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((The Wednesday Triple: page 3 of 3))
That might’ve also explained why the cubes flew so wildly off course. The non-growing sections of the cube would have gained their own, genuine momentum while being pushed along at such a speed by the still-growing sections. Not to mention, they would have begun to bear the effects of gravity--and possibly other environmental conditions? He wasn’t sure.

Hmm.

This was not a minor discovery, Hector felt. Clearly. With it, he would be able to, in effect, manipulate his iron after its initial creation--even to attack. Sure, it wouldn’t be easy and would probably require shitloads more practice, but...

With this, he could evolve his entire fighting style.

He wondered if Zeff and Asad had been intending to teach him this soon. Maybe they didn’t think he would’ve been able to do it. He wouldn’t have thought he could do it, either.

Heh. He wanted see their faces when he showed it to them later. Garovel’s, too, of course.

But first, it needed refinement. He had to practice more.

Abruptly, however, it occurred to him that he’d stopped keeping an eye on the captives. He annihilated his work and then briskly returned where he’d been sitting before. Thankfully, no one seemed to have noticed. He counted the number of captives, just to be sure none were missing.

Rather than sitting back down, though, he remained standing as he set to work again. Now that he knew not to add an accelerative force to the cube’s orbit, he found that it was almost trivial to sustain, almost as if he were keeping it to its path with one of his hands.

He tried out different centers of orbit, around his torso, around his arm, his hand, his leg. They were more difficult but not terribly so. He tried out different angles as well, and found a similar result. Then he tried walking while trying to maintain the diagonal orbit around his torso, and he began struggling again, but not for long. After pacing back and forth a few times, he was starting to get the hang of it.