EPISODE 2 - PART 1

- FIRST DAY -

[WHITE]

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The swing of a sword comes fast, cutting the air with force until it’s blocked, making a loud impact noise of wood.

“Just because you rookies passed the school exams or were invited to be in the main platoon by the elite…” Giles shouts on the corner of the training field. “It doesn’t mean you are off the hook! If you don’t train or study, you’re out!”

Fenik blocks another sword blow, Zack’s dripping sweat as he goes once more to a horizontal strike with speed, but gets stopped again. Fenik just moves a step back, with not even a drop of sweat.

“There’re a lot of people in the B team that would love to be in an official platoon, so NO SLACKING OFF!” Giles screams the last part especially to Larry, that is fighting in a slow and lazy pacing with Kyle, the youngest and shortest in the class, which has medium-short brown hair, with fear on his eyes.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” Kyle apologizes quietly backing a step almost dropping his sword by the panic.

Larry just scratches his hair with a grin.

Then another strong impact comes from Fenik and Zack’s sparring.

Sixteen soldiers form a platoon, each platoon has four squads with four soldiers in each of them. It’s strategized that the platoon can work together, but it can be separated in each individual group and still be effective.

Every soldier on a platoon needs to know how to work in a team, being it the platoon or its designed squad, or when needed, alone.

The academy’s a governmental institution to train young people to become good soldiers, but it’s closer to a school than an actual military regime because the education has the purpose to build self-defense more than patriotism.

In Windcut, every citizen needs to know at least the basics of combat and defense, so we can be prepared for any emergencies.

Still, they are not enough, everyone’s still too weak.

Another clash, followed by other two quick strikes, all of them are blocked, as Fenik just goes a step to the side. Zack goes back two steps, releasing one hand of the grip to take out the sweat off his eyes. Fenik’s starting to sweat, but nothing compared to any of the rookies.

Even Fritz, a tall and muscled guy with blond hair and a prince-looking face, is trying to catch his breath against Scott, a guy that looks always tired and with a black cap on his head, which has a wet texture on the sides of his dark-red hair, also deep breathing.

“That’s unfair!” Fritz’s voice fails to continue, needing to take an inbreathe to continue with anger in his eyes. “Two swords are against the rules.”

“The teach let me use them.” Scott’s heavy breathing makes his voice sound less lazy than normal. “So, no complaining.”

Giles listens to that with a disapproval look, crossing his arms. He thought Scott was just doing that to look cool, but he’s actually managing to go against a kid that already looks like having the best physical shape for a soldier.

Fritz goes to another attack, but over the wooden blade of Scott’s left hand, in a reverse grip, he is able to slide the attack off, while he trusts the right-hand sword below the second’s blade and his wrist, in the direction of Fritz’s head.

For Fritz, the sword is just a small light brown point below Scott’s hand, that gets bigger and bigger. It was so fast that the only thing he could do was to bend his entire body and head to evade the attack. He goes back and reflects it away with his sword.

Another drop goes to the ground, making the pavement darker.

“If… I had… A bigger sword…” Fritz speaks looking to Scott, that is also snorting with tiredness.

“But… that… would be unfair.” Scott answers.

“Dumbass! You’re the one with two swords!” Fritz complains pointing his sword forward.

“Just go and take one more,” Scott says in a tired tone. “If you’re so annoyed by it…”

Fritz growls with anger. “All right, Teacher! Give me one more sword.”

“WHO THE HELL DID YOU SPOKEN TO?!” Giles shouts, not moving an inch.

Fritz got confused for a second, but then realizes, going to a straight position, hands close to his body, and facing Giles.

“Captain! Sir, permission to have one more sword!?”

“Do you really think that would help you, rookie?” Giles asks in an aggressive intonation.

Fritz hesitates for a second.

“Sir, I want to try it!”

Giles sighs and nods in affirmation. One more to the two long sword style, what this academy’s transforming to?

Fritz goes to near the chain-link fence, taking one of the dropped extra swords. He feels the double sword style weird to grip. He never was trained or even seen someone with it besides Scott, so just the fact of having both of them like that seemed wrong.

“All right! Game on!” He grins going back and getting ready.

But he suddenly realizes that he was having an instance of his old combat posture, so he fixed it trying to copy Scott’s.

Scott puts the tip of his swords to the ground slowly, bending his body slightly forward, marking to be ready for the sparring round. Fritz hesitantly rests the tip of the wooden weapons on the floor as well. Whatever, in the instant the tip of the second sword reached the floor, making a wooden muffled sound, Scott moves forward fast, dragging his swords on the rough pavement.

Fritz goes two steps back, raising his weapons in a defensive position, but quickly notices, that he doesn’t know what to do with either swords.

A quick swing comes from his right, Fritz reflects it, just like Scott did the last round, but in normal grip, sliding it to the side, making the sword fly away, Fritz was much stronger and bigger than Scott, but a strong loud noise blast from his other side, right on Fritz's ribs, followed by an enormous scattered pain.

Scott’s right sword was sunk on Fritz’s left side. It was so strong that it must have broken one or two ribs. It doesn’t appear to, but Scott was stronger and faster than he looks.

Fritz, Giles and some other rookies that stopped to watch understood, that Scott’s strike had a good technique in it, and the most important part:

It was merciless, with no worry to hurt his adversary. The entire look of Scott was of a lazy and tired guy, but surely, he wasn’t weak.

“Oh, sorry about that,” Scott says tiredly and slowly, with a more imponent voice, or maybe it looked that way just because of what just happened.

Scott goes to grab his sword that went flying, not looking back.

Fritz kneel, putting his hand on where he got hit, he can feel all his nervous system as tiny roots scattered from where he got hit, burning in pain.

The protective white uniform stopped about half of the impact, Fritz certainly would be dead if not wearing it, even by the blow of a miserable wooden sword.

“Alright, didn’t need to do that hard, Scott,” Giles says more seriously.

“Huh?” He looks to Fritz, understanding what he meant.

Before, Scott wasn’t even paying much attention, to be honest. He was in some automatic mode, just waiting for the class to finish so he could get some rest.

Scott didn’t like to fight, but he was trained early on life by his father, one of the best swordsmen on the military, not that it meant much, swords on Scott’s conception were mostly useless, they could easily be overrun by anti-personnel weaponry, and didn’t do much against SAE.

Seeing what he has done there was like someone slapped Scott on the face, his eyes got dominated by preoccupation and guilt.

“Damn…” Scott look to the captain. “I didn’t mean to…”

He starts to go to Fritz in slow and uncertain steps, going to help him, but he gets up on his own.

“That was a good fight!” Fritz proudly announces. “But I just lost because you got me on the surprise.”

Fritz starts to laugh, but coughs stop him, making the pain worse. Everyone has stopped their training.

“I wasn’t thinking…” Scott says in a serious tone straightening his cap. “I’m really sorry about that.”

“What you talking about?” Fritz takes his hand off the wound, showing the white fabric stained with blood. “You played seriously, and I like that!”

“Scott, go with him to the infirmary, they can handle it.” Giles points where they need to go, before turning to the rest of the class. “C’MON ROOKIES, NO STOPPING UNTIL I SAY SO, MOVE IT! ON THE DOUBLE!”

Zack tries to touch the tip of the wooden sword in a slow sneaky attack on Fenik’s back-side, but in a quick swing, the sword is sent flying to the fence, it’s almost like Fenik had eyes on the back of his head.

“What the hell! I can’t touch you!” Zack complains in disbelief.

‘These kids…’ Giles starts to think.

This surely is a strange class, they look weak, but some have their sword skills above the normal.

‘Fenik Blade, his silver hair is undoubtedly the strong mark of the Blade family, one of the most elite families in Windcut. He probably had intense training since he was about 3-years-old, that would explain his closed and methodical personality, and his skills.’

Another attack is blocked by Fenik, showing Zack relentless attacks.

‘Zack Crowder, he passed as the highest scores on his previous school, even by being outclassed by his adversary, he isn’t a kid to be underestimated.’

Giles looks to the pair behind Zack, the first one is a red-haired girl, holding her sword with both hands, but in an unconfident way.

‘Ray Crowder, she just barely made it to the platoon unit, one less point and she would go to the B team. She doesn’t look like her brother, both in skill or personality, but he surely has some influence.’

“I don’t know how to do this!” Ray’s partner whines, looking confusedly to her sword for the right way to have a grip. She has long straight black hair, and always uses a dark beanie with cat ears in it.

‘Kattie Gekko, her long hair nearly breaks the academy’s regulations. She looks clumsy, but she only got to the platoon because she had the highest score in combat on the entirety of her school’s history. Maybe she’s faking it, or wanting to look weak to make friends? I need to recheck her information later.’

“So, we start now? I don’t know.” Larry, the one with orange hair, asks unclearly.

‘Lawrence Mcintosh, his scores weren’t that good, but he got in by being a member of an elite family, let’s see if he can go through these two years on the academy.’

“Ahm… I don’t know… let me be ready, Okay?” The afraid little boy looks to his foot, his medium-sized light-brown hair goes to his eyes, making him fix it with his hand, but soon enough it goes back to his face.

‘Kyle Hynkel, he passed with a great distance by the knowledge tests, did pretty bad on the combat one though, I need to work him to shape.’

On the back middle, another group of girls is paired, one with a strong look to her eyes, which contrasts with her princess looking appearance with golden hair and green eyes.

‘Stella Torres, daughter of a political family, she surely didn’t need to be in here, but I guess that old man of a father of hers grown the idea on her head.’

Her partner blocks a slow diagonal swing, but it was sufficient for her to lose grip on the sword, dropping it on the ground. She has big pink hair, her eyes are of someone in the clouds, always lost in thought.

“Oh my, sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.” She says softly.

“It’s okay! You need to focus, alright? I’ll swing, and you block and counterattack. Just like this.” Stella swings her sword in a way that she almost hits herself in the face.

‘Penelope Collier, she’s the worst fighter in here, but she got in by her interpersonal and intelligence abilities. Another one that I need to look out for in my combat classes.’

A guy, with medium dark-purple hair, waves and giggles at Penelope, that smiles and waves back, making Stella even madder for her not paying attention.

‘Randy Wright, he had good enough skills to get in here, let’s just hope that those two lovebirds don’t disturb the rest of the class.’

“You cool, man? We have to fight, or our early scores won’t be high!” Randy’s adversary talks with no effect to a guy that looks both blind and deaf by love.

He has a blond slicked-back hair, and looks really pissed off by having Randy as a sparring partner.

‘Oskar Morris, even by being here only because of his elite pass, he surely does look like wanting to impress on the first day. Still, I don’t know why another political offspring is doing here.’

“C’mon! You almost got me, let’s try again!” A girl with long and dark-brown wavy hair has a confident grin on her face.

‘Tamara Covett, for what I remember, the Covett family is famous for being good medics, surely all teams need at least one of those.’

“I… I… OK.” A short girl with black-blue messy hair responds to Tamara, then she starts to mumble to herself methodically. “I need to put more torque on my elbow, or maybe if I did this… hm, no that won’t work…”

‘Nora Bartlett, the smartest in the class, maybe she’s going to be part of the next generation of scientific geniuses. She probably aimed for the main platoon unit to be able to go to Liberty on the graduation. Yeah, that would be a good strategy.’

Now Giles looks to the last pair, differently from the past ones, they are quiet, fighting for real, one’s waiting for the other to attack, then parry, counterattack and all over again. It’s a balanced match.

The closest boy has blue hair, his eyes are focused on the one in front of him, but constantly do quick searches on the ground and sides.

‘Vincent Gill, finally some promising soldiers, with focus and skill. But something about them is off, almost like they were trying this way too seriously than they should.’

The second one uses square glasses; he has black and half-behaved half-messy hair. He looks serious, with little effort he swings the sword to block and attack.

‘Tyler Woods, neither of those family names ring a bell, I might be mistaken, but I guess they both are from poor families, or at most a completely civil bunch. I wonder if they’re trying to prove themselves to the fortress here?’

Besides them, there’s the two on the infirmary:

‘Fritz Maximilian, the son of the past command general, retired from his position after the last incident. Perhaps he wants to look strong to increase the family name’s reputation again? Just don’t try too hard, kid.’

‘And Scott Pollard, I did hear about a member of the Pollard family being the head of a famous platoon, way before when there were missions to go outside to collect some of the creatures.

‘Luckily all of them are staying until the end, there’re a lot of important children this year. Actually, this is my first time taking so much elite offspring under my wings.’

Giles grins. ‘This might be just fun.’