(A/N: Inspired by the line "feral child raised by puppets". Set pre-game, vaguely AU.)
It was going to be today.
Giacomo observed the contingents of foot soldiers moving through formation from above, his arms folded across his broad chest and his expression unreadable. It didn't matter much anyway, what he looked like at the moment – the soldiers' attention was to their work, and no one spared a glance to the perimeter wall. After a moment, though, a pleased grin spread across his face.
Today was the day he'd prove himself worthy of the private unit he'd petitioned, and he wouldn't have to lift a finger.
He'd done enough to prove his personal prowess. Now it was just clearing the two of them...
Ayme knew. Ayme had been a confidant of his for a very long time, since even before she was through her tests. At that point in time she was considered classified information and Georg was supposed to keep her and Folon separate from both one another and anyone else. That failed rather miserably given that Giacomo himself was an experimental body, and one who, being Georg's son, was permitted full exploration of the laboratory. Though young, she was cool-headed and not easily impressed; it took Giacomo much more than one encounter to earn her grudging confidence, and more than that to develop something of a tentative friendship.
She and Skeed, though Giacomo had little personal interest vested in the redhead, had quietly and subtley lended their aid to advancing him to this point. Enough of it went unsaid enough that he had reaped the most glory, but the real issue at hand lay with the other orphan who'd been brought into the empire as one of Georg's experiments.
The emergence of two figures at the far end of the courtyard signalled the beginning of the trial. The soldiers who were training had not been informed of it ahead of time, and now stood at confused attention, waiting for orders or explanations from their unit commanders. Ayme, one of the two figures who'd entered, looked from side to side before spotting him in the distance, and raised one arm in something half-greeting, half-salute. As he moved to do the same, he saw Ayme elbow the figure next to her and then he spied a flash of white as Folon grinned in his direction.
The two of them were going to be in his unit, and he would had no one else.
The difficulty was, of course, Folon's history of misconduct. The blue-skinned man had been trained exquisitely well, and was capable of killing with his bare hands as well as the weapons they'd taught him to manage – in that respect, he was no different from Ayme. The place they diverged was the level of modifications they'd gone though. While both Ayme and Folon had proven themselves to be stronger than any of the other orphans who'd been selected for testing simply by surviving, Folon had undergone more severe experimentation due to both his resilience to the treatment and the fact that he was already of a questionable sanity when he was first recruited. Suffice it to say that the meagre self-control he'd once possessed had been twisted and broken dangerously, and leave the rest to imagination.
Giacomo smiled, though, as he felt the tension roll out tendrils and lick its way into the contingents; they recognised Ayme and Folon, and they were afraid. It was almost a shame that they needn't be. He could see Ayme talking intently to Folon, and the other's posture was stiff and tight, indicating that he was listening. Giacomo was fairly sure she'd be reminding him that he was not allowed to kill anyone today, and that if he did everything properly, just like they practiced, Giacomo would do what he promised. That was all Folon needed to hear.
Giacomo was patient, for this. He knew what he would see: perfection. Perfection beyond that which any normal soldier could ever dream of attaining. Perfection to the same level he himself commanded; perfection so absolute that this entire field of soldiers would be powerless. That, that was why he was grinning. His grin remained as the first round of shots was fired, bullet after bullet after bullet whistling harmlessly through the air where Ayme and Folon had lingered seconds previously, as row after row fell to the speed of Folon's whips and the shock of Ayme's guns, as the formations crumpled and turned in upon themselves as soldiers grew more and more stupefied that a mere two people were succeeding in defeating them. He grinned wordlessly even as he felt other commanders come up besides him, even when the Emperor himself came to see his army being soundly trounced by only two fighters.
They were going to be the most unquestionable force the Empire had ever seen.