Dear Diary,

Ow.

I have a sneaking suspicion which teacher had those two girls dragging themselves in after my door unlocked.

So the four of us made it to the Practice Yard well before any of the others; even before the big guy whose voice still echoed through the halls. I eyeballed which line of slabs was the center of the yard, lined my feet up on one edge, and slipped into parade rest as best I could remember from my ROTC training two years prior. The other three saw me do that, and out of the corner of my eye I saw them imitate me with varying degrees of success. I risked turning my head to check, since I still heard the big guy's voice coming from the entrances into the Practice Yard. I guess it said something that his voice came from more than one of them at a time. At any rate, I checked out the others. Angel had parade rest down. Saffron had her knees locked and Bill...

I hadn't gotten a really good look at Bill downstairs, I guess. 'Butterball' covered it pretty well. Still, he was trying. "Saffron, don't lock your knees. Bill, don't slouch. All three of you, toe the line."

I snapped my head back to the front just in time, as the big guy came through the entrance to our front left. Just after he did, the rumble of a small herd of students announced the arrival of the rest of the unassigned students behind us.

"Good Morning, my little wannabes!" His voice thundered through the space, and by the time the echoes stopped the tromping behind us had died down. "I am Marshall duBois. For my sins, I am in charge of both Physical Training, General Combat Training, and Specialized Physical Combat Training here at Phileo City Heroic Academy. I am also Phileo City's Marshall," I kept the surprise from my face, but it was hard. Marshall meant he was commander of the city's defense forces, and had a seat on the council. I wondered how that interacted with his teaching when the city had a 'declared war' on its hands. I blinked to clear my head, because he'd kept talking. "Since none of you have a schedule of classes as of yet, none of you have officially been accepted into Phileo City Heroic Academy. Since I didn't test you lot yesterday, I know you're all carpet munchers and simps. That doesn't mean a fucking thing to me, but if you fail to meet the minimum standards I'm looking for, not only will you have to crawl back to wherever you come from, but your patron Goddess will take it as a personal insult. Today I will be testing your physical aptitude, focusing on your Strength, your Endurance, and your Agility. Just to be clear, I will not be testing you to a limit set by the entrance requirements, but testing you to failure, because acceptance is based on an aggregate of your scores. Do you wannabes understand?"

Before the echoes of his voice fully dispersed, I shouted back, "Yes, Marshall!"

That's about when Saffron face-planted onto the stone paving in front of us.

The Marshall almost beat me to her. I had another reason to be thankful for my new body's lack of excretion, because someone that big moving that fast toward me made me want to piss myself. I ignored both the Marshall and the gawking batch of students, rolled Saffron over onto her back, and slapped at her face to wake her up. My hand got thoroughly coated in her blood from her split lip and bloody nose, but after the second more-or-less gentle slap, her eyes popped open and she scrambled to her feet. When she clung to me to get upright, I whispered, "I said don't lock your knees, idiot!" in her ear, then jumped back to my spot in the line, shoving one of the gawkers from behind us out of my spot to do so. Angel and Bill were already back in place, and Saffron made it back to parade rest in impressive time for someone who had passed out not sixty seconds before.

"Not good, wannabe. If you haven't got the Endurance to listen to my opening speech without fainting, you better be the Strongest, most Agile bitch ever to grace the halls of this Heroic Academy!"

I couldn't leave it like that. If I hadn't given in to my ROTC training, she wouldn't have been trying to maintain that position, and wouldn't have fallen over. Yeah, I told her not to lock her knees, but according to my old Drill Sergeant, at least one Cadet did that every year.

"Marshall! It isn't Saffron's fault she fell over, it's mine!"

My field of view now contained nothing but the top of Marshall duBois' chest and his jawline; I swear his voice blew my hair back like a gale. "Are you telling me you drained her Endurance out like some kind of vampire, Diaz?"

Oh, shit. He knew my name. "No, Marshall! I failed to emphasize that locking her knees while in Parade Rest could cause her to pass out!"

His next words weren't a parade ground shout, but a growl that I felt in my bowels. "You taking responsibility for her falling?"

"Yes, Marshall!"

I barely caught his nod, and he followed it with another shout, "Diaz! Ten laps, at a sprint! Now!" I jumped into a run before he finished the word 'laps', headed for the nearest wall. I made a right at the wall and broke into my best ground eating run, only to hear him shout, "I said sprint, Diaz!"

I sprinted. By the fifth lap, my lungs burned. By the eighth, my thighs ached. The whole time, the Marshall shouted something at the rest, but my ears were full of the pounding of my pulse and my own panting. At the end of the tenth lap, I slowed to a jogging run and did one more lap, after which I jogged back to my spot in the line. The Marshall stared at me as I did, then gave me a miniscule nod as I slipped back into a passable parade rest.

"Most Academies test Strength and Agility on separate days from Endurance to be fair to their Cadets. This fine Heroic Academy has done so on occasion in the past. I do not. Can any of you wannabes tell me why?" He paused, his eyes raking across the lot of us.

I glanced to the side, meeting the eyes of the other three, who looked back to me with grins as wry as my own. Our hands shot up almost in sync, and the Marshall raised one eyebrow.

"What is it, wannabes?"

The four of us managed a passable shouted chorus of, "The world isn't fucking fair, Marshall!"

Marshall duBois threw his head back and laughed, the sound as loud as anything he'd said today. "Got it in one, Ca... wannabes. Worse, it's the job of Heroes to dive in where the world is least fair AND MAKE IT FAIR!" His last four words literally shook the ground beneath our feet. Not a lot, but enough to make me glad parade rest lowered my center of gravity just a little and made it easy to keep standing upright.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Okay now, as I call for your names, you do what you saw Diaz do, except you do not stop until I tell you to. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Marshall!" we all shouted, even the gaggle behind the four of us.

"Aetos!" To her credit, Saffron didn't hesitate. She bolted for the wall and ran. I winced as she stumbled at the end of her first lap, but the Marshall didn't stop her. By the end of her third, she wasn't sprinting by any measure, but he didn't call her on it. Right around then, he had some of the gaggle head to one of the sheds for some equipment. By the time she jogged through her fifth lap, the rest of us had set up a simple obstacle course and a few weight stations; bench press, squat, and a weird primitive leg press sled.

I lost track of Saffron when the Marshall called me over to the bench press and had me start lifting. Five reps, add weight, rinse and repeat. The Marshall started me at a hundred pounds, which I surprised myself by lifting, and added twenty five pounds each time I managed five reps. At two hundred, I managed two struggling reps before my arms noodled and the weight dropped toward my chest. The Marshall caught it with inches to spare, one handing it back in place before having me start doing squats. I failed at two twenty five there, and he caught me before my head hit the ground.

While I lifted my fourth set on the leg sled, stunning myself by pushing four hundred pounds with relative ease, everyone in the yard heard Saffron tumble to the ground. The Marshall moved across the Yard fast enough that I couldn't really track him, lifting Saffron by the scruff of her neck and filling the yard with his voice once more. "Aetos, twelve laps. Well run. Do some stretches and move over to the weight stations."

Then he was back, adding another set of weights to my sled. I managed to get up to seven hundred before I failed, and like before he caught the weight before it slid down and shoved my knees through my shoulders. "Good work, Diaz. Now get those wobbly legs on over to the obstacle course; you won't be judged on speed, but touch a light and you're out." While I tried to catch my breath enough to ask him what lights, he muttered something, waved a hand toward the course; some part of every obstacle glowed, not to mention two two meter strips of light on either side of the course.

As I headed for the course, he shouted, "Driver, laps, at a sprint!" he paused, then shouted again, "If that's your best sprint, you are a sorry excuse for a wannabe, let alone a cadet! Don't make me set the hounds on you, wannabe! Mac Conno! Bench Press!"

I'd never really had a chance to recover from the sprint, and I'd just finished pushing most of my core to failure, so I wobbled a lot on the obstacle course, I totally cheated on the hurdles, crouching and passing under them instead of leaping over them, but I guess the Marshall was too busy spotting for Angel. I leapt onto the climbing net, avoiding the meter wide stripe of light at its base. Climbing up and over wasn't fun, but the strip of light at the base of the net on the far side had me a little stumped. Eventually I just rocked back and forth about ten feet up and pushed off, curling into a ball and rolling as I landed. That hurt like a bitch, and I think I heard something crack when my arm hit the ground, but I made it back to my feet and kept moving. With the Marshall distracted by spotting Angel, I just crawled across the logs rather than risk losing my balance. Everything else was more or less easy if I wasn't trying to race, which I wasn't. I managed two laps through before I failed to get enough distance coming down the net and tagged the light at the bottom.

An ear splitting siren sounded for about half a second, and all the lights went out.

"Not bad, Diaz. Mac Conno, obstacle course! Aetos! Bench press!"

The day continued in that vein; while he had the group my brain had already labeled 'the ROTC crew' go through everything first, he worked his way through everyone eventually. While I rested, standing at ease while I did so, I got a look at the rest of our group; fewer than I initially thought from the thunder of boots behind us. Twelve kids, at a guess ranging from around early teens to one guy in his early twenties. A few of the guys outdid me on the bench press, but that didn't surprise me. Equality aside, guys tend to have more raw muscle mass in the upper torso.

By the time the sun stood directly overhead, he'd finished with about two thirds of the testing. "All wannabes who have finished testing, fall out to the Dining Hall for lunch, then you've got the afternoon off, report to the Library after breakfast tomorrow."

When I turned to go, he barked out, "DIAZ!"

I spun, landing in a parade rest facing him, "Yes, Marshall!"

I'd never seen someone grin quite so evilly before. "You stay. You haven't done your Endurance testing yet."

What else could I say? "Yes, Marshall!"

Eventually, about halfway through the afternoon, the last applicant finished her laps, collapsing to the ground. "Diaz! You know the drill!"

Nodding, I lit out for the edge of the Yard, pushing myself to a sprint before he could yell at me to do so. I managed about thirteen laps before I couldn't keep kicking and dropped into a run. My legs burned, and my lungs ached, but I refused to quit; if everybody else went until they fell over, I could too. Somewhere around two dozen laps I lost count, and I couldn't keep the sweat out of my eyes well enough to really pay attention to anything other than putting one foot in front of the other and turning before I slammed into a wall. I'm not sure how long I'd run before duBois' voice filled my world, screaming, "Diaz! Sprint!"

I amazed myself by breaking back into a full sprint, shaking my head to clear the sweat from my eyes. After my second bouncing turn, I looked around and realized the courtyard was empty except for the Marshall and I. He stood at the center of the Yard, rotating in place to watch me as I sprinted around the edge of the yard. After half a dozen laps I couldn't keep it up, and almost fell as I staggered into a jogging run. He didn't say anything, and I kept running, lap after lap after lap. Every now and then he barked me back into a sprint; after the fourth or fifth time I only managed a single lap, but I still managed that much. As the afternoon stretched on into evening, and one end of the Yard fell into shadow broken by those camp lights, he moved to jog alongside me. I felt his gaze rake across me, and he asked, "Diaz, are you using any enhancement Spells?"

"No, Marshall," I managed to wheeze.

"Did anyone else use one on you?"

"Not... to the best... of my knowledge... Marshall," I panted. I wasn't about to collapse, but I couldn't stop panting long enough to form a full sentence in one breath.

He grunted and jogged back to the center of the courtyard. I kept running.

When the sky went dark, the oranges of sundown giving way to stars from one edge of the sky to another, he called, "Diaz! Front and center, at a sprint!"

I kicked into one final sprint, barely making it to him and settling into a parade rest before I collapsed. He stood there staring at me for at least a minute, muttering something about moon phases, glancing at the sky once or twice.

"You ever run a marathon before, Diaz?"

"No, Marshall," then, because I couldn't help myself, because I am, after all, an idiot, "ran from the police a couple times, ran from dogs and muggers and once a really freaky rabid squirrel, but never a marathon, sir."

Despite his professional-military-trainer scowl, that pulled a snort from him. "Congratulations then, wannabe. You managed twenty seven miles today. You missed Dinner, but if you hurry the kitchens might have something left over. Dismissed."

"Thank you, Marshall," I said, unable to work any kind of shout or enthusiasm into it before turning to stagger back toward my room. I discovered that girls were physically unable to enter the boy's dormitory when I got turned around and tried to stagger into it by mistake. It wasn't a hard wall, more like a magnetic field that pushed back more the further I went. Normally I'd be all about figuring that out, but tonight I was just too fuckin' tired. I was even too tired to hit the kitchens, instead I just trudged back to my room, rejoicing that I remembered what floor I lived on and didn't overshoot and have to climb back up.

Marie stood waiting outside my room, an old fashioned metal tub atop her cart.