Moss Hills, Oakwood Factory:
“Focus. Be ready for anything,” Insula Fu instructed from Metcalf’s earpiece.
Metcalf had no choice but to remain silent. She was already doing what Master Fu had said. She had so much to focus on simultaneously and keeping her shaky position on the wall was hard enough. She preferred not to be reminded of the obvious.
After only two months of intense training, Metcalf’s abilities had greatly improved. Her friends turned out to be wonderful teachers. Their crunch-time classes combined with Master Fu’s early morning sessions taught Metcalf far more than she thought possible. Though painstakingly well-constructed and realistic, Master Fu’s lessons were also unorthodox and challenging. She never knew what she would have to do next.
This time, Metcalf found herself just outside an open fifteenth story window of a factory guarded by training-bots; the androids that trained with and sometimes defeated the highest level of students. Her task required that she retrieve a secret microchip from a room in the factory. Metcalf knew she was good at combat, but she didn’t consider herself good enough to take on a factory full of highly skilled fighting machines. Instead, she used stealth and her motion energy skills to find and hopefully remove the chip without combat.
Metcalf found that the stealthiest body positions were rarely the most comfortable. Currently, she was upside down looking into a large open window avoiding the nose shattering window sill and the annoying breeze an open window creates. The only thing keeping her body pressed against the brick wall was her motion abilities. It took a lot of concentration to pull off this trick especially with the wind outside. Of course, the trick was impossible a few short months ago. She was excited about her improvement but knew full well the safety risks.
Metcalf was masked and dressed completely in an indigo cloth outfit. With a night seeing magnifying monocle over her right eye and a set of small mirrors, she searched the room hoping not to make too much noise. She had to examine every inch of this room for something useful. There had to be something in the room with information about the layout of the building or the location of the chip. If she was really lucky, she could find microchip itself but that was pushing it.
These crucial moments of her sessions were the ones she dreaded the most. Master Fu’s training methods were as bizarre as they were intense.
“What’s the square root of half of eighteen,” Master Fu shouted quickly into her microphone. Master Fu could afford to yell; she was safe in a van half a town away.
“Ni… Uhh three,” Metcalf replied.
The answer was correct, but the sudden change in brain function broke Metcalf’s concentration just enough. The distraction was all it took to end the mission. She cursed as she slipped down the wall. The mirrors she held so steady seconds ago fell to the floor. She could climb back up to look into the window again but she needed her mirrors to search properly. She would have to enter the room herself and find the mirrors before she started searching again.
Not willing to take the risk being caught and beaten while searching, she preferred to abort everything and come back another day. Mirrors were cheap and could be found anywhere. If that was all they had to go on, she was in the clear for now.
Metcalf continued sliding down the wall but started to control and slow her decent. Finding a ledge on the wall, she leapt off the wall and used her crisho wings to guide herself and land on a roof across the street. She heard the sirens in the factory start to sound. By now she was far enough away to evade capture. Still she kept running.
She wouldn’t be caught, but she would also have more problems when she tried again. Next time, the guards would take more precautions to secure anything of value. That’s what real people would do anyway.