Chapter Two, Training
The need to hide my training from everyone, and from my father in the first place, imposed significant restrictions on the program of these very workouts.
I couldn't fly peacefully, neither on Earth nor in space—the risk of catching my father's eye, Cecil's spies, or just the lens of a random camera was too great. I couldn't even order a suit from Arthur—after all, he is my father's best friend and sooner or later would definitely blab to him about everything.
Training strength and endurance using classical methods—beating someone up, getting into a fight along with some hero team, or anything of that sort—was also out of the question, for completely understandable reasons. Even though it is one of the most effective methods.
I found an unexpected and, as it seems to me, rather elegant solution. I needed to train flight speed, endurance, strength, and it would also be worth learning to hold my breath. What environment could provide me with all the necessary load and at the same time serve as natural camouflage from prying eyes? Of course, I'm talking about the ocean.
The ocean can give me all of this. Starting from the need to hold my breath during workouts and ending with the immense pressure of the water column naturally testing my endurance. Swimming underwater was fundamentally no different from flying for me—strictly speaking, I wasn't swimming, but exactly flying underwater, since swimming involves pushing off the water using limbs, fins, or jet propulsion, which I didn't do, because the natural mechanism of flight was much more efficient. The only difference from flying in the atmosphere was the greater resistance of the medium, which, again, only benefited the training. Last but not least: much fewer eyes, cameras, and other devices are directed into the sea and ocean depths than into the atmosphere or even space—in the water, visual observation means are simply useless, and on others, like sonars, although I will differ from marine life, it is not that critical. The ocean depths quite often provide my father and other heroes with the opportunity to demonstrate their usefulness to the planet. In the worst case, I'll be mistaken for another Kraken or something like that.
About a month after acquiring my powers, I had the opportunity to test my theoretical conclusions in practice—before that, I didn't stick my neck out much, continuing to diligently pretend that I was fully absorbed in attempts to awaken my powers. That day—it was a Friday, the third—Nolan, along with the Guardians of the Globe, got involved in a major mess in the Far East, which last time ended with his almost week-long absence from the planet. According to the official version, he was abducted by aliens, but knowing my father, I suspect that he himself rushed to chase competitors into space to deal with them away from human eyes, as he did with the Flaxans.
As luck would have it, that morning we were being given our semester grades at school, so I couldn't skip classes to start training immediately after my father's disappearance. But I did not intend to waste time in vain. Barely returning home, I buttered up my mother with my perfect grades—which was natural for me, but Debbie never missed an opportunity to scare her son with the end of the school year and punishments for bad grades, as if I had ever brought home anything below a B—and making sure via the news and the internet that the story was following the route I knew, I got ready for a run.
"Yes, Mom," I say as if casually, already putting on my sneakers. "Since I don't need to do homework for now, I'll run a bit longer today, maybe drop by the stadium, they set up new equipment there to prepare for the student olympics."
Debbie tore herself away from the news for a second—they were once again recounting the details of the morning battle—looked at me with an absent-minded gaze for a couple of seconds, and only after that did what I said penetrate her head.
"Just be careful," she unexpectedly didn't object. "If you feel tingling in your knees and back, or pain, stop immediately. Okay?"
"Agreed."
Surprisingly, she didn't even start her usual song about how at my age it's still too early and dangerous to run marathon distances.
Is it because of Nolan? Usually she pretends, especially in front of me, that she doesn't worry about her husband at all and just jokes it off, saying that if he doesn't return for dinner, we'll get more cutlets... although in reality, she always puts my father's portion away in the fridge.
"Don't worry so much," I tried to cheer Mom up. "You know—he always comes back."
"Usually I can sit here and watch on TV as he beats up hundred-foot monsters all day, but when he disappears into another dimension or into space..." she sighed heavily. "I can't help but assume the worst..."
Mom is somewhat too frank today... by all rights, I should stay with her for moral support, but I can't miss such an opportunity for training. Leaving Mom to continue guarding the TV, I left the house.
I used to fear that having gained superpowers, I wouldn't be able to enjoy running anymore, because a normal or even sprint pace now doesn't strain my muscles and lungs at all. But it turned out not to be so bad. Yes, I can't exhaust myself to a sweat like before, but I can still enjoy the music and catch that state of runner's trance, when you completely stop paying attention to your surroundings and fully immerse yourself in the music and your thoughts. And although our physiology is structured so that during physical exertion, including running, less blood flows actively to the brain, making thought processes slow down and generally making the brain work less efficiently, it always seemed to me that it was easier to think while running.
For about fifteen minutes I ran at a normal pace—but still fast enough for passersby to turn around and flinch when I overtook them from behind—and only hiding from human eyes in the forest did I allow myself to accelerate.
Sticking to sparsely populated areas and bypassing cities in a wide arc, I headed for the Pacific coast. I never thought about it before, but obviously, I have another, maybe not a super, but still a pleasant ability. I never forget the way. No, not even that, I always easily orient myself in the terrain, understand where I am, where and how I came from, and where I need to move. Even if I close my eyes and fly in a random direction, periodically changing direction, I will still know where I flew from and what the distance covered and the return distance is—not in meters, of course, but in some intuitive understanding. It's as if I have a huge three-dimensional model of all the space I've explored in my head. My father never talked about this, but it seems Viltrumites don't need maps. Perhaps this is part of our natural adaptation for flight, like birds navigating by the earth's magnetic field, and marine life by underwater currents.
I ran to the ocean in ten minutes; I could have done it faster, but then I'd have to forget about stealth. After all, Viltrumites are designed for flying, not running. Yes, we can move fast on our own two feet, but it doesn't even come close to flight speed, or to that runner from the Guardians of the Globe. Besides, it would be much less elegant. I don't know how that guy manages to bypass the laws of physics, but if I run at full strength, it will be a real disaster for the environment. However, this also applies to flights. Air resistance doesn't disappear anywhere, but for now, I can't accelerate fast enough for it to become a problem.
I stopped in a rocky bay on the coast. Nearby there was only one fishing village—forty kilometers to the north—and not a single large city or trade route. In general, a very secluded spot. Taking off my clothes, I hid them in the rocks and, left only in swimming trunks and an MP3 player, finally proceeded to the real part of the training. At first I was very cautious and, fearing bouts of decompression sickness, made gradual dives to a relatively shallow depth. But no matter how much I experimented, increasing the depth and speed of the dive, my blood was in no hurry to boil. Everything pointed to the fact that Viltrumite physiology has some natural defense mechanism against sudden pressure drops. On the one hand, this cannot but rejoice, but on the other, minus one potential trump card in the upcoming battle with my father... although I can't imagine how I would drag him to the bottom...
But the player turned out not to be designed for such dives. At one point, the water pressure began to press the buttons on its casing, causing the device to bug out wildly, skip and fast-forward songs, and mess with the volume, so I had to surface and hide it on land, along with my clothes.
Well, let's see how long I can last now...
Swimming away from the shore again, I resolutely flew into the depths. It very quickly became clear that my eyes were completely unsuited for deep diving. More precisely, it wasn't really about me, it's just that light penetrates the water column with great difficulty. Algae and plants only survive in the first hundred or two meters; further down, there's simply not enough light for photosynthesis. And speaking of great depths, even though their inhabitants possess highly specialized vision—in the bioluminescent spectrum—they only need it to see each other and distinguish glowing predators from, for example, potential breeding partners.
The yellow and red spectrums disappeared first, almost immediately. In the first fifty meters, I could see the water in green; closer to a hundred, the water was tinted first in a green-blue palette, and then in a blue-green one; by three hundred, all colors were swallowed by black blue. I could still see here, but below, beneath me, there was already completely impenetrable darkness. And I will go down there later, but not now.
Navigating underwater presents certain difficulties for a diver. On the surface, a person orientates themselves in the environment using vision, and balance is maintained with the help of the vestibular apparatus, muscle-joint sense, and sensations arising in the internal organs and skin when the body's position changes. He constantly experiences the effect of gravity (sense of support) and perceives the slightest change in body position in space. But here there is no familiar support under the feet; of all the sense organs orienting a person in space, only the vestibular apparatus remains, the otoliths of which continue to be affected by the forces of Earth's gravity. But fortunately, I was not human, if I am to believe my father by ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent—did he run a genetic affinity test, since he appeals to such precise data? Thanks to Viltrumite physiology, my vestibular apparatus was on a completely different level compared to a human's, but at the same time, there was something else helping me navigate... I can't yet exactly understand what it is, but I felt myself and my position in the water almost as well as I did in the air before.
So even though the depth looks quite creepy, I think I can afford to go down there. But I won't rush. I am currently at a depth of about three hundred meters, and my body is experiencing a pressure of about three million pascals, or, to be clearer, thirty Earth atmospheres. That's a lot, a hell of a lot, for a human and any land creature. Seals swim to such depths, after all, it is their specialization, but it's quite acceptable for me too. I can withstand more, much more, but I shouldn't also forget about the exponentially increased resistance of the environment and the need to account for increased oxygen consumption—holding your breath in your bathtub is absolutely not the same as holding your breath during a deep-sea dive—I think I can arrange the first underwater flight training here and test what I'm capable of right now.