"Where were you?" Elstrin said. Kana hadn't been there when he woke up. Again. "And get off my lap."
The guy sat up, stole a cracker from Vel's plate, a muffin from Andrew's plate and the rest of Elstrin's lemonade. "I was," Kana said between bites, ignoring all three sets of glares directed his way and the subtle shifting of breakfast plates away from grabbing-range, "taking an early shower. And I was met with a pleasant distraction, and therefore I am slightly late, but very satisfied."
He wriggled his fingers at someone sitting a few tables away, a cadet who Elstrin vaguely recognised to be from their building. The other guy grinned, raised his eyebrows suggestively and turned back to his friends.
"I see," Vel said delicately. "Congratulations and don't this is my food get your own."
Kana drew his hand back, pouted, and sauntered off to the breakfast bar, looking far too smug for someone who still had a mostly bruised face. "God," Elstrin muttered. "Why does he have to be my roommate?"
"I'm sure he's got other uses apart from being a typical horny teenager," Vel said. "Like making illegal mistakes and winning you a trip down to the city, where you met Gabriel Kresil. Seriously— "
"Why do you want to contact him?" Elstrin frowned.
"That's my own business. Can I, though?"
"No. I hardly even talked to him. You could ask Snow about him. They're friends."
Vel sat back, disappointed. "I don't want him to ask me questions."
"Is Gabriel famous or something?"
"Used to be. He's been keeping a low profile. I haven't seen him in years, let alone ever talked to him."
"So… how do you know he'll have whatever info you need?"
"Hey, I'm the one interrogating you," Vel huffed. "What happened with the dragon?"
"You didn't bribe the guards enough?" Elstrin said, pretending to be unimpressed.
"Why won't you just tell me—"
"I know how you can talk to Gabriel," Kana said, returning with a full plate. "But you need
money, and at least three hours of spare time, and you can't ever tell your boyfriend 'cause I bet he's better than your boyfriend."
Stunned silence followed. Elstrin used it to resume eating. Andrew reacted first, lobbing an
empty cup at Kana and giving him the middle finger for good measure, while Vel spluttered, "You and—and him?"
"Actually, make it five hours," Kana continued, slinging an arm around Elstrin's shoulders. "If you're really nice to him he'll even give you some bonus time. Or maybe I was just special—eight inches has to count for something, right? I mean—"
"Be quiet," Elstrin said severely. "Stop talking about your sexual encounters or I will steal your key card and lock you out for a week. And you—" he pointed his fork at Vel, "seriously, just ask Snow. Whatever you heard about was not my business. And you—" the fork jabbed accusingly at Andrew and paused for a while. "Nothing. I like you. But you should buy a leash for Vel. Not for kink."
"I've thought about it," Andrew replied seriously.
"There's a big storm cloud over your head," Kana observed, batting the air above Elstrin as if shooing a fly away. "That time of the month again?"
Resisting the impulse to punch Kana was difficult, but Elstrin managed somehow. He settled for biting into a waffle and channelling his irritation into chewing it savagely. He really didn't know why he ended up with a bunch of perverts for friends. Maybe he should ask Andrew to introduce him to a tamer group, people who didn't have their minds constantly stuck in the gutter. But then again, did such people even exist? Three-hundred young men cooped up together without the usual entertainment that computers and televisions brought… maybe he should just get used to it. At least nobody was talking about girls.
Still, he was relieved to get away from Kana and his lewd jokes after breakfast, eager for a new day of training. Whatever Snow did in the infirmary yesterday had apparently worked too well: on top of a total absence of dizziness, Elstrin felt as if he'd had a full week's rest, and there was not a single twinge in his muscles, which had been more or less permanently sore since he'd started sword training. He was brimming with energy. A six-hour spar didn't sound very daunting at all, and he was ready to bet that he could hold out better than last time.
"How's your knee?" Snow said as a greeting, abruptly cutting away a large chunk of Elstrin's good mood.
"Fine, thank you," Elstrin said with a scowl. He snatched his practice sword from the lieutenant's hands. It only prompted a laugh. "I should file a complaint against you. For mistreating a gravely injured patient."
"You weren't gravely injured," Snow pointed out. "And how does healing translate to mistreating?"
"You zapped me with magic."
"Did I? I don't recall." He smiled and ignored Elstrin's glare. "Anyway, since you're both nicely patched up courtesy of me, I want you to spar with your roommate this morning. Until recess."
"What?" Elstrin complained. "But I just escaped—I mean, I, uh—why? He's crazy. He'll kill me."
"I'm sure he won't. Would you rather spar with me?"
"Yes!"
"But you can never beat me. I think you and Kana would be an even match. And it's just for a few hours."
"He'll punch me if I even get close to disarming him. He said so himself, he can't let his guard down."
"I'm sure he won't," Snow repeated. "If he does, you may kick him in the ribs, but only once. Come on."
He started towards Kana and Lieutenant Leopard. Elstrin slouched along behind him, reluctant. How the hell were he and Kana an even match? He'd seen the guy fight well with a million injuries on his body. Now he was practically fine apart from a few scratches and bruises that he doubted Kana even noticed. God, he was going to get flattened.
Snow sent them to the jogging track for warm-up as he and Leopard discussed something. Kana looked puzzled but moved to run alongside Elstrin. "They want us to spar?" he asked, glancing at their instructors.
"Yeah. Don't hit me with your sword. I can't kick hard enough to break your rib."
"Oh. Hmm." Kana grinned. "Promise me you won't steal my key card. Ever."
"I was kidding," Elstrin said, rolling his eyes. "I just can't stand hearing about those things while I'm eating."
"There's nothing else to talk about," Kana said earnestly. "Okay. I'll try not to hit you. No guarantees, though."
That didn't sound very reassuring, but Elstrin supposed it was the best he would get. Maybe Kana would go easy on him. He supposed he didn't look as threatening as Snow did, so it might win him some easier moves. He took a deep breath and concentrated on his warm-ups, trying to recall what little he'd seen of Kana's fighting style. Speedy, definitely. Heavy on the offensive. Those strange blocks that shifted into attacks halfway through a parry. Not a lot of running around, so he anticipated putting most of his energy into his sword. Oh well, at least it meant the fight would be over sooner.
"Why do you look so scared?" Kana laughed, after a minute of silent stretching exercises. "I'm not that good. I bet all the lieutenants can beat me easily."
"I'm not a lieutenant," Elstrin grumbled. When Leopard finally called for them to start the duel, he faced Kana and tried to quell the nervous squirming in his stomach. He'd entered the army looking for a challenge, hadn't he? This was just another challenge. Just a very difficult and daunting one. He would do his best and hope to get through it fine.
"How's this for incentive?" Kana whispered as they bowed and raised their swords. "Loser has to suck winner's dick."
"What? No fucking way—" Elstrin began loudly, but Kana brought his sword up and around towards his neck, and Elstrin twitched back to avoid it. There was absolutely no time to recover— Kana used a different set of attacks to the ones that they'd learnt, and the standard blocks didn't quite work. Elstrin was forced to improvise, sloppily at first, but slowly, he found a semi-stable rhythm that he could just follow. He barely parried each attack, and yet he managed to. Everything was two times faster than what he was
used to—Kana never stepped back to catch his breath, never locked blades, never ducked out of range. He was aiming to overwhelm. It very nearly succeeded, but maybe Kana was right, or Snow was a really good teacher, because Elstrin found himself able to fight back. Nearly evenly. He could still tell that he just wasn't as quick and agile as Kana was, not as at ease with a sword or even his own body—he didn't move with that catlike grace that the Lupalian did, like a wild but choreographed dance.
It was exhausting. The constant jabs and pokes and slices didn't ease up one bit. Elstrin was aware that he hadn't really gotten bruised much yet but his arms were burning from the effort of blocking nonstop, his mind spinning from trying to catch up with the rhythm that always seemed to want to change. He couldn't invent moves the way Kana did; even if combining a few of the blocks helped a little, bought him some time and slowed the pace down for a few seconds, it always sped right back up again. Every now and then Kana would introduce a move that was completely different to anything Elstrin had seen before, complex unpredictable twirls and swipes of his sword, moves that Elstrin quickly learnt to just step out of the way and avoid instead of trying to deflect them, because he couldn't. Apart from that, he kept the spar going, encouraged by the fact that no punches had been thrown yet and the water break had passed already, and he still hadn't been disarmed. He was losing, sure, but it was a gradual slide. He might just have a chance of turning the tables. Maybe if he did something totally unexpected. All he needed was a distraction—and unbidden, the events of his first spar with Snow popped into his mind.
Yeah, right, he told himself. You could always grope Kana, win the fight, and put up with an entire night of suggestive sexual advances. No thanks.
True. And god, he really hoped Kana had been joking about the blowjob. He did not want to suck anyone off, especially after he'd just gotten rid of an inconveniently placed ghost, and especially not when it was his perverted roommate. He supposed if Kana was serious, he could always vehemently refuse, and if the guy was persistent, report him for sexual harassment. It was already kind of happening anyway, what with the massages and the showers and everything else. But if he did report him… Elstrin couldn't imagine it would be good for their friendship. And he certainly didn't fancy the idea of sharing a dormitory with an enemy. He'd had enough of those in high school, and it would ruin the wonderful fresh start that he'd been diligently maintaining.
He'd deal with the issue when he had to. Right now—he was running out of strength. Could he fake an injury? No—Kana was surely enough of an expert on the topic that Elstrin might as well shout that there was a three-headed monkey behind him. Could he—
"Hey, nice fight," what was unmistakably Gabriel Kresil's voice drawled.
Kana made the mistake of glancing over. Just for an instant. His attack faltered, swung a hair's width away from its aim, and Elstrin wasn't sure how he did it—he had disarmed Snow before purely because Snow let him to get the technique right, and never had he managed it in an actual spar—but a breathless dodge, twist and wrench was all it took for Kana's sword to clatter to the dirt ground.
Elstrin stared. Kana stared—and for a moment something flashed through his eyes, like the frozen reaction of an alarmed snake ready to strike. Then, smoothly, he bowed, and less smoothly, Elstrin did the same. He was stunned. His arm was still tense, ready to stop the next blow that never came. He—he had won. He'd won.
"Oh, no, guys, don't stop on my behalf," Gabriel said quickly, holding up his hands. Snow was glaring at him. "What?" he smirked. "Can't I voice an opinion around here? It was a nice fight."
"You did that on purpose," Snow said. He stepped forward and picked up Kana's sword, then took Elstrin's from his slack hand. "Go take a five-minute break, you two. Well done."
Elstrin walked automatically over to the water stand, mind still blank with disbelief. Granted, it wasn't a very fair victory, but—he had won. He sipped absently from his bottle, letting those three words sink in. He began to smile. He imagined that the sky glowed bluer and the water tasted sweeter.
"That was fun," Kana said, bumping their shoulders together. There wasn't a trace of bitterness or resentfulness in his grin. "We should do that again. I honestly thought you wouldn't last half the time we sparred for. I haven't had a decent fight like that in ages."
"I only won—" Elstrin paused. He couldn't believe he was getting the chance to say it. "I only won 'cause you got distracted."
"No, I looked away for like one millisecond. Everyone gets distracted eventually. You're really good at disarming, otherwise I would've recovered and kept kicking your ass." Kana laughed. "But I sure as hell wasn't expecting him to turn up here."
They looked across the field. Gabriel and Snow had moved to where Stag was, and the three of them were talking. Vel hadn't noticed them yet, but Andrew was throwing increasingly astonished looks at Gabriel. His instructor cottoned on quickly and ordered him to keep training. Elstrin wondered what was so important about Gabriel, and why none of the lieutenants seemed surprised by his arrival. Maybe he visited HQ as often as Snow visited the little house in the slums. Who was that person Snow had threatened to forbid him from seeing? Rem?
Gabriel left the soldiers after a short while and walked towards the main gate, passing the water stand on his way. He grinned at Elstrin and gave Kana an obvious once-over. "Lookin' good there, Mr. Skax," he said.
"You call this good?" Kana muttered, indicating his face.
"Oh, well, you folk from Little Lupalia are always getting beaten up, so I have different standards," Gabriel said casually. "What room are you in?"
Elstrin interjected disbelievingly, "You're not visiting us—"
"310. Apartment C," Kana grinned. "Don't mind Elstrin. He gets jealous."
"I can tell," Gabriel said with a wink, totally disregarding Elstrin's stunned protests. "Well, I gotta go. I'll see you… later." With a last sensual smile directed mostly at Kana, he turned and disappeared around the cafeteria building, old jeans doing nothing to hide the subtle sway of his hips.
Kana held up a finger before Elstrin could lose his temper and start yelling. "I'll make sure he won't ever step foot in the room if it's such a big deal. Hell, he can stay outside the apartment itself. If you want."
"That's not what I want. What I want is a normal roommate who doesn't see ghosts everywhere, take drugs in the bathroom and leap at any and every chance of making himself look like an outright slut."
"Ouch," Kana said, hand fluttering over his heart. He raised his eyebrows slightly, and Elstrin saw that under the bruises, his eyes were actually an extraordinarily deep blue. "Let me tell you three things, Elstrin. One, I don't see ghosts everywhere. When we have the time, I'll tell you every legal bit of information I know about spirits, so maybe you'll stop saying all these wrong and disrespectful things about them. Two, they weren't drugs, they're antibiotics and I don't need them anymore anyway, so let's just drop the subject and be done with it. Three, I do not make a conscious effort to appear slutty, and if it seems that way, then—I dunno. Thanks, I guess? The only thing remotely slutty I have done thus far in HQ is receive a quick and very non-personal blowjob in the shower. That is all, and it'll remain that way tonight. Do you really think Gabriel would try to do anything with a cadet when your lieutenant can in fact hear every word of our conversation?"
Elstrin spun around. Snow, standing in the distance with his arms crossed and their practice swords by his feet, flipped them a sardonic wave and tapped an invisible watch on his wrist. Elstrin scowled. "What the fuck, of course he can't hear us—"
"Actually, I can," Snow called across the field. "Your five minutes is up. Get over here or I'll make you train until eight."
Kana shrugged, patted Elstrin's shoulder and jogged back to Leopard, far away enough that
Elstrin couldn't shout swearwords without the risk of others misinterpreting. A little freaked out on top of his anger, Elstrin approached Snow more slowly. How the hell had he heard? They had been at le
ast thirty metres apart. The field wasn't exactly a quiet, calm place. He and Kana hadn't been hollering at each other. He knew by now that Snow could perform magic, but shouldn't Elstrin be able to feel something if there was so much hidden energy around the man? He didn't know the scope or function of the shields Snow had mentioned yesterday, but—there should at least be something there. All of a sudden it unsettled Elstrin a great deal. He wasn't comfortable with the idea that his instructor had extra armour, because surely it meant he had extra weapons too. If he could just see them…
But of course he couldn't. He knew next to nothing about magic; only the most prestigious and rich schools taught it to their students, and Elstrin had not attended one of those. He'd only heard and read about it. Something like controlling a sixth sense, making use of an entirely new set of hypothetical muscles and bones. Flying without wings. He had no idea how that was even possible.
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