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~~Thanksgiving Special (page 3 of 6)~~
"Time out," said Zeff as Axiolis flew in to check his wound for him. The regeneration had been active for a while, so Hector knew that wasn't their concern. More likely, they wanted to see exactly how much damage the bullet had caused.

Axiolis in particular had been quite studious about these things whenever Hector and Zeff sparred. The aged reaper seemed especially interested in trying to measure every major wound they received and collateral impact points in the environment. Hector still wasn't entirely sure how observing these things so closely all the time was supposed to be of any use, but he wasn't about to doubt a four thousand-year-old reaper's expertise, either.

'This is fantastic,' the reaper was saying. 'Hector, this puncture is significantly more damage than anything you have previously landed on Zeff. The flesh wound is still relatively minor, of course, but this impact area where your iron connected with the armor--the diameter of this must be around, oh, five hundred percent larger than even your second most damaging blow was.'

Hector wondered if he would ever be able to share Axiolis' apparent passion for geometry. He certainly wanted to be able to share it. But math just sucked so hard. It had always been one of his worst subjects, and learning new concepts in it always felt like he was trying to chisel rock with his bare hands. Or even his bare face, sometimes.

'How were you able to muster such a profound increase in velocity with so little prep time? I was watching closely, and I didn't see anything.'

Hector explained what he'd done.

"Ah, so you cheated, then," said Zeff, carrying that familiar tone of disapproval again. "I told you to do something with zero prep. Hiding your prep, while potentially useful, was not the point of the exercise. You need to be able to summon power like that on a moment's notice--to take advantage of fleeting openings in combat. If your prep takes two seconds, but your window of opportunity is only one second, then your technique is still useless."