“It’s a bit of a story, mate.” Flynn sighed as he walked past. “Just know that we’re glad to be back.”
“Just know that you should never sign anything Wulfson asks you to,” Silas added.
“Sign? Was it that proving ground exercise he asked us to participate in? I couldn’t go because I am taking extra workshops. Was it fun?”
“Hell no,” the five shouted.
The Tsuna looked around at the haggard and wounded bunch. “Oh, well then. I’m still glad you made it back in time to see what groups we will get for the Deathmatch.”
“You say Deathmatch so innocently that it’s almost unnerving,” Kaiden commented.
“He knows it’s only a nickname.” Kaiden looked up to see Chiyo walk up the stairs to the landing pad.
“Howdy, Chiyo, doing good? Staying warm?” Luke asked.
She looked quizzically at him. “It’s the springtime, so it is rather nice.”
“You wouldn’t know from where we’ve been.” Cameron huffed, clearly still annoyed. He waved back at the others as he descended the stairs. “I’m heading to the dorms. See you guys there.”
“I’m right behind you.” Silas winced as he reached the stairs and gripped the railing as he walked down. “Maybe way behind you.”
“What happened to all of you?” she asked Kaiden.
“Like I told Genos, tell you later.” He flicked a thumb behind him. “But if you want a hint…”
Chiyo looked over Kaiden’s slumped shoulder and gasped. “Is… Is that a Sauren? You captured a Sauren?”
“No, that’s Raza… Oh right, you don’t train with Wulfson, so you’ve never met him.”
“She is the smart one,” Luke said, then cracked his neck and leaned against the railing. He looked at Flynn who stood casually in front of him. “Next time, you’re the bait.”
The marksman smirked and shrugged his shoulders. He skipped to the stairs as if to rub it in as Luke growled and shuffled after him.
“Yeah, needless to say, we got our asses kicked. We won, though.” Kaiden tried his best to stand normally but couldn’t muster much more than to slightly straighten his back. “Genos, care to be a pal and help me limp my way to the med-bay?”
“Of course.” He nodded and put one of Kaiden’s arms over his shoulder. “I’ll help you get there as soon as possible. Dr. Mortis will heal you with no hesitation.”
“Dr. Mortis? The Mirus doctor?” the ace asked. “Where’s Soni?”
“Amber said that she is at a summit in Canada. She’ll be back in a couple of days.”
He removed his arm from the Tsuna’s shoulder and tried to stand as straight as he could, stretching his arms. “You know what? I’m actually feeling better. I think I’ll head back to the dorms and take a hot shower. Work through the pain and all that.”
Chiyo chuckled lightly. “Trying to keep up your tough guy act?”
Kaiden looked at her with a worried expression. “Trust me, you don’t want that Mirus doctor working on you. You don’t know the horrors of the slime he’s got,” he finished with a shudder.
The infiltrator watched as he departed down the steps, Genos following behind and helping to steady him. Then she looked at the Sauren, watching as Wulfson hit him a couple times and told him to wake up.
She shook her head at the absurdity of it all. “I guess there’s a lot I still have to learn.”
Chapter Ten
Kaiden awoke with a start, and the pain in his shoulder sent him collapsing back onto the bed, hissing upon impact.
“Nice little do-si-do you did there.” Chief chuckled as he appeared above him, nearly blinding Kaiden’s tired eyes.
“Man, it’s been a while since I was this sore.” He huffed and pushed up slowly to sit on the side of his bed and roll his shoulder. “At least the pains from the Animus fade away quickly.”
“For now. Once you’ve used that thing for a couple of years, you might feel even worse, considering how much you’re blown up and shot.”
“Hopefully, by that time I’ll be a bullet-dodging ballerina,” Kaiden joked.
“There’s always hope, no matter how much you seem to squander it,” Chief jeered.
Kaiden stood and headed to the shower. He activated the temperature gauge and turned on the water before heading back to his dresser to pick out some clothes. “What do I have today, Chief?”
“Just the Squad Test meeting with the other initiates in about an hour.”
“That’s tomorrow, Chief.” The ace yawned as he set a t-shirt and pants on the top of the dresser.
“It’s on Wednesday, which is today.”
He paused for a moment and then shut the dresser and walked quickly to his window. “Open blinds,” he commanded. They opened and he saw the sky fading into evening light, then looked at his clock to see the day read Wednesday. “What the… How long did I sleep?”
“Twelve hours. You remember that ‘little nap’ you were going to have because you got the day off from workshops thanks to Wulfson?”
“I don’t remember that.”
“You were pretty out of it,” Chief recalled. “You slept through most of Tuesday, too. Really got to get you a better meal plan or something because you’re turning into even more of a lazy bastard.”
Kaiden mumbled something about a “translucent jerk” under his breath as he grabbed the rest of what he needed from the dresser and left for the shower.
“Shall I send word to your buddies that you’ll be there soon and that you’re freshening up?”
“Yeah, fine,” he replied. “I’ll meet them in front of the main building in ten.”
“I should probably make that thirty, but he’s got to learn to keep a schedule eventually,” Chief muttered to himself.
The ace finished his shower quickly, dried off, and dressed. He looked around the room for anything he was missing and turned to the EI. “You coming or are you gonna hover there in smugness?”
Chief twirled. “I might as well. I don’t have much of a choice, for one, but you’ll also need me to get your squad results.”
“Well then, let’s go,” Kaiden ordered
“Making me rush because you overslept? You have no manners, do you?” Chief chortled as he phased out of the room.
The ace rolled his eyes as he ran out, slammed the door, and headed to meet his friends.
Kaiden sprinted to the main building, dressed in a blue Nexus Academy shirt and grey pants, along with his normal black boots and jacket. He saw Chiyo, Genos, Jaxon, Flynn, Izzy, and Amber in the distance and waved at them.
“Good to see you up and about,” Jaxon said as he finally closed the distance between them. “I haven’t seen you walking the dorms, in the ace workshop, or at the Animus Center. I wondered if you would ever recover.”
“Still a few sores and strains. But I’ve gotten plenty of sleep,” Kaiden admitted sheepishly.
“I’m feeling great, honestly,” Flynn said with a smile. “Nothing like getting back to nature for a bit, eh?”
“You weren’t the one dodging Sauren claws and electrified whips,” Kaiden grumbled.
“Maybe not, but I was the most important component to our plan, and I did my job,” he responded.
“No one can hide in a bush quite like you, I’ll admit,” the ace jeered.
Amber giggled while the marksman waved him off. “And no one makes quite as good a runaway as you do, mate.”
Kaiden gave him an annoyed look. “I’m with Luke. If we ever go off on another field trip with Wulfson, you will be the bait.”
“Speaking of which, where is he? And all the others?” Izzy asked.
“Well, Luke, Cameron, and Silas are probably late for the same reason I was,” Kaiden reasoned.
“Poor constitution?” Flynn quipped.
The ace sneered. “I have a gun, you know,” he said as he reached under his jacket, only to find nothing and realize that he had forgotten it. “Damn it all.”
“Cameron and Raul are no
t exactly known for punctuality anyway,” Jaxon stated.
“Marlo was caught up in some armor-crafting training. He’ll be here soon,” Amber explained.
“He’ll be here now,” Marlo announced as he walked up and greeted the others with a wave of his large hand. “How you guys doing?”
“Rather well, although slightly anxious, perhaps,” Genos admitted, tapping the tips of his fingers together fretfully.
“What? About the squad picks?” the demolisher asked, resting an arm on the Tsuna’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, buddy. If you get someone on your team who gives you problems, just come and get me and I’ll make sure they shape-up.”
“That is quite kind of you, friend Marlo. How exactly would you be able to do that?” the Tsuna asked.
As Marlo opened his mouth to explain, Amber raised a hand to stop him. “He has his ways. He’s a people person,” she explained, then leaned in to whisper to the demolisher, “You probably shouldn’t expand on that. Don’t want him worrying about you potentially bashing someone’s skull in.”
“I wouldn’t be that harsh,” Marlo defended. “Just enough to, you know, make them remember their manners.”
“Either way, best to not mention it and simply let that lie,” she commanded.
Flynn raised a hand and waved at a group in the distance. “Well, look who’s here to round out the bunch. How are you, fellas?”
Cameron, Silas, and Luke walked up, each of them with bags under their eyes and sullen looks. The first two mumbled greetings as they passed while the titan stopped in front of Flynn and stretched. “Not as chipper as you seem to be.”
“Wonder why that is,” the bounty hunter muttered, rubbing around his collar. “Maybe because the only thing on him that got any action was his trigger finger.”
“Hope the seats are cushioned considering your sore ass.” Flynn snickered.
“Raul is not with you?” Jaxon asked.
Cameron sighed. “He’ll be here soon—primping himself up for the big meeting. Said something about wanting his squadmates to appreciate him at first glance.”
Izzy looked around. “We need to head inside soon, or we’ll miss the good seats.”
Kaiden realized that he had been almost completely oblivious to the other initiates around them. Groups of people walked past and talked excitedly about the meeting and their potential squads. He looked up to see the sky had darkened and the lights of the plaza had begun to glow.
“Best get in there, then. We’ll save him a seat if we can,” Silas said as he shuffled zombie-like to the doors of the main building.
“Is he gonna be all right?” Amber asked Izzy.
She shrugged. “He’s too stubborn to see someone in the med-bay, so I guess he must not be in too much pain.”
“We should go ahead. The meeting starts in seven minutes,” Jaxon informed them.
The group agreed and entered the building, heading for the theater to hear about their future teams and what their final challenge for the year would be.
The theater was a massive thousand-seat hall. A wide wooden stage sprawled in front, with patterned red curtains and numerous decorations on the stage and the floor below. The group took seats in the middle of the front row. The three hundred initiates filled the lower level.
Kaiden looked on the stage and saw half a dozen staff members talking amongst themselves as the rest of the students found their seats. He recognized the man in a long white coat as Head Monitor Zhang, the overseer of the Animus center. Surprised, he also noticed Sasha —aside from his personal interactions with him, he never really saw the commander wandering the grounds.
He didn’t recognize the others, but he saw they were all talking to a figure in the middle. The man appeared to be in his late fifties or early sixties with salt-and-pepper hair combed back and a neat, greying goatee. He had faded blue eyes that seemed to betray his age, but he stood calmly among the other staff members. The way he held himself—standing straight, his arms clasped behind his back, and giving only brief nods of recognition—showed the strength of his character.
“Hey, who’s that guy in the middle?” Kaiden asked, pointing to him.
“That’s Chancellor Durand. He’s the head of this school,” Chiyo informed him.
“The whole thing? I thought they had a board or something?”
“He would be the head of that board as well,” Jaxon stated. “He personally greeted all the Tsuna on our first day here. I do not know much about him, but our delegates treat him with great respect. He was personally in favor of the Tsuna integration program and had a heavy hand in getting it through the World Council.”
“How do you not— Hey, Raul,” Cameron shouted, interrupting himself to get the tracker’s attention and wave him over. “How do you not know who the head of the Academy is?”
“I told you how I got here. I beat up some punks and got a recommendation. I barely knew what this place was,” Kaiden retorted.
“You didn’t get a pamphlet or nothing?” Marlo inquired. “He has a plaque at the front of the Academy. You should have seen it when you came in.”
“I was too distracted by everything else when I first got here to worry about looking at a plaque,” Kaiden replied.
“What about during orientation?” Izzy asked.
“When was that?”
“The first day of school,” Silas said, his tone flat.
“I might have been with Wulfson or wandering the grounds. I skipped it.”
“Of course.” Luke chuckled.
“Well, guess you’re about to learn,” Flynn stated. “Looks like they’re ready to begin.”
Kaiden looked up to see the chancellor walk up to a podium at the front of the stage. “Good evening, initiates,” he bellowed, his voice amplified throughout the theater. “My name, for those who are unfamiliar with me, is Bastien Durand, and I am the Chancellor of Nexus Academy. For those of you who are meeting me for the first time, I wish to greet you warmly and offer you congratulations for your success so far.”
“He seems way more understanding than you lot,” Kaiden said with a smirk, which disappeared after a second. “Lot? Am I picking up Wulfson’s habits now?”
“I know that you have all done your best and continually strive to be even better than that as you train to be the top of the pack in your respective fields. And because of that, I know that this Academy is a place where you deserve to be. We will certainly do our part to help you succeed and leave here as the greatest soldiers, technicians, engineers, analysts, and medics this world and beyond has ever seen.”
Durand took a deep breath as the lights of the theater dimmed. “But it will take more than training and good wishes to achieve that, which is why you have taken these tests throughout the year. They are a way to gauge the application of your talents, get the most out of your abilities, learn and implement teamwork, and measure how you fare against unique and often dangerous adversaries or situations of the kind many of you will face once you have graduated.”
“That sounds rather foreboding,” Flynn whispered. Kaiden, Cameron, Silas, and Marlo nodded.
“Which is what brings us to this moment. The final test of the year is a combination of your personal skills and your ability to work with your brothers and sisters in arms.” A holographic map filled the sky and all the initiates looked up to study it as Durand finished with, “The Squad Test.”
Dozens of holographic people filled the map. Shots were fired between the holograms, and explosions shook the room. Virtual ships and vehicles engaged in combat with one another and mechs appeared to fire upon the holographic fighters.
“This test is not only a battle against the environment but with each other. It will be the penultimate accumulation of your mettle. It has been in place since the beginning of the Nexus Academy and is a true battleground where only one team will be truly victorious. Whether you succeed or are defeated will all be laid at your feet. Your preparation, teamwork, skills, and determination w
ill be your edge in this match.”
Kaiden watched the teams battle both each other and the various hostiles on the map. Ships crashed in the sky, showering the air with holographic bits that evaporated around him. A squad succeeded in destroying a batch of hostile mechs before another squad came up behind them and took them down in a spray of lasers and kinetics. Various lights began to vanish as more teams began to fall. The map began to shrink, and areas exploded or shorted out. Teams were caught in poisonous gas or rooms with explosive traps and taken out. More and more mayhem continued to unfold until there was finally one group left standing in the one remaining room left on the map. As the holographic team raised their fists in victory, both they and the room disappeared.
With that, the lights came back up, and the initiates focused on the stage again. Durand smiled as he looked at them. Some watched him with wide-eyed shock and others with excited smiles, and many whispered to one another about what they had just witnessed.
“And with that brief demonstration of what lies ahead…” Durand stood tall and his gaze swept from one side of the room to the other. “Does anyone here believe they don’t have, within themselves, the true heart of a Nexus Academy student to take on this challenge?”
A long pause followed. The chancellor, the other staff, and most of the students looked around for hands or fearful faces. After a while, those students who were shocked or worried saw the resolve on the faces of the others or were encouraged by their fellow initiates and found the strength to sit straighter in their chairs, awaiting the next words.
“Very good,” the Nexus head declared. “Then let us continue and discuss what lies ahead for all of you brave souls.”
Chapter Eleven
“You seem a bit shell-shocked there, Flynn.” Kaiden chuckled, seeing the marksman trembling slightly beside him. “Getting pretty real now, huh?”
Flynn looked at him, then shook his head and cracked his knuckles. “Nah, not shocked, excited.” He beamed. “I had a picture in my head of what this would be like, but that little demonstration they just put on? I’m more pumped for this than I already was.”
Animus series Boxed Set Page 71