Divine Milking System-Chapter 76 | Don’t Break My Squad Before Friday

I walked over. My legs made their displeasure known with every step in that aching way that meant yesterday’s training had decided to send a delayed invoice.

"Feet shoulder width," she said. "Knees soft. Weight forward on the balls of your feet, not your heels."

I adjusted.

She walked around me, which was exactly as difficult to ignore as it sounds given that my brain was running at reduced capacity and had fewer resources available for maintaining appropriate professional focus.

Her hand came down on my left shoulder, adjusting the angle. Firm. Corrective. Completely routine.

My nervous system sent a very unhelpful message.

"You’re leaning back," she said. "When you lean back you commit your weight before you know what you’re committing to. Every step should be a question your body asks the ground, not an assumption."

"Right," I said. Coherently. Like a person.

"Show me lateral movement. Side to side. Don’t cross your feet."

I moved. It felt like moving through water with additional shame. The crash had taken my coordination down with everything else and I could feel the gap between what my body knew to do and what it was currently capable of doing. Yesterday I’d been burning through Misato’s circuit feeling like I had something to prove. Today I felt like I was running on fumes and borrowed time.

Which, technically, I was always running on borrowed time. That was the whole situation. But usually the metaphor felt less literal. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Misato watched me move. Her expression wasn’t cruel. It was the expression of someone gathering accurate data.

"Better than yesterday," she said. "Your base is improving. But you’re still thinking too hard. Stop counting your steps."

"I’m not counting."

"You are. You’ve taken exactly the same number of steps left as you take right, every single time, since I started watching."

I had absolutely been counting.

Behind me, I heard Belle sit down on the grass. Not in a defiant way. In the way of someone who had identified a moment to conserve energy and taken it. Jordan had somehow already found a position lying flat with his eyes closed and his arm over his face.

"Wayne," Misato said, without looking at him.

"Present," Jordan said, from the ground.

"Get up."

"In a moment."

"Now."

"The ground is very supportive and I feel seen by it."

Misato walked toward him, leaned down, and grabbed his wrist. She pulled. Jordan came upright with the resigned expression of a man being raised from a very comfortable grave.

"You’re going to practice your shadow bind targeting," she said. "Belle will be your moving target."

Belle looked up from the grass. "Why am I always the target."

"Because your passive ability means you need the movement reps. And because you’re fast enough to make it interesting."

Belle processed this. The second half had clearly been more persuasive than the first. She stood up, brushed grass off her skirt, and rolled her neck. "Fine. But I’m logging a formal complaint about the simulation situation."

"Logged," Misato said. "I’ll review it after you survive Friday’s assessment."

"Can we do both."

Misato finally looked at Belle directly. Not dismissively. Actually looked at her. "Yes," she said. "We’ll hit the simulation chamber tomorrow morning before Garrett’s class. Five-thirty."

"Before Garrett’s class," Belle repeated flatly.

"Yes."

"You want us to do simulation training before a physical conditioning class."

"I want you ready for Friday. That requires both."

Belle closed her eyes for exactly two seconds. "I hate this school," she said, with tremendous feeling, and then she started stretching her hamstrings because she was Belle Fox and she was going to be ready for Friday whether she liked it or not.

I watched this exchange from my spot on the field, still holding my footwork position out of some vestigial commitment to appearing functional.

Naomi had drifted to the edge of the field and was holding her staff with the loose grip of someone who had forgotten they were holding it. She looked like she was thinking very hard about something very far away.

Misato appeared next to me without transition.

"Talk," she said quietly.

"About what."

She looked at Naomi. Then at me. Her green eyes were doing the thing where they processed information faster than she let on. "She’s running on empty. You look the same. You were both fine at lunch."

"Afternoon crash," I said. "Training’s been intense."

Misato was quiet for long enough that I knew she wasn’t satisfied with the answer and was deciding whether to press it.

"Your ability," she said. "Does it drain the person you use it on."

The question was precise. Not aggressive. Just accurate.

I looked at her. "Depends on the application," I said. "Suppressing pain signals takes more from the target than basic nerve stimulation. If I push someone past what their body could normally sustain, there’s a recovery period after."

Misato absorbed this. "So the session last night and the extended training session this morning. You’ve been running Naomi past her limits since yesterday evening."

I said nothing.

Which was, in its own way, an answer.

Misato looked back at the field. Her jaw moved slightly, not chewing anything, just the subtle tension of someone deciding how much they cared about something they hadn’t signed up to care about.

"Don’t break my squad before Friday," she said. Not angrily. Practically.

"She’s fine," I said. "By tomorrow morning she’ll be back to full capacity."

Misato turned and looked at me with those sharp, read-everything green eyes. "How do you know that."

Because the system told me. Because the extraction tax from Silver-tier targets clears in twelve hours and Naomi’s twelve hours had started last night at approximately ten PM. Because I’d run the math three times during lunch and the numbers were solid.

"Because I know my ability," I said.

Misato held my gaze for another moment. Then she nodded once and turned toward the field. "Jordan. Stop trying to shadow bind the training dummy’s shadow specifically. It’s bolted to a concrete pad, there is no shadow to grab."

"I was testing the theory," Jordan said.

"The theory is wrong."

"Now I know. Science requires failure."

Misato made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a laugh that she immediately converted back into a neutral expression. "Use Belle. Moving target. Go."

Belle took off across the field at a light jog, her blue ponytail swinging. Jordan extended his hand and shadows rippled across the grass, stretching in six directions at once before snapping toward Belle’s shadow with enough force to yank her feet out from under her.

Belle hit the ground, rolled, and was back up in three seconds.

"Hey," she said.

"Moving target means you move," Jordan said, sounding slightly more awake than he had in the last two hours.

"I was moving."

"Move faster."

Belle stared at him across the field. Then she started actually running.