The comforting heat from the shower water against the back of my head brought me back to reality. I sputtered from the water trying to get into my mouth and kept my hands against the smooth wall ahead of me.


    Shouldn''t take too long, I thought, Xandra''ll want to take her turn after me. We need to get going soon.


    I finished showering only to realise I didn''t have a towel to dry myself off. Instead I decided to bulb-up all over just enough to turn the water all over my body to steam, briefly turning the locker room into a sauna.


    With the exception of my hair, which was still a little damp, I was dry. I changed into a simple baggy blue t-shirt, put on boxer briefs and socks, and then slipped on a pair of gray sweatpants.


    The remains of my muddy clothes lay strewn in a heap on the tiled floor. A tinge of guilt struck me for making a mess, but another part of me couldn''t muster the effort to care.


    I''ll need to give these a wash, or maybe just abandon them, I thought.


    I decided to check the pockets and was glad I did. Inside the right pocket of the mud-lathered denim jeans was the one hundred pound note, and the cheap phone Donald had gone to the trouble of buying for me.


    I turned the phone on and was relieved to see it was still working just fine. The screen came to life and showed two numbers; the first belonged to Donald. The second was the number for my brother''s workplace. The clock on the wall in the locker room told me it was nine in the morning.


    My brother would be at work.


    My thumb hovered over the call button.


    Just do it, I thought, call Gary and let him know you''re okay. Then Mum and Dad and Susan will know you''re alive at least.


    I pocketed the phone and stepped around the muddy heap of clothes on the floor on the way out. If I did decide to take those clothes and wash them they were going to be a problem for me in the near future.


    Xandra was sitting still caked in mud and dripping wet on a bench in the corridor outside the locker room. By her feet was a smaller bag filled with a towel and a change of clothes.


    "Sorry for the wait," I said.


    "Oh don''t worry," said Xandra, playfully, "I''ve heard mud is just great for skin."


    Though what she said was kind of funny I had to force myself to laugh a little. Xandra lingered for a moment, picked up her bag, and then walked with wet steps off into the locker room.


    I was aware enough of the troubles tugging at my mind to start counting them.


    One, whether or not I should call my brother.


    Two, the possibility that Xandra and I were starting to have feelings for each other.


    Three, that I was pretty darn hungry.


    Four, that the clubhouse would likely not be safe to stay for much longer given the owners could come to check on it at any moment.


    There were still more problems to worry about, like whether going to the underground bunker Xandra planned on us going to next was a good idea or not. She had made mention of it a few times but I had been either running or too lost in my own thoughts to pay much attention.


    All of the problems vying to be given priority in my mind caused a maelstrom that made me not want to think about any of them. Instead of attempting to think through any of the problems I simply walked into the main hall and sat down and opened up the portable DVD player.


    It had been charging all night. Since I opened it the screen blinked on and the disc inside the player whirred to life; School of the One Thousand Sorrow Fist''s menu appeared on the screen.


    Some things never change, I thought.


    Even way back on the night I was evacuated I had been watching TV as a way to escape from the troubles playing on my mind. At that time I had decided to let myself be evacuated rather than go on the run with my friend. I had been so stressed after making that decision that I spent two weeks straight watching all of my favourite movies as a way of coping.


    And here I was, just over a month later, using a portable TV player to cope with the stress again.


    At least this time I could lie to myself about why.


    Although the hunger in my stomach was gnawing something fierce, the urge to escape from all my concerns prompted me to skip through the movie to the first training scene in the film.


    In the scene Sonny Yen''s character, at the time just a student learning the basics of The Sorrow Fist Way, was told to practice the various movements needed to achieve greater control of his body. The gimmick of the scene was for Sonny to balance upon a rack of empty bottles, with the drinking end of the bottles against the soles of his bare feet.


    What followed was a pretty awesome montage of Sonny Yen''s master taking a bottle away every day until just one bottle remained for each foot.


    Then, finally, the next bottle was removed so that there was just the one left.


    It wasn''t just that Sonny could balance for hours on a single bottle by the end of the montage that was the trick. It was that he could do so whilst dodging apples and other miscellaneous items thrown at him by children told by the Master to throw them.


    By the end of the montage Sonny could not only balance on the single, fragile bottle, but he could do so whilst moving his body with perfect control to avoid the objects thrown at him.


    All during scorching hot weather.


    Well, I thought, Why not give it a try too?


    I walked into the kitchen and checked the cupboards for possible bottles to use. There was an absence of bottles but there were a large number of drinking mugs. I almost took them but stopped myself because, though Xandra and I had already broken in and made a large amount of mess, putting my feet all over the mugs belonging to the owners of the clubhouse was a step too far.


    After rummaging around some more I found a better option; several empty glass jars. I scooped up several of the jars and took them into the main hall. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    I lined all six jars on the floor, making sure to take off the lids too. I then took the small remote which came with the portable DVD player and, after taking off my socks, I stood atop the jars.


    In any normal circumstance this was a really, really stupid thing to do for many reasons. What if I fell over and cracked my head open? What if my bare feet broke the jar underfoot and the glass cut deeply into the skin?


    Whatever, I thought, I''ll heal myself if it happens.


    I pressed play on the remote and fixed my attention to the portable DVD player screen. The montage started again. Sonny Yen started shakily standing atop the bottles and made his first attempts at the dance-like movements instructed by his Master.


    I let the montage play through all the way, which took about two minutes, all the while feeling the jars biting into the soles of my feet, though holding steady.


    I didn''t feel like I had learned how to do what Sonny Yen could do by the end of the two minutes. But that was to be expected because I hadn''t asked the power inside me to start retaining the information.


    I thumbed the backwards button on the remote which, conveniently enough, started at the beginning of the montage.


    My heart started to thumb heavily in my chest from the surge of excitement.


    I closed my eyes and searched inside myself to find the ''light node'', that fragment of the power, which would be able to retain the information specific to learning martial arts from a cheesy kung fu movie from the late Seventies.


    After several moments, like when I had tapped into the power to learn all of the medical knowledge from Donald''s textbooks, or further back when I had achieved the emerald unlocking of my eyes at the Wedder Gorge facility, I knew that the power inside of me was ready to retain the information I wanted it to.


    I opened my eyes and watched the montage play out again.


    The experience this time was vastly different to the first time round watching the montage without using the power. This time round all of my concerns fell away until all that remained was a stoic calm and a hyper focus.


    There wasn''t a single thing in the world that mattered other than what I was watching on the portable DVD player. My world became my attempts to copy what I was seeing in The School of the One Thousand Sorrow Fist montage.


    I was aware in the beginning the way my body mimicked what was being done on screen. I lagged behind Sonny Yen''s movements, like a robot jerkily gaining control of its own limbs for the first time.


    A rhythm was quickly established. The montage played out and my body copied the movements shown in segments; particularly when Sonny Yen perfected what he was supposed to learn by the end of the montage.


    Gradually time began to get away from me until my world became the movie.


    As if in a dream I was no longer standing in the main hall of the Shepperton Rugby Clubhouse.


    Far from it.


    I was standing atop several glass bottles somewhere in ancient China on a scorching hot day.


    Was I still me? I looked down and saw that, yes, I was still me and not Sonny Yen.


    Were I not in the throes of using the power perhaps I might have been far more surprised by the whole experience. I could feel the humidity in the air; and could feel the ache in my legs and the bone-aching soreness in my feet; my own sweat rose off me in a stench that told me I had been trying to stand and do all of my Master''s instructed movements for several days in a row.


    Fwop!


    An apple hit my head and exploded into pieces.


    Children were all about me holding slightly rotted apples and all sorts of other off fruits and vegetables (one particularly annoying brat was about to throw a crowbar at me); there was a moment of silence and then the kids started throwing the fruit and veggies and, yes, the crowbar, right at me.


    By this time however I had been practicing retaining my balance and all the movements my Master had shown me for several days and nights.


    Fwoop! Schwa! Swap!


    I nimbly dodged a good number of the items thrown my way, and kicked and blocked with my fists several more.


    Then the crowbar smacked me in the head.


    It hurt as much as a block of steel thrown at full force by an eight year old Chinese boy would.


    I fell back, losing my footing.


    And hit the ground hard. Instead of grass however I hit the cold hard and slightly wet wood of the clubhouse main hall.


    What''s more, Xandra was looking down at me with panic on her face.


    "Burgess?!" she shouted, "Are you okay?"


    For a brief moment her face changed to become the love interest of the movie; a beautiful young Chinese woman who was the granddaughter of Sonny Yen''s Master.


    Stop the fragment, I told myself.


    I willed the power to stop trying to soak up all the information and, in the blink of an eye, the main hall and Xandra were the only reality that remained persistent around me.


    Xandra helped me to my feet.


    She was dressed in new clothes (a pink shirt with an anime character on the front and a longer white-sleeved shirt beneath, as well as a pair of baggy blue denim jeans). Her hair was still wet and she wasn''t wearing any make-up.


    "What was that?" she said.


    I stepped away and looked down at the empty glass jars which had broken durng my fall and scattered across the floor.


    "I was learning kung fu from the movie," I said, "I swear it was like I was there."


    Xandra''s already large eyes widened.


    "In the movie?" she said, "For real?"


    I told Xandra more about the experience over breakfast. She made more noodles, but also added in fried eggs over the top as well. She was happy to handle making breakfast so long as I told her every tiny detail of what I had just experienced.


    I avoided telling her that she had looked like Sonny Yen''s love interest for a few moments before I told the power to stop working. I was glad we weren''t both acting weird around each other after what happened on the rugby pitch.


    Maybe I had just imagined that moment, I thought to myself.


    I was a little worried that Xandra was going to be angry with me for trying to learn kung fu, or for losing myself in the experience to the point I was full on hallucinating being in the movie. Instead, the idea seemed to be of real interest to her.


    "Cool!" she said, "It was like your mind made you think you were there as a kind of, like, buffer."


    "Buffer?" I said.


    "Yeah," said Xandra, "A normal human brain can''t learn kung fu super fast. But the power can. So maybe it was a way for your brain to comprehend all of the information you were retaining?"


    "Maybe," I mumbled.


    After breakfast we packed away our things. Xandra had taken cleaning supplies from the clubhouse and the petrol station, so she was adamant that we take our muddy clothes with us to wash later. We took separate bags found in one of the cupboards to carry our muddy clothes.


    We both decided not to bother cleaning up after ourselves. I reflected for a brief moment that I simply didn''t care about cleaning up, and how that wasn''t a good thing; but it wasn''t as if there was an authority figure around to reprimand us for not doing so. I felt a tinge of guilt but not enough to do anything about it.


    Another day of cloudy skies and the threat of rain presented itself to us as soon as we stepped out of the clubhouse front door.


    "So," said Xandra, carrying all her bags as well as the rucksack on her back, "To the bunker?"


    "Sure," I said, carrying my own carry bag, the smaller plastic bag filled with my muddy clothes, as well as my own rucksack on my back.


    Xandra shot me a questioning look and then set off across the gravelly path towards the nearby forestation. She made it several paces before noticing I hadn''t moved at all.


    "Burgess?" she said.


    "Hold on," I said.


    I put my bags down and dug into my right pocket, retrieving my phone.


    "I need to make a phone call," I said.


    Xandra nodded.


    "Don''t take too long," she said.


    I nodded and then hurried back into the clubhouse to make the call. I sat on the nearby bench, being careful to avoid the muddy spot where Xandra had sat before.


    The call rang on the other end several times. Each successive ring made me want to hang up and forget the whole thing.


    Why are you so nervous? I thought, It''s just your brother.


    After several long rings someone on the other end picked up.