it was just the two of us.
"Hey Jack, why did you join a dojo in Manhattan?" Peter asked from the seat beside me on the bus. He was watching the buildings roll past the window, his bag balanced across his knees. "It's pretty far from home. There are dojos closer than this."
"I did some research and this one came up as the best option," I said.
Peter glanced at me. "That's it? Just research?"
"Yeah."
"Okay." He leaned back and looked out the window again. "Just seemed like a long way to go for push-ups."
I didn't respond to that. The bus kept moving.
The ride took about thirty minutes. Manhattan's streets got narrower the further we went from the main avenues, the buildings pressing closer together, the noise of traffic dropping off slightly. When we stepped off the bus and walked the last block, Peter slowed down in front of the building and looked at it.
A small Japanese-style dojo sat quietly in a narrow street. Clean, simple, no signage beyond a small plaque beside the door. Nothing about it announced itself.
"It's a lot smaller than I imagined," Peter said.
"Size isn't the point."
We stepped inside. The wooden floor made a soft, clean sound under our feet as we moved toward the training area. The space inside was open and simple — good lighting, minimal equipment, nothing decorative. The kind of place that existed entirely for the work.
A woman in her late twenties was in the middle of a fight when we entered.
She moved fast. Not showy-fast, not the kind of speed that performed for an audience — just efficient, precise, every movement landing exactly where it was supposed to. Her opponent was bigger than her and clearly experienced. It didn't seem to matter. She read each of his attacks before they fully formed and responded without hesitation, cutting off his angles one by one until he had nowhere left to go.
Peter went quiet beside me. "Wow," he muttered under his breath. "Man, she's wild."
Within seconds she finished it — a clean takedown that put him on the floor without any wasted effort. She stepped back, breathing steadily, and then noticed us standing at the edge of the room.
"Jack. You're early today."
"Yeah."
Her eyes moved to Peter. "Who's this?"
"Peter Parker. My friend. He wants to join too." I gestured between them. "Peter, this is Colleen Wing. She owns the dojo and runs the training."
"Hello, ma'am," Peter said politely.
She looked at him for a moment, then turned. "Follow me."
Peter leaned slightly toward me as we walked behind her, dropping his voice low. "Okay, now I understand why you picked this dojo specifically," he whispered, nudging me with his elbow and grinning.
I rolled my eyes.
But he wasn't completely wrong.
Colleen Wing was the reason I had chosen this place. When I found out she existed in this version of the world I was genuinely surprised — and then immediately certain. She had a reputation built on precision and discipline, someone who didn't skip foundations or rush students toward anything they hadn't earned yet. No shortcuts. No flattery. Just structured, demanding, honest training.
That was exactly what I needed.
Training started shortly after.
"Stop." She stepped in before I could finish the movement. "No. Your stance is wrong."
I paused. "It felt fine."
"It isn't." She tapped my foot lightly with hers. "Move this back. You're off balance."
I adjusted. "More," she said. I shifted again. "Good. Now don't lose it."
I raised my hands. "Wait." She reached up and nudged my elbow down. "Too high. You're wasting energy."
Peter exhaled somewhere to my left. "How many things can be wrong at the same time?"
"All of them," she said without looking at him. "Again."
We moved. "Slower." I stopped mid-motion.
"You're thinking about the strike," she said, circling around me. "You haven't set your base yet." I reset my stance. "Posture first. Then weight. Then movement. In that order."
I tried again. She watched for a second. "Better. Not good. Better."
Peter groaned. "That's not encouraging."
"It's accurate," she replied.
She stepped between us, adjusting his shoulder then mine again. "Don't rush. Every movement has a reason. If you don't know it, you shouldn't be doing it."
I tightened my stance slightly. She noticed immediately. "Relax. Tension makes you slow."
I exhaled. "Again."
She worked from the basics without apologizing for it. Even the self-defense I had picked up before felt rough and incomplete by comparison. Here every movement had a reason. Posture. Weight distribution. How your feet were positioned before you even thought about throwing a strike. She corrected both of us constantly, walking the floor between us, adjusting an elbow here, a stance there, saying very little beyond what was necessary.
Peter was already breathing hard twenty minutes in. It was his first day and she wasn't going easy on either of us.
"You both need to build your foundation properly before anything else," she said, stopping in front of us with her arms crossed. "What you have now isn't useless. But it's unfinished."
She trained us separately after that, working through our individual weaknesses with the same calm, unhurried focus. Nothing about her approach was harsh, but nothing was soft either. She simply expected the work to get done and waited until it was.
It wasn't easy.
But standing there at the end of that first session, sore and honest about how much ground there was to cover, I felt something I hadn't felt in a while.
Like I was actually building something real.
At the end of the session, after Peter had grabbed his bag and stepped out to wait by the door, Colleen stopped Jack with a single word.
"Walker."
He turned.
She was wiping down her hands with a cloth, not looking at him yet. When she did, her expression was the same as it had been the entire session — calm, direct, nothing wasted in it.
"You have something on your mind," she said. "I could see it the whole time you were on that floor."
Jack didn't answer.
"That's fine," she continued. "Everyone who walks in here is carrying something. I don't need to know what it is." She folded the cloth once and set it down. "But I'll tell you this — your body can only go as far as your mind allows it to. Right now your mind is somewhere else. Half here, half wherever it is you go when you think no one's watching."
She walked past him toward the equipment wall.
"Hesitation is the first thing I'll train out of you. But I can't do that if you're already hesitating before you even step onto the floor." She didn't turn around. "Whatever is pulling at you outside this dojo — you need to deal with it or set it down. You can't build anything real on a distracted foundation. Strength doesn't grow in a crowded mind."
She paused, hand on the shelf.
"Next session. Come in cleaner than you did today."
Before Jack could respond, she walked away.
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