Author's Note: I almost forgot Ken's birthday DX
Gah. Aren't I awful, forgetting poor lil' Ken like that? Well, in my defense, I have been busy lately. But I still remembered! So this piece of shit, crappy, pointless, worthless, mediocre, disjointed one-shot is his birthday gift :3
Warning, as there's bullying in this fic. If bullying is something that bothers you, you probably don't want to read this. Also some animal abuse to beware of...Or maybe not? Do worms count as animals? I'm not sure, so I guess I'll jut say worm abuse. Beware of worm abuse. Male names were taken directly from the list of boys Laeti has dated, as I am uncreative and couldn't come up with my own. Female names are likewise influenced from whatever else. Different-ish style in this one. Lot of em dashes ._.'
On a less relevant note, I checked my email, and like, holy shit. I suddenly got another twelve followers...And I don't even...Why? XD This all happened this week and I didn't even post anything this week. I don't know what's going on. Thanks anyway though, you odd ones who find my crap readable enough to keep tabs on it~
Though he tried as hard as he could to be strong, Ken was dead after his first day of military school. D-E-A-D, dead. From the first sixty laps around the building to the last timed deathtrap of an obstacle course, every morsel of vitality he had was vacuumed right out of him. He was left a puddle of sweat and limbs like wet noodles, huffing as hard as a sasquatch in a sauna.
He bonelessly fell back against the wall and took in gulps, eyelids closing beneath his glasses. It wouldn't always be this hard, he knew. He would go to sleep tonight and wake up just a little bit stronger tomorrow, and then he'd train tomorrow and get a little bit stronger the next day, and so on and so forth. That's why he was here, so he'd get stronger.
"Here," spoke a mellow, female voice.
Ken opened his eyes and saw one of the other students (or were they trainees?) holding out a bottle of water. Her name was Clara he knew, as she was in a few of his classes. Even though the sleeping dorms were separated for obvious reasons, much of the training was coed.
"Thanks," Ken mumbled breathlessly. He took the bottle with shaky fingers and swilled deeply.
"You're welcome." Clara smiled at him. Ken thought he liked her, a little. Obviously he wasn't very familiar with her, but she reminded him of Candy. She was much bigger than Candy (bigger than him) with whipcord, hardy muscles, sturdy hips, and calloused fingers, but she smiled at him like Candy did. She seemed nice like Candy was, and that was all Ken could ask for.
Everyone else had been here longer than him. Everyone else knew each other, and he was the new guy all over again; and that was even worse in military school than it was in regular high school, because here everyone was athletic and intimidating and he was just himself. Wimpy, plain, skittish Ken. The other kids teased at him back home, but here they eyed him the way starved wolves eyed stray lambs and howled feral laughter every time he stumbled.
Though he was still thirsty, Ken pulled the bottle from his lips after a second drink and gave it back to Clara. He didn't want to take advantage of her kindness. She laughed gently and shook her head, not taking it.
"Go ahead," she told him with amusement glinting in hazel eyes. "I know you need more than that."
Ken offered a fragile, sheepish smile and gratefully guzzled down the rest of water, feeling nominal amounts of life seep back into his insides. "Thanks," he reiterated and lifted his head, emerald pools blinking shyly. "You're the first person whose been nice to me here."
Clara tsk-tsked and looped an olive arm around Ken's shoulders, steering him off the wall and into stride toward the building's entrance. "Ah, don't take it personally. Everybody here tries to act like a big shot by ripping on the newbies."
"I guess that's the way it is everywhere," Ken mumbled as she led him long, endless unkind remarks and immature pranks surfacing in his memory.
"Yup. But I tell you what, they'd be a lot nicer to you if you did the initiation."
"Initiation?" Ken glanced at her skeptically.
Clara's lips twitched. "Yeah. It's something we do behind the trainers' backs. So we know we can trust each other, y'know?"
"I guess that makes sense," Ken agreed. There was always an unspoken rule in school that students should always put each other before teachers, even if they didn't really like each other. Which basically boiled down to: no snitching, always share answers to homework, and shun all teacher's pets.
"Do you want to get initiated?" Hazel spheres studied him curiously.
"Yeah, of course!" Ken was going to be here for a long time. He wanted to make as many friends — or allies at least — as possible.
"Great," Clara brightly declared and unwound her arm from his shoulders. Ken felt noticeably lighter with it gone. "I'll tell my friends and we'll meet you outside at the north obstacle course in an hour, okay?"
Anticipation and anxiety swing danced in his stomach with jittery steps. In an hour it would be past dark and they weren't supposed to leave the building after dark. But despite this, Ken was more eager to make friends than he was afraid of punishment. "Okay. Um, what exactly am I going to have to do?"
"It's a surprise," Clara chirped. Then she gave him a friendly clap on the back and veered into the girls' dormitory. Ken wheeled and left for his own room. He changed out of his dirtied, sticky uniform into more comfortable clothes. His sweater, worn, familiar sweatpants. He set his watch to go off in an hour and stretched out on the starchy cotton sheets, sore muscles pulsing.
He wondered what Candy was doing back home. That thought was the last one he had before dozing off.
The shrill alarm of his watch yanked him out of a dreamless sleep and Ken snapped up so fast he almost fell down. Shutting off the alarm, he scrambled to the door and surreptitiously crept down the hallway. This was his first night here and he wasn't sure how many instructors would be monitoring the building. Heck, for all he knew, there could be guards at the doors. But there weren't, thankfully enough. Perhaps it was a bit silly on his part to worry about this. After all, the fences here were four meters tall and barbwire laced the top in spiky curly-qs.
Ken quietly exited into the yard, the crisp night air nipping at his skin. Breaking out in gooseflesh and giving a shiver, he made his way to the north obstacle course. The moonlight illuminated a group of silhouetted figures, five boys and three girls; one of whom was Clara. Smiling nervously, Ken absently pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and offered a wave.
"Hey guys. I'm ready for my initiation."
"Good," answered one of the males (a burly blonde Ken recognized as Julien) as he swaggered a few steps toward Ken.
"I told you he'd come," said Clara. The group snickered and before Ken could question what was so funny, Julien grabbed him by the collar and wrenched him around, the heel of his palm striking the small of Ken's back with unbridled force and sending him sprawling to the dirt. A rocket of pain shots up his spine as his guts punted backwards and all of a sudden a very familiar, very dreadful realization of what was happening dawned upon him just as Julien and another boy with black hair Ken didn't know grabbed him by the arms and hauled him to his feet.
"Please," Ken stuttered, despising himself as much for his initial naivety as for not being macho enough to be brave in the face of being outnumbered. "I don't want any trouble, I—"
The balled rock of a fist of the girl with sheeny auburn ringlets drove right into his solar plexus and turned his plea to a whimper as he doubled over. "Pathetic!" she shouted and Julien and the unidentified boy straightened him up again.
"Take it like a man, small fry," Julien scoffed. "Go on, Darcy, hit 'im again."
Ken wordlessly struggled to pull out of their grasp, twisting and tugging, but their arms were so much stronger than his undefined spaghetti limbs, and Darcy's knuckles smashed into his windpipe. He spluttered mutely as his throat burned and the passing air got choked off, and then—
"My turn!"
"Go for it, Theo!"
And then another fist, even bigger, punched Ken square in the face and he couldn't tell if that brisk snap he heard was his glasses or cartilage. Theo hit him again right in the same spot, and if it was his glasses last time, then it was his cartilage this time. Blood bubbled onto his upper lip, hot against his cold skin and then it rolled into his mouth, treating his tongue to snotty, salty metallic tangs. He trembled and his legs gave way, but the hands on his arms held him in an unyielding vise and refused to let him collapse.
Blows from Jeremy, Odetta, Mael, Daniel, and Clara herself rained down on him in circuits and then all at once, razing his insides and turning his hide to one throbbing, screaming bruise. Cuts wept from his face and blood never stopped dribbling from his nostrils, and soon his ears were bleeding too and all he could do was not cry, not break and not cry, because if he cried, if he cried, then—
"Look at him," Mael sneered. "He's fucking crying!"
Ken quaked, blinking away the blurriness from the boiling tears and dash of blood, and if he had ever been ashamed of himself, it was now. He was so pitifully, utterly ashamed of himself that he almost wished they would just kill him already.
Julien cackled viciously and threw him to the ground. "You sure know how to pick 'em, Clara!" He casually kicked Ken in the sternum and Ken let out a soft, inaudible gurgle of pain. The kick started a trend, because the next thing Ken knew, all eight of them were kicking, and kicking, and kicking everywhere. He tried to curl up in a ball to buffer the barrage, tried to curl up like a little pill bug; a little roly-poly, but they just kicked him right open again. Combat boot after combat boot smashed imprints into his flesh, cruel laugher drowning out the little cracks and pops as Ken fractured.
The sheer pain of it was like being rubbed raw against sandpaper and ground into hot coals in unison. Ken wasn't sure how much more of it he could take when Clara shouted a firm, tart "Stop."
The kicking stopped immediately and Ken allowed himself to slacken on the grass, a bloodied, aching, sniffling mess. He closed his eyes behind shattered glasses and heaved serrated breaths, too hurt to think.
"We don't want him unconscious," she continued. Ken stiffened.
"Right," Jeremy snickered. "I almost forgot." He squatted down, ice-blue eyes gleaming with mirth as he effortlessly pushed Ken onto his back and pinned his swollen wrists over his head. "Go get it, Odetta."
"With pleasure," Odetta purred. She ran off as Theo pinned his legs.
"Please don't," Ken begged, voice hoarse and reedy under the froth of saliva and blood. "Whatever you're g-going to do, please don't." He didn't have high expectations. Bullies never listened, but then, he'd never been bullied like this. Never as bad as this, never when every fiber of his body riddled with pain. Never to the point where making the slightest move was as appealing as rolling in a bed of rusty nails, and when he was drained of the very ability to do so anyway.
"Aww," Darcy cooed. "He's cute when he's sniveling." She kneeled next to Jeremy and lifted one of Ken's hands just slightly, taking his left pinky in her grasp. She bent it back until it broke with a loud, sickening, snapping sound as distinctive as stepping on a twig. Daniel covered his mouth to muffle the scream.
"Got it," Odetta announced as she ran back into view, having just missed the performance. In her hands was a silver can. Ken felt ill just looking at it and the last thing he wanted to do was discover what was inside.
But naturally, his wants meant nothing to them.
Julien clapped, Mael fist-pumped, and Clara's grin was as toothy as an alligator's. "Perfect," she chirruped. Odetta snickered like a schoolgirl caught doing something naughty and crouched beside Theo. Daniel lowered himself next to her and Clara parked herself on Ken's other side.
"Let me do the first one," said the boy with black hair whose name still hadn't come up.
Ken froze as Odetta pulled a worm out of the can. A long, pulsing, writhing, twisty earthworm. His heart turned to stone and sank into the pit of his coiled stomach.
No. No, they wouldn't, they couldn't, they—
Julien and Clara forced his mouth wider than ever and Ken was moderately shocked that his jaw didn't just unhinge, it was smarting so bad. He twisted helplessly, limbs screeching in protest with twinges and stings and searing, but he had to fight! He couldn't just lay there! The boy chuckled with the worm in between two fingers, so disgusting he didn't even want to touch it himself. He chuckled and lowered it closer and closer to Ken's open mouth, and Ken just kept struggling with all he had, but the hands that trapped him would not loosen.
"That's right," the boy taunted. "Squirm, fresh meat. Squirm like the little worm you're about to eat."
Ken was rendered stationary as he forced the earthworm into his mouth. Dirty fingers squished Ken's tongue and deposited the wiggling creature. It was as slimy and cold as raw fish meat, with an odor just as horrendous. It tasted like bitter dirt and there was nothing Ken could do but swallow it. It slipped down his throat like nothing at all, the same brand of ease in which an infant swallows a toxic battery.
Ken gagged as the hand pulled out of his mouth, coughing as teardrops of fire cleared trails in his cheeks. He could scarcely process what he'd just done, but his stomach walls were suddenly coated in glue.
"My turn," Daniel jeered right in his face, hot breath close enough to blow back the tears. Odetta handed him another worm and—
No, no, no, no, no, no! He couldn't through that again, not again!
But he did. In fact, Ken went through it another seven times. Another seven doses of fresh earthworm, still alive and squirming and wiggling like mad; like they could understand what was happening. Another seven flavors of moist, flabby, acerbic soil. Another seven swallows of something as thick as fingers, but smooth as mango juice. Clara was the last of them to feed him, stuffing the worm down his throat as a pseudo mother bird.
They all got up and slapped high fives as Ken feebly rolled over onto his hands and knees. They all snickered and relished in his humiliation like it was some kind of wonderful happening, and all he could do was breathe past his bloody sobs and vainly try to vomit.
At least they were done. Despite everything, at least it was over. At least—
"Let's take his clothes," Clara decided.
Ken didn't even try fight it this time. He'd already eaten worms. There was no resistance left in him. He'd eaten worms. They roughly stripped him naked. Their hands were like claws, ripping and shredding the fabric until he was left fully exposed, the sharp wind kissing his welts and caressing his lesions. Julien picked him up and tossed him into the net of tires in the course just to prove how tough he is. Renewed pain flared through him in resonating waves and Ken hazily thought that he probably couldn't get up if he tried.
They left afterward, all the fun over.
Ken spent his first night at military school outside, bare to the damaged bones and crying useless tears that wouldn't fix them.