Re: The next morning

[Natalie Kent]

Natalie slouched out onto the track, her cellphone in one hand and her polka dotted underwear in her other. She stuck her tongue out at Tali and gave Enoch a dirty look, she would show them who was better. Silently she prayed that the tall blonde boy would be her partner. So far, he was the only one who seemed to have any manners, although he talked too much. She sighed loudly, the last group of trainees she had been with were so much better. They all actually liked each other because most of them had grown up together. She resented the fact that they were all junior agents and going on missions already. She didn't know any of the current basic training members because she was in advanced classes, 6 months ahead of the others.

She yawned loudly, she was used to waking up early, but she hated sleeping in a room full of people. Her current roommate was still a year too young to enter basic training, she was a quit girl who never bothered her. She smiled, in 3 months time she would be a junior agent and would be a decent roommate, hopefully.

She looked around the big yard, "Welcome to hell." she muttered, "I bet anyone my mattress that Mr. Dangerfield will say that." she rolled her eyes, "That's what Mr. Green said every single morning. According to the other students, all the trainers said it." she jabbed Tali in the ribs, "And I can tell you this, it is indeed hell."

OoC; I think Mr. Dangerfield should pick partners (not the trainees) and please don't partner me with Jake, cause he's my character.

[Lokai Dangerfield]

Lokai walked outside to the obstacle course. A smile ran across his face. For some reason he always woke up well when he was allowed to torture people, for their benefit of course. He could put up with anything today knowing how well the trainees would love him in just a few minutes. He looked at the ragged group of teens and sighed. Seems they have no sense of unity or group. They'll have to learn or die... hey that's a good line. I should use that. Lokai laughed again. This would be a good day.
"Good morning, maggots, and welcome to your first day of hell. I hope you enjoy it because the fun just gets more and more from here." Lokai held a serious tone. He didn't figure it would help for the trainees to see his fun side... yet. "Ms. Natalie, I told you to wear those polka dots. Put them on and drop to give me fifteen push-ups. And yes, before you think it I am going easy on you. I don't know why, but if you even look like you want more I will be more than happy to give it to you!"
Without waiting for answer he turned to the rest of the group. You see this track? It will be your best friend until I say otherwise. Everyone say, 'Hello track' now!" He waited for the expected response. "As soon as Ms. Natalie here is done with her push-ups, you will all begin running. There are two hurdles on the track, they are to be jumped over, not run around. If you knock a hurdle over, you will fix it and give me twenty push-ups before resuming your course.
"Ms. Natalie will not run, however. She has more important business on her phone. She is going to call Dr. Kerr's office and explain to his secretary exactly, in fine detail what is happening. She will then ask to talk to Dr. Kerr and explain to him as well. Once she is done, she will take all of the junk she brought which is not regulation and check it into storage. She will then return and run ten laps. None of you will be finished running laps until Ms. Natalie is done. You will work as a team, sweat as a team, eat as a team. If I decide it, you will shower as a team. Above all, you will be punished as a team. You are no longer individual maggots, you are now one maggot. The ugliest, most disjointed maggot I have ever seen. Understood?"
Lokai enjoyed the moment for a second and then said, "Get going, maggot!"

[Tali Levin]

When Tali walked out onto the track, she had no idea what to expect. Natalie's jabbering only mad her her more nervous, but she just tuned her out as best as she could and waited. As Lokai walked out onto the track and started yelling, she realized Noam had been wrong. She probably should worry about Lokai more than Valkyrie, unless. . .

She sighed at the mere thought of anyone being worse than Lokai. He didn't mind humiliating them, and he definitely didn't mind punishing them physically. Who was she to complain, though? She had wanted that over humiliation, hadn't she? She shouted, "Hello, track!" along with the others, then turned her attention back to Lokai as he continued. She couldn't help groaning aloud when he mentioned the hurdles. She was short for her age--4'11, to be exact--and had never been any good at jumping over anything, especially not hurdles." Still, when he yelled at them to run, she ran. She was a fairly decent runner, and good at pacing herself. However, when she came closer to the first hurdle, she froze up for a moment, just stood there staring at it. After a long moment, she started running again, jumped, and fell flat on her face, taking the hurdle with her. Oh boy, she thought. This is going to be a long day.

[Lokai Dangerfield]

Lokai snickered at the girl seeming to have trouble. He was certain that today would be fun, he was also certain that they wouldn't go to sleep until they had learned to work together. He walked over to the girl who looked quite embarrassed. Guess this is the one Dr. K told me about. He extended a hand to the girl and helped her up. "Jake." He called to a trainee who had recently run by. "Why didn't you help this girl up? If she falls you all fall. You are one maggot!" He eyed the boy walking closer. "Both of you give me twenty push-ups now! From now on you are partnered. You will work, eat, bunk, train, and puke together. She doesn't miss a hurdle because you will help her." He returned is gaze to the red-faced girl. "If he messes up, you will be there with him. Keep each other in line. Now drop then keep running!"
He raised his voice so everyone could hear him, "From now on, you are one maggot and you will think like one maggot. From this moment until you stop running, every time Enoch, who thinks he's some fast guy, crosses the starting line, you will all say in unison, "We are one maggot!" If anyone fails to comply or if I hear dis-unison, that will mean more laps for you all."

[Jake Thomas]

Jake nodded, "Yes, sir!" he saluted, and grabbed Tali's arm, "Are you okay?" he asked, glancing over at Enoch who was already on the other side of the track, "Here we go." he mumbled, dropping down to his hands and doing wimpy pushups. His body flopped onto the ground every time he lowered his body, "one, two, three," he grunted, already sweat was pouring from him. "You...can...do...it." he said, to himself and Tali.

At the end of the not quite twenty pushups he stood up panting, "Okay, I'll run along side you and give you a boost when we get to the hurdles." he shrugged his shoulders as they came up on a hurdle, "Ready?" he asked as he placed both hands on her waist and hurled her over the hurdle. He quickly lept over the hurdle after her, promptly landing on the girl who had landed not-so-gracefully on the other side. "Uh, I don't think this is working to well..."

OoC; Sorry for the power play.

[Tali Levin]

||Eh, it's ok. I don't really care (in this instance, anyway).||

Tali stood up, muttering a quick, "Sorry, sir," as Lokai helped her stand. She looked down at her hands, which were mildly scraped, then watched as the skin healed over in a matter of seconds. She wiped the blood on her pants, then dropped to the ground and did twenty fast push-ups before jumping to her feet. After spending the last eight years of her life as a trainee, she was fairly good at push-ups. She watched as Jake struggled, not sure what she could do to help him. When he finished she ran alongside him, then let him lift her over the hurdle because she didn't know what else to do. She grunted as he landed on her and her chin scraped across the track.

"He's right," she muttered as she stood up, wiping her chin on her shirtsleeve. "We are one maggot. And we definitely fall together." She tried to smile, but only grimaced. Dang, that really hurt. Tali started running, hoping Jake would follow. She shook her head as Enoch neared the starting line. "Look alive," she muttered, then shouted, "We are one maggot!" as he did so. After they were done shouting not quite in unison, she turned her head toward Jake. "Don't worry about lifting me; I'll be okay." She forced a smile, trying to ignore the stitch in her side that was developing from her talking while running and thus not breathing right. "Just make it look like we're a team, okay? I'll run slower for you and you. . . help me up if I fall. Okay?"

[Enoch Leoncia]

Enoch took to the track like a bird to the sky. From the moment they started, he was ahead of the others, barely paying enough attention to them to notice when Tali fell. He heard Lokai talking about him, so he listened, but didn't slow his pace. We are one maggot. Right. It was just about the dumbest thing he'd ever heard, but he wasn't about to say so.

Back with the Ukwtakun, he'd been trained mostly on his own, and his instructor had been beyond severe. In fact, the man had been downright cruel, perhaps even inhuman. But it had showed it's effectiveness in the way Enoch passed the others with little effort and the fact that he took orders without question. Well, verbal question, anyway. He questioned orders quite often, but only in his head.

He shouted the phrase as he passed the starting line again, noting that the other girl and boy didn't say it at the same time as him. He sighed inwardly and looked back at Lokai, smirk ever-present on his face. He realized as he did this that it was a mistake, for he tripped over his own feet and landed hard on one knee. He inhaled sharply at the intense rush of pain in his bad leg, which had been broken just over a year before. He doubted Lokai would appreciate him stopping, however, so he pushed on, limping a little at first, then shoving the pain aside and merely running.

||Tell me if he seems too "powerful" at any point. I'm trying to make him as "normal" as possible, but his training was a lot different, thus so is he.||

[Natalie Kent]

Natalie eyed Lokai with disdain, "Hello?" she said, holding up her cell phone to her ear, "Uhm, this is Natalie Kent." a pause, "Yes, I'm in basic training." another pause, "Uhm, well, I kinda brought my cell phone and a few items into basic training. I am supposed to tell Dr. K about this as well, could you connect me to his office, please?" a long pause, "Oh, well, should I call back then or..." she frowned, "Okay. Thank you ma'am." she said and hung up the phone. "Sir, Dr. K is out to breakfast at the moment. She said that he would come down here to see me later." she shuddered, having to go to Dr. K's office was bad enough. Having him come down personally to yell at you was even more horrible.

She pulled the underwear over her head and went back to the main building to put her bag into storage with the rest of her belongings. She got quite a few weird looks from the other students as she marched past them with the white material on her head.

Getting back to the obstacle course a few minutes later she started jogging around the course, taking the hurdles with ease. She muttered to herself most of the time, occasionally raising her voice to shout, "We are one maggot." She hated basic training, and Mr. Dangerfield did say the exact words that she had told the others that he would.

[Lokai Dangerfield]

Lokai watched as his students ran around the track. Disunity in their voices as they spoke. When Enoch crossed the finish line for the eighth time, about the time Natalie was returning from her errand, holding the underwear to her head, he had finally had enough of the disorganized voices. "I can watch you run all day, people!" He shouted. "Right now you have eight extra laps to run after Ms. Natalie finishes her ten. Unless you really like running laps, I suggest someone figure out how to work as a team and speak as a team!" Lokai watched the blonde girl jump her first hurdle with ease. "Since Ms. Natalie has added extra laps for you all with her phone gig, I think she ought to help lead this team to unity. Natalie and Enoch, you are now a team. You will be the mouth of this maggot! Every time Enoch crosses the start line, his teammate will count to three loud enough that everyone will hear it. After she says three, everyone will shout in unity, 'We are one maggot!'
"Considering my newly extended generosity in helping you speak in unity, you will now run two laps for every time you fail to say, 'We are one maggot!' in unison." Lokai wasn't sure if he ought to be so happy over causing so much pain in these kids. They're young he reassured himself. The greatest stress to Lokai was the apparent disunity between the members of his training squad. "By the time you go see Ms. Valkyrie later, you will all smell and speak as one maggot! You will tell her you are one maggot and you will obey her as one maggot! Understood?"
Lokai noticed Enoch fall a second time. He ran over to the boy who ran faster now as one running away. He ran beside the boy, jumping hurdles with him. "You think you're something special don't you? Let me tell you something, boy. If this team fails, you fail. If you and your partner can't lead this team, it will fail and you with it!" His words were sharp, likely because Lokai saw a resemblance of himself in this boy. "This team will fail if you don't have faith in them. Do you have faith in them maggot!?" Lokai heard the boy say something low. "I didn't hear you! You will motivate every person of this team every time you pass one, understand!?"

[Enoch Leoncia]

||You are such a godmoder, bro. I don't care, though, since you always know what I'm going to post or something. (Seriously, everything you had Enoch do I probably would have done. XD)||

Enoch was usually the picture of control, but at that moment he was too angry to care about much of anything, especially not seeming like the perfect little angel he wasn't. After he fell the second time, he felt heat creep up into his face and he ran twice as hard. When Lokai started running with him, he wanted nothing more than to punch the man right then and there.

"I won't fail," he muttered through gritted teeth, knowing the man likely wouldn't be able to hear him. When he told him to speak up, Enoch stopped running and started yelling. "I won't fail. I don't need them to do what I have to do! I don't need a partner, especially not a stupid girl. And I don't need you shouting in my face every second. I have them all beat by three laps already, so get out of my face!" When he finished his little spiel, he started running again, faster and harder than he probably should have. He knew that if he didn't pace himself, he would end up unable to keep running, but he didn't care. He wanted to get away from Lokai, and fast.

As he ran, all he could think about was how close he'd come to spilling everything. Saying "I don't need them to do what I have to do" had been just about the dumbest thing he'd done in his stay on the campus. Still, he doubted anyone would suspect anything. Lokai was having too much fun screaming his head off at everyone and the others were likely too tired to care about anything but getting through the next 18 laps or more. Control, he reminded himself silently. You have to stay in control. No more emotional outbursts. You're not a girl, so don't act like one. He nodded to himself as he slowed to a more reasonable pace. It's all about control.

||I edited Enoch's profile a little, and finally added an image too.||

[Tali Levin]

Tali had mostly just been focusing on running, jumping, and shouting at the appropriate times, and had hardly noticed when Lokai started running as well. When she did notice, she was too tired to care. Enoch's outburst, however, got her full attention. And they say I'm emotional? She thought, rolling her eyes. If she thought about it, though, she probably would have done the same if Lokai had been as up in her face as he was in Enoch's.

She felt a painful twinge in her side and she groaned inwardly. Already, she was more than ready to stop, but they had how many laps left? Too many, was all she knew. She'd probably collapse before they finished, then Lokai would just make them run more. Tali looked over at Jake, wondering how he was holding up. "Are you okay?" She asked, panting heavily as she spoke. She knew he was older, and probably even stronger than her, but he'd had the least amount of training--besides Enoch, who must have been a track star or something--and she doubted he was feeling great just then.

They came up to another hurdle, and she managed to clear it, but barely. So far, she'd either fallen over the hurdles and taken them with her, or managed to jump high enough not to fall, but low enough that she still took the hurdle down with her. She'd lost count of how many push-ups they'd done, and she felt a pang of guilt every time she watched Jake do his. She tried to be encouraging, but saying, "good job" and "you can do it" seemed rather pointless in light of their situation. And, knowing it was her fault he had to do them made everything seem so much worse.

[Lokai Dangerfield]

Lokai was starting to get fed up with the lack of cohesion he saw. The fact that no one was in shape didn't help his mood any. "Sit down! All of you!"
Lokai paced back and forth in front of the group for nearly five minutes before speaking, his eyes moving from one to another giving a glare that spelled death. The clear exhaustion that he saw from his trainees did not lessen his mood any.
"You are not a team. You are not even one maggot. You neither smell that good nor act that coherently. You are several little ameba that will fail when the time comes because you care nothing for anyone but yourselves! I will not have that! I don't care if you survive this training! I don't care if you go running to Dr. K or your mommies! You will learn one thing here, even if it kills you! You will learn to be a team, Understood!?" Lokai waited for the expected response.
"On the battlefield, I don't care how good you are. If you don't trust your teammate and protect them and form a tight alliance with them, you are as good as dead. You have two choices, maggots. You can learn to be a team, or I will beat the crap out of each one of you personally until you want to be a team!" Lokai paused only a second. "Well, what's your answer?"

[Jake Thomas]

OoC; Crap. Crap. Crap. Is crap allowed? xD
AND FONT SIZE 1 PUHLEASE.

BiC;
Jake hung his head, maybe it was still to early to go through basic training. Everyone had warned him and told him to wait until he had been at the school for at least a year. "Yes sir." he mumbled, when Lokai demanded an answer. He looked down at his knees and grimaced at the ammount of blood he saw. He hadn't taken as many falls as Tali, but somehow me managed to scrape them up when he was doing his pushups. He sighed quietly, everyone was so much more fit than him. Even that 4 month Enoch was better than him.

"Sir," Jake raised his hand slowly, "I suggest we vote a leader of the team and no matter how much we hate him or her we will follow him or her. We would also hope that he or she would not be selfish and use us in ways to make his or her work easier. Maybe that way we could learn to be a team. I mean, we all wouldn't be trying to lead or slack off." he shrugged his shoulders.

[Natalie Kent]

Natalie glared at Jake, "I suppose you think that you should be the leader, huh? With all your fancy talk about being a team. How do you think we're gonna be a team when you can barely make it around the track once without doing 100 pushups?" she then turned to Tali, "And you, you've been here long enough, you should be able to jump those hurdles with ease! Don't you jump over them everyday in the gym? Or maybe you were slacking off and cheating." she accused, "Anyways, I know what you're doing wrong, it's not because you're short. It's because you're jumping way to early." she said in a stern voice, "And that sexist pig over there knows nothing about team work even though he's able to run around the track faster than anyone else. At least Tali and Jake are trying." she snapped, "None of you have said a civil word to me since I've been here. If you think you're going to make it through basic training on your own, you are oh so wrong." she said, pointing a finger at each of them in turn, "I have been through this before. I made it through 2 months of hard training here, but then I broke my arm. I can help you all get through this hell, but I won't unless you're nice and civil to me. Because that's how teams are. They help each other and are polite to each other, even though they hate each other." she looked at Lokai, "Uh, end of lecture, sir." she said, shruggind her shoulders and patting her head, making sure the underwear were still there.

OoC; I hate Natalie. xD

[Tali Levin]

||I think we can say crap. . . unless it offends anyone?

And yeah, Natalie is a. . . pain. XD||

Tali sat as commanded, though she knew sitting right after running wasn't a great thing to do. "Yes, sir," she muttered in response to Lokai's first question. She was about to respond to the second when Jake made his suggestion, and Natalie shot him down. Tali was too tired to smart-mouth back at the girl, so she merely sat and took it. Natalie was right, after all. After eight years on campus, Tali should have been able to jump the hurdles with ease, but they'd always been one of her weak points and she'd never made much of a point to focus on that particular weak point.

Though she knew better than to speak out of turn, Tali couldn't help saying just one thing. Keeping her upper arm parallel to the ground, she raised her fist and didn't really wait for Lokai to acknowledge her before speaking. "Sir, I think Natalie is right. We can't all keep fighting each other and expect to make it through on our own. Natalie knows what she's doing, and I think if we pick a leader it should be her." She sighed inwardly as she said the words, suddenly second-guessing herself. Natalie was a brat, but she did have something to offer to the team. . . didn't she? "Or, even if we don't have a leader, we all have something to offer to the team and we should use it to our advantage. Enoch is fast and strong, Jake is smart, and Natalie is. . . knowledgeable." She deliberately left herself out as she spoke, then she looked down at her lap. "That's all, sir."

||Don't hurt them too much for speaking out of turn. They're kids, remember? ||