G.A.P.S.

Training for the Field

As I walk down from the tower, Sam zooms off into another hallway. "Yo, Cobra! Over here!" I look around, and see who I assume is Burns at the other end of the tower, waving at me. He's about seventeen, but he's got a few inches on me. Black hair, it looks like there's oil in it, blue eyes, and a German accent.

I walk over to him, and he enthusiastically starts shaking my hand. "Welcome to the team! I'm gonna be training you for field combat, evasion, some other stuff like that. We'll be working on parkour first, everyone here loves the courses we have. We can use microbots to make the terrain into anything we want, from specific cityscapes to jungle environments." "Well, I can see why people enjoy that. Lead the way, Burns."

We exit out the same hallway I came into. Entering an elevator to our right, I can see into the same hallway where both my and Chloe's rooms are. I switch to combat form and use x ray vision to see if she went back to her room, but it's still empty. "Hey Burns, why is that your callsign?" He stares into some iris scanner, setting the elevator in motion. "I can control anything heat related. I can heat up or cool down people or objects to the point of setting it on fire or absolute zero. I can also control fire, using it like a solid object, like a hammer or a bridge." Once he finishes the sentence, the glass doors open and I turn my attention to the parkour room. Or should I say arena?

The ceiling is 150 feet high, and the length and width are as long as a mile. There are over thirty people in the room right now, and it's still very open. Nobody is doing parkour, just climbing over obstacles or running around. A blaring speaker system kicks in, shouting, "ALL NEW MEMBERS, REPORT TO THE ENTRANCE IMMEDIATELY!" I can tell that Chloe is the one talking over the speaker system while the other people start trotting over to the door I just walked through.

Chloe suddenly pops up right next to me, causing me to jump at least a foot away. "Sorry bout that, but using my third form to travel through shadows is way too much fun!" Turning her attention to the whole crowd, she starts our training on parkour. "Ok, the point of parkour is to get from point A to point B as efficiently as possible. Before learning how to climb, you need to learn how to fall. Burns here will show you how..."

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After over four hours of falling, climbing, getting a fair share of scrapes and bruises, we've all gotten pretty good at some of the basic moves in parkour. Burns talks to our now nearly exhausted team, "Hour break, then we all get over to the combat training room." With that established, we all sit down as some kind of drone comes up to us. This guy to my right gets approached first. "Food order, please." After thinking for a bit, he says, "Cracker Barrel bacon cheeseburger?" The drone has the burger materialize, and hands it to him on a tray with its arms. It faces me, and I already know what I want. "Food order, please." "City BBQ pulled pork sandwich with BBQ sauce and pickles, and a side of hushpuppies." Piping hot awesomeness on a tray gets handed right to me, and I dig in.

As I sit there eating my sandwich, I start talking to the person next to me who ordered first. "What's your agent name, and what do you do in your combat form?" "My name is Zipper. Yeah, I know it's not really original, but it's pretty much the only word that describes my powers." I look at his tray, and it's been split in two. He puts two corners together, and they fuze together, a seamless repair running along the cut edge to the adjacent corner, like a zipper. "Can you do that to any object,  or are there some things that you can't do that to?" "Dunno. Never really pushed the limits yet." Burns walks back into the arena, "Break is over, follow me." We all get up, following him into a hallway and jog half a mile across the length of the arena to get to the combat room.

Once we set foot inside, a wrestling ring appeared on the floor. The floor must've been built with microbots, I guess I'll get used to some weird stuff while I'm here. Chloe is already in the room, finishing her stretches. She stood up, and addressed the class. "Ok, so you know how we're not the fit, buff people that the military uses? We work on our strengths of being light, agile, and whatever powers you have in your forms. And of course, we fight dirty." A little cheer rose up through the group at that.

"For training, we obviously won't be hurting each other with the actual techniques: we have fighting bots that you'll perform the real moves on. Much cheaper and less painful." Chloe takes one of the bots and lifts a panel on the chest. She presses a few buttons and puts a fairly big knife into it's hand. "As an example of how hard we'll train you for combat here, this has been programmed with the same physical attributes and training prowess as a Green Beret." The bot suddenly lunges for Chloe with the knife, but she was either expecting it or had insanely rapid reflexes. She blocked the knife so that it slid past her body, then flipped him over at the same time she took the knife away from the bot. As it landed, Chloe plunged the knife into the neck, a sure death for any human.

"It took me years to get to this level of skill, so don't expect yourself doing this in a matter of weeks. I want to see your skill levels, so we'll have Cobra go up against the bot first." Great. As I step into the ring, Chloe sets up another bot, hopefully not at one of the harder programming levels. It walks into the ring, and I shift to combat form. Before I put my kerambits into my hands, Chloe stops me, saying, "Unarmed combat first, weapons come soon though." Putting my knives back and shifting back to normal, I get into a fighting stance. The bot comes into the ring, when a hologram or something similar gets laid over it. "Yo dumb***, go **** yosaelf!" Now I'm up against a high school teenager/gangsta/punk/thing, included with sagging jeans, backwards hat, and (fairly explicit) sound effects. Overall, not a bad product for someone in the mood for killing.

Burns makes a chair out of pure fire and lies down. "Match will be conducted in three rounds, or until someone is unable to continue. Do both of you understand?" We nod our agreement, and I prepare to break something by smashing it's ugly face in. Then the bot pulls out a stiletto knife, and a cage drops over the ring. Burns and Chloe are startled, this isn't part of the training sim. This just got a whole lot harder. As Chloe and Burns try to stop the programs, I attempt to shift into combat form. I feel an electric charge surge through me, like my forms are restricted from use. I am sure I see death, at that moment, charging towards me in a fit of rage.