Author: Douglas A. Taylor
Category: Suspense
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Chapter 15
We all gathered in the gym the next morning after breakfast to watch Trina try to break a board with her hand. Now, I wouldn't say that life as a Prime is boring, exactly -- more like periods of frenetic, even life-threatening, activity interspersed with long stretches of preparing for the next burst of activity -- but even minor social events like this one provide a refreshing break in the routine.
Bill had been unanimously chosen as the judge for the event, although privately I didn't see the need for a judge. An emcee, sure, but I mean, if the board breaks, then it breaks; it was unlikely that something that would require an actual adjudication -- something dumb like the board half-breaking -- would happen. But everyone else seemed to want one, so I wasn't about to disagree. And it did lend the whole thing sort of an air of pageantry.
Bill stood up in front of everybody and went over the terms of Mike's bet with Trina, namely that Trina was to attempt to use a knife-hand -- what most people think of as a "karate chop" -- to break a three-quarter-inch pine board. If she couldn't break the board after five attempts, then she would lose the bet. I held up half a dozen of the boards I had brought from home, which Mike inspected, and then he selected one of them.
Bill then went over the rest of the terms, which was the stuff I have already mentioned about dinner and clothes, although he did add some legalistic-sounding verbiage (which I suspect he made up on the spot) about the cost of the dinner (which "was by no means to exceed two hundred dollars American, not excluding tips, considerations, gifts, or any other honoraria not specifically mentioned herein") and the "costume" (which "shall not violate any public-decency laws established by, nor exceed the commonly-held bounds of propriety of, the community or communities wherein the dinner is to be prepared, ordered, delivered, eaten, or consumed; and neither shall it cause the wearer to suffer excessively from any extremes of heat or cold or undue difficulty of donning or subsequent removing of said outfit").
He said all this with a countenance as stiff and grave as that of any hanging judge, although how he kept such a straight face with the rest of us, even Mike, all but howling with laughter, I'll never know. When he finished, Bill called up Trina and Padma.
Padma, being a Tae Kwon Do black belt herself, had done this type of thing a few times before. Without a word, she took the board from me and held it straight out at arms' length, dangling between her thumb and fingers with the grain parallel to the floor. Her face was turned away to protect her eyes from any fallout from the strike; she was going to be the only one of us who wouldn't watch Trina try to break the board. As Trina's coach, I placed myself where I could see what she was doing, but out of range of any flying splinters or pieces of wood. Trina gave me a nervous smile, then set herself. I could see everyone except Padma lean forward eagerly as she drew back her hand to strike . . .
That was when the monster alarm began ringing.
A disappointed "Awww!" spread through the room, and Mike, Toby, and Nicolai started getting to their feet. "Hold it right there!" Bill thundered, surprising everyone into freezing where they were. He gestured to Trina. "We have a minute or two. Go ahead and break the board."
Trina looked uncertainly around the room. He had a point. Normally when Wizzit sounds the monster alarm, we hop right to it, because there's no reason to dawdle. Strictly speaking, though, it's not really a situation where every second matters. We did indeed have a minute or two. "Go on," I urged Trina. "Take a shot at it, anyway."
Trina nodded, took a deep breath, and set herself again. If she was anything like me, her adrenalin would be pumping by now -- a conditioned reaction to the monster alarm -- and that would make it that much easier to break the board. She drew back her hand and then swung it in a hard, tight arc. There was a crack! and suddenly two pieces of board were flying through the air to land on the gym floor.
"That . . . that was easy!" Trina exclaimed, looking at her hand in disbelief. "I barely even felt it!"
"That means you did it right," I assured her warmly.
I have to give Mike credit; he was the first in line to shake Trina's hand and congratulate her. Of course, he then shooed Padma out to the weapons room to collect our gear and began sending everyone else off to don their battle vests. Still, anyone who expected him to slink off into the shadows twirling his mustache and muttering "Curses! Foiled again!" would have been disappointed.