“Smaller knives are clearly better, to an extent.” I say.

“Yeah, but like, you’re clearly at a disadvantage if someone with a longer knife slashes at you,” replies Isabella.

I don’t know how it started, but after we got back to our rooms after the icebreaker, me and Isabella just started arguing over knives once I tried organising my knives. Of course, that Emma girl just sits on her bed listening.

“Think about it. If you’re really gonna use a knife in a fight, you keep it concealed ‘till you’re up close. Then you stab. With a longer knife, stabbing can be harder.” I try to tell Isabella.

“You can brandish a weapon and still be ready to use it, you know. Like how police officers threaten with their rifles before firing, usually.” She counters.

“Yeah, but in a street fight you aren’t a police officer. There’s no rules of engagement, you just try and get rid of the other guy before you get injured too badly.”

“Uh… I think we’re meant to be outside by now,” interrupts that other girl, Emma. She’s probably right too, they said to be back in five minutes. Something about uniforms…

Uniforms, I’d say, is the final thing until I can finally accept the gravity of what I’ve got myself into. If I can even do that.

Weird thing with me, I can never really truly grasp the severity of stuff that’s happened. I just adapt, and accept it for what it is.

Unhealthy, but who cares?

Walking outside with the other two, they’ve shoved boxes upon boxes of clothes against the wall of central point. There’s only eight of us, how many fucking pairs of clothes do we need?

“Oi, you three.” Says a woman I don’t recognise. Obviously, my eyes instantly go to her rankslide.

Warrant officer? I forget the difference between the classes, but she’s obviously a big shot here.

“Look through the boxes for shit your size. You need two pairs of MTP shirts and trousers, and a couple olive shirts. Then just find a pair of boots your size. Oh, you also need some black cargoes and a combat shirt from over there.” She points to another group of boxes, this one filled with black clothes. No regular clothes, nice! Just army uniform, and what I can only assume to be just blackout clothes. Why even bother with blackouts?

Either way, I don’t care. Clothes are clothes.

What size even am I?

Usually I wear a medium sized shirt, but those are really loose (better in my opinion), but small would probably be better. I think my waist is 28 inches, but I havent measured in quite a long time.

Thankfully my exact sizes are at the fucking top of each box. How nice.

“Forgot to say,” that woman speaks up again. “Get changed and come outside. We’ve got something planned.”

Lovely, finally some shit to do.

Leaving the other girls behind (who are still rifling through the boxes looking for their sizes), I get back into our room. This room has a weird smell, for some reason. Nothing unpleasant, just unique. So do the cabinets, actually. I think it’s just something reacting with the sunlight, or whatever.

Anyways, this cabinet is finally useful. Somewhere to put these damn blackouts before whatever we’re gonna use them for happens. The blackout shirt is odd, though.

It’s similar to the MTP shirts given, with the fact that on the arm it has a patch that says “REMSC” on it, but instead of a coat of arms or whatever, it just has the numbers 22 and the bottom left corner is shaded in purple. Nice.

Otherwise, the MTPs are just regular MTPs. The shirt arm patches have the UK flag on the left, and the REMSC emblem thing (how is a circle with 2 lines through it a proper emblem) sewn on right.

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Getting into it, it's not bad. The olive undershirt is a bit tight, but considering I used to wear a chest binder (long story), it’s nothing I can’t get used to. I’m gonna stick to wearing my own boots though, the ones I took are about as soft as rock on the inside.

While I was busy examining and hanging all my shit, the other two girls came in too, and got changed. How convenient.

Everyone else is, somehow once again, already outside, in their new fits. They’re surprisingly more social too, already got their arms around each other.

It baffles me how fast boys can get together, sometimes.

“Is that everyone?” Shouts Lieutenant Hood.

Considering there’s eight of us collected here, I’d fucking say so, you blind bastard. After a couple look-arounds and murmuring, he speaks again.

“Welcome, once again, to your new life. This’ll just be a quick rundown of what you should expect:

Your training will be stupidly quick, here, since we pack everything in. We spend a week on the military side of it, fieldcraft, tactics, weapons. Mostly stuff that’ll actually be used in practice. We try to refrain from drill.” Drill? What, a literal drill? “We spend another week on the more policing side of it. You won’t be expected to learn all of the shit they teach at that college of policing in this time, but the essentials for our purposes. Person protection, raiding, hostage rescue. All the movie shit.” Oh, so now along with being a soldier, I’m a fed? That’s nice, may as well feature me in an episode of “24h in police custody”, if they even still run that. “There’s an assault course right now, and then you’ll be in the classrooms learning about your best friends from here on, your service rifles.” Ooh, guns.

Lieutenant Hood gestures for us to follow him as he starts walking away, down the road. Guess I better get used to walking. I read somewhere on reddit (is reddit like short for “read it” or something?) that soldiers do something like 30k steps a day, minimum. I used to average 15k a day, so that’ll be something.

I try to lag behind, along with Isabella and Emma (i only now realised that their names kinda match, isab-ella and emma).

“Assault course, you know.” I say to them

“What do I know? I know that I’ll fucking thrash you racing you on it.” Isabella replies.

“Try me, bitch.”

“I will.”

“Your laces are untied,” pipes up Emma, pointing to Isabella’s laces.

“You’re gonna beat me with your fucking boots untied? Let’s see it.” I mock her.

We turn left after walking down a bit, and there’s these 4 massive buildings on our right. And what I can assume to be the assault course further onto the grass to the right, too.

“Alright, listen up,” shouts Lieutenant Hood, finally bringing us to a stop at the front of the assault course. It is longer than I thought. “You’ll all be on this in a minute. You will be timed, and if your time isn’t good enough, expect a whole fucking world of pain during PT. Don’t cut yourself on the barbed wire, don’t fall, and don’t cry. Now line up at the front…”

“Mong.”

Barbed wire? Why are they just sending us into this like it's nothing? We’re still just a bunch of fucking kids, at the end of the day…

“You ready?” I ask Isabella, positioning myself at the white line at the start of the course. Looking ahead, it’s real intimidating. First its a net we need to climb, followed by monkey bars above some pool of muddy water. There’s then a trench with barbed wire above it, a high wall, some balance beams and finally just some tires on the floor. How can I even see that far? I’m just too good.

“Ready?” Hood shouts. “No? Good, start now.”

Despite never having done an assault course before, I know from the start that I can beat Isabella. Maybe my ego is just big.

The net is a bit painful to climb up, but I've already got a lead on her (thanks to the fact im tiny). Her face is screwed up in concentration as she tries to untangle her feet from the net. Everyone else is somehow behind her, too. How did these motherfuckers get invited into here, being so shit at this?

Doesn’t matter, I’m determined to win.

Monkey bars are easy, I remember in some trampoline park called “Orbital”, I’d always go to the monkey bars there. Don’t know why they had some, but it’s definitely useful now. Kinda freaky hanging over a pool of muddy water, though, despite it sounding mild. Dropping down from the monkey bars, Isabella is only now reaching the bars, with everyone else lagging behind. What nikame.

I’m quite thankful the dirt is dry today, with all the being-right-on-the-fucking-ground. The barbed wire above me is different from the ones I usually see, too. Instead of little spikes every few inches, it's just a consistent line of razor blades. Bet someone will get injured on those.

As I push myself off the floor, I only now realise how tall the highwall is. I’m what, 165cm? This is something like 2 meters.

Obviously, I do the logical thing and try to climb on by jumping.

By what I can only assume to be either my immense skill, or an act of god, I somehow manage to reach the ledge of the wall, and quickly pull myself up. Behind me, everyone has only now reached the trench crawl. Get good.

After taking another fall from the highwall, the last thing is just tires. Hopping through them isn’t that hard (ok its a bit hard theyre so far apart), and that’s it.

Some assault course.

“Good fucking job, Hussain.” Says Lieutenant Hood, coming up towards me. “1:24, possibly a fucking record for basics here.”

Thanks for the ego fuel.

After what feels like an age, Isabella finally walks up next to me, panting.

“What were you saying about thrashing me?” I taunt her.

“Shut.. Up…” She barely manages to get out, somehow really out of breath.