Once again, hello everyone and anyone. Here's Chapter Three of CotW. The storyline continues sometime after the events in 'The Dark-Haired Boy'. In this chapter, we see the reality of training for Isotopes like Aiden.

Enjoy?

Chapter Three - 0ccult Division

"Hurry up, Maggots! You got ten more laps to go!"

Having just thrown up, I weakly looked up towards the wooden tower that stood in the distance, where my drill sergeant was seated in a nice comfy cushioned recliner with a microphone, a set of binoculars, and a nice cold beer on an end table next to him. I knew this because when we first started the exercise, the man so kindly showed us the platform on top of the tower and then ordered us to run down all of the steps of the tower (which was about ten stories high), and then do a hundred laps on the track field some yards away. Of course, we protested, but all complaints stopped when he told us that whoever came in last would go the whole week living on their own in the Forest.

"Come on, Aiden! You don't want to be last, do you?"

That shout came from Alice, who ran right by me with only a little sweat on her forehead. I, however, was drenched in my own.

"B-be q-quiet…." I somehow managed to say back to the amber-haired girl before my stomach shot back my pitiful oatmeal breakfast up through my throat and out my mouth, covering the dying grass underneath me with vomit. As I gasped for air afterwards, I heard another voice yelling at me as the person it belonged to approached.

"Yo! Little boy! This simple warm-up too much for ya?"

That little remark was made by Damien-0692, a Isotope who was older than Alice by a year, and older than me by nine. Alice had once told me that Damien was a Helli0n favorite, that wherever he went, he received the utmost respect from the other superhumans at location. She also told me that he was a great man, for he had saved a group of recently awaken Isotopes from a Jvstice War-Machine back when he was about my age.

Though everyone liked him, I hated him with every fiber of my being.

Every chance he had, Damien would always call me any name under the burning sun apart from my own, arguing later that he had a 'forgetful memory'. Not to mention that before I went to sleep every night, I had to check to see if my pillow was dry. Damien had a nasty little habit of 'spilling' his canteen on top of it once in a while. But those petty reasons were not why I detested the guy. You see…

…Alice was in love with him.

Back then I had a little harmless crush on Alice, since she was the first and only girl I had met at the time. At first, I was confused as to why I felt awkward around the amber-haired girl, but after discussing it with Damien (I know, I had already mentioned my undying hatred for the guy, but he was the only other person I was allowed to talk to in the secluded training facility they had us in. Hey, I never said it was pleasant. Thankfully, Damien kept my crush a secret, but only because he would later use it to blackmail me. Just keep reading. You will see what I am talking about.), I learned what I was feeling, and also that I should not tell Alice in any circumstances about it. Despite better judgment, I kept my mouth shut, but not without those close-calls. However, several days after I knew what it was to have a crush on someone, Alice confessed to me her undying admiration… for Damien.

That definitely ruined that day.

Finally recovering from my sudden vomiting, I somehow managed to continue running, and found that I was right sprinting right next to Damien, who had finally reached his limit. Looking at each other with weary eyes, we both began to run with more energy, the consequence of losing hanging over our heads like Death over a sick man. However, I was too young to keep up with the blonde jackass, so I started to fall back against my will, putting a smile on Damien's face as he reassured himself that I was going to be the one going into the woods. Gasping for air, I looked at how much more we had to run, and as I did so, I caught sight of Alice cheering us on from the finish line. Seeing her unlocked something in me, and once again I was next to Damien, running as fast as I could in my exhausted state of being. Damien, realizing that I had caught up, made the effort to run faster too, but we remained neck-to-neck. As we were about to reach the finish line, I pour the last of my energy into one last dash, and barely saw my foot hit the white line on the dark rubbery pavement an instant before Damien's foot. Dropping to the ground, I panted heavily as the loudspeakers that were located throughout the field boomed once more, the voice of our drill sergeant playing through.

"Well done! But who came in last?" the beer-loving man asked us in his standard, loud voice through the speakers. Alice, who had ended first out of the three of us, only smiled as she stared at Damien and I, who were both on the ground, trying to recover our strengths.

"That seemed to me like a tie. Since I didn't have a camera with me, I guess both of you will have to go to the Forest!" she joked before beginning to giggle to herself. As I stared at her lovely hair after catching most of my breath, I suddenly heard a voice talking to me inside my head. Instantly, I knew who it was. Damien, that jackass of a psychic.

"Hey, pipsqueak. Listen. Tell Alice that you came in last." Damien said to me mentally, which I respond by talking to myself in my mind, knowing that he was listening.

"What? Why would I do that? I don't want to go to the Forest!" I screamed in my head to myself, which Damien heard and reply to seconds later.

"Yeah, well me neither, and I'm more important than you. I'm serious. Tell her that you came in last, or else I'll tell her about your little crush on her right now. You know I would really do it too."

The minute Damien made his threat, my blood ran cold. Looking at the blonde Isotope, I shouted every curse I knew in my mind, all directed towards the damn psychic, before lowering my head and speaking out to Alice.

"Alice, I… was the one who came in last." I muttered to the amber-haired girl, turning away from everyone, fighting back tears. Alice only stared at me in shock, dumbfounded to the fact that I had just admitted defeat. Damien, however, beamed as he stood up, suddenly full of energy again.

"You hear that, Sergeant? The kid came in last!" Damien yelled up to one of the loudspeakers, which were also equipped with a microphone so that the drill sergeant could hear us from his tower. Moments later, the loudspeakers boomed again.

"Alice-0834 and Damien-0692, congratulations on completing the exercise first. You may return to the barracks. Aiden-0913! You have failed the exercise! Report to VR room for immediate extraction! You are all dismissed!"

The Forest was actually a virtual reality world that was used to test Isotopes in the 0ccult Division on their survival skills. Unlike other Isotopes, who were placed in squads, members of the 0ccult Division were mainly sent on solo missions, which made it essential that they knew how to survive in any type of terrain. However, when one is in the Forest, their minds are tricked into believing that they are in a different timeline. Say you were plugged in for a day. A day in the real world was a week in the Forest, a week a month, a month a year, a year a decade. Because of that, Helli0n banned the use of it for standard training. Unfortunately, the 0ccult Division of Helli0n did not specialize in 'standard' training.

The 0ccult Division was a branch formed as a covert operation center for Helli0n International due to the increased frustrations of the public. Apparently, if civilians knew about every single battle or Operation that took place, they would lose what little sense of security they had left. That was why the 0ccult Division was made; to respond to attacks that could not be made known to anyone: Helli0n official, Isotope, or civilian based on severity.

A week after I was awaken, I was assigned to the 0ccult Division.

The first rule of being in the 0ccult Division; you are no one. Your existence was made a secret until you had finished training. The only exception was if you had already undergone standard training before being assigned to the 0ccult Division, which was the case for both Alice and Damien.

The second rule of being in the 0ccult Division; You must never fail. If you were sent on a mission, you were expected to complete your task in any shape or form. If you did not succeed, then the consequences were severe.

The final rule of being in the 0D? You lived and fought for Helli0n, and no one else. Not even yourself. If you are given an order by a Isotope General that contradicted the orders given to you by Helli0n, then you ignore the Isotope. Simple as that.

However, because of these rules, only three Isotopes were recruited into the 0D this year.

And one of them was rotting away in the Forest.

Me.

To me it was day three of being in the Forest, and already I had begun to lose resources. The native wildlife had run off with some of the berries I had picked for myself on my second day there. The only water that was available to me was two miles away, and it left my food without guardian.

My shelter was pitiful. All it was was a fallen log that had dropped next to a small cliff, covered by giant leaves that acted as a roof for me.

And I had four more days to go.

Sighing deeply as I sat in the cool shade given to me by a giant oak, I looked over my person once again, remembering how I had gotten into the Forest in the first place. For the millionth time, I grew angry and cursed Damien's name, but then stopped when I realized that I was just being a bitter child.

"It's my fault that I told him about what I felt about Alice. I should've known that he would do something like blackmail me…" I said to myself as I stared at the shade I sat in, feeling relaxed in the darkness of the tree's shadow. After I was tested, I had demonstrated my powers to one of the most important Isotopes out there, Major General Lakas, completely by accident. But somewhere inside me told me that I had called that shadow to approach my hand by my will alone, and it was something that made me curious about myself. The funny thing was that in the year I had been with the 0ccult Division, not once was I given the chance to use my ability. Now that I was alone in the Forest, however, I had plenty of time to practice. Contemplating what I had done a year ago, I hovered my hand over a clear spot in the shade and concentrated, imagining a blob like before slowly rising from the shadow. After a few seconds, nothing happened.

"Come on. Don't tell me it was only a one-time thing!" I said out loud to the shadow I was sitting in, attempting to make another shadow blob rise with no success. After five minutes, I gave up, and turned to the sky, my hand dropping to the ground.

"Why can't I do it anymore…?" I asked myself as I closed my eyes, tired out from the attempts. In a minute I had fallen asleep, and as I slumped off to the side, my fall was cushioned by the ground, which appeared to be swallowing me up whole.

When I woke up, I was in darkness.

"What the-? Where am I?" I yelled to no one as I looked around, seeing nothing when I did. As I moved, I felt as if I was underwater, and yet I was able to breathe perfectly. Stopping, I dropped my eyes onto my body, and found that I was the only thing illuminated in that strange world. Though I should have been freaked out when I saw that, instead I only smiled. To this day I cannot remember why I had smiled. Maybe it was the fact that I was the only being in that world of darkness. Maybe it was the darkness itself. Nevertheless, it would take me an hour to finally look up and find the white spheres that lined the surface of the world, and a half hour to discover that each white sphere was a shadow from which I was able to exit out of. After some practice, I had claimed the shadow world for myself.

Three days later, I was sitting on my fallen log of a bed with my hand outstretched to the nearest shadow around me, once again trying to summon some sort of darkness from it. After having learned almost everything about my shadow world, I began to train my shadow manipulation skills, but found that to be a lot more difficult than traveling through shadows. At first, I had aimed to create a blob of sorts just to start it off, but found that a more definite shape was needed, since every time I had attempted summoning a blob I only managed for it to rise an inch out of the ground before it broke apart and returned to its original state. As I continued to concentrate, I was unaware of the creature lurking on the top of the small cliff, which I had my back to. When I saw a sharp point rise out from the shadow, I instantly smiled with triumph, right about the same time the creature behind me pounce. Crashing into my back, I fell forward and had the wind knocked out of me, all the while the creature, which was a mountain lion that seemed extremely hungry, circle my fallen being to see what part of me it wanted first.

I never gave it the chance to decided.

Stunned from my fall, I lashed out with my right hand quickly towards the big cat attacking me, and to my surprise, four pitch-black spikes emerged from my shadow and impaled the mountain lion. As the beast cried out it final shouts of pain and agony before its life left it through the holes the spikes had made in its chest, I sat there, dumbfounded, having witnessed the whole thing. Looking at my hands, I slowly began to smile, and then to laugh, since that day had turned out to be so great. First I had summoned shadow objects from shadows, and I also had food for the rest of the day and for the following day.

As I laughed to the virtual heavens upon, I, for the first time, felt alive.