Against the bare skin of her shoulders where her crimson locks did not reach rested soft black leather; where her hair exposed her neck she could barely feel the ends of his hair, long for her male partner, but tousled, and in some ways attractive. The same crimson red strands fell in his face, but instead of the raven color like his partner, a honey-brown formed the base. With his chiseled jaw, broad shoulders, and perfectly shaped nose one could consider him handsome but for his eyes, entirely black and devoid of white. His jacket reached three inches above the cement, where black pants tucked into black boots and a black muscle shirt ended just over a black belt. Moonlight shone onto golden skin, paler than hers but still considered tan. Two twin short sword blades also gleamed in the moonlight, similar rubber grips ready to be wielded in his strong, thick-fingered hands. Her partner in this endeavor, his back leaned against hers to ensure a maximum defensive stance as they waited for their adversaries to arrive.
A soft white fog began to settle in, replacing the slight wind of before, the temperature increasing by quite a few degrees. Both moonlight and artificial light contributed to the eerie setting. Warm, light droplets of rain commenced falling from the sky, soon to join beads of perspiration on their skin. The dark-haired girl thought the scene a bit over-dramatic. Two other figures approached through the wisps of white, merely shadows through the poor visibility.
His deep voice cut through the silence like a knife. "I'll take on Karen," he said, never turning from his position. The girl would have chuckled out loud, but she knew her partner didn't find it quite as funny as she did. Arching her back as not to bother him with her motion, the girl rolled her shoulder forwards, causing her shoulder blade to protrude in and out, working out a kink in the muscle. As she did this she thought about how different they were-- and how different they would be. If only he knew, she thought and relaxed her body back into the defensive stance.
"I don't think so," she replied out loud, to the obvious annoyance of her partner. "You fight David, per protocol." A slight note of authority slipped into her voice as she said this. Generally she wouldn't pull rank, but authority seemed necessary in this situation. She would have preferred to switch partners as well to the correct pairs, her and David, Jarrett and Karen. But the guy/girl teams had been decided at random, and this time they'd lost the dice roll. The two of them were friends once, really close in fact, but something went wrong. She just associated him with some memories she preferred to forget, and then the whole Jarrett and Karen thing happened. What, did Simon Macey think himself funny when he designed the Macey Test? No other leader of Bond Team had to deal with these "graduate-designed" tests and trust issues before. Deveraux must have been off his rocker when he commissioned them.
On the opposite side of the rooftop, the other team readied themselves to counter-attack any first moves. Like Jarrett and his partner, David and Karen dressed similarly in pristine white leather that hid in the fog. One had dark brown spiked hair tipped with white, while the other had long, mouse-brown hair, stick straight despite the rain with thick white-blond streaks. The girl watched the other two with icy, unnaturally blue eyes. The dark-haired boy jumped up and down excitedly, pumped up for this match, blue eyes glittering. The red-eyed girl would have laughed if not for Karen's presence. David smiled, seemingly oblivious to the tension between everyone else. He just grinned his goofy grin, though the icy blue eyes almost made him look menacing. He enjoyed pairing up with two beautiful girls, girls that he needed to impress with his fighting prowess.
"Jarrett, you're going down man!" David called out, pointing at him. He brought his fist in, punching the center of his chest, a hollow sound resonating as he did so. Karen winced, both at the immaturity of her partner and at what he'd said. She had hoped to fight her boyfriend. He promised her they would fight each other if they ended up on opposite teams, no matter what "that girl" said. But her pale brown eyes watched with fury as the other girl settled back against her boyfriend, annoyingly close and comfortable. With boiling blood, Karen started to think that she wouldn't mind not fighting her boyfriend. Maybe a few bruises would teach that girl a thing or two about nosing into where she didn't belong.
"It's too bad, it could have been a lovely partnership between the two of us. A win for sure. Imagine the victory celebration." David spoke to the girl, who now smiled, observing her two opponents. As she studied Karen her grin became more of a smirk, as if she knew what Karen thought, and settled in closer to Jarrett. It disgusted her to have a person like Karen on Bond Team, to room with her, to feign friendship. She knew, however, that she had to deal with Karen on Bond Team, at least for the time being. Now however, she needed to make the first move.
Miss DiOrazio, leader of Bond Team, seemed to fade into the fog, disappearing from sight. The place that she had occupied on the top of the roof filled with nothing but fog. Karen should have prepared for what happened next, but her team leader had caught her off guard. Only a split-second reaction twirled Karen around, long brown hair whipping around with her quick motion, blocking the advance. Lucky for Karen, her own blades had stopped her opponent's pointed katanas only nanometers from her heart. Had the team leader the time to study the two of them, freeze them in position, she would have found the irony of Karen's blades crossed in front of her chest in an x with her own two through the center amusing. Her red eyes met Karen's blue, both stares sharing a contempt and hatred for the other. Both glaring, both filled with anger, revenge, and hopefulness. But only one pair would eventually fill with fear, the other with triumph. For now, her message had gotten across. Karen knew that her team leader knew the secret, and knew her time soon would end. Bond Team wouldn't contain the both of them, never would. Only this thought comforted the raven-haired girl sometimes. But at the moment, she had Karen's fighting skills to worry about.
The light brown-haired girl pushed with all of her might against her opposition's blades with her own. In many ways her team leader possessed skills superior to her, and martial arts with weapons remained no exception to the rule. Accordingly, the other girl's crimson-streaked curls shook as she pushed downwards quickly, breaking Karen's grip with sheer force, and with a quick lunge landed the first hit with a long but superficial slice across Karen's abdomen. The cut dripped tiny orbs of crimson blood, running down her moonlit white skin, pooling at her waistband. Karen lunged out for a counter-attack on her opponent's left shoulder, but her opponent swatted it away as simply as if her hand resembled a fly. Karen's attacks continued forward furiously, putting her opponent on the defensive. However, from the look on her team leader's face, she probably could parry every advance forever. Though neither of them said anything, it seemed that only a yawn wanted to come out of the dark-haired girl's mouth. Ample reason existed why the others elected this girl Bond Team's leader, obvious from the fight here and in many other ways. Highest grades, calm demeanor, and certainly less arrogance than the former Bond Team's first leader. She also had very good decision-making skills, which caused her at that moment to spin out of the monotonous exchange, back handing her right katana so that it stopped point-blank from Karen's heart, through the center of her back. But then, the movement of both girls froze completely, the droplets of light rain stopped like bullets in midair. The flickering of a faulty footlight had stopped, and the boys appeared also in a similar situation, completely still in mid-combat, Jarrett clearly winning over David.
"End program." A booming voice spoke overhead, and Bond's leader cringed at the volume. The rooftop disappeared beneath their feet, crumbling into pixel dust and pulled away as if a vacuum pulled away the pieces. The sky faded to white, as did the rest of the void around them, the white void stretching endlessly. The weapons dissolved from their hands, and as soon as they regained control of their bodies, assumed a nonchalant stance as if nothing happened. For all the outside world knew, they might have sun-tanned on a beach for the past hour. Out of the middle of nowhere arrived a tall, distinguished man with graying hair, a no-nonsense look on his face- Corporal Keene, one of the professors at Deveraux Academy, hardly ever smiled.
"Stelle, it seems we have a bit of a situation. I'll see you in a few minutes." Stelle ran this statement through her mind. What could possibly be wrong that the teachers would stop a training session during free time? Stelle wondered if Deveraux would send Bond Team on a mission of some kind, like the former Bond Team. Her first real mission would rock. Karen's glare that she glimpsed out of the corner of her eye almost made her smirk. But she didn't have time to think more about the situation as her mind transferred back to her body, cast into darkness.
Karen's time would come. For now, though, Stelle apparently had important team-leader duties to tend to. The pneumatic hiss of the hydraulic mechanism on the lid of the cyber-cradle alerted Stelle to the fact that her consciousness had indeed returned to the real world. Stelle arose from her horizontal position quickly, finding the usual three minute adjustment period unnecessary. Adjustments in the field led to weaknesses, weaknesses led to mistakes, and mistakes led to fatalities. Never be lulled into a false sense of security. Always be ready, even in Deveraux Academy. The enemy had breached security before. As the others still woke from their cradles, she informed them that she expected to meet with them afterwards in the girls' dorm. But for now, she had a meeting to attend, and leapt out of the pod to make her way to her professor's office, presumably to meet with their founder, Jonathan Deveraux.