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around me slowly,
then bent down to whisper in my ear, “Ann Brutus said to give you the message
that a leader should always be ready for anything.” Strangely enough, not one
other inductee turned around to see what the loud thwack was that they had
heard. I felt someone lifting me back to my feet and was surprised to learn
that it was Shane and he was glaring at Oren.
    “Thank you, Lo, that is all for
now. Back to your post.” Oren barked the order without glancing in Lo’s
direction. “Go with her, Leadership girl.” I followed Lo about half way up the
rows of inductees where we both lined up, eyes forward. She squeezed my hand as
an apology. I couldn’t imagine how bad she felt right now. I squeezed it back
to let her know I didn’t hold the soon to be black eye against her. Today we
would be sparring against a randomly selected partner, and we would be overseen
by group leaders. “The training that you had in school was child’s play. The
real fun begins today.” Oren dismissed us to a large gym where I was paired up
with a girl from another school. She was fast, but she didn’t come close to my
skill level. The group leader scolded me when I took it easy on her.
    The sparring session was
actually helpful. I learned a few new moves from the group leader and so did my
partner. She was decidedly worse for wear, but had a little bit better
technique by the end of our session. She had the advantage of my left eye being
almost completely swollen shut.  When we took a break for lunch, Lo found me
immediately and started apologizing incessantly.  “Rai, I would never have done
that, but Oren said that if I didn’t that he would and he wouldn’t be gentle
about it.”
    “Lo, don’t worry, I know that.
What did you hit me with anyway?”
    “The combat training manual. He
made me.”
    “Well if we don’t learn
anything from it, we can always use it as a weapon. Remind me to never make you
mad if that’s your ‘gentle’.”
    We both laughed at that. “I had
to make it believable or he might have done it again. Then you’d have two black
eyes!”
    “Rai, what happened to you!” I
hadn’t noticed Adrian had found his way to the table. He ran over to me, held
my face in his hands, and gently kissed my cheek. If I wasn’t red before, I
sure was now. “Are you ok?”
    “Lo tried to take me out, but
I’m tougher than I look.” He looked at us both quizzically, he obviously didn’t
believe that. Adrian sat on my left side, as if he thought he might protect it
from any other dangers that could be lurking around, waiting to jump out and
attack me. “My new Master Chief sent me a message via my best friend: always be
wary. I’ve got it now. Wary of her anyway.” I muttered the last part under my
breath.

Chapter 9
                After lunch, my random partner wasn’t quite so
favorable. It was a large boy with a forehead the size of a brick.  Apparently,
he had no problem with not letting up on me. He heeded whatever warning that
was issued him this morning about giving it his all, and I wound up with a
bruise the size of a kiwi on my left thigh and a cut that wouldn’t quit
bleeding on my right cheek. At the end of the day, the last thing I wanted to
do was go back to that training room and let Ann see the gift she gave me on
the left side of my face. I hadn’t looked in the mirror, but I could feel the
heat and tenderness enough to know it wasn’t pretty.  I made my way to the
training room anyway.
                When I walked in, I was relieved to see that Ann
wasn’t there, but the relief was short lived when I realized that Shane was in
the room, standing on the far wall. “Wow, you look terrible. Were you trying to
even out your face, there?”
                I scowled at him. “Do you make a habit of
lurking in rooms all alone?  You could have given me a heads up this morning,
by the way.”
                His eyebrows knitted together in a frown,