Chapter 8 #2
His movements were sloppy right off the pounce, and there was a clear opening in his guard, right below his right arm.
I darted in, and I ducked a swing, putting me in the perfect position to drive into the side of his ribs.
I used the concentrated force of my elbow to send him stumbling to the side with a loud exhaled “oof,” then I leveraged that weakness before he had time to fully recover by following up with a hard and high swing of my knee, directly into the same spot, then backing away swiftly when he tried to counter.
If he didn’t touch me, it wouldn’t matter if he was stronger than I was.
He may have had formal training, but I lived a trial of survival.
I just had to knock him off the mat, and I’d win.
I watched the way my opponent moved. He was fast at some things, slow at others.
Like so many people in peace time, he clearly hadn’t been very enthused about his mandatory physical education.
When he lunged at me again, I juked left, and when he swiped left, I came in from below, striking, again, at his unguarded ribs.
He should have learned the first time, but he wasn’t coming off as terribly adaptive.
This was likely the level of most of the draftees, and I could work with that.
One more attempt at striking me and one more easy dodge, and this time I went for his legs, getting low, hooking an arm around his calf, and jerking him off balance.
His head hit the grass, and I hopped back to the center of mat.
The whistle blew, and satisfaction pumped through me with every beat of my racing heart.
Quick, clean, easy.
All I needed now was to have someone to chest bump and grunt at, and no one would be questioning my gender. I was pumped. I knew I fucking had this. The Mictlan government was a fool for underestimating me just because I was a girl.
A few more matches tied up until everyone had gotten one warm up round, then it was time for the evaluation. As a winner of my sparring match, I was up first for our group.
I entered the boundary, then inhaled one slow breath, and exhaled even slower.
"Vann Callan. Protectorate 005." Major Blume stated for me. I nodded as if I needed to confirm he'd gotten it right. Dumb. "Your opponent will be... Sebastian Takeyama. Third year. Rank 1."
My eyes widened as that near regal image of a man joined me on the padded platform.
He was dressed in athletic clothing, including loose grey pants and a fitted black compression shirt.
He was lean but strong, like a swimmer or a runner, with every one of his muscles clearly defined under the snug fabric, while looking nothing like my roommate, who had a body fashioned to kill instead of one built purely for agility and functional fitness.
His jet black hair was loose around his face, framing a complexion as pale as my own, with eyes that near sparkled like amethysts in the sun.
He looked down at me from his superior height—a consistent experience that was starting to give me a bit of a complex, honestly—his expression one without feeling, joy, anger, or interest. Perfect professionalism and nothing else.
"You're from 005?" he asked as he took his position. That caught his attention. "Medella?"
I nodded, but I was too tongue tied to actually say what I wanted to say.
I dipped my chin, as if I needed to hide my face, though there was no way he’d recognize me.
At best he’d seen me once, amidst absolute chaos, and I hardly stood out over anyone else present that day.
But having my hero right here talking to me was making me irrational.
"Th-thank you." I stumbled over my words.
"You saved my life. A lot of lives." I stopped myself from adding he'd saved my brother's life as well. I wanted to tell him that, if not for him, I'd have no family left. That I was the girl he didn’t even notice in the audience, and the same girl he’d stood over to protect from a metal monster, like some fan girl who thought a rock star had picked her out of the sold out crowd because he looked vaguely in her direction.
But I couldn’t say any of those things, because that girl didn’t exist anymore. Fianna was dead, and I had to be what she never could be.
It was time to stop idolizing others and become my own hero.
Sebastian tipped his chin, a silent acknowledgment of my gratitude, then he shifted into a fighting stance.
I took a deep breath, I bent my knees, and I assumed a guarded position, exactly as I'd done with Vann a thousand times. The whistle screamed, and the fight began.
Sebastian remained in place, waiting patiently for me to come to him. I’d hoped he’d strike first, but this strategy made more sense, considering this was an evaluation and not a beat down. If he struck before I'd gotten a chance to try, there would be nothing to judge.
Still, as I sized up his position, inching closer and slightly to one side, his guard was… perfect. He was nothing like the last guy. The way his eyes moved, the way he slightly shifted his weight near imperceptibly, and just his entire aura was an impenetrable shield.
I hesitated to move in too aggressively.
He’d expect that. I needed to be smart about this.
Sure it was just a simple sparring match for him, but for me it was my chance to leave a good first impression.
Doing well here would establish me as a worthwhile recruit, which would increase my chances of getting assigned a Shinka unit sooner.
I shifted slightly on my toes, barely a movement at all, and I could tell he was tracking every twitch. He was the highest ranking student for a reason, and I needed to find some way through his perfect guard.
I inched closer still, attempting to break this stalemate of a stand-off. Vann was nothing like this. He was always moving, always goading me, always bouncing on his toes, while Sebastian Takeyama was this imposing wall of a person.
“One minute, thirty four seconds.” Sebastian said, his tone level like he was doling out a bland fact about rhubarb. Was he timing me? Was my evaluation score going to drop if I waited too long?
Flustered and now with a sense of urgency, I decided to just go for it.
I ran towards him, then jumped and raised a fist to pull his attention high.
His attention moved with me, his eyes following my every move faster than I could make them, to the point he was looking ahead at exactly where he knew I was going.
This wouldn’t work, but I was committed now, and there wasn’t a good way to change course.
I dropped to a deep crouch, then instead of going for the uppercut he was hopefully expecting, I slammed my hands on the ground and I pivoted to sweep his legs, just as Vann had done to me one too many times.
Sebastian reacted immediately. My shin was less than an inch from coming into contact with his ankle, when he lifted his foot, slammed down his heel on my calf, and crushed my momentum, before nimbly stepping over my strike path.
I hadn’t fully processed what was happening before he was on top of me with my ankle in his grip.
He yanked me toward him, then pinned me with a knee on my chest and a fist one inch from connecting with my neck.
“Time from start to finish: one minute, forty nine seconds. Time in active battle: fifteen seconds. Such significant lag can mean death in live combat. Try again,” he said. He let that sink in before he released me with fluidity and grace.
I swallowed, at a total loss as to what had just happened. It was instinct that had me scrambling back to my feet while my mind was still reeling.
Sebastian shook his head. “The distraction and sweep tactic might work on an untrained soldier, but you won’t be facing anyone so inexperienced on the battlefield, be it the practice mat or the real world.
” His tone was stern and teaching. Maybe that was a tactic they taught in basic training.
The fact that it worked on me should have been my first hint that it was a terrible choice.
Fuck. I was screwing this up already.
A bit shaken, I tipped my chin and returned to the only fighting stance I knew.
Knowing I was being timed so precisely, I couldn’t afford to dawdle again.
I moved on Sebastian with no real plan, hoping I’d spot an opening somewhere between the time it took me to pull back my fist and the time it took to throw it, but there truly were none.
Whether I swayed left, right, up, or down he was ready to block, counter, and reverse.
This wasn’t going to be a very positive evaluation.
If I had been trained every week of my life until now, would I know what to do?
From the whistles blowing on the other mats, it seemed that everyone else was fairing just fine.
Fighters to my left and my right were turning this fight into a fast paced flow, however brief, before they were pinned by their superior.
I was the only one who couldn’t figure out how to approach. I was the pathetic outsider. The pathetic fucking girl, who was taught how to breathe through birthing but never how to fight in a formal match.
With blind hope, I threw a punch that was, predictably, easily caught and stopped.
I leveraged the position to thrust a knee towards his stomach, but that was also caught and halted like I was a fly dive bombing a rock.
I jumped back to reset, then I made one last attempt to go for his rib cage, but I was put on my stomach, with my arm twisted behind my back and a knee on my spine, with such lightning speed and force that I couldn’t have explained how or when it happened even if I’d watched it played back to me in slow motion.
He gave my arm one more hard jerk to communicate the fight was over, while I was fighting back tears of frustration.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
“Twenty-three seconds. Active time in battle: nineteen seconds. Next.” Sebastian stated definitively as he left me on the ground. He didn’t help me up. Just returned to the head of the mat and waited for me to clear the floor for the next, more worthy opponent.
My wounded ego helped me up and out of the training area, while embarrassment burned beneath my skin. It looked like I was going to be starting this venture from the bottom. I shouldn’t have expected anything more.
It didn’t matter in the long run, I guess. I just had to survive until the war ended, and then I would have achieved my goal. I didn’t need to be a star or anything. Just… survive and hope that whatever became of our society as a result of this conflict, it wouldn’t be even worse than we started.
That was all.
I’d hyped myself up too much and put too much pressure on myself, and that was silly. It wasn’t like I could make a difference on an individual basis. Great warriors like Sebastian were the ones who would make a difference. I was just a nobody who was running from my problems.
That was what I told myself.
And I repeated it all the way back to the dorm.