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Chapter 8 The Trumpet

The next day, after the daily morning training, the trio sat at their usual spot during breakfast. Despite almost running a full marathon that morning, Zoe still felt sluggish from staying awake all of last night.

"Oh, Colson!" Zoe said suddenly, "Did you tell Ivy about the training tonight?"

"Oh gosh, that's today?" Colson groaned, still sore from his morning training.

Ivy perked up, "More training?"

"Well, " Zoe said, "once every two weeks or so, there are team scrimmage games or some type of physical or mental game. Capture the flag is tonight, I think. The Exam game...there's also death week, but that's something else."

Ivy's eyes lit up, "Capture the flag? I love games like that!"

Zoe smiled; she knew Ivy would get a kick out of hearing that. "We get some weapons and go into Highwood forest over there," she said, pointing out the window at the forest they went to the other day. "Each team chooses a place where they want to put their flag, and the other team attempts to capture it. There are obviously rules around weapon use, but if you don't maim, kill, or cut off anyone's limbs, you're in the clear. But it all depends on how the teams are picked."

"What do you mean?"

"If you're on the bad team, you'll get crushed. So you just need to hope to be on a good team."

"Huh," a thought popped into her head, making her smile; she cracked her knuckles looking at Zoe and Colson, "so who do you think would win if we were on opposite teams?" she asked playfully.

"Well, I know this forest inside and out pretty much. There'd be no contest, really," Zoe said, feigning confidence. 'Truthfully, though, it may be a coin toss. I feel like she'd absolutely murder me if we went against each other,' she thought.

"I could take you. Easily." Colson said matter of factly.

"As If! I'm gonna find the largest battle axe they have," Ivy mimicked a swing, "I think I'm gonna take your right arm first."

"Not gonna happen. You're just too slow."

"I'm faster than you!"

Colson laughed, "You really aren't."

"An axe to your leg will slow you down, then."

"Well, you're gonna be too slow to hit me. Also you're not gonna get one."

"Why can't I?" Ivy groaned.

"For one, they don't just have those lying around. You'd have to ask someone to make it for you, which would be a lot. Also, I don't think Crater would give a weapon to someone like you."

"Someone like me?" Ivy had a confused look on her face. "What does that mean?"

Zoe's eyes flicked back and forth between them, forcing a grin on her face, "Yea, Ivy," she said quickly, "There's a storage area where you can look through weapons, or if you have enough CCs, you can go into town and have one custom made." She looked at Colson with a look that said, "stop." Looking back to Ivy, she went on, "They probably won't let you run around with a weapon like that, but who knows."

After rummaging through the armory closet, Ivy found four weapons of interest: a massive sword—the blade was as long as Ivy was tall; a smaller circular blade that was the size of a dagger but its ends split off in two; a bright red war hammer; and two nunchucks, she didn't know how to use them, but to her, they looked cool. The rest of the shed was full of knives and hidden blades.

She practiced using the weapons on some rubber training dummies for the next half-hour. The nun chucks were a catastrophic failure as she hit herself more than the trainer. To everyone's surprise, she could use the bastard sword and swing it around, but it became blatantly evident that a blade like that wouldn't fit her fighting style.