"Alright, let's begin your training process. First, I'll ask you to demonstrate your powers."

"Ooo, ooo! Pick me! Pick me!" Without waiting for confirmation, Ariel rushed to take center stage in front of Masamba. She showed him that her bubbles were capable of being big or small, rubbery or easily popped, and reached her limit on how many she could create, which was enough to make a shell of bubbles probably ten feet around her.

Buddy was next, and he demonstrated both use of the hair on his body and the ability to disassemble his shirt into a weapon, making it take the shape of a staff, which disgusted Ariel and made her turn away.m

That's going to be an obstacle in our teamwork.

Last up was me, and after I explained that I had no powers, which didn't seem to surprise our instructor at all, I was instructed to go over to a cupboard and pick out a weapon from inside. I opened it up, and naturally went for the coolest thing there: a scythe. I couldn't pick it up though, so I gave up on it and chose a sword instead. I couldn't pick that up either. "What gives, I could've at least held this on Earth!"

"Remember, you have the strength of 0.3 people, it's only natural." Masamba flexed in a completely ironic display. "Your strength is determined by your soul, not your muscles." Another cheesy smile and thumbs up broke out.

Completely defeated, I ended up settling for a knife, which was tough for me to swing around.

"Well, I guess that's all the information I need," said Masamba as he wrote down a few things in a notepad. "So what I can gather, Ariel's power is better for defense and Buddy's is more offensive. I'd recommend coming up with strategies based on that."

What, am I completely useless?

"Without a power and at your current strength, I'm not sure what to do with you Neuman, so you'll just have to wait back and see what happens. For now, though, I'd read some strategy books."

I'm completely useless...

"Time to begin the training. Do you guys all know the rules to One?"

Buddy and I affirmed, but Ariel was completely clueless.

I guess that game wasn't around in her time.

"Allow me to explain," said Masamba. "The goal of the game is run out of cards. All players start with the same number of cards, and the rest are in the deck. A card is drawn from the deck and played. From there, you go around in a circle playing cards if you can. You can only play cards of the same number or the same color, and when you play a card it becomes the next card that can be played. If you can't play a card then you have to draw one. Also, in order to play your final card, you have to say 'one' on your turn that your hand becomes only one card. There are a few fun cards in there such as wildcards, draw twos, draw fours, and reverses."

Something was fishy, and my gut told me to fish it out quickly. "Ummm... Masamba? What does One have to do with training?"

"It is just a means Neuman. Now if you'll follow me..."

He lead us to an incredibly small room, told us to go inside, and gave us a deck of One cards. The room had but one light and hardly provided enough room for us all to sit comfortably. At least a small window imbedded in the door made it seem a little bit less enclosed.

"Better get comfortable, you'll be in here for the remainder of the training."

Our, even Ariel's, jaws dropped.

This time, Buddy was the sceptic. "W-what do you mean, 'for the remainder of the training'?! You expect us to get stronger by sitting in this room?!"

"Oh no no no, I don't expect you all to get stronger. I just expect Neuman to get stronger."

"EH?!"

Why just me?!

"Yep. You other two meet our strength requirements. However, he does not, and since you guys are a team, I'm putting you all through the exercise. You all will stay in here until Neuman is able to open the door to this room and get out."

I walked over to the door, and found I was easily able to swing it open and closed. "I guess we pass?"

"Don't be so closed minded! I'm putting plenty of weights behind the door to make it hard for you to open."

So that's how it is. Wait a second... "I still have no idea how I'm going to get stronger like this."

"And you don't need to! Now all of you get in there!" He pushed us in, but not without a little resistance. "I'll be back in a week to check on you if you still haven't gotten out by then. Oh, and if any of you open it but Neuman you'll get kicked out of the Squadron before your first mission~" He closed the door, then for the next few minutes placed weight after weight in front of the door. Finally, he gave us his usual thumbs up through the almost covered window, and we were on our own. "Now then," said Masamba, "time to check on that other group."

-----

Ariel placed down a red five.

Neuman was at a decision making crossroad. I don't have any red cards, and I have a yellow five, but that's my only yellow. My other options are to draw a card or to land a draw four on Buddy. Judging by what's been played and the average deck, there should be seven cards left in the deck. Buddy has three cards, Ariel has two, and I have three. Lying in wait in their hands or the deck has to be the last draw four and a blue reverse card. Ideally, this round would set up for the next, and one of the cards that Buddy would have is the reverse.

Without knowing it, he was overloading himself with information and thinking too hard about a kid's game. Or was he? For the past few hours, or what felt like hours, the question of how playing this game would help him get stronger constantly plagued his mind, and he was drawing a blank. His decision was to take the game seriously, because why else would he give them it in the first place? Wasn't the goal to get stronger, and shouldn't the training to get there be serious as well? This was the only explanation, and thus he continued on.

I have to play a card that would either allow for the reverse to be played or set it up so that Ariel would play the reverse if she has it. No matter what I need to get this draw four onto Ariel, otherwise she is likely to win.

Neuman was overloading, and he finally realised it. Without thinking any further, he slammed down his yellow five. Buddy drew a card. Ariel played the other last draw four.

"And with this, my victory is secured!" shouted Ariel.

Neuman felt like crying. All that thinking time, wasted instantly...

-----

Several more hours, or was it at least a day at this point, passed by, mindlessly, incessantly playing One.

The amount of time taken was starting to worry Buddy. This is bad, this is bad! We're wasting too much time! I thought joining the Squadron was what we needed to catch the Passing Wind because of their intelligence network, but it's taking far too long! At this rate, he'll take another life.

In his mind, he was doing it not out of revenge, but out of a sense of justice. What he didn't realise was how struck to the soul he was with the death of his friend. Perhaps it was lack of experience, perhaps it was just being human. Regardless of this, his personality was slowly shifting towards a flash point. Berk didn't deserve to die, and knowing that it was simply to tear them apart for the pleasure of the killer made it all the worse. Perhaps even worse than that was the idea in the back of his mind: "I can do something about it." This was not a world where a gun could turn the weak to strong, where law would prevent him from balancing the scale. He was strong, and he could take revenge if he so desired. The alignment score should've been a red flag, but how could it? He doesn't know the ideals to which he was being compared to. There was also no way to know that he would've scored much higher before the incident.

An idea to the nature of this training finally came to mind. Is this maybe a variation of solitude training? Generally the point of putting someone in solitude is to punish them and to break their will, but those whose wills don't break generally come out stronger. But if that was the case, why are we here with him? Placing down his next card, he came to a possible solution. Could it be that the confinement is only a challenge to overcome? Could it be that the real nature of this training lies in the card game? Yes. One is known for being a card game that can easily end in anger. If that is why this game was chosen then the goal must be to rile Neuman up as much as possible, stopping just before the point where he wouldn't be able to take it anymore. In this small room the only possible outlets of the pent up energy would be to take it out on us, which I hope wouldn't happen, or to get out of the room. If Neuman can figure out for himself to contain these emotions instead of simply seeking a means to release them though, he could get much stronger.

Buddy thus resolved to purposely try to annoy Neuman by both normal means and by controlling the only means of entertainment at their disposal. He whispered his solution to Ariel, who understood, and, while she had doubts about the method, agreed to participate.

-----

Ariel reversed the direction, letting Buddy land the dreaded draw four on Neuman. Neuman was getting quite fed up with how he had only won seven games in the past hundred. Truly, it hurt Ariel to see Neuman struggling, but she knew what had to be done. She also saw the pain in Buddy's face, and she knew that it was better, although still terrible, to have Neuman deal with frustration for a little while than to have Buddy continue on like this.

"How bad can you be at a mostly luck based game Neuman? Are you purposely making the wrong decisions?" Ouch, thought Ariel, it feels bad to purposely push him so far.

Neuman glared at them. "I know you two are teaming up against me, so I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't say things like that." The anger was building up Neuman's face, but he was resisting.

Thank goodness he's doing so well though, we've been making obnoxious noises, working together to beat him, and just doing contrary to what he wants on everything for who knows how long, but that was the closest to lashing out that he's gotten. If I would have had to go through something like this instead of getting stronger over time I probably would've snapped and had the others struggling for air before I even realised what had happened. She smiled to herself. When this is all said and done, I'll have to be sure to explain myself and give him a big hug. Actually, when it all is said and done, we'll all need some comforting.

She looked at each of them and considered for a moment how fun their adventures would be later on. This was a fine group they had put together.

***

A/N: Hehehe. So some of the shows I watch/have watched (Naruto, Bleach, Hunter x Hunter) have crazy ways their characters get ridiculously strong in a short time, and they never seem to make complete sense. So what do I do? Parody it of course! This was my attempt at creating the most insane way a character could somewhat logically gain powers quickly :D Maybe you'll never look at Uno--I mean One the same way again :P