• Mature • Hate It Til You Love It (Graded)

[Kasoria]

Vhalar, Arc 690

"Up, you bastards! Time to greet the fuckin' morning!"

His mind didn't so much as hear the words as his ears sensed them. It was during the relaying of that noise to his brain that the punctuation to the profanity was given-

-in the form of a door being picked open and the room being invaded-

-that Cadet Kasoria's body was battered out of blissful sleep, and into shattered wakefulness. Not that he had much time to enjoy the waking, though.

"Come on, come on!" Red-faced and roaring, the two beefy men walked up the twin line of cots and started rousing their occupants. Truncheons were deployed against wooden frames, hammering and crashing sounds echoing and redoubling in the low-roofed room. "You're cadets now! You think that means you stay in bed while the world is-"

"Sir, don't youGHKKKKK-!"

Kasoria flicked a glance at the cadet opposite him as the boy doubled over clutching his belly. Not very bright, that one. It was his first trial but even he knew not to talk back to men like this. The instructor paused and loomed over the coughing, retching kid, clad only in his night garments.

"DID I SAY SPEAK?! I DID NOT! CLOTHES ON! BOOTS ON! ON YER FUCKIN' WAY OR BY FALDRUN'S FANCY FUCKING COCKEND I WILL HORSEFUCK THE LOT OF YOU!"

It's mostly just for show, lad. They bluster and they bellow and they get you moving. That's they're job. Kasoria remembered Tantos' words as he pulled on his clothes, focusing on that and staying awake and nothing else. Nothing that could draw their ire. Do as you're told, don't talk back. Only things you need to learn.

That and how to go from sleeping to running in the space of a bit.

The last part was his own addition, and yet it was an important one, too. He didn't know how long it had been, but half a bit seemed to have been pushing it. Less than sixty trills and he was bent over his bed, pulling on his breeches, then his socks, fumbling for his shoes. Shaking his head and slapping his cheeks and forcing the wit and will of waking into his mind.

Kasoria had woken early before, working at the store since he was wee, but this was... very different, in the style of waking.

"Cadet Kasoria?"

He shot upright with one boot on. Shoulders back, spine straight. "Yes, instructor!"

"You gonna go running with one fucking boot?"

"No, instructor!"

"Then hurry the fuck up and get the other one on." The hard, knobbly end of a truncheon force his chin up a little higher. Piggy eyes rank with overt sadism and covert appraisal glared down at him. "Or it's back to the Oh'Pee with you, gutter-trash."

Take more than that, wanker.

"Yes, instructor!"

Turned out, his mind adjusted just fine. It was the constant movement that did it, and the press of anxious, crackling humanity around him. Two dozen other youths, from orphanages and merchant families all, lined up by their beds alive with nervous energy. Kasoria could feel the shock from all of them, and tossed a quick wink to the wheezing youth who'd nearly had his stomach knocked out. All he got was a mouthed "Fuck You" in return.

"All right!" Instructor Bene barked, hands on his hips, legs set wide. "Double time out into the training yard! Time to wake you little bastards up, good and fucking proper! Aaaaaaaand... MOVE!!"

Kasoria didn't need to be told twice. He just wheeled around and waited for the boy in front of him to move, then followed him at the same trot. The pounding, the juddering, shuddering crash of every step... well, that's how it seemed to his fresh and naked mind. Cadet Kasoria let the feeling wash over him, wake him, refresh and fill him... until he didn't feel it anymore.

He was awake, and a Blackguard Cadet. Time to get to business.

[Kasoria]

Ymiden, Arc 691

"Oh, get up, you fuckin' tart."

Cadet Kasoria would have disputed that, but who would have listened? Everyone else in the training yard was more concerned with their own troubles, their own sparring, their own enemy leering over at them from across the sand. A Final Year cadet class had been drafted in by that fucking sadist Instructor Drix for their unarmed combat training that trial. Lean, vicious sods who were relishing the chance to push around some fresh meat.

More than push, too.

Kasoria spat out some blood onto the sand and pushed himself up to his knees... then up to one foot... and then up to another-

Which is right when his opponent launched into his next attack. Charging forwards and swinging up a leg to knock him back down-

-Kasoria blocking the blow with his crossed arms, stopping the bigger, heavier cadet's kick before it landed. But physics was not so simple a thing denied, and the impact still rattled up his arms into his shoulders and back... and Kasoria welcomed it. He let the momentum of the kick help him back up into a crouch, knowing the older cadet wouldn't want to lose his momentum-

-and he danced back as the man came in with a haymaker. Tut-tut. Not very precise, or disciplined. Drix would be disappointed. Kasoria shook the sweat from his hair and let it patter around him in a halo of exertion. The suns of the season beat down mercilessly, no cover or shade to be found in the training yards. Which was just how fucking Drix liked it. Nothing but strain and sweat and the task ahead of them. Water was earned from victory, and nothing else. If you kept losing, you kept dehydrating.

So don't lose.

With a roar the Final Year came sweeping in low with a tackle, looking to bear Kasoria to the ground for good. The younger cadet let him come, gritting his teeth as nigh-on two hundred pounds of raging, sweaty sparring partner struck him around the waist. Weight and mass pushing him back, bare feet skidding across the sand and scraping the stone underneath.

But he didn't fall. He embraced it. Welcomed it. Just like the shock of waking a year before, he found a place for the pain, the impact, the brutalizing of his own body. Every trial, every season, every session and lesson, he realized that he didn't have a breaking point. Well, he probably did, but every time he endured and triumphed, he knew he hadn't found it yet. This tackle was but a minor example. Big and flashy and it hurt and he could feel the cadet's arms meeting behind his back to haul him off his feet but-

Doesn't mean you have to let it.

Cadet Kasoria's elbow came down hard between the Final Year's shoulder blades, going down to one knee at the same time, dropping body lending more force to the blow. The older cadet coughed and grunted and paused, grip behind Kasoria's back failing-

-little trainee gritting his teeth, ignoring the sweat in his eye and repeating the movement, then a third time, until the grip was broken and with a bellow that shook the stones of the yard-

-rocketed back to his feet, swinging up his knee into Final Year's stomach as he did. The older cadet went toppling back like a felled tree that had grown legs. There was a smack and a puff of wet sand as he landed, shaking his head and looking up in disbelief at the little sod that had knocked him down. Cadet Kasoria ran a quick hand through his lank, wet hair... and gestured for him to Come Forth.

With a roar, he did. With a grin, Kasoria met him.

[Kasoria]

Zi'Da, Arc 692

"Well, look at 'em go, Corporal. Doesn't your heart just burst with fuckin' pride?"

"Oh, indeed, Corporal. Fine little crop of cunts they turned out to be, eh?"

He knew the class could hear them, of course. Their tone carefree and verbose, warm as their skin under their coats, flanking the wood-burning stove in one corner of the training yard. Each man held a metal cup of something warm and flavored and steaming and Kasoria would have given a week's pay from the store to have someone splash the contents over his face.

That way he might at least feel it again. Or not, given how much of it felt like blocks of ice eating into his skull.

Stop whining, keep moving. Thirty-six... thirty-seven...

Each time his body went down and his numb nose touched the frozen sand, he could feel his knuckles grinding harder into it as well. Around him, a dozen fellow cadets were doing much the same. Simple, ordinary pushups... only it was their fists, not their open palms, that were pressed into the ground. One of the chuckling instructors sauntered up and down in front of them, looking down with cruel approval.

"Aye, hate us now, but you'll have fists like rock dusters if you keep at it. Which you fucking well will, until we bloody well say so."

"Too bloody right, Corporal," Sergeant Tantos said as he joined the remainder of the class that had started two arcs before. Half of them washed out, kicked out, gave up, or run off. "Might be the last arc left for these piles of donkey-diddling shite, but no reason we can't toughen them up some more. Cadets... hold!"

They knew better than to stop, to relax, to even breath heavily. Along with all the rest, Kasoria stayed down, arms straight, toes and knuckles pressed against the sand, waiting... waiting... waiting until he started to feel the knives carving into his sides and his belly. He could see the slow grins on the two men's faces, the enjoyment bristling their beards and just as some of them started to get shaky arms-

"Down and CLAP, you cunts!"

Kasoria remembered the first time they'd tried this trick. The whole class just... froze. Boots and truncheons and knuckles came raining down in retaliation, punishing them for their insolence, their ignorance. Even the poor cunt who asked what they were supposed to do got a black eye. But they were told, and this time-

There was a "hoof!" like a massive beast with a dozen mouths puffing out all its air at once and-

-a dozen lean, muscular bodies went from their bellies on the ground and noses sniffing sand to shooting back up and when their torsos were almost diagonal to the ground

CLAP

-a dozen sets of hands, a dozen sharp retorts, perfectly in sync-

"Down, and... CLAP!"

"Hoof!"

CLAP

Over and over, up and down, with spittle flying from gritted teeth and their muscles scorching impossibly even though there were icicles stabbing down from the walls around them. The Cold Season was well on its well, and though this season didn't have the abysmal, relentless freeze of Cylus, Zi'da was plenty cold enough to remind a man he was still mortal. Kasoria kept moving, though his body ached and his muscles cried. Best thing to do in the cold? Keep warm. Best way to keep warm? Move around. Best way to move around? Well-

"Down, and... CLAP!"

"Hoof!"

CLAP

"My-my-my, listen to that, Corporal."

"Listening quite intently, Sergeant."

Now the hoof-clap rhythm continued without their prodding, a microsm for their whole role. The cadets were closing in on that blessed day when their didn't need their mentors or teachers or scholars or these bullying fucks anymore. They knew to continue without being told, to torture their bodies until the final command was given. The pace, the beat, the pendulum up-and-down... it had been battered into them over long, careful arcs.

Kasoria had taken a while to notice the strategy. The merciless, horrific violence of the first season in the Academy was just that. The first season. A brutal shock to senses and form and dignity, designed to weed out the weak and gentle of spirit. The ones who couldn't handle a pack of rabid drunks in the Underground, because fuck, they could barely handle an Instructor who was doing this for a reason.

Up, and... CLAP! Up, and... CLAP!

"Remember when first they came to us, Coporal?"

"Oh, indeed I do, Sergeant. Wet behind the ears, no hair on their balls, a pack of verminous cocksucks, the let of them. And now?"

"And now indeed, Corporal. And now..."

A pair of boots stopped in front of Kasoria. He spared them a fraction of a glance, and kept up with his exercises. But they were easier, now he knew who was before him. He knew the face, he knew the smell. The same man that had found him, hungover and battered in a Blackguard cell, two arcs ago. Who'd broken his fingers and made him an offer, even given him a purse in exchange for his word.

A word that he'd kept, because here he was. Outer Perimeter rat changed and morphed and twisted into Blackjack.

"Ah," Sergeant Tantos said into the frigid air, and Kasoria smiled into the freezing sand, even as his sweat froze on his brow. "Look at you now."

The boots departed, leaving the class to their torture, as the snow meandered down upon the training yard.

[Oberan]

Review Rewards

Murder Hobo

Points awarded: 10

Knowledge:

Endurance: Ignoring Sweat in Your Eyes
Endurance: Fighting In Hot, Humid, Energy-Sapping Weather
Endurance: Don't Think, Don't Question, Just MOVE
Endurance: Developing Callused Knuckles
Endurance: Completing Clap Pushups in Zi'Da
Unarmed Combat (Ki'Enaq): X Block

Non-Skill Knowledge:
Blackguard Exercise Instructors: Crude, Brutal, and Proud Of Their Students
Blackguard Cadet Academy: Ruthless and Lengthy, But Creates The Best City Guardsmen

Magic: No magic exp

Other: N/A

Notes:
Not just your typical three-post grinder slash flashback to Kasoria when he was young and had already lost his innocence, no, but a rock-solid and entertaining, characterdriven flashback I enjoyed very much.

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