"How do you do that?" he whispered. "Practice," she said quietly, and kept her eyes forward. When they moved into basic punches and blocks, the children around her threw their arms out with the enthusiastic, imprecise energy of kids who were still learning to coordinate the movement. Nia's strikes were short, clean, and snapped through the air with a sound that drew Ben's head around again.
He stared at her. She didn't look back.
Earl Harris finished mopping the back corridor and returned to the main hall, running a dry cloth along the window ledges, staying near enough to keep the side mat in his line of sight. They'd moved on to kata by now. Dylan stood at the front of the group and walked them through the opening sequence of the most basic form, a simple pattern of blocks and strikes and steps that most beginners stumble through several times before the shapes start to feel natural. Most of the children did stumble through it.
Dylan demonstrated the first few moves, then walked the group forward one step at a time, correcting, repositioning, encouraging. Nia didn't need the corrections. She moved through the kata the way water moves, continuously connected, each movement flowing out of the one before it. Her weight shifted with absolute precision.
Her stances were deep and stable. Her blocks snapped into position with a crispness that was almost startling in the context of the small, bouncing group around her. When she pivoted into the second series of strikes, the movement was so clean and compact that Harris stopped what he was doing entirely. He set down his cloth.
He had seen kata performed at every level, from first-week beginners to national competitors. What he was watching now was not beginner kata. The girl moved like someone who had done this particular form so many times that the shape of it lived in her body, not just in her memory. The timing was internally metered, not dependent on watching Dylan.
The strikes made noise, actual noise, the kind of short, sharp report that comes from a strike with real energy behind it. He had not expected this.
On the main mat, Ethan Cole glanced over. He was mid-drill with Ryan, working on combination attacks. He looked toward the beginner group without pausing his drill, caught a glimpse of the small girl in the worn blue GI moving through her form, and rolled his eyes. "You see that?" he said to Ryan.
"They're teaching the babies their first kata over there." Ryan laughed. "Iron Gate Academy, where champions train and toddlers do ballet." Ethan looked over again, and his eyes caught something just a fraction of a second of it, something sharp and fluid in the girl's movement.
Something that didn't quite match his comment. He looked away before he could settle on what it was.