Date: 7/04/2013
It had been 2 and a half years since Kosuke and Izumi had arrived at the camp, however during that time they never saw each other once. Though still a child, through the intense training he endured, he had obtained an incredibly athletic build that was accompanied by a surprising growth spurt. Another thing he gained from the two years was a stronger mind. He learned and became proficient in four languages: English, Tagalog, Korean and Mandarin. He did his best to learn Russian from Anya but he couldn’t make any progress at all.
Roughly a year after being brought to the camp Kosuke’s memories partially returned but it wasn’t much, the only things that came back were the names of his parents but it was enough to bring tears to his eyes.
During the two years, more children were added to the Templar program and they became residents of the same house Kosuke was brought to; however, they were less receptive to their new situation. With the sudden increase of recruits, three separate squads were formed: Prima which consisted of the first 5, Jackals consisted of 10 children with more violent tendencies and the final one Fortress was made of another 20 children with more passive attitudes and couldn’t adapt properly to the violence.
On this day every member of the program was called to the common area which was a large space of grass where mercenaries would mingle with each other before getting a job to do. There was a makeshift stage placed in the middle of the common area with the head, Number 0 standing firm. All three Templar units gathered before him.
“Formation!”
Number 0’s voice bellowed through the children who immediately neatly formed into their factions
“CHILDREN! TODAY YOU WILL GRADUATE AND START YOUR TRUE MISSION IN SERVING THIS CAMP!”
“YES SIR!”
They all yelled in unison
“REPEAT YOU OATH!”
“OUR BODY IS OUR TEMPLE! OUR STRENGTH IS OUR KNIGHT! OUR GODS ARE OUR MINDS!”
“LOUDER!”
“OUR BODY IS OUR TEMPLE! OUR STRENGTH IS OUR KNIGHT! OUR GODS ARE OUR MINDS!”
“WELCOME TO OUR CAMP AS THE FIRST INITIATE TEMPLARS!”
The children erupted hearing their praise from Number 0
“Now go to the warehouse! You will all be fitted with new equipment and weaponry, you’ll be entering the field soon enough.”
They all did as instructed and headed over to the warehouse for their new equipment, on the way over Jiwoo was talking with Kosuke
“Have you decided on the god of your mind yet?”
Kosuke still had the same expressionless face as before
“No, have you?”
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“Yep! The god of my mind is the God of Freedom.”
“I see… it’s a fitting choice, have you thought of a name?”
“I was thinking of… mmm… Hino!”
“But that’s my name?”
“I know but I like it.”
“I don’t get girls.”
“And you never will.”
Anya leaned over to Kosuke
“You better decide on the god you will represent soon Kosuke, you know it’ll be important to how you’ll be trained more in the future.”
Kosuke just huffed before answering
“Fine, just give me a second.”
While Kosuke thought Mercy decided to chime in
“Oh man, Kosuke trying to think of a good name? This won’t be good.”
He just glared at her
“Ok I got it.”
Jiwoo, Anya and Mercy all braced for impact and thinking of all the terrible names Kosuke might pick
“Hasu (蓮).”
At this point Joey also joined in the conversation albeit a bit late
“That’s a good name Kosuke, gotta say I’m surprised given your track record. So what’s it mean?”
“It means lotus in Japanese although in my context it’s ‘Sacred Lotus’.”
Jiwoo spoke up again
“I like it, the name kinda reflects in your eyes, the right green one is the lily and the left blue one is the water the lily came from.”
“Thanks Jiwoo but it has nothing to do with my eyes, it’s actually related to my name.”
“Kosuke?”
“No, my family name Hino (日野), apparently it means ‘Sun Field’ and the Lotus is connected to the sunrise.”
The other 4 kept walking while stunned, they didn’t expect such a deep answer to something they thought was simple but were impressed regardless. Though the silence was left for too long so none of them responded out of awkwardness and the rest of the walk was quiet.
…
As they arrived at the weapons warehouse, its layout was strangely altered in a way where all weapons and equipment were laid across a long line of interconnected tables. None of the children from any of the squads saw such a variety as none had been granted access to the warehouse before and needless to say, they were quite excited.
Behind the tables were strange people varying in size and covered head to toe in custom stealth equipment, with a dark cloak over the top that concealed them completely and effectively hiding their identities. These people conversed with the initiated templars and gave them information on the different equipment, however even conversation with these people was odd as their masks, which seemed to resemble a Bungisngis, had a voice filter.
As Kosuke was browsing the weapons he spotted a syringe filled with a metallic liquid laying there unnoticed by everyone else and so he picked it up and asked the cloaked figure in front of him
“Explain this.”
“Yes, this syringe is filled with the chemical compound NaK or sodium-potassium alloy, it’s incredibly reactive to water and will catch fire when exposed to air however that only occurs once it’s reacted with a water-like substance first.”
Kosuke examined it some more thinking there’s something else to it
“Is that all it does?”
“No, it can be used as an incredibly powerful weapon that ensures an instant win once injected into the target.”
This peaked Kosuke’s interest
“Interesting, but why is it so deadly?”
“If the alloy is injected into the body there will be an immediate reaction between the chemical and blood, this will form sodium-hydroxide and potassium-hydroxide essentially burning your target from the inside out, bear in mind this will cause them extreme suffering.”
Kosuke decided to collect it as one of his weapons and continued browsing for others, before stopping to look at the equipment in front of another figure who was rather small, just a few inches below Kosuke’s height making them around 4”11 to 5”0 tall.
“Hello, Izumi.”