Chapter 5: That One Secret

Emily

Although today was quite fun it was a bit of a letdown that me and my team got our asses handed to us by the guy who I saved from getting beaten to a pulp, but It was okay plenty of chances to prove myself. I was in my corner of the room studying and going over a bunch of work when John walked in, he looked quite frankly like shit, you could tell he was exhausted and out of energy. He just kind of fell on his bed and basically passed out. “Long day?” I called out to him, he rolled over lazily addressing me, “Captain made me a leader, and he wanted me to be more informed and trained in order to be so, I have been training in the war rooms all afternoon. But damn am I going to kick ass next battle. Yours and everyone else’s starts tomorrow.” He basically went back to bed after than even though it wasn’t even time for dinner yet, I then thought about if I was going to be a leader as well, or if my performance today had demoted me within the team, I wouldn’t mind as I am not ready nor not interested in leading, John would make a good leader, he has all the social pieces needed to be one, he just had to be able to put it together. He spoke again half asleep “I Did learn something important today.” He then chuckled “Your name is Emily” we both chuckled, I was always a very private and quiet person and it would make sense that someone of his upfront social style would want to pry, “Yep now you just have to figure out my last name” he then sighed loudly and exclaimed “Ahhhh Fuck!” someone walked in and started yelling “Hey, watch your language!” he shot up as if he was never asleep and then sighed in frustration and slung himself back into the bed once he realised who it was, “Look as much as I love you for getting me out of jail I really am too damn tried to deal with you droning on about whatever your about to.” I don’t think he realised what the hell he was doing, he was disrespecting a commander of our factions army “Mr Dodd I need you to show me some respect or I will have to repeal you from my employment and sent you back to the super sticky spot you were in.” for such a large threat he seemed unphased “look, I think I paid my debt after all the information I gave you, I did you many, many favours, so don’t try to threaten me.” John had now broken his none caring persona, he was being serious, and he looked as if he was getting mad. I decided to step in, I didn’t want him getting his stupid self kicked out just as he was getting himself some success. “What did he do for you?” I acted nosey in order to distract him from the stance that john just took against him, “Nothing that’s of any importance of you, and if you ask again, I’ll get you iced.” He then did the commander equivalent of storming out without even giving the desired information to John. he turned to me “thanks for that, guy has been hanging himself over me ever since he bailed me out of prison, but I did pay him back way more than he ever could me.” I wondered what he did, I knew from the commander that he was under his employment but what did he do for him that was so beneficial? “What did you do for him?” he looked uncomfortable at the prospect of me knowing. “Legally I can’t say, and you would probably hate if I did.” He said it light-heartedly as if he was joking, but there was some truth buried in it “I already hate you so what does it matter?” I said it with a cheeky grin, he chuckled and sighed. “Look I’ll tell you what you want to know if I get to know who you are, because you are so fucking mysterious.” He laughed at his own stupid sense of humour, but I agreed, I also agreed to keep it all a secret.

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John

I woke up still basically dead and out of energy, I was meant to just pass out super early but getting caught in a multi hour chat with a roommate kind of delays that, but I still had a job to do, I had to help my captain train some of the now less experienced fighters before next week’s battle. I killed my morning time before training starting the day, doing homework talking to teachers and such. But the time came where I went to the armoury next to the battle room and began discussing the training we will be doing with the Captain and Daniel the now replacement leader for Emily, we planned on learning our movement abilities and doing more complex weapon training, we wanted to blast ahead and push our guys past their limits, this would make these fighters much better, much sooner. All the other students showed up 15 minutes after we did, dead on time. They were swift in their set up and were battle ready in less than 3 minutes. The captain stepped up “Right John and Daniel will be running two teams’ practice, they have been training hard so they can help me teach you, I will be on the ground giving advice as you guy go. Split up into two groups and pick your leader, 9 in each” everyone scrambled into groups around us, but we sorted it out quick. “I hope you chose well because that’s your training group for the rest of your time here.”

We peeled off to the other sides of the map and the first thing I did was teach my group how to wall run. “Right so this is how you wall run, the first thing you need to do is focus on a wall you want to run or jump on. Then you run hard onto it, the suit picks up the rest, you just need to run like normal but on a slight angle that’s how you get up and down the wall.” I then demonstrated by running straight into the wall of the building and jumping onto it, the boosters activated, and I was running on an angle along the wall, gaining height as I ran along then jumping and boosting off it, then proceeding to land on the in the kneeling position with my weapon up, ready to fire. I then ordered everyone to find a wall and practice what I just did and come up with new ways to use movement in combat, at first everyone was sloppy, basically falling off the wall at some points and not being able to stick the landing. But as the 90 minutes of practice went along, they became efficient enough to clear the whole map basically without touching the ground, they also learn how to shoot targets whilst on the wall with a decent level of accuracy. During the session I also homed in and improved my skills along with them, after about an hour of constant training we stopped to do a 30-minute test match, where the objective was just to eliminate the other students. It was a free for all meaning that every troop was an enemy. For fairness sake me and Daniel stayed out of the conflict due to the fact that we were more well trained than everyone else, but during this initial battle one student struck me as the one to beat. He was ruthless and risk taking, he was precise and almost god like in the way he handled himself in combat. He had the same time training, yet he was so far ahead of everyone, I tapped the Captain on the shoulder. “Who is that guy there?” I asked him in genuine curiosity, he pulled up a list of student names and their respective photos, “That… is Benton Leaney, he is a prodigy in everything he gets his hands on, a natural born talent by the seems of it.” He wasn’t wrong he was leading the match 31:16 to the next most scored player. “He should be a leader, that kid is incredible for his time spent learning.” The Captain looked down with disappointment “I know he should, I already asked him during training, he had no interest in leading, said it wouldn’t be good for the team.” I continued to watch him demolish the other players until the time was up.