"Yes." The twins answered at the same time with a blank expression on both of their faces. They walked further into the room and began looking around to familiarize themselves with where they would be staying for the next couple of days.
'I guess they don't really care about the doodle.' Solstice eased up, and stopped his nervous habit of rubbing his fingers.
The young man sat down on the bottom bunk directly opposite of Solstice, while the young woman crossed her arms and leaned against the ladder.
"3 newly chosen traversers managed to be at the same facility, same day, and all bestowed divine gifts. Our fates are definitely intertwined, so we might as well get to know each other now while we're here together." The young man gave off a feeling of confidence, not in an annoying way, but in a calm assuring manner. One felt that the young man was a dependable individual off his aura alone.
"My name is Daemon Lazarus, my sister is Ava Lazarus, your name?" Daemon reached out his right hand towards Solstice for a handshake.
Solstice accepted the hand shake. "It's Solstice."
There were a couple reasons why Solstice didn't mind telling them his real name. The main reason being that their fates really were intertwined.
About half a millennium ago, when humanity just started to get a foothold in the fight against the Wyrd, there were many notable traversers who prospered greatly. These early generation powerful traversers, established great families, most of them had many marital partners. The early generations kept producing many children with their many partners, quickly growing their powerful legacy families.
The Lazarus family was one of these legacy families, and a very notable one at that. They're famously, one of the main legacy families to inherit the divine blood of the Hearth Goddess and some of her powersets, and the Hearth Goddess was in very good relation with the Solstice God when the gods were still active.
Besides the Lazarus family, the Blythe and Ambrose families are the only other legacy families to inherit the Hearth Goddess's blood.
Solstice didn't care if there was a chance that some members of the Lazarus family were corrupt, his intuition told him that if he didn't befriend Daemon and Ava, he would regret it. He felt that he could trust them more so than the government.
"That name is quite brazen, but it's not impossible to find people named that. Especially amongst the lower-middle class and the poor." Ava frowned a little bit.
"It's not like I had a choice, that was up to my parents." Solstice scratched the back of his head, looking back and forth between the twins.
"To coincide with my brazen name, I inherited the Solstice's God blood and one of his powersets." Solstice decided he would tell them that information as well, he wanted their utmost trust, he was willing to let them know something that absolutely should've been kept secret.
Ava and Daemon straightened themselves in surprise, turning to look at each other. A few seconds later, Ava burst out into laughter while Daemon looked down to the floor and sighed.
"Fate has surely brought you to us." Daemon looked back up at Solstice, then looked over to his sister Ava who had just stopped laughing.
"Y'know, why are you guys still here? Jest could've just dropped you guys off at your family's estate." Solstice remembered that the twins were both from the powerful Lazarus family.
"There's a bit of a situation with our family right now so we requested to stay here, Jest also gave us the same offer he did for you." Solstice nodded and didn't ask for further details from Daemon. Daemon got up from the bottom bunk and began observing the sleeping quarters a bit more, opening the drawers and going through junk just as Solstice did.
Solstice went to use the bathroom, then he came back out only to see that Daemon and Ava were about to leave the sleeping quarters.
"Where are you guys going?" Solstice was curious where the twins were headed, as they were told to only stay in the sleeping quarters for the next 48 hours.
"We're bored and this is unproductive, so we're going down to the 1st floor where the BCT room is to get some practice in. You can come with us if you'd like." Ava offered Solstice to join them, in which he happily agreed to, as he was bored himself. He also wanted to take this opportunity to see if they would be so generous as to teach him a bit of combat, and he wasn't really afraid of getting into trouble. The 3 of them were very special people after all, they couldn't be punished too terribly.
The 3 of them left the sleep quarters and entered the corridor, surprised at how the staff seemingly weren't walking around too much. The few who did were so busy with their tasks that they didn't bother, which allowed them to easily walk down to the 1st floor without being stopped.
At the bottom of the stairs, they walked a bit further down and stood right outside the door labeled 'Break Room/BCT'. Ava pushed open the door as they entered, they took in their surroundings.
To their immediate left, were a couple of tables and metal chairs, with a stack of cards in case the staff wanted to play a quick game of landlord, blackjack, Texas Hold'em and such games. Right next to the tables were a few metal lockers, which were mostly empty except for the occasional spare office uniform or physical training gear.
On the right side of the room, were sets of virtual reality combat simulators, in which you could select specific scenarios or create and replay previous ones for improvement. This was usually what people did to hone their mental combat acuity and critical thinking for when combat happens, rather than actually learning real combat technique or body conditioning.
While it's quite easy to copy movement in your head after seeing it done in front of you, unless your body had superb coordination and conditioning, it took practice to be competent. It was normally what people did after they did practical combat training to see where they could improve, what movements or spacing could've put the fight in their favor, and many other things.
In front of them was a vast open area where staff could freely practice their techniques either by themselves or with a sparring partner.
"Are you trained in combat?" Daemon half turned his body as he began putting on one of the spare sets of physical training gear.
"Nope. I was hoping you could teach me." Solstice began putting on a spare set of gear as well.
"Alright, we'll start with some basics, after you're consistent on footwork and striking, we can go to a little bit more advanced level and also train grappling too." Daemon did a few stretches before finally stepping onto the open platform with Solstice.
"You're a bit short, so you're going to have to get in close to taller opponents as they will have the reach advantage, and you'll have to learn to be comfortable in the pocket. Another approach that would be good for your stature, would be to punish their superior reach by counter-hitting their arms and legs after making your opponent miss." Daemon explained his plan to Solstice, they began drilling some of the basics which was going smoothly.
It was fairly easy for Solstice to learn striking with decent technique, as his body's condition and coordination was enhanced, but he had a few bad habits with his head movement, lowering his hands too much after each punch and some sloppy footwork, all things that could be drilled down upon.
Daemon was a fantastic teacher, all the training he endured growing up in the Lazarus family paid off greatly. Even at the age of 16, he was a formidable fighter, and he was passing on much needed practical technique to Solstice.
About an hour passed, the trio once again surprised that none of the staff had to use the Break Room at all during this time, as they surely would've been kicked out.
"You did pretty good for your 1st training session, granted a great deal of your absorption of fighting technique is also because of your enhanced muscle memory from advancing the Grade 0." Daemon smiled over to Solstice who sat at one of the tables, drenched in sweat, he nodded in acknowledgement. He wasn't even really all that exhausted, Solstice was surprised in the amount of stamina his body truly had.
"I feel a bit less human to be honest…." Solstice spoke his true feelings about the way he felt regarding his new life, he was uncomfortable, yet excited.
"That depends on what you think 'human' is. If you're talking about your body, you're very much human. If you're trying to look at the word in a philosophical sense, that depends on your own viewpoint on what's considered 'human'. In my opinion, I don't think it's healthy to use the word 'human' in a limiting connotation, whether you're a mundane person or a traverser like us. To use the word 'human' that way is a lack of confidence and certainty in one's own capabilities…..at least to me it feels that way." Daemon proudly shared his own thoughts on the matter.
"I can understand what you mean by that." Solstice found that he actually quite liked what Daemon said to him, and decided that he would try to assimilate a more confident mindset.
"Let's go a round." Ava stepped out into the sparring ground. "Are we using our gifts?"
"Sure, but don't go overboard." Daemon got into a low stance similar to that of a wrestler. Ava started making weird slow movements, like she was performing a strange dance.
Ava began humming softly, it was very hard to hear it unless you had an enhanced sense of hearing. The humming changed from a sweat soothing tone, to an unruly staccato, her strange dance mimicking this as well.
The eeriness of Ava's dance didn't deter Daemon from charging head on however, with an insane burst of speed, he stopped dead short of an arm's reach of Ava. Ava's staccato hum hit a sharp note in which her right arm flicked out like a whip, her fist nearly landing on Daemon's face.
There was no actual fist-to-face contact, yet Daemon's recoiled as if there had been. Daemon fell back a few steps, he brought his hand to his nose to wipe away his blood, his nose was broken, pretty badly as a small opening on his face was created. Miraculously, Daemon's nose started healing back to normal.
'Pretty potent regeneration for Daemon, and some sort of song related powers for Ava.' Solstice made a mental note of the powers displayed by the Lazarus twins.
"I misjudged the power of that one….I'm sorry about that." Ava apologized sincerely, she started slipping out of the fight mentally, due to her feeling guilty.
"Mhm." Daemon didn't say anymore, he was a little pissed, he closed the distance once again, this time he succeeded in grabbing Ava's right wrist with his left hand, before stepping in and turning for a shoulder throw. Ava hit the ground, with her right arm still under Daemon's control.
Ava's humming changed from an unruly staccato back to a soft consistent tempo, this hum allowed her to have extreme body control, she twisted and kicked up from the ground, her heel landing cleanly underneath Daemon's chin, throwing his head back, but he still held on. Ava fully flipped over, standing up, trying to thrash her arm out of Daemon's vise grip unsuccessfully.
Daemon stared her down before sighing, his broken teeth were already replaced with new ones, he spat out his old broken teeth and some blood to the side. He calmed down, no longer pissed off.
"I lost again. You're still terrifying in close combat." Ava sighed.