Chapter 56
***
The next morning, the exact same group of us pulled up to a massive, brand-new sports complex. You could even call it a Palace of Sports. Massive and empty. Mostly, anyway. A spry pensioner was already sitting at the front desk, and a shift of patrolling security guards was stationed in the guardhouse.
Natasha presented her ID, while Bruce and I showed our passports. The vigilant woman jotted down all our information, called "where she was supposed to," received confirmation and instructions, and then handed me the keys. Right on cue, the director of the complex came running up and took us to "inspect the property."
A quick tour of the complex took over an hour and a half. The equipment in the wrestling and gymnastics halls pleased me greatly; everything was exactly how I would have set it up myself. It was practically a scaled-up replica of my Parisian house, adjusted for a different building, layout, and square footage. They had likely used it as the blueprint.
The office turned out to be the size of a three-room apartment, and its layout reflected exactly that: it had a bathroom, a shower, a kitchen, and even a balcony. However, only the office area was actually furnished. And even then, it was bare-bones minimalism.
"Don't think poorly of us, Comrade Creed," Natasha decided to clarify and address the issue. "You have been allocated a separate, fully furnished, move-in-ready apartment in one of the high-rises. However, Comrade Stalin personally ordered the office to be built exactly like this when the design was presented for his approval..."
"He had his reasons. And he was right. I'll be living here. I'll furnish it myself," I replied calmly. "You should worry about Bruce instead. He has to move his family to the Soviet Union."
"Understood," Captain Romanova nodded. "But the apartment will remain yours regardless."
I didn't answer, continuing to look around.
"The paperwork will be delivered shortly, Comrade Creed."
I turned to her and raised an eyebrow in surprise.
"The plans and developments, everything concerning the Second Generation. Many of the documents are classified 'Top Secret,' so they are being delivered by a special courier with an armed escort."
I gave a slight nod, recognizing the good old "Soviet" way of doing things. Albeit in a much softer form just for me: here, the papers were being brought to me, not me to the papers. That was already a plus.
The courier arrived half an hour later. He was a young man from the First Generation dressed in civilian clothes, carrying a briefcase, and escorted by burly guys in Red Army uniforms with AKMS rifles slung over their shoulders.
He walked in, handed the briefcase to Romanova, got her signature on the manifest, and left.
One of the armed kids stayed outside, taking up a position next to the front door. Apparently, the rest of them had organized a guard rotation, because for all the subsequent days—and consequently, nights—that the documents remained in the office, an armed "sentry" was always stationed outside the door.
The three of us spent a week and a half studying and drawing up plans. On the very first day, toward the evening, Suo stepped right out of a portal and into the room. She looked around, calculated something, and the "apartment" started filling up with furniture from our New York house, flying in through portals she opened.
Natasha tried her best to keep a straight face. Bruce, however, completely lost his mind watching her work. Come to think of it, he hadn't met Suo before.
"Suo, this is Bruce Lee, my student. Bruce, this is Suo, my wife, who moonlights as the Sorcerer Supreme of the Earth Dimension," I introduced them quickly, without taking my eyes off the documents.
Suo smiled sweetly, and Bruce gave a delayed, stunned nod. Natasha pretended to be a piece of furniture. Meaning, she tried to blend into the background, reasonably fearing jealousy from such a powerful individual. Little did she know her fears were completely unfounded. As far as "making moves" went, no other woman existed for me besides my wife, a fact Suo was perfectly aware of. So jealousy wasn't even on the table. She was far more likely to get jealous of martial arts than of another woman, no matter how drop-dead gorgeous or sexy she was.
As for the papers... Effectively, the entire concept for raising the generation of "supers" had already been devised, detailed, and written out. All that was left for me to do was make minor adjustments to the section that concerned me directly: the Federation, its structure, the training regimen, the instructors, the curriculums, the gradings, and the competitions.
The rest... The Central Committee's plan called for recruiting the best Pioneers of the appropriate age bracket for patrol duty alongside the militia, granting them the right to use force in accordance with a specially drafted patrol service manual. Consequently, they would receive intensified combat training, as they were to be the primary force ensuring the maintenance of public order.
There wasn't even a hint of what I had feared most: the total militarization of this generation. On the contrary, the plan assumed that the vast majority of the children would be engaged in various non-combat clubs and after-school programs. That was where the main focus lay.
That, and the moral and educational aspects. And psychological counseling. Resolving generational conflicts.
And that was essentially it. The rest was ideology and propaganda—things I have little understanding of, but which this country excels at.
There was another aspect that concerned me: the physical education curriculum in schools. It needed to be revised to account for the new physical capabilities of the "super" generation. But they already had groundwork laid there, too: data collected from observing the First Generation, those three hundred young men and women who had been the first to test the Erskine Diet.
Only the smallest detail remained: practical application and personnel. And "cadres decide everything." Unfortunately, things were pretty tight on the cadre front.
But there was another massive issue: mutants. The mere fact that they existed was enough. And that was a serious problem that no one had a ready answer for.
I had to make a call. To Xavier. To ask him to share his pedagogical developments... and his personnel. I was essentially organizing a branch of the School for Gifted Youngsters.
Once again, personnel... I was starting to understand Stalin, who orchestrated a coup in an entire country just for my sake. If things kept going this way, I'd soon be doing the exact same thing...
We spent a week hunched over plans and paperwork. After that, I spent another week "hanging on the phone." Officially. Unofficially, I was bouncing all over the planet, calling in every favor I had, holding negotiations, persuading, making deals, begging, and twisting arms...
The result was twenty-three Masters of various styles from China, Thailand, Japan, Mongolia, Korea, France, Argentina, Brazil, and even the USA. It was an incredible result. And it was a drop in the ocean.
All of them received their dose of the serum.
It also turned out that France wasn't needed just for me, or even primarily for me, but for my former students. The KGB had managed to track down every single one of them. I managed to convince two-thirds of them to join my cause. They were slated for the "vaccination" as well.
And then the real work began...
By the way, Suo wasn't sitting idle either. She held negotiations with her former student (or rather, he held negotiations with her, which seemed more likely to me), and construction began on the Fourth Sanctum in Moscow. Right near the Federation's Main Palace, where I had set up shop.
Work... The frantic pace and the training regimen dragged me right into their cogs and gears.
It was tough. Even for my mutant stamina: sixteen hours of classes daily with groups of students, an hour and a half for sleep, two hours with my wife, and two hours for my personal students: Bruce, Chuck, Natasha, Peter, and, surprisingly, Steve and Nicole.
Honestly, I have no idea what kind of negotiations, concessions, compromises, or whatever else went down at the highest levels over this, but one day those two just showed up at my class and asked to join. I nodded, and my roster of students grew by two. Frankly, I don't care who I train, even if it's Taskmaster... Who, by the way, also showed up. Or rather, I tracked him down myself and invited him. To the most "advanced" group. The three hundred members of the First Generation. That didn't mean I had abandoned them, no. But I physically didn't have the time to give them a workout worthy of their capabilities.
Before I "vaccinated" him and took him on as a personal student, I thought about it long and hard. For six whole training sessions. (I simply didn't have the time to sit with a cigar and stare thoughtfully at the sunset. I just didn't. So I had to do my thinking on the fly.)
I "vaccinated" him. Because if he started ruining my life—*my* life personally—I would just kill him. With or without the formula, it wouldn't make much of a difference. But otherwise, the kid was talented. He picked things up on the fly. It was a pleasure to work with him.
***
It happened a year after I started working in the Soviet Union. The sun had set long ago. The sports complex was empty. Well, not counting the grandma at the front desk, quietly clicking her knitting needles to the soft hum of the radio, the patrolling security guards, and me.
It was night. Three and a half hours that I could spend sleeping... or on my own development. The choice wasn't always obvious; sometimes I spent it on development, and sometimes on sleep. True, the latter was rare, usually only when the kids' groups had worn me out completely.
Today wasn't one of those days. Today I was training. In the darkness of the massive sports hall. Alone. In silence.
I was performing the twenty-fourth form of Tai Chi Chuan. Some might say there are many other forms, other styles, but I was performing this one. Because I wanted to.
A climbing rope swung. A volleyball net fluttered as if caught in a breeze, then quickly settled. A basketball rolled across the gym floor. Floorboards began to creak on their own. A nasty, barely audible ringing started in my ears; the "wall" in my mind began to vibrate, and the "water flowing down it" rippled. The hair on my head began to shift slightly, as if played with by a non-existent wind. A strange sensation. The basketball, having reached the opposite wall, bounced off it and flew back across the room like a cannonball. Straight at my head. Surprisingly, following the form, I shifted slightly, just enough so that the ball flew a couple of millimeters past the bridge of my nose, right before my eyes, but didn't touch me. A couple more movements, and the form was complete. I ended up in my starting position, exhaled slowly, and lowered my hands.
At the entrance to the hall, I heard light footsteps. Soft, whisper-like voices echoed in the darkness. Voices that, if you listened closely, you could recognize as belonging to people... dead people. People I had killed. Shadows thickened and took on unwelcoming shapes. The "wall" in my mind stopped trembling, but the "sky" above it turned a blood-red hue. The hairs on my body stood on end like a startled cat's.
The footsteps were approaching, but I couldn't see whoever was making them. They sounded very close now, right in front of me, but there was no one there. The "footsteps" passed right through me, as if I didn't exist, or they didn't. They passed by and continued toward the wall.
I adopted a Qigong stance and began circulating Qi through my body. I applied a mind-clearing technique. But the "sky" remained red.
A soft creaking of a rope could be heard. A rope tied to the upper crossbar of a gate, from which the body of a young girl, hanged by the fascists, swayed slowly in the wind. I had heard that sound at a farmstead that didn't even have a name left. I tried to forget it for a long time... just like the howling of the wind in the charred stovepipes that stood where entire villages had been burned to the ground. And that howling, too, could now be heard in the viscous darkness of the empty, nighttime hall.
Qigong wasn't helping. I brought my hands together in front of my chest and began chanting Buddhist mantras, trying to drown out that damn creaking of a hemp rope with my own voice.
Throaty German speech, barking commands from an NCO, the cries and screams of women, then the sharp rattle of a Schmeisser, followed by more barking commands, now unaccompanied by women's cries... I closed my eyes and focused on the sound of my own voice... but the "skies" remained red. And the "water" flowing down the wall was beginning to turn the color of blood.
My concentration was shattered by a barbell bar piercing straight through my body like a needle through a butterfly. The whispers bore down with renewed vigor, the sounds of women and children crying, Nicole's muffled screams from behind a wall...
I grabbed the bar sticking out of my chest and slowly, with effort, began pulling it out, focusing on the pain now, hoping it could drown out those damn sounds. In response to the pain, a searing rage rose within me. Not the "Beast," no, my own rage. Powerful, burning like acid. I growled, continuing to pull the bar from my chest. The "wall" in my mind collapsed completely under the onslaught of the pouring rage, which leaped in tongues of flame straight up to the "sky." Rage! Pain! Rage and more rage! There was nothing else left in my mind. No "sky," no "earth," no "walls," no "water"—nothing but the roaring flames of rage.
The bar left my body and clattered onto the floor. I roared—bellowed—at the top of my lungs and voice, generously pouring Qi into it. Like the flames of rage in my mind, it swept away everything around me. With a kick, I sent the bar flying; it embedded itself a third of its length into the wall right above the head of a red-haired girl who had abruptly crouched down just as she entered the hall.
"I think I came at a bad time," she squeaked quietly.
"Come on in, Jean," I said, instantly calming down. I literally "clapped my hand" over the flames of rage, snuffing them out, and just as quickly re-erected the "wall"—now twice as high and three times as thick—capping it all off with a darkened, opaque dome to shield against the sky that was starting to turn red again. "Hello."
"Uncle Vic, I don't feel good," she said pitifully.
"I figured," I chuckled in response. "Come in, have a seat," I nodded toward a pile of torn mats that had been blown against the wall. I sat down on them first, setting an example. I sighed heavily, realizing my training was over, and a furry little disaster was creeping up on Earth. A sad, red-haired little disaster...
"I..."
"Your power is slipping out of control, isn't it?" I clarified.
The girl nodded sadly.
"I'm scared, Uncle Vic... I almost killed Scott during training. Everyone I know avoids me like the plague. Wherever I go, I get attacked. Or people run away screaming..."
"It's hard to blame them," I chuckled, watching the shadows thicken in the corners again, a basketball rolling across the floor on its own, and a climbing rope slithering up itself toward the ceiling like a snake. Splinters and small objects slowly levitated into the air, which was filling with the whispers of the dead... Hardcore. What's it going to be like when Wanda comes into her power? And she'll come to me too... Nooo, I'll dump her on Suo. Let her deal with it. I have enough on my plate with this red-headed miracle.
"You came to me, not Charles. Why?"
"The Professor... he helps me. It gets better... for a little while... then it happens again. And it's even worse... I get angry. I lash out at everyone for no reason... I said such horrible things to Mr. McCoy... to Kitty..."
"So Xavier didn't tell you, did he?..." I smiled sadly. "Why did you come to me? What do you expect from me? What kind of help?"
"I... don't know... Mr. Howlett... told me."
"What did he tell you?" I asked with genuine interest, feeling myself starting to levitate.
I extended the claws on my toes and dug them into the floor. From the outside, it looked like I was calmly continuing to sit on the mats, but in reality, I was hanging by my claws exactly the way Hank McCoy loves hanging from the ceiling. My muscles definitely had the physical strength for it.
I was incredibly curious to know what Logan could have possibly said about me.
"'Take your problems to Victor! Pick up your snot! And march your ass to the obstacle course! And if you don't finish it in under a minute, you'll be running it until morning!'" the girl quoted, looking away.
I "fell" backward, clutching my stomach and laughing uncontrollably.
"Oh, Logan! You son of a bitch!" I managed to squeeze out between laughs.
At that moment, my claws slipped, and I "crashed" into the ceiling, cutting off my laughter abruptly. I peeled myself off, extended my claws, dropped onto my hands, scurried across the ceiling, crawled down the wall, and scrambled back to the floor, stopping right at eye level with the seated girl.
The girl watched my actions with wide, shocked eyes. She clearly hadn't expected such parlor tricks from me. She was particularly stunned by my head, which I had twisted toward her at an angle that no normal person could even envision in a nightmare. And I still managed to talk while doing it.
"Sit down, Jean. That laugh wasn't directed at you. Your problem isn't funny at all."
The girl, who had half-jumped from her seat, sat back down, frowned, and asked, "So, was he right? Do you know something?"
"I do," I said, deciding not to beat around the bush or deny it. "Charles didn't tell you that your power is Omega-level."
"Omega? Me?" she asked, astounded.
The windows in the hall rattled, and the roof groaned. The basketball was now rolling across the ceiling. Along with everything else that wasn't bolted to the floor or the walls. Except for the mats the girl was sitting on.
I dug my claws deeper into the wall, pressing my entire body against it—everything except my head, which remained turned toward Jean. The whispers of the dead were growing clearer, turning into distinct voices, screams, groans, curses... The "skies" above my "dome" were turning crimson and bleeding.
"Yes, Jean. Omega-level. You are stronger than Eric and Charles combined. And that is a problem."
"But how..."
"Charles locked away most of your power in your mind when you were a child. Now, that block is failing, and it won't hold anymore," I explained the situation.
I remembered arguing with him until we were hoarse that time: to block or not to block. There were a lot of "pros" and just as many "cons." The girl herself had put an end to the argument when every resident of the mansion—except me and Xavier—collapsed onto the floor clutching their heads, and the mansion itself began to slowly uproot itself from the ground and rise into the air.
Xavier "helped" the girl, and I left, sticking to my opinion and stating outright that with this "help," he had only exacerbated and delayed the problem, not solved it.
And now the girl had grown up, the block was bursting at the seams, and Xavier's problem had come to me. On its own. On its own two feet.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't consider killing her at that moment. The temptation to solve the problem quickly, radically, and reliably was so immense that I dug my right hand into my left shoulder, fully extending my claws, and squeezed my eyes shut. The pain and the rising rage chased away the bloody haze from the "skies" of my mind, and the urge released me slightly.
A simple solution. A fast, easy way out. Completely logical and justified—even in the canon comics, it all ended with her getting killed. But not before an entire star, a Star Empire, and five billion sentient beings died first...
I don't give a damn about them. I don't know them. But I know her. Logan and I taught this little girl how to ride a bike, took her fishing with us, taught her how to do flips, and showed her the right way to bake fish over a campfire...
I couldn't do it.
I didn't kill her.
"We are responsible for those we have tamed." And there is no other way.
"So what do we do?" the girl asked pitifully.
"Learn," I sighed. "Learn. But not here."
"Where then?" she asked, surprised.
"Give me your hand," I said, sliding down to the floor and pulling myself into a vertical position using the claws on my toes. Then I held out my right hand to her.
The girl looked at it and recoiled in horror: my hand was covered in blood. I caught myself, hid my right hand behind my back, and looked at my left. It was covered in blood, too. Well, what did you expect, considering I just used them to pull a barbell bar out of my own chest? I sighed and wiped my hands on my pants—the only piece of clothing I wore during training. I usually wore red shorts with a hammer and sickle, but today they were drying on the line.
After that, I held out my hand again.
Jean hesitated a bit more, but eventually placed her small palm into my massive paw.
"Close your eyes," I ordered.
She sighed and obeyed. One! And we were in Kamar-Taj.
"How did we...? Where are...?" she jerked, letting go of my hand and looking around wildly.
The stones around us began to shift and float upwards. The pressure on my mind intensified. The "skies" started to turn crimson again. I myself was starting to be lifted off the ground. I instantly dropped onto all fours and dug my claws into the earth.
"Uncle Vic, are you and Kurt related by any chance?" Jean asked with cheerful suspicion, having recovered from her surprise.
"Not with Kurt. But with someone else among the X-Men... very possibly," I chuckled, starting to move toward Suo's house, remaining on all fours and keeping a firm grip on the stones beneath me, since I was still being pulled upwards.
Zen! Those born to crawl don't want to fly!!! Or, as Logan loves to repeat: "If God wanted me to fly, He would have made me with wings." So, despite taking a slight hit to my prestige and authority, I moved quickly, practically hugging the ground.
"Why?" Jean asked, intrigued.
"I managed to 'have a good time' back in my day. In America, and in Asia. I even left my mark passing through Old Europe. And the 'X-gene,' as Xavier claims, is hereditary."
"How long ago was that? 'Your day'?" she squinted, trying to keep up with me, which required her to almost jog.
"A hundred to a hundred and eighty years ago. Or a hundred and ninety," I estimated thoughtfully.
"That's a pretty big gap, isn't it?"
"Well, I was 'having a good time' for more than a year. I was an active man. And irresponsible."
"I find it hard to picture you like that, Uncle Vic," the girl shivered. It was Tibet, after all. It was somewhat cooler here than in the heated sports complex.
"A steady woman changes a man. And besides, a hundred years is a long time..." I replied, crawling-running up to the threshold of Suo's house. Oh, I can already feel I'm going to hear about this arrival more than once. She's going to remind me how I came crawling to her "when push came to shove."
"Suo!" I called out loudly, moving over the threshold and into the house.
"Victor?" the Ancient One asked, surprised, stepping out of her room. "Why are you on the floor? Did something happen, or did you decide to play? I'm actually not very busy right now. We can 'play,' Kitty-cat!"
"We'll play later," I didn't refuse, especially since it was a good idea. "Open a portal to the desert. The spot where Old Man Nur died. I need your help."
"Alright," Suo didn't argue, instantly raising her double ring and beginning to trace a fiery circle that revealed the sands. "Are you going to brief me?"
"Jean, get into the portal quickly," I ordered.
The girl (though, can you really call a fourteen-year-old a girl? More like a teenager. But she was still a girl to me) darted into the fiery circle as quiet as a mouse. I jumped in after her, tried to grab the ground, and failed. My fingers merely clawed uselessly at the sand, and I took off soaring like a bird. With a decent amount of acceleration, too. Not 9.8 meters per second squared, obviously, but definitely two or three.
It must have looked absolutely hilarious. And it felt like it, too. It was a very strange sensation... but you can only have too much of a good thing: I wasn't born for flying. Not without a parachute or wings, anyway (I remember liking hang gliding). I "jumped" toward the ground and began digging into the sand as fast as I could, until I hit the dense clay layer underneath. I anchored myself into it, driving my legs in up to the knees.
"Victor, you surprise me with new talents every single time," Suo admired. "When did you learn to fly?"
"Open the Mirror Dimension, please," I didn't rise to her bait.
"I thought you hated magic?" she asked, surprised.
"But I love the Earth. And I really don't want it to accidentally split in half. Will you open it?" I gave her a dark scowl.
My "skies" were turning a deeper shade of crimson, and the "blood rain" had started again. The voices of the dead were growing louder and more distinct. The hallucinations were on the verge of starting. Jean's power was truly terrifying. And Suo should have been able to feel it by now as well.
The smile vanished from her face. She frowned, and we were swallowed by the Mirror Dimension, which triggered a surge of magic that ignited a flash of wild rage within me, helping to clear my head slightly.
"What is happening, Victor?" she asked, casting some sort of shield over herself.
"The block on an Omega-level mutant's power is failing, that's what's happening," I growled. "You'd better get out of here. I'll make my own way home."
"Understood, Victor. I'll be waiting for you in Kamar-Taj," Suo didn't argue. She opened a portal and left through it.
"Your wife is scary," Jean noted once we were alone.
"As if I've ever been afraid of my woman," I snorted. "Anyway: there's no one here but us. None of the destruction in this place will affect the real world. Your power won't hurt anyone. You can relax."
"What about you?"
"I'll survive, don't worry about it. If it gets bad, I'll just 'jump' further away."
"Well, you're a big boy. You'll figure it out."
"How are you with telepathy?"
"What about it?"
"Can you reach Charles?"
"I'll try. But why?"
"Have him slowly weaken the block. If you break it yourself right now—and you can—there's a high probability you'll damage your psyche. It's better not to risk it. So let Xavier into your head and don't resist."
"Alright," Jean sighed. She sat down on the sand and closed her eyes.
"Stand up! You'll catch a cold!" I ordered sternly.
The girl stood back up with a grumble. The desert at night is no resort.
Jean dusted off her pants, widened her stance for better balance, and squeezed her eyes shut. I'm no telepath. Everything I know in that department is how to defend myself and counterattack when the channel is already open by another telepath. So I have no idea what was happening in Jean's head the whole time we stood facing each other in the middle of the desert. She was just standing on the sand, and I was buried almost up to my waist. But what was starting to happen around us was terrifying.
First, even the slightest breeze died down. The air simply solidified around us, becoming thick like jelly. It instantly grew warmer. Then, the sand began to lift into the air. This rising motion spread outwards like a wave, expanding in an ever-growing circle with Jean at its center. The phenomenon intensified, picking up momentum, and soon the entire desert, as far as the eye could see, was suspended in the air: sand, stones, stunted bushes... and even me, ripped from the ground.
Then Jean herself began to float. She remained exactly as she was, her eyes closed, completely open and surrendered to the will of her power.
"Victor, I can barely hold her," Charles's voice broke through with great difficulty, cutting through the solid downpour of blood hammering my "dome" and turning the wasteland surrounding my mental wall into a sea as crimson as the "skies." He wasn't trying to break through the "wall." He was "knocking on the window," leaving the words right in front of it. "Act!"
He didn't need to tell me twice. A "jump" right up to her, and a Qi strike with both palms pressed against her temples. Not too hard, but enough to "switch off" her consciousness.
I gently caught her limp body and "jumped" with it to Kamar-Taj. And from there, back to Moscow, to my gym.
She woke up on the mats half an hour later.
"I..." she opened her eyes and saw me calmly performing a Karate kata. At a measured pace, but pouring all my effort into every movement. "Uncle Vic? Did I dream it all?"
"No," I replied, without breaking my sequence of movements. "It was all real."
"But... how did I...?"
"Charles started losing control, so I knocked you out."
"I see," she thought for a moment. "So it didn't work?"
"Why not? The block was weakened and secured at a 'new level.' Your power has increased and isn't fighting to slip out of control anymore for the time being. Master it. Train. When you're ready, come back, and we'll continue."
"I will come back," she got up from the mats. "Grandpa!"
"Even if that's true, it would be 'great-grandpa' at the very least. With a lot of 'greats' attached. I was 'having a good time' in America during the American Revolution. You can count the generations yourself."
"Nerd."
"Say hi to Logan for me," I ignored her jab.
The girl ran off, and I was left to furiously beat the air. Her power was terrifying. It bypasses any block, seeps in, drags images to the surface, and tears open old wounds... And that was just an echo, a tiny fraction of it bleeding out completely out of control.
A terrifying creature—an Omega-mutant. Truly terrifying.
It's going to take me more than a day to put my head back in order now. I don't even know what I want to do more: sit and howl at the moon in misery, or go and tear a couple of battalions of soldiers to shreds...
So, as Sakaki Shio—the 100th-dan Karate Master from Vasya-Sensei's favorite anime—used to say: "Hit the makiwara, kid! Hit the makiwara..."
***
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