a/n: A sequel to "NORTH WINTER HIGH SCHOOL: THE WALL (MILITARY) ACADEMY" and "NWHS:tW(M)A-INTERLUDE". Set in the same world and takes place two-years after the previous fic.

The Ages are listed as the following:
Robb - 22
Sansa - 20
Arya - 19
Bran - 17
Rickon - 14
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Jon - 21
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Gendry - 21
Ygritte - 22
Tanner - 28
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Fic: Summary: Arya has been training as a Crow under Lt. Karl "The Skull King" Tanner's hard thumb for the past two-years. While out on a routine watch with her ex-partner Jon Snow at the Fence in the Beyond, all the little experiments on her Uncle Benjen's behalf start to come into context.

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The Wall Academy:
Elite Military Training Depot
(White Walkers, Wildlings, & Wights)

Prologue:

He had refused to give her a gun, but allowed Arya the machete. Tanner told her that she wasn't to rely on something made from metal bits, but on her hands, on herself. She'd much rather have the gun, it would have been easier, but she wasn't going to beg the man—especially when the Corporal knew the Lt. wouldn't change his mind—so she set to work with setting the snare that would catch them this evening's meal (hopefully).

They were at the edge of the Haunted Forest in the Beyond, the fenced in training area of the Wall. She wondered what she could possibly catch, when all the times that she'd been out here, she could count of both hands that times that she and Jon had encountered animals—and still wasn't sure whether the creature with the Glowing Blue Eyes she had encountered her first time in the Beyond with Jon, at the weirwood grove, was one of them.

She'd taken off her thick, durable, lined gloves, and just worked with the skin-tight fleece gloves that were underneath, her fingers slowly losing feeling in the below zero temperatures as Tanner watched her with bland brown eyes.

Though her back was to him where she crouched on top of the snow in her snow gear, she could feel it. After three years of knowing the man, he could still make the little hairs on the back of her neck stand on end with just a look, a breath, a blink.

She finally finished with the snare, put her heavier gloves back on and brushed snow carefully over the wire to hide it. She then got a branch broken off from the lowest branches of an evergreen tree with the pine needles still adorning the twigs and carefully swept away and trace of her presence in that spot as she backed away. Her and Tanner carefully hiding away, it was difficult to be upwind or downwind of anything if the ground was level and the winds were blowing every-which-way it could think of with no concern for their empty bellies. She had planted some attractant that was sure to draw attention—but it was a waiting game until then.

[It was two-years ago that her Uncle Benjen, then Colonel, now Lord Commander of the Wall as of last year when Joer Mormont finally reached his retirement at the age of 68, after 51 years in service. It was him who thought this grand plan of leaving Arya to be molded by Tanner's hands only. She had long ago learned to control the fear that she felt for the man, wouldn't let it control her, stall her.

There were so many rumours and stories about her Ranking Officer, Lieutenant Karl Tanner—that it was actually a challenge to discern which were myth or truth. Even after training under him for a year with a partner, and two without.

All the information that she had gathered about him, via her teachings learned in the Shadow Tower under intelligence gathering, where still mostly unconfirmed.

He had grown up in Gin Alley in Flea Bottom, the poor and rundown underbelly of the prosperous and grand King's Landed where President Robert Baratheon resided over the Seven Kingdoms. Who could know what the then boy had to do on the streets before he was apprehended and made to run the APA course at the King's Landing Stadium. He moved through the ranks like thunder, and though he was just a Lieutenant, he was the one of the best Crow trainers at the Wall.

Having watched Tanner for the last three-years, how he fought in close combat, how he moved so silent, that soullessness in his eyes, how cruel he could be, and having found little to none public information on the mobile unit he used to run with... she believed that he had been a Bloody Crow.

The Bloody Crows were a black operations unit. They worked in the shadows, and there work was bloody. This was the factor that made Tanner make sense to her, made her listen to every command/instruction he gave her, made her fear him, made her curious, made her respect him despite herself—and made her question why exactly was it that Benjen wanted Tanner to train her specifically.

Her breath clouded in the freezing air in front of her before being stolen away an instant later by the howling wind with every exhale. She didn't know how long they would be there for, so she made sure that she was as comfortable as she could be in these conditions because she wasn't going to move until something came into that snare—if she did, Tanner would shoot her on principle, and those were not sim-bullets in the rifle, they were the real deal. As to whether he would clip her or kill her, she was never sure when it concerned that man.

Three days, that was the longest that Arya had ever spent training in the Beyond for before, but now Tanner had taken her out there for from a week, to nearly a month.

They'd already been out here for six days, and the teenager wasn't sure when this stint was going to end.

She'd only ever been in the Beyond with Jon before, someone that she trusted with her life, and had—he'd saved her several times from its environment and inhabitants as she had him. It wasn't the same out there with Tanner as it was with Jon. How can she trust someone like Tanner to have her back when he'd shot her in it more times than once? It was such a tricky thing, balancing trust with her RO and the fear that she had of him—how can you trust someone you fear?

What was the real reason why his code name was The Skull King? She'd heard the stories, the rumours on the matter. Years ago, when Benjen first told her that Tanner was going to train her alone, and she had tried to wheedle her way out of the whole thing, she had brought up Tanner's codename. Benjen had said: "They're just war stories. We all have them. And it's not uncommon for them to be altered and exaggerated as time wears on and they are retold by people who heard them from someone and they from another." Arya had known her uncle all her life, and knew that he was covering for something and suspected it had to do with Tanner's 'supposed' Bloody Crow past—and she wasn't sure she'd ever find out.

The sun was slowly but steadily inching westward as the seconds turned to minutes and those minutes were slowly but surely turning into hours. And she was starting to wonder if she put enough enticement at the snare or if the wind made the snow carry it off. She fucking hoped that wasn't the case because she would shoot herself with the rifle on principle.

She had been semi-comfortable from where she hunkered behind a old, rotted, long ago felled ironwood tree, but even though most of the wind was blocked, the cold from the ground was seeping through and things were starting to fall asleep. Her body was immobile, but her mind, eyes, and ears were not. She couldn't see Tanner from where she was, wasn't sure where he was hidden and whether he could see her even though she couldn't him—it was an unnerving thought.

By the level of the sun, it was nearing 0800.

Her stomach was hollow. Her nose was running from where it was stuffed inside her parka hood to try and keep it warm, and she had to be content with little sniffs to keep the snot at bay. Her throat was dry and she wanted a drink, but she couldn't move and she needed to pee at the same time.

She had learned stillness, and patience at the Wall, though at times it was against her nature. Sometimes she just wanted to jump into it head first. Sometimes, like now, she wanted to yell out her frustration. But she wouldn't and didn't, not after having waited this long.

There was a crunch in the snow, and at first she thought that she was just imagining it. She breathed low, alert now, and heard it again. She wasn't just dreaming, something was coming. She kept extra still now, her heart pounding in her chest, her stomach wanting. She made sure to keep breathing as she had before, any change might scare that animal off. She heard the crunch of its cautious steps, too heavy to be something like a hare. She could hear it chuffing, even for the wind, smelling her bait.

She heard the snare catch, and the animal make a startled noise. She sat up, looking over the fallen tree at the captured animal. It wasn't what she was expecting.

The bull was a couple years old, just old enough to separate from its mother and go off on it's own. Though it was the same size as a horse, its antlers were just buds between it's big ears. The moose's big brown-almost-black eyes were showing white with its fear as it kicked and jerked around, the snare caught around the armpit of its front right leg as it attempted to life the creature from the ground without success. The thick branch in which she had tied it off on, creaked with its strength and weight.

It suddenly stopped it racket as she leapt over the log and it scented her, spinning around to face her, kicking out with its front hooves. She watched it, making no move, the bare machete gripped in her left gloved palm. Tanner stepped from the shadows on the other side of the bull and it snorted his scent, angling its body so that it could keep both of them in its sights. It lowered its head, not a move of submission, but aggression, as it backed as far as the snare would allow. It's breath billowing powerfully from its nostrils, fogging in the air in front of its face, stolen by the wind and instantly replaced again.

Both officers stepped up to the boundary of the snare and a little, the bull snorting at them. Arya looked at her Ranking Officer in guidance as he stared unwavering at the heaving animal.

"Kill it."

She blinked, looking between him and the bull. "Kill it?" she was sure that this animal was just to big and would be a waste on just the two of them, but again, she had no idea how much longer Tanner was going to keep them out here.

The first thing that she had ever killed that was bigger than a rat, was three years ago. When she was still partners with her favoured Jon Snow and the two of them were in the Beyond for their third-year graduation test. They had come across a dead winter hare, its executioner a blue fox. She had hooked it with a lasso she made from their length of rope, and Jon finished the little beast off with the machete. She had assisted in the kill, but it was Jon that finished the job.

"Are you hungry?" he murmured. "Earn your meal and kill the animal, put it from its misery."

Arya looked back at the big animal, her grey eyes narrowed, assessing. Tanner made no move to hand her the rifle hung over his shoulder and her hand tightened on the machete handle. She was hungry and this animal would feed them.

She took a step forward and it stamped the hoof that wasn't caught in the snare. Its thick shoulders were thickly muscled. It might not have a set of thick antlers, but it could still easily kill her before she killed it. She needed to make this quick. Not just for the animal but for herself. She took another step, now just into the ring of the snare.

Keeping her eyes still trained on the beast that had her well beat in height, she crouched down briefly for a fist full of snow. It watched her with big brown eyes as she packed the snow into a makeshift snowball. She bent her knees slightly, her thick booted feet spread to give her a steadier stance as she threw the snowball at the bull with her right hand as hard as she could.

She was left handed, but Tanner was training her to be ambidextrous . The packed snow struck the moose in its pliable muzzle. It snorted hotly, shaking its head, its eyes flashing, and it planted its feet charging for her, its head down. She readied herself, it was right in front of her in just a few powered strides. It came to the end of the length of the snare, and she ducked under its striking head. As its body was jerked to the right, the branch holding it cracking loudly, she came at it.

"Yah!" She let out a yell as she sliced the edge of the machete against it tendoned and muscled neck, using both her hands to put as much strength as she could into the draw as she passed by on its left side. She jumped aside as its hind end came at her.

Tanner watched passively, his hood down. The beast didn't go down immediately as dark blood leaked from its open throat, it making a gurgling sound as it still tried to get at her in its dying breath. She jumped out of the way as it almost collapsed on top of her and as it thumped powerfully down into the stained snow, the branch tied to the other end of the snare finally snapped and crashed to the ground.

She dropped to her knees as its dying breath left in one last huff of steam from its nostrils, the light leaving its dark brown bulbous eyes. Her gloved hands and upper arms had blood spray on them. She looked over at Tanner as he set the rifle and pack aside and came over to her, taking both pairs of gloves from his hands as he knelt in front of her and next to the dead moose.

"Nice work," he told her. "Quick. Clean. Merciless." He looked from the animal back to her and she turned her flinch into a blink as he reach towards her face with pale hands, pushing her hood back and exposing her face to the cold winds. "Your first kill," he knew. He reached towards the opening that Arya had put in the animal's throat and cupped his hands at the still bleeding wound. It filled his hands, pooling over his fingers and staining the snow an even darker red around the moose's head and front legs. "One always wears his first kill."

She watched wide-eye as he brang his hands to her face but quickly squeezed them shut as she felt his cold finger tips through the warmth of the fresh blood as he drew them across her entire face, painting it red like a blank canvas. He withdrew his hands as she opened her eyes again, licking blood from her lips.

His lips curved upward as he looked at her with those pit less brown eyes and brought his own stained red and dripping hand to his lips and tasted it. "And now your true training can begin." She could feel his satisfaction at her deed and felt the pride in her heart.

Arya had done and would come to do and see many things during her time in service at the Wall; but camping inside a polar bear's carcass, eating blue arctic fox meat raw, nearly drowning in the runoff from the Frost Fangs' hot springs, and being stalked by Glowing Blue Eyes did not compare to all that Lt. Tanner had done whenever he had taken her out into the Beyond to train—and that had just been the first in a long line.

-tbc-
********Game/of/Thrones********
Note:

How do you like the start so far? I know that you're all wondering what the fucking stories are about Tanner's code/nickname are, but I'll leave that to y'allz imaginations! Please review!

The Key:

The Wall = Thousands of years ago it was a defence against the White Walkers, an invading and savage race, but has long turned into the top military recruitment training depot and base in Westeros. It takes on the top students who run the APA course, and trains the recruits for four-years before they become official officers of the Sworn Brothers.
The Military has complete control over itself, not the President of the Seven Kingdoms.
~ While the Wall is independent from Westeros, they need the President to implement these such actions on the Country. Such as: the APA course etc.
~It's rival is the Military outlet across the Narrow Sea that train soldiers called the Unsullied.

Ranking Officer or RO = Is what Tanner is to Arya. Her ranking, commanding Crow officer. He is like her up-graded drill sergeant.

The Beyond = The Beyond is a area that is as controlled as the military could make. It was 300 miles in length, 150 miles in width; the area just after the Wall's northern side and the area before the start of the Land of Always Winter. Fenced off, and complete with hundreds of hidden cameras to monitor the recruits' drills. The land consisted of a small mountain rang called the Frost Fangs, on the farthest upper West side; dense forest called the Haunted Forest, chocked with fog, laying on the length along the Wall; and covering the northern east of the Beyond was a cold, windy tundra covered in snow and ice; a river that ran through the middle, branching off into the West and East and lay frozen over in the tundra but not the forest. Of course, there were wild animals that still roamed, like mountain cats in the Frost Fangs, moose and the like in the Haunted Forest, and polar bears and mammoths in the snow tundra—controlled as it could be, it was still dangerous.

The Bloody Crows = A black ops. unit that does the dark and dirty for the Wall, all missions held in the strictest classifieds. Technically, they were disbanded. They worked in the shadows, and the work was bloody.

Simulation-bullets aka Sim-bullets = Sim-bullets are used in all training exercises like those in Craster's Keep and are made in the Armoury Shop. Made from a thin alloy, they act like real bullets, fired from real gun. They disintegrate or 'splat' upon impact, their tips filled with coloured paint. Despite not being real bullets, they inflicted pain that is very much genuine. If used corrected or incorrectly, they could cause: welting, bruising, crack a rib, spotted bleeding, knock the breath out of you, knock you out—and in a few cases, even kill you. Sim-bullets may not be metal, but they could still kill you.

Glowing Blue Eyes = These belong to an old creature that comes from The Land of Always Winter. One that hasn't been seen since the Long Night and War of the Dawn, creatures under the control of long unseen and largely forgotten White Walkers. It cannot enter the groove of the weir wood/heart tree.

The Weirwood or Heart Tree = The heart tree is a sacred growth and thing of worship of the Old Gods of the Forest. Long ago, when the Andals landed on Westeros and implemented their religion of the Seven, they tore out and desecrated most of the weirwood trees of worship. Few survived, all in the North. Now, in this present day, they are mostly depicted in history books and in museums. The Beyond is the sight of one of the last heart trees.

Stark Notes:

~That had been Arya's first experience in the Beyond with Tanner alone. Is this just a peek into what other training the Skull King has in for her?

~Benjen got promoted to Lord Commander two-years when Mormont retired.

Thanks for Reading!

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