Risk and Rebel's Guide Book

RAGE > EXCERPT

LASAR HQ

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Unlike the rest of the LASAR agents, most of Rage's training took place outside of LASAR headquarters. Because his speciality was intended to be survival from the very beginning, it wasn't uncommon for him to be dropped off alone, with next to nothing, and no idea of how long he'd be there. 

That was how he'd become familiar with the jungle. Gray and Boss were both, admittedly, surprised that he'd actually survived for as long as he was left in the Amazon.

It was how he'd learned the dangers of the desert.

How he'd grown to respect the various terrains of Siberia. 

But surviving in outrageous environments across the globe was only part of Rage's training. The rest of it took place at headquarters, same as everyone else. The only difference was that every time he returned to headquarters for that type of training, a great amount of time had passed. He had aged ... everyone else had aged. As a result, he had very different relationships with the other agents, as opposed to the relations that they had with each other. 

Rage never got into stupid spats with the others. He never picked fights for the sake of starting drama. And because as he had grown -- in both size and strength -- with age, none of them tried to start anything with him, either. 

His strange schedule allowed him to develop his own opinion of the other agents, free of any input from the others. And as he did that, he found it easy to realize which ones he actually respected. Most of the other agents were on the list, though some were undeniably higher than others. Some of the highest included Pride and Team Bravo. 

Some of them he respected, yet couldn't help but be annoyed by. Those included Catatonic and Major. He blamed neither of them for their strange personalities; he was objective enough to realize that he and they were just the types of people who would clash.

No, Rage had no quarrels or bad blood with any of the agents of LASAR.

But as a survivalist, he had learned a thing or two about inter-community dynamics from the animals of the wild.

 One of those lessons being that when the pack was betrayed by one of its own, it didn't matter who in the remainder did and didn't get along. They all banned together for the sake of defending themselves against the deserter.

They banned together for the sake of survival.