Chapter 70
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The wedding was over. The agreements were signed. The federations had reached their accord. That was that — time to go back to the Union. And work, work, work. Less than six months to the Olympics, and the combat sports team wasn't ready. Boxing, freestyle wrestling, Greco-Roman wrestling, judo.
Why weren't they ready? The athletes were training, working hard, the coaches were pushing, and the dietary program was in place. And that was precisely the problem — the diet. The Soviet athletes would simply kill everyone in the ring. Not out of malice, but from the shock of competition and the stress of nerves.
With non-contact sports, everything was straightforward — faster, higher, stronger. But contact sports? One killing in the ring and the entire team would be disqualified. It would be a scandal, not a triumph.
I had to take personal charge of preparing every contact athlete. I handed off all my current training groups, except the most advanced, to senior students and assistants, and rolled up my sleeves myself.
And the preparation had to cover two entirely separate scenarios simultaneously: a normal, unenhanced opponent — and the opposite: a mutant, a vampire, a shapeshifter, a modificant. And the most important thing of all — by all that is Zen, don't mix them up.
I had to gather the champions, the medalists, the masters, the distinguished coaches — of the previous generation. And break the central rule of the past ten years: "supers" do not fight and do not train with "non-supers." That rule had been followed without exception within the Federation. And throughout the Union at large. It was strictly enforced. And violations were harshly punished.
A "non-super" coach could lead a group of supers, certainly, but under no circumstances was that coach permitted to spar with their students, to make physical contact with them, to compete against them. Exceptions existed for chess, shooting, orienteering — and a few other disciplines where raw physical ability wasn't the deciding factor.
But with the Olympic contact sports team, that rule had to be broken. And even then, only under my direct supervision, with ambulance crews and resuscitation specialists on constant standby.
And it was not for nothing. Injuries happened every single day. Every training session, someone broke something, dislocated something, tore something, split something open, or got a concussion. Thank Zen there hadn't been any fatalities yet.
But the work moved forward — grinding, difficult, painful as it was. The Olympians, men and women both, gradually began to adapt. They learned to properly calibrate their strength. And most importantly, they learned to read who was standing in front of them.
I remember the shock on the athletes' faces at that first session, when they were shown not only mutants — their capabilities, their distinguishing features, the methods for quickly identifying and reading their orientation — but also shapeshifters and specially detained vampires. Rumors about mutants had been slowly leaking into general awareness at least, however imperfectly. Shapeshifters and vampires were something else entirely. As for modificants, things were more difficult. The KGB comrades declined to hand any over to me, though I'm entirely certain they have at minimum intelligence on such individuals and projects.
But I had to work with what I had.
And alongside the Olympic preparation, there was still the constant business of resolving various questions around the newly formed Aikido Federation — all while the federation's permanent head was on internship at the Hombu Dojo and would be there for nearly another year. Which meant nothing could be passed to him. Everything had to be handled personally — decisions made, matters arbitrated, arrangements coordinated, agreements negotiated.
It was fortunate at least that the government's "green light" hadn't been revoked. Without that, I genuinely don't know how I would have managed. The government itself might have been the thing that changed instead. I didn't say that out loud just now, did I? I don't think so. The last thing I needed was friction with the country's leadership.
But it was moving. Instructors and senseis were already making their way from Japan to Moscow. Groups were being formed here — from both older and newer generations. Schedules in the training halls were being reorganized, and the first sessions had begun.
And on top of all of that, there were Bruce's films, in which I occasionally had to appear. Well — "had to" isn't quite right. Nobody was forcing me. But Bruce asked, and asked, and asked, until I simply couldn't refuse. And honestly, I enjoyed it. Being present at the birth of something miraculous — a legend, a fairy tale — that's something.
For long months, I had to forget entirely what sleep was. And that's not a figure of speech. When I say "entirely," I mean entirely. Completely. Without exception.
My nerves stretched taut as crossbow strings. A breakdown was drawing closer, inevitable. But so was the Olympics.
Which one would arrive first — I genuinely no longer knew.
And then, on top of everything, a representative from the Red Dragons arrived with an invitation to the Battle, which was about to begin.
The look I gave him must have been so pitiful and wretched that the representative could only smile with sympathy and shake his head. He did, however, take the opportunity to ask whether I had a student I considered worthy of participating in the Battle — or at least in bouts at the Arena.
A student. Right. I didn't have one. I spread my hands, guilty, and told him to go — to Okinawa.
As it turned out, the Reds had already visited Yui Creed, as Head of the Shindo-ryu School. And while his students didn't participate in the Battle itself, they were frequent guests at the Arena.
Well, damn. Shut out from that angle too. And yet — where was I supposed to find a student? Not even for the Battle at this point — I'd get to that myself, some other time. No, a student for my own sake. For harmony. For the gratification of my ego. And to pass on the accumulated weight of everything I'd learned.
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The 1980 Olympics. It arrived before my nervous breakdown did — barely. The relay of the Olympic flame, the opening ceremony, the lighting of the torch, songs, dances, anthems. A magnificent spectacle. And I had no time to enjoy any of it — I was running around like a broken broom: this wasn't ready, that wasn't finished, meet this person, find lodging for that one, discuss this, negotiate that. An absolute nightmare.
And then came the first bout for a contact athlete from our team.
Honestly — I had not been as nervous standing in the front rank of that square formation before the first assault on the British as I was sitting in the front row of the stands right beside the ring. When Schmidt came at me with a syringe and the Tesseract, I hadn't been as frightened as I was in the moment the referee sprinted toward a body lying on the canvas.
The fight itself had lasted all of one second — our athlete simply drove one short punch to his opponent's head, and the man went down. Crumpled and settled onto the floor.
The relief when they called out "he's alive" — I thought I was going to finish. Or finish myself off.
And it was like that, so help me Zen, every single time. Every appearance by every member of our team. Throughout the entire competition. The entire Olympics. The entire Zen of it.
By the third of August, when the Olympic bear finally floated up over the packed stadium and the Soviet choir sent it off with their farewell — I had nothing left. No moral strength, no physical strength. None whatsoever.
I drove to the Federation sports complex, made it to my office, picked up a blank sheet of paper and the first pen I could find, and wrote the following:
upper right corner
To: Comrade Stalin, I.V.
From: Creed, V.I.
centered below
Statement:
I am done. I quit.
lower left, beneath the text
03.08.1980 (signature) Creed, V.I.
I pressed the sheet into Natasha's hands — she had no idea what was happening — then gathered my things into a sports bag, and jumped to Kamar-Taj, where I literally collapsed onto the floor of Suo's room and blacked out the moment my eyes closed.
The dream, though, was strange. I was watching my own body from above again. From somewhere higher still, light poured down — bright, warm, pleasant, with a faint tingle to it. It passed through "me" and fell onto my body below. It poured and poured, and beneath its influence, something was forming inside that body — being copied into it, as if — another "me." Different, yet absolutely identical in every way. A complete astral, mental, ethereal, or whatever-you-want-to-call-it copy. Perfect and absolute, carrying all my knowledge, all my skills, all my habits, my personality, my essence. And this other "me" began to take root in the body, to merge with it, to settle into it — while the thin silver thread connecting "me" to the body I had left behind grew thinner, and thinner, and began to dissolve. Something was pulling at "me," sweeping me away somewhere.
Then the light vanished.
No. That won't do. I had already abandoned my body once, and I had no intention of doing it again. With every ounce of force "I" had, I threw myself back into my body, driving the other "me" out with a sharp, powerful blow. A flash of white, and I opened my eyes, snapping upright to a sitting position. I patted myself down quickly, jumped to my feet, bounced on my heels, ran through a short high-speed shadow boxing combination, then dropped my hands and exhaled with relief. After which I collapsed back down onto the warm, soft floor of Suo's room.
The door opened at that exact moment and she walked in herself. I beckoned her over, patted the floor beside me with my palm, and gave her a sly wink. She smiled back and lay down with me. What followed — vigorous, prolonged, and entirely matrimonial — was enough to knock the remnants of that ridiculous dream clean out of my head.
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