The Hunt

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

By the time we finished, which took about an hour or two, I was sporting a light black eye and a bleeding nose. But I got a satisfaction of the fact that I got him good in the side, too.

After a strong inspection in the mirror during the shower, I found out that the eye wasn't that bad, it was just a little swollen. It will still work. A bit of ice would help too.

After the shower I went to check on Parker's team. He was now training in the master gym with the other boys in our class. Only I recieved a special individual training because I was one of the newbies. Even after a month of training.

But I didn't mind, at least I wouldn't be paired with one of the tougher guys here. Who would probably be harsher than Robins. And that is saying a lot.

I just wasn't very popular here. Certainly not the favourite one. And that was because I was the only girl here. Of all of the people, only boys recieved this kind of achievement. In their eyes, I'm the black sheep.

If I recalled corectly, the next segment of my training today should be in the special gym with the knives. I had it every two weeks with Nate and his team. That wasn't so bad.

I waited for Nate to show up leaning on the wall of the gym. I didn't have the nerve to go inside and see him, I didn't really like to be the center of attention. Especially not here.

As I waited, a few guys walked out of the door but none of them was Nate. Finally, he showed up and when he saw me, he walked to me with a big smile. Which froze when he took me in.

"Jeez, Portwood," he said. "What did you do to deserve this?"

"That bad, uh?" I said, touching my left eye.

"Well, you look kinda cool with it," he teased.

"Robins was in a bad mood today," I shook my head.

We moved side by side to our next spot, with his mates following us. As we were walking to the door of the gym, someone hardly knocked into my shoulder as they went past. I was forced into Nate on my other side who quickly steadied me. I looked to see who it was and sure enough, Zack Layden's blonde hair shone near the entrance. He always hated me from my first day here, took every opportunity to somehow get back at me for being here. He turned and had the nerve to wink at me.

"He's just jealous," said Nate.

"Of what?" I said, exasparated. "My lack of skill? The fact that I'm an easy target here?"

"Hey, don't be so hard on yourself. Yes, sure, you're an easy target but you can very well take care of yourself."

"Yeah, that's true," I nodded. "Like I took care of you on my first day here."

He laughed. "See? You're alright."

Inside, we got divided into four groups. Each group had six members. I got lucky enough to have Nate with me this time. I hated when we were seperate, he would always beat me.

Our trainer, who luckily wasn't Robins anymore, gave us each three knives to first practice on a wooden target. This was easy, I always smashed this one.

There were exactly 24 oval targets, every one at least 5 meters long. As I said, I was good at this so it wasn't that far for me.

I waited for the order to shoot and then I stretched my arm, flicked my wrist and let the knife fly. I didn't wait to see how I did, I threw the other two knives as well.

I looked around the room and caught Nate's eye who gave me an appreciative nod of the head.

"Good job, Portwood," said the trainer.