Hiya, sorry for the wait! Exams are over (finally) but I'm not sure if I'm going to have internet for the next week or so, so I'll try to get writing and post when I can :)

Disclaimers: I don't own anything my my two OC's! Anything and everything else belongs to Veronica Roth or Suzanne Collins!

Elliott's POV.

Four months after our acceptance into the faction way of society, we had our Choosing Ceremony with other kids of our age, since Alexandria had finally turned sixteen.

She bustled around me; adjusting and smoothing out my shirt, tugging on my hair and just freaking out in general about my appearance (she had already freaked out about her's about an hour ago).

Usually, I knew she wouldn't care about how either of us looked, but…

"It's our Choosing Ceremony, Elliott! We gotta look nice, now stop fidgeting!" She swatted lightly (in her book only, it hurt like hell) at my arm and continued 'neatening' out my dirty blonde hair that naturally just stuck out in all directions.

The hair was my dad's fault. Ugh, genetics.

I sighed resignedly, "Fine. Pretty me up." Alex snorted, "As if. I don't think you could ever achieve 'pretty', maybe just 'below average'."

Dramatically, I placed my hand over my heart, like I had just been stabbed there. "Ouch, Lex. That one hurt," I replied to her scathing, but teasing, comment.

Never let it be said that Alexandria Hale didn't have a bit of an odd sense of humor.

She huffed and stepped away, admiring her work. "I think you pass the test, pretty boy." "Thanks, Alex."

Our foster Amity parents (I don't know how the hell we managed to survive in this faction) poked their cheery heads in and announced happily that we had to head down to choose our factions.

On the way there, they lectured us about how important Amity was; how it was a peaceful, self-sustaining society.

Oh, and of course they won't be in the least bit offended if me or Alex decide to choose another faction, so it doesn't matter if you think you're unsure, just 'follow your heart'.

I glanced over at Lexie, and her eyes were glazed over, obviously bored with Karen and Mark's blabbering on about the Choosing Ceremony, no matter how excited she was about it ten minutes before.

"Here we are!" Karen said with a smile that seemed to be permanently on her face. "Choose well, you two!" Mark added with an almost-identical grin.

"We will," Alexandria and I chorused, boredom very thinly concealed in our voices.

We took our seats with the Amity, surrounded on all sides by bright yellow. A man dressed in black and white spoke about how their society believed that everyone should be able to choose the life they live, why the factions were formed and the traits of each faction.

I nearly fell asleep. Alex actually did.

And on my arm, no less.

I nudged her a few times to get her awake, signaling to her that it was almost time to choose.

Well, it wasn't much pressure on making a choice for us, because we had both decided pretty early on that we were going to go for Dauntless. It was kind of obvious with our skill sets; I mean, both of us were trained in the most efficient ways to disarm and kill people; what other faction would we fit in with?

While I was dwelling on all of that, the man called, "Elliott Winslow." I forward and walked towards the center of the room, where the bowls were set up.

I took the knife from the man, who was probably from Candor with his monochromatic outfit, sliced quickly through my left palm and held it over the Dauntless bowl.

My blood fell onto the glowing coals as the factions cheered loudly for the first transfer.

While I was walking over to the Dauntless section, instead of the Amity, I looked back at Kate and gave her a wink. See you on the other side.

She smiled nervously at me in reply and I shot her a reassuring look before taking a place with the other initiates.

It seemed like forever when they finally got to her name, "Alexandria Hale." She took her turn to come forward and take the knife from the man. She made a quick incision on her palm, allowing her blood to splatter onto the coals.

Alex proudly strode over to the Dauntless sector and stood in a row next to an Erudite boy. It looked like he was trying to engage her in a conversation (I couldn't blame him; Lexie was really pretty with her pure gold hair and green eyes), but she keep blowing him off.

I'd be lying if I said it didn't amuse me from my spot a few rows behind her. I quietly snickered as I watched his fourth attempt to make small talk.

The last sixteen year old had been called and the Dauntless led us up the stairs of the building where everyone runs and pushes their way through into the fresh air.

I felt amazing, exhilarant even, as I dashed up the stairs, catching up to Alex.

"Hey," She said with a grin. "Hey yourself," I replied, her infectious grin making its way onto my face. "Liking Dauntless so far?" "Of course!" She laughs, neither of us were even out of breath yet, unlike that Candor transfer that we had just run past.

We all rushed down the street, cutting off a few cars here and there, whilst making our way to the train tracks. The loud whistle of the train made itself known amongst the screams and hollers of the Dauntless.

Right when the train comes into view, they all started sprinting, keeping in line with the cars before leaping into the inside of the train.

Some initiates (mostly transfers) seemed to be hesitant to make the jump into the train, so Kate and I just used the opportunity to push past them and we successfully made our way into the open carriage.

A tan, brown haired Dauntless boy greets us once we're safely inside, grinning at the both of us and introducing himself, "I'm Gabriel, and you seem quite well acquainted with jumping, for banjo-strummers, I mean." He added with a wink, gesturing at our bright clothes.

We simultaneously looked down at our shirts, and Kate picked at her's a bit self consciously. I shrugged, looked down at my rather small best friend and shrugged again.

"Well, I'm Elliott and this is Alexandria." I introduced us both, casually gesturing to me over her shoulder.

"Cool, nice to meet'cha! Call me Gabe, and don't worry 'bout the initiation too much; I got two brothers and they both say it'll be okay." Gabriel said with a small, but reassuring smile.

"Thanks," Alex said with a grin, and I knew that he was going to end up as a friend; she was a good judge of character.

We heard Gabriel's name starting to get called by a girl on the other side of the car and with another wink and flash of teeth, he was gone.

Alex turned to look at me, "Well, he was an interesting one, huh?" "Yeah," I absentmindedly agreed with her, thinking on how we were going to go through initiation. No doubt it would be pretty easy (compared to our training as Careers), so would we just stick together and ignore everyone else? Make more friends? Make enemies?

No. The 'enemies' one sounded like a horrible idea.

"So," She nudged me. "Whatcha' thinking about, Eli?"

"Just thinking… how should we do the initiation? Plan it, wing it?" I now focused my attention on her; Alex's opinion was important to me, even though she didn't always make the most logical decisions.

"Hmm. Wing it." She answered after thinking for a bit. I waited for her to explain, "It's just that we don't know what kind of people are going through the initiation with us; if they're friend-worthy material, then we'll make friends, if they're enemy-worthy material, we'll piss 'em off."

I nodded along, "Agreed then. Winging it."

Someone in the train car yelled for us to jump onto a rooftop that we were just about to pass by. Alex leapt off a split second before me, both of us softening our landings by landing on our fingertips and the balls of our feet in a crouched position.

A man was waiting for us, introducing himself as Max, a leader, and asking if there were any volunteers to jump off the roof first.

I stepped forward, ever the adrenaline junkie, and launched myself off the rooftop.

Hope you liked this chapter and review/favorite please! :) x