Mika Yoshida's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Mika pushed open the door to the abandoned parking garage, her backpack heavy with printed diagrams and her phone loaded with training footage. She needed a space where no one would see her stumble through the sequence—not yet, not until she had it perfect. The concrete floor was dusty but flat. She set her bag against a support pillar and pulled out her phone. The seven-move sequence played on loop while she marked her starting position with a piece of chalk. She ran through it once, checking her footwork against the screen. Her pivot was too slow on move four. She reset and tried again. This time her weight shifted wrong on the defensive block. She tried a third time, then a fourth, adjusting each mistake until the movements flowed together. By the twentieth run, her arms burned and sweat dripped down her neck, but the sequence looked like it belonged to someone who knew what they were doing. She watched the playback on her phone and nodded. Good enough to fool someone who didn't know better.