"He's gone." the same phrase was being repeated throughout the class, but only about half must have actually known what was going on.
"Who's gone?" someone said.
"Adam Marius." a girl at the front of the class called.
"Quiet!" the teacher shouted. "Now is not the time to discuss this, you will be informed of the matter during break time. For now, we need to get on with training, unless you're River, of course."
I went red and sat down at the side.
"Now, I need you to get into pairs and stand one pair per mat." he said.
A couple of people looked over at me jealously but no-one dared to oppose the instructor who was prone to giving out hours of weekend detentions.
Ash waved at me before going over to pair up with Paul, who she always paired up with.
I decided to see how many people I knew around the room from our couple of months here. There was obviously Ash and Paul, and then there was also Kathryn from the temporary training centre. Oh, and there was Kaylee Richardson who was on my second mission with me and another boy who's name I never learnt. The other people on my two missions were too young to be in this class. One of them was Ali, who was only six.
"River!" I looked up sharply in respect for the instructor who was walking towards me. He was a funny looking man, short and stout with a long, thin beard. Anyone who laughed, though, learnt very quickly that they shouldn't have. As funny as he looked, he was one of the best fighters in the state. "Get up now, you're coming to do some theory work at my desk."
Groaning, I got up and grabbed my crutches.
"Don't even complain," he warned, "if you had been working hard enough in my lessons you wouldn't be sat watching in the first place."
"That's not fair, they were way bigger than me." I said. "And anyway, I got Wade in the chin."
He looked over at Wade on the other side of the class, supporting a large bruise on his chin.
"Hmm, that is a pretty nasty bruise, you must have hit him hard." he said, then realised that he wasn't the kind of teacher to give compliments. "But sadly, he said that he did that tripping over in the corridor, so that doesn't matter anyway."
"Did he get any punishment?" I said.
"A couple of weeks of after school and weekend cleaning duty." he said emotionlessly.
"Is that it? I got my leg broken." I said.
Sir turned to me. "Don't you question my punishments, he showed great skill, so I'm not about to punish him badly, am I?"
I opened and shut my mouth like a fish, but decided not to say anymore.
I sat down on the other side of his desk and he chucked me a textbook. "Copy the first ten pages of that and I'll give you a test at the end."
I gingerly opened the first page of the textbook and groaned again. It was filled with writing.
"Can I just take notes rather than copying word for word?" I said.
"Yeah, but you'd better get started, you've only got two hours."
-----
"How was that?" Edlyn said. We'd left lessons a couple of minutes early in order to avoid the crowds while I was on crutches, and I was allowed a friend with me.
"PAINFUL." I said. "I would rather have been actually fighting."
"I'd rather have been fighting as well, to be honest. I've seen that text book and it's not pretty. How many pages?"
