Girl of Steel and Stone

Chapter 18

Chapter eighteen

The second day was funny at the same time as it was painful. My muscles ached from the heavy training from the day before and I was tired to the bone. Plus, we got tons of homework I wasn't looking forward to. Reading and I still weren't great friends.

Funny, because this was the First Year's first day.

Even if we weren't in great shape either, we were a lot better than them.

Seeing them struggle forwards, trying to breathe and sweating profusely was hilarious. And yeah, I pitied them. We ran past them almost effortlessly in our first rounds and by the time we were starting to struggle, they were already panting on the floor, doing push-ups and whatever torture their teacher had come up with.

The descendants were especially hilarious. I couldn't help but point them out to Roan who sent me a glare every time I did.

'See that one? Looks an awful lot like you,' I said, pointing towards a guy who was sweating so much there was a tiny pool on the ground under him.

'Shut up, Cali,' he said, grounding his teeth. I flashed a smile and ran on.

At the last turn I had to stop. My leg was hurting something fierce and when I rolled up my pant leg I saw that the place around the scar had turned a fiery red. I was almost healed, but since they hadn't used any of those expensive fast-healing methods on me, I still felt it sometimes.

'1!,' Mr. Bowie yelled. 'Why aren't you running?'

'Stab wound!' I yelled back. Yesterday, I had continued running. And I had paid the price. I had been limping the whole afternoon.

Mr. Bowie stopped before me and bent to look at the scar. Then, his lips flattening into a thin line, he stood and walked away.

'This had better be the only time, 1!' he yelled over his shoulder.

We'd see. If it still hurt this damn bad I would stop. Yelling Mr. Bowie or not.

I did all the other exercises, gritting my teeth against the pain. When it was finally time for politics I was almost happy to see Mr. Marshall's face. Key word, almost.

The rest of the day was almost as uneventful. Except that when I asked Mr. Jackson if I could specialize in both throwing and fighting knives, he agreed, which made my day.

I talked to Diana and Gavin for five minutes each and we decided to have a more elaborate talk once a week, while checking in on each other at least once every two days.

The third day was a heck of lot more interesting.

The morning started the same way as the second. I ran almost all my rounds, but stopped for the last one. Mr. Bowie ignored me, which was fine by me.

Politics was really hard. Roan tried to explain it to me while Mr. Marshall wasn't paying attention, but I knew this would be one great hurdle.

Acting was fun. It wasn't – as one might think – easy in the least, but it was still fun. We had to read one page about a certain person and act like that person for the whole hour in different situations.

Hacking was harder. I was definitely not the worst of the class. If the teacher explained it for stupid people like me, I actually was able to do more than the most basic basics.

Weapon training proved harder than I thought it would be. I had thought I knew already everything about knives, but I was wrong. There were all kinds of them and there were countless tricks I wasn't able to do yet.