Énouement

Chapter Twenty Five

The battle came two days later against Centipede army, and it was Ender and I's first in a real toon. Ender had never really been apart of the battle while I had never really been apart of a team. Ender was nervous, we both were.

We stayed with Dink's toon, lined up against the right hand corner of the wall. All these boys were so much taller than Ender and I. I felt like a dwarf.

"Wiggin!" Called Rose the Nose. I rolled my eyes as I was once again ignored by the chauvinist pig of a boy. Not that I exactly wanted to be in his position. I could see the dread on Ender's face, the tingle of fear that ran down his body. Rose saw it too.

"Shuddering? Trembling? Don't wet your pants little Launchy." Rose hooked a finger over the butt of Ender's gun and pulled him to the force field that hid the battleroom from view.

"That is so sexual harassment." I muttered before gagging, and the boys near me snickered.

"We'll see how well you do now Ender," Rose made sure he was loud enough for the whole army to hear. "As soon as that door opens, you go straight through to the enemy's door."

Suicide. Stupid, pointless, and petty. Rose wanted to punish Ender for his "insubordination", but he had to follow orders now. This wasn't about school work or the right to use his desk. This was about war. I could see the rage in Ender's eyes, but he quickly calmed himself and praised the idiot.

"Excellent sir. The direction I fire my gun is the direction of their main contingent." Sweet Ender, always taking the high road. He was too good for this place. Rose just barked a loud laugh like a hyena.

"You won't have time to fire anything, pinprick." The wall vanished, and Ender dutifully jumped through to grab a handhold, before propelling himself forward. Rose stalked back to me and grabbed my arm in a vice grip. "C'mon princess. Watch your boy toy be annihilated."

He brought me to the opening, bruising my arm now, but what we saw wasn't what Rose predicted. Ender had used his feet first position, firing between his legs to take out several soldiers. They only managed to freeze his legs, which was useless because of his position.

Ender drew closer and flung his arms out in opposite directions. The hand holding his gun ended up pointing towards the main body of a centipede army. He used his last three seconds to freeze as many as he could, before they froze his body. He wasn't even done there. Ender managed to crash into the Enemy gate force field, and was ricocheted back towards a mass of enemy soldiers. He disrupted many more groups as each shoved him off and I was relieved to notice his spinning slowing down. No more time to watch Ender, gotta win the game.

We won the battle, I thought mostly due to Ender's one man army in the beginning, and Rose didn't speak to either of us after. Ender remained first in the standings, and Rose's plan had backfired. There was no more talk of insubordination and whether or not we could use our desks. Rose even stayed on the other side of the barracks away from us.

"You should've seen the look on his face Ender! I thought he'd had a conniption." I giggled as Ender practiced his defense combat forms. We had the training room to ourselves and I had wanted to get some practice in my dancing.

A ballet bar had mysteriously appeared on the wall a few weeks ago, and I knew Major Anderson was to thank. I had even managed to hack into the schools main frame computer system, the one the teachers used to have access to the nets, to download some classical music to practice with. We couldn't go on the nets here, the Earthly world operations were a distraction after all.

So anytime we needed information, we had no choice but to go to the library or use our desks to accesses the information they deemed sufficient. It was mostly the history of war mind you.

Ender had helped as well by designing a program to locate ballet videos for me, so I could learn new dances. I had a feeling Major Anderson knew what we had done, surely any teacher who watched the footage of us here would know, but hadn't thought or cared to stop us. I also didn't know if she had told Graff. I'm sure we'd find out soon enough though.

"I was only following orders Tori." Ender called softly, slightly panting from his maneuvers. I smiled.
"You know, I could spare with you. It'd certainly be better practice than doing it alone."

"That depends. Are you going to fight like my instructor, or use your circus moves?" He teased as I stopped my barre work. I slipped off my ballet slippers, leaving me barefoot like Ender. I smiled serenely before jumping into a hand stand and kicking my legs towards Ender's face, before flipping back to my front. Ender had narrowly avoided my blow, and raised his arms to defend himself.

"You're opponent won't always fight like you Ender. You've gotta learn to adapt." I giggled and stayed light on my toes as he tried to jab at me. With each thrust of his fist I spun in the other direction, until I was behind him and swipped at his head. Ender heard me somehow and rolled out of the way. He crouched and tried to sweep my feet from under me, but I hit a quick back hand spring to avoid his leg. I smirked.

"You're getting better Ender."
"But you're still not fighting me full out." He observed.

"Nope." I giggled and moved quickly to kick his chest, and after he had fallen, then pinned him down with my body. Ender was panting hard, but I was only slightly out of breath. I smiled and kissed his cheek before offering a hand to pull him up. We started clearing away our stuff, careful to make it look like we hadn't been here. Ender grabbed my desk and I held my shoes on our way back to the barracks.

"You know, Dink is gonna relay on you a lot more now." I looked at his face from the corner of my eye, but he was passive.

"I know." I nodded and watched as he continued to stare straight ahead.
"He'll want you to come up with more ideas."

"I know." I bit my lip and stopped walking. Older boys and the odd girl shoved past us, not concerned with two little kids. Ender faced me and stared as I cradled my shoes to my chest.

"You're gonna attract a lot more attention."
"Yeah." Ender's voiced stayed low, uncaring.

"The older boys won't like it."
"Probably not." I gripped my shoes harder and stared at the floor.

"Graff won't protect you."
"I don't doubt it."
"You still gonna do your best?"
"You still gonna stay by my side?" I looked up at his face. He was still calm, passive, and sounded dismissive of my concerns. But deep in his eyes, I saw that he was just as worried as I was. I smiled sadly and held his hand as we started walking again. I didn't need to answer. And Ender really didn't need to ask.

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So my AHS: Coven fanfic is up. Go check it out if you're into that sort of thing :) I'll be gone a couple of days, but if I have time I might update again before next week.

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