Museum Core Chapter 84: Fisticuffs

There were certain things you’d never see in nature. 

Such as a grizzly bear fighting a honey badger. 

Though were such a battle to come about, it hardly mattered how much raw audacity and willpower the badger had, the bear could win that fight in an instant just by sitting on its opponent … though it really, really, shouldn’t use that method, as the badger would likely take that as an opportunity to permanently ensure that the bigger animal would never, ever, have another child. 

But ultimately, that matchup was a foregone conclusion … when it was, in fact, the animals fighting. 

When Jaclyn and Henderson clashed in the training room, it was the spirits, the concepts, that were crashing against each other.

Indomitable will, seemingly unlimited flexibility, and an unbreakable hide against impossible power, immense weight, and unstoppable bulk.

Ironically, of the two of them, it was the badger who was the more durable of the pair. 

And that made Henderson’s weight seriously work against him. He was naturally heavier than Jaclyn, both his bonds added extra mass, and transforming further doubled down on that. 

Even if he’d actually been trying to hurt her, all he’d have been able to achieve was bouncing her around the vast hall unless he managed to corner her. Hopefully, this sparring match would help him get his Pugilism Skill high enough to where he wouldn’t have the same issue with actual enemies. 

Henderson’s next move was suddenly transforming into a grizzly mid-punch, nearly doubling his reach to the point where he could lightly “tap” his claws against her chest, but at the same time, Jaclyn snapped her spectral wings open and twisted midair, turning his “attack” into a glanching blow while her right foot stopped mere centimeters from his temple. 

They both froze like that before resetting, walking back to opposite ends of the room for the next round. There was no referee here, no rulebook, just a mutual understanding of who would have come off the worse in that exchange. 

“I still can’t believe you’re actually willing to let me hit you like that,” Henderson commented. “Still trips me up.” 

“You do remember I’m willing to let myself get run through to win a fight, right?” Jaclyn reminded him. 

“Yeah, you’re still crazy,” he muttered, amusement swinging along in his voice. 

“If a man has decided that he is going to bite off your nose no matter what happens to him in the process, the chances are he will succeed in doing it,” Jaclyn quoted. 

“Chuck Norris?” Henderson asked. 

“Bruce Lee,” she rolled her eyes. “Ready?”

“Ready,” he confirmed. 

And they were right back to trying to “kill each other.” They’d had protective equipment, five rounds ago, but that was currently scattered across the ground in a million pieces. So they’d decided to stop making more work for the custodial staff and continued without it. Between their toughness and the medical team waiting outside with literal magic potions, it wasn’t like it was actually dangerous. 

Jaclyn advanced at a measured pace, but Henderson was charging like a berserking bull. What was he … 

The former marine actually lowered his head just as he shifted into an ankylosaurus, the massive dinosaur exploding forward in length so rapidly that Jaclyn wasn’t able to dodge, and the armored head the size of a torso slammed into her chest with enough force to hurl her clean across the room. 

He’d gotten good at that, controlling the direction and momentum of his shifts. 

When an anima monk on the transformation path shifted, they’d always expand from and shrink to the point where their weight rested. Usually, that was their legs/hindlegs when in a quadrupedal form, but it would be literally anywhere. Unless they were in mid-air, then the fulcrum of the shift was the center of mass. 

So when Henderson had expanded forward, he’d also made sure to add a high degree of forward and downward mometum, enough to, ever so briefly, lift the back legs of even the massive dinosaur he’d turned into … so when he shrank down into his far smaller grizzly bear form, he found himself at the front end of where the ankylosaurus had been and continued running at the full speed a bear could muster until he was at a point in the “running cycle” where both his back feet where on the ground and he could smothly transition back into a human run. Fist already cocked back as he launched himself at her before Jaclyn had managed to get back to her feet. 

He pulled that attack at the last moment, and simply lightly tapped her stomach. 

Yeah … clean win on his part. Especially with how she’d been lying on the ground, trapped between his attack and the concrete floor. That would have hurt. 

“That was a pretty slick move,” Jaclyn commented. 

“But?” Henderson asked, sounding like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Was she really that bad a trainer?

“But nothing,” Jaclyn clarified. “You’re the best shifter in the BPA who isn’t an orc, and they’ve had years to experiment with these powers. So, ready?”

They went at it for several more rounds. He won some, but she won more, especially as she was getting better at reading his shifts. It was such an unnatural, inherently magical way of fighting that she’d initially had a hard time figuring it out, but it had taken far longer than she’d have had in a real fight. 

Unless someone Henderson went up against had a truly ridiculous amount of practice against transformation-style Anima Monks, he’d be damn hard to stop. 

Therefore, he changed tactics, trying to tie her down with a literal bear hug, huge furry arms wrapping around her and closing in, threatening to trap her. And trying to break through via pure force would fail utterly, considering their relative strengths. 

So Jaclyn didn’t bother trying, instead surging forward, closing the distance far more quickly than he’d expected, planted one foot on his knee to push herself skyward, then, once she was high enough, kicked off his chest with the other. 

Jaclyn went flying backwards with such force that she actually wound up doing a flip before touching down and she still went skidding backwards from the remaining momentum … until her back hit the wall. 

Yeah, her situational awareness needed a lot more work. 

She let herself slide down the wall, and Henderson’s fist slammed into the concrete where her chest had been a split second earlier, a blow that would barely have tickled her, sending plumes of dust shooting across the room. 

And then, she punched him. She’d barely had five centimeters to accelerate her fist, but still managed to put more than enough force into the blow to send him skidding away, bent double around where she’d struck him. Heavy he might be, but he’d left himself sufficiently open for her to land a clean blow she did not have to pull short, and not being as strong as him hardly made her weak. 

Which let her launch herself after him, and he surrendered when she tapped the side of his neck with the tips of her fingers.

They looked at each other, then at the concrete dust floating around and the scraps of annihilated boxing gloves littering the floor. Nodding as one, they chose to end this particular sparring match. Or, as Granger always called it, “training room annihilation.”  

Now that the fight was over, they headed towards the changing rooms and showers.  

“By the way, the hell was that punch?” Henderson asked, not bothering to clarify which one, as it was obvious. 

“It’s called a one-inch punch,” Jaclyn explained. “You hit a hell of a lot harder than anyone expects when you’re that close.” 

“Is that an anime thing? Because I’m pretty sure my son told me about it once. Or maybe one of Granger’s Wuxia ideas?” Henderson wondered.

Jaclyn gave him a pained look. “It’s a regular martial arts thing. Bruce Lee rather famously won a martial arts tournament with it.”

“Can you teach me?” he asked. 

“No,” Jaclyn shook her head. “For starters, I’m not a good teacher. But you probably should focus on learning something that covers your weaknesses. 

“I learned to be able to land solid punches when grappling because a lot of my opponents are going to be bigger, heavier, and probably stronger than me, so any fight that ends with us rolling around on the ground is going to end with me losing. But if I can lay into them in that position, from a place outside their field of view, that’s my ‘get out of grapple free card.’ 

“You, on the other hand, can’t be properly grappled, being able to change sizes however you want, whenever you want, allows you to shrink out of or expand to blow grapples pretty easily. Maybe some wrestling would be good? Or Judo, that has some useful ground fighting techniques. As a bear-dino hybrid, you’re big and heavy, the more you can leverage that, the better.” 

“I don’t suppose you could recommend a good teacher?” 

Once again, Jaclyn shook her head. “Not off the top of my head, but the BPA has a list … somewhere.” 

“I’ll go look for it, expect me back in a decade or so,” Henderson commented dryly as they continued walking towards the showers. 

“Oh, come off it, it’s not that bad,” Jaclyn replied, then added. “We should have things properly organized in a year or so.” 

Truly, creating an entirely new agency was never a smooth process, but trying to do the same after having lost the center of government was the recipe for disaster, even if they’d managed to avoid flushing the whole affair down the crapper thanks to sheer bloody effort. 

Somehow, inexplicably, things worked. For now. 

“But I think you should work on making a martial art for your bear form. Other than your general police training, you’re a boxer, but that doesn’t really work when you’re transformed because bears don’t box; they get into slap fights. That’s how they can bring their claws to bear, and how their body is set up to strike.”

“Yeah, I was wondering how I could use my claws,” Henderson agreed. “But isn’t there an existing martial art for that?”

Jaclyn shook her head. “Nothing you could adapt.”

Martial arts and moves that used fingers did exist, but nothing she could think of off the top of her head applied. 

Going after pressure points required being able to either fold most of your fingers out of the way or combine them into a single spot to concentrate force. 

Mantis-style kung fu required you to be able to fold your fingers, something bear-paws did not have the dexterity to do, period. 

Nukite, or spearhand, was a move in karate that involved lining up the bones in your fingers and then jabbing someone with the tips, the alignment transferring force down your arm in a way that should prevent injury on your part. However, not only was that a fantastic way to wind up with broken fingers if you made even the slightest mistake, but bear claws were also not straight enough for it to be useful. And ultimately, the point that made all others moot, the punching motion was the same regardless of what shape you had your fist in, equally inaccessible to Henderson’s ursine form. 

Her own Leopard-style kung fu also had some moves that involved the fingertips, specifically, taking advantage of the fact that the half-open fist the style used kept them exposed so that they could be raked across a vulnerable spot, such as the eyes. 

Though she’d never used any of those moves, neither on the street, nor in matches. It was not a fast-track to a lawsuit, it was a goddamn litigation speedrun … yeah, she’d been hanging out with Granger too much. 

But the point was, these moves would not work for Henderson either. Because while he needed something to transfer the massive amount of force he could generate. Not a way to go after a weak point. 

Though the eyes were a massive vulnerability, where even minor injury could be debilitating. She’d gotten smacked in the face during training, once, and wound up in the emergency room for a blinding pain.

And after two hours in the emergency room, worried she was about to go blind in one eye, what did the doctor do?

He’d taken one look at her, declared that she had a small scratch in her cornea, a minor irritation, which would stop hurting “soon” and go away in two, maybe three, four days at most. 

Of course, her response at being tossed out after less than two minutes hadn’t exactly been polite, she’d had too many bad experiences for that and it had been her eyesight they’d been talking about, but as it turned out … the doctor had had a good reason for ending the meeting so quickly.  

It really had been a minor, inconsequential injury that had gone away at lightning speed, despite how quickly and thoroughly it had incapacitated her. 

The point was, no human had the kind of physiology where you could “slap” someone with just your fingertips and expect to not wind up with broken bones. So why would someone have invented a martial art to that end?

“You’re probably going to get a martial arts Skill to help you, though,” Jaclyn pointed out. 

“Yeah, that’s true,” Henderson sighed. “I guess sometimes, the answer to a problem really is just ‘git good’.”

“Another ‘meme’ I’m too old to know about?” Jaclyn assumed. 

He shrugged. 

They parted soon after, and Henderson headed into the jungle to grind. 

Which left Jaclyn to take care of the absolutely least favorite part of his job in any and all respects. Figuring out all the myriad ways the newly introduced supernatural elements of this world could be used to commit crimes. For the most part, thankfully, it wasn’t her task entirely, or even primarily, but she did have to help. And by God was it depressing. 

Laws, ultimately, had to be proactive, that was a, no, the fundamental basis for most Western legal systems. When the state could make laws to make something illegal after it had been done, there was nothing stopping it from creating “fuck this person in particular” laws. 

And while Jaclyn had met quite a few people over the course of her career who definitely deserve to be on the receiving end of such an action, she was also aware of precisely why that wouldn’t work. Well, it would work, it would just also have the side effect of breaking the legal system and greenlighting abuse of power on a massive scale. 

Which meant that they needed to get proactive. For example, most of the people in the organization had been asked to come up with ideas and pass them along if they had them so their superiors could evaluate. Nothing like a career in law enforcement to let you imagine the darkest deeds humans were capable of. 

Granted, there were places where it was very clear-cut and current laws neatly applied, such as was the case of love potions. 

Thankfully, the BPA only knew they existed, they weren’t an actual threat yet, because unlike what a certain children’s book author thought, they were basically date rape drugs. 

And anyone who used it could basically be prosecuted under the same laws. It was a substance that induced an altered state of mind, and even the mildest form of hanky-panky under the influence was therefore a form of sexual assault, with the exact degree of severity depending on what exactly happened. So if, God forbid, someone found those things and used them, it would be a simple, open-and-shut application of existing laws. 

But what about other forms of mind control, without direct parallels to existing crimes?

Granted, certain aspects of that still fell under the Domestic Abuse Act in one form or another, but not all did. Taking away another’s free will was obviously morally wrong, but how in the blue blazes did you prosecute that?

And what about a System that had a Charisma stat, how would that work? It was, apparently, a combination of enhanced appearance, minor shapeshifting to align said appearance with the beauty standards of whoever you were dealing with at a given time, and a supreme instinct for always saying the right thing.  

Quite aside from the fact that it was, ultimately, a form of magical influence, even if it wasn’t outright mind control, it also couldn’t be turned off. So did that mean users of such a System were breaking the law by existing?

Thankfully, she didn’t have to deal with that issue in its entirety; that was a problem for the lawmakers, but nevertheless, Jaclyn was far more aware of the complexities involved than she’d like to be. 

She was old enough to remember the Wild West the internet had become every time a new technological advancement had opened up a new avenue for use. It had taken seemingly forever to figure out acceptable regulations, though back then, she’d been happy to not be involved in that mess. 

Not that the internet didn’t still see a new “technically not illegal but utterly morally repulsive” issue crop up every couple of weeks, but things had at least calmed down a little. 

*******************************************************************************

How long do you like your chapters? 

When I started writing, things naturally played out as a series of 2-3k chapters, no scene breaks, etc. with the odd interlude thrown in. But since then, I've started  writing chapters with several smaller scenes in them as well, and with books like Museum Core and Outrage of the Ancients with their multiple POV characters, things are different and there are a lot of scene breaks now, but the chapters also get longer and come out less frequently (most of my books have maybe one chapter 5k or longer, MC3 has had four thus far, and two more that almost hit that benchmark).

So my question is: Would you prefer me to split those chapters up at the scene breaks and post more regularly (still probably won't have a proper scedule, though), or keep things as they've been recently? Or would you like me to focus on long chapters in general? 

Mind you, I'll still write super long chapters (or as long as my chapters get, at any rate) if there isn't a natural place to split them, etc., but what's your guys' general preference?