Chapter 6

Horn stood in the circle, wondering who would make the first move. He'd been trapped for almost a minute, and no one had attacked; but he knew that wouldn't last long. He was proven right in the next three seconds.

The opponent directly in Horn's vision suddenly broke from the circle at a dead run, aiming for Horn. He opened his hand from a fist to a flat surface. At his rate of speed, it would carve through flesh like butter. However, Horn was still faster; with a turn to the side, Horn avoided the knife-like thrust, and caught the man's head between his elbow and his knee.

A grunt to his left caught Horn's attention, as the next attacker started a Renzoku Energy Dan. Horn moved across the circle, reasoning that he would stop the attack if it would hit his comrades; instead, the man's attacks plowed through the others, hitting a good number. Horn marveled at his stupidity, and decided to end it. Horn used Zanzouken to appear behind the man, and thrust his arm through its head. A wet noise sounded; it went limp, and Horn withdrew his arm from what remained of its skull.

The last two attackers split between Horn's front and back. The front one attacked in an exact imitation of the first man's tactic; Horn sighed in a disgusted fashion, and used a sweeping kick to separate the attacker into two portions.

A hydraulic hiss was the only warning Horn needed to avoid the blast, but he decided not to destroy the last training robot. He needed it intact to rebuild the others from. With another use of Zanzouken, Horn came from behind and switched it off. I also have to find some way to make them more realistic, Horn reflected. A real fighter wouldn't kill his allies so casually, or repeat a tactic that had failed so abjectly.Horn left the ship's service robots to clean up the training area's mess; Horn himself would repair the training robots. The ship's computer makes decent copies, but decent isn't good enough.

Leaving the robotics alone for the moment, Horn decided to turn his attention to Jendo, the most important item on his list. Jendo was certainly crafty; he'd managed to avoid Horn for 3 years now. Jendo may have crash-landed on Earth, which gave him at least another 4 months to prepare for Horn's arrival, either by getting transportation or preparing for a fight. Horn didn't dare underestimate Jendo; even though Horn was stronger, Jendo had almost killed him more than once. This time, Horn was ready. And Jendo is going to pay for what he's done.

Horn's ship sped on towards Earth