Tris POV.
Amity, the first jumper is Amity.
"I can't believe it," Christina says. "An Amity, the first jumper? I think that's a new record."
"What's your name?" I ask.
"Tiffany," she says unsteadily. Whether she is going to cry, or break out into a fit of laughter, I can't tell. Her eyes roam the room, scanning with curiosity.
Her eyes find Tobias, but she doesn't give him a second glance. It's happened before where new initiates find interest in Tobias, but this girl doesn't seem to care.
"Make the announcement, Six," Tobias says, he slyly winks at me. I turn to the crowd of Dauntless that gather to watch the new initiates fall into the net and yell, "First jumper, Tiffany!" They all cheer, and Tiffany smiles.
The net whips and cradles another body. I reach my hand out to help him across the net.
Just as Christina speculated, there are ten transfers.
Amity: Tiffany. First jumper. Olive skin, green eyes, short blonde hair.
Candor: Erin. Second. Tan skin, obsidian eyes, long black hair put up in a ponytail on the back of her head.
Erudite: Marcy. Third. Golden eyes, light brown skin, curly brown hair.
Amity: Drake. Fourth. Dark skin, green eyes, black hair.
Candor: Percy. Fifth. Black hair, tan skin, hazel eyes.
Erudite: Jordan. Sixth. Pale white skin, brown hair, green eyes.
Abnegation: Elena. Seventh. Blonde hair, silver eyes, bronze skin. Already a warrior, didn't get the chance to jump first.
Candor: Melissa. Eighth. Light brown hair, dark green eyes, could be mistaken for brown, olive skin.
Candor: Chloe. Ninth. Brown skin, brown hair, brown eyes.
And lastly, Abnegation: Parker. Tenth. Brown hair, blue eyes, white skin.
Once all of the transfers are off the net and have composed themselves, Tobias and I lead them through the hallways to the Pit. We stop in front of the doors to the Pit to introduce ourselves. Christina leads the Dauntless-borns to the dining hall, since they don't need a tour around the place.
Since there are only six Dauntless-borns, they only need one person to train them. Well, Tobias can probably train this many transfers by himself, he did for my group, but he insists on letting me help.
"We will be training you initiates, so I expect you to follow our rules," Tobias says. I was zoning out so much, I must have missed some of his little speech that he does whenever new initiates arrive. It's not always the same, but similar.
"My name is Four," he says.
"My name is Six," I say. Now it's my turn to give a little speech. "You are about to enter the Pit, the heart of the Dauntless compound. It—" I notice two Candor whispering to each other. "You got something to say?" I say, and they stop.
"Um, no, ma'am. We were just wondering why both of your names are numbers." Candor.
"That is none of your concern, initiate," I say. "Listen up."
Tobias steps in and says the rest. When he finishes, we show them the Pit, and the Chasm, which a bunch of the Erudite found interesting.
At dinner, one of the Abnegation sits next to me, Elena, I think it was. She looks better in black than she did grey. Her personality feels like she belongs in Dauntless, this was a good choice for her.
And she also doesn't know what a hamburger is.
"You've never had a hamburger before?" a Candor girl named Chloe next to her says.
"No, is that what it's called?" I exchange a look with Tobias from across the room, nodding my head at them. The conversation that they're having is the exact same one that Christina and I had on our first day in Dauntless.
Christina, who is sitting next to me, nudges me with her arm, smiling a little. She must be listening in on that conversation as well.
I rub my knuckles on the top of her head and she cringes away. I laugh, and the Abnegation and Candor that is sitting next to me looks at me with surprise. I must have come off as pretty serious for them to be surprised that I laughed after meeting me only an hour before.
I feel someone pat me on the head and look up just as Uriah passes, a smug smile on his face. We have this ongoing inside joke where one of us past the other on the head while the other is oblivious. That was his fifth in a row. I have only gotten him three times.
When we finish dinner, Tobias and I show the initiates to the dorm.
"You mean we all have to sleep in the same room?" a Candor named Percy asks.
"Yes," I say. "We had to do it, you have to do it. The Dauntless-borns are doing the same thing." They all groan and start to protest, but I say, "If I hear one more of you complain about it, you're Factionless. Get comfortable, it's going to be a long time." Tobias and I walk away, leaving them to do their own thing. We walk back to our apartment together, careful not to run into any of our initiates on the way there. We don't want them to know that we are together, because they are our initiates and them knowing won't be very good.
On the way there, we pass Uriah talking to someone in a hallway. As we pass, I pat him on the head and keep walking.
"What is going on?" Tobias asks.
"Inside joke," I reply. We get back to our apartment not to long after.
The time is 6:00 when we wake up that morning. Tobias wakes me up, I grumble for a little bit, we get ready, and we go down to the training room where we are going to meet our initiates.
We don't know their names very well, that's why we are going to have them introduce themselves again. They all line up against the wall and introduce themselves, then we start the lesson.
I hand out all the guns, and Tobias teaches them how to fire and handle the recoil. That Amity girl, Tiffany, is a fast learner. She weighs the gun in her hand before lifting it to the target. It is only the first time that she fires that the recoil surprises her. After that, she is learning faster than all of the others.
The Abnegation named Elena is pretty good too, for that fact that she used to be in Abnegation.
A weird group, this one is.
I observe the class most of the time, since I haven't had much experience training initiates as Tobias.
I don't know how the jumping off a train thing went, since I wasn't there, but one of the things we don't have to teach them is that, since they already know how because they have done it already. It's still hard to believe that the first thing that initiates do is jump on and off a train, then jump off a roof right after.
I lean against the door frame as I watch Tobias teach. I notice a couple of initiates giving me worried glances, as if they fear that I will notice something they are doing wrong and kick them out because of it, but I wouldn't do that. Ever since Eric and Max went Factionless because people found out that they were working with Jeanine Matthews to start a war, the people training the initiates have gotten less harsh. But the cuts are still there. Something about some of the leaders still liking that idea.
Tobias and I told our initiates about it when we showed them their dormitory the night before, and of course, no one liked it, but we don't really have a choice. The cameras in the training room watch our every move, how we teach them, if an initiate is doing terrible but we just let them do bad. That's one of the reasons we have so much discipline, because we know people are watching.
I have also gotten plenty of offers to take one of Eric or Max's place in the Dauntless leaders, but I refused. I don't want to be one of those people to be so busy all the time, too busy for Tobias.
After Tobias finishes, he dismisses them to go eat dinner or something.
The entire initiate class leave massaging their hands that held their guns.
As I walk into the dining hall, Uriah is sitting at a table on the way to the one I am going to. As I walk, I reach out to pat him on the head, but he catches my wrist. "Nuh-uh-uh," he says, grinning. "Not getting me again." He reaches forward and pats me on the head, then he lets go of my wrist. I glare at him as I walk the rest of the way to my table, a couple of my initiates staring back and forth at Uriah and me.
When I sit down next to her, Christina asks, "What has been going on with you two? Patting each other on the head all the time."
I smirk. "Inside joke."
"You're weird."
We eat the rest of our food and walk around the Pit together.
"So, how have you and Four been?" she asks.
"Good. How have you and Will been?"
"Good."
We keep walking silently. I hate it when this happens, when we have nothing really to say. We stop at the Chasm. I lean against the railing, listening to the rushing water.
"I wonder what it was like," I say. "To be Al. Standing here, heart set on jumping." I stare down into the darkness beneath me.
I hear someone call my and Christina's name and turn around to see Will. "Hey!" he says grinning. He gives Christina a kiss and turns to me. "How have you been, Tris?"
I shrug. "Good. But it's Six now, since, you know, initiates."
"Right. Forgot about that." One of Will's friends calls him to come over to them. "I got to go," he says. "See you later, Six." He winks at me and leaves.
I wave at him as he walks away.
Christina and I walk around the Pit some more, until we decide that it's getting late and we should probably go to bed.
When I get back to my apartment, Tobias is already there, brushing his teeth in the bathroom.
"I'm back," I say, closing the door. He spits and rinses his mouth out with water.
"Hey," he says. He walks out of the bathroom. He comes up to me and brushed the hair off my forehead, so he can kiss it.
I get ready for bed, then lay down next to Tobias. He puts his arm around me and I close my eyes to sleep.
