Three weeks.
That's how long it took for the impossible to get bored and become routine.
Kori's clipboard filled with checkmarks. Kenzo's hammer found new ways to be lifted by Esen. The training hall stopped smelling like chalk and started smelling like sweat, burned air and the particular kind of exhaustion that means something is working.
Progress looked ridiculous at first. Then it stopped looking ridiculous. Then it started looking dangerous.
Esen discovered he could hover. Not fly. Not levitate. Hover - twenty glorious centimeters above the floor, face flushed, every muscle locked, drifting with the speed and majesty of a man standing on an invisible rotating chair. He figured out that if he aimed his shockwaves straight down in short, controlled pulses, the ground pushed back just enough to keep him airborne. It shouldn't have worked. But Esen didn't care about what should work anyways.
