Confession time.

I am not a ninja guys. Not even a little bit. I once tried to pretend I was one and I ended up getting flicked in the arm with a pencil by someone trying to prove otherwise. Ninjas do not allow themselves to be poked with pencils. Therefore I must not be one.

The point of this confession is to tell you that I have very little knowledge of fighting moves, street or organized or otherwise. If anyone has any information on these things, please let me know! I'd love to learn, and it would be helpful for future chapters. Thank you for understanding, and I hope you enjoy otherwise!

Also, I have recently discovered that you can reply to reviews. I DID NOT KNOW THAT! That's exciting. I will start replying to every review, because it makes me happy when I get replies to my reviews. It makes me feel acknowledged. AND I want all of you guys to feel acknowledged. I may not know who you are, what you do, are what you stand for, BUT I APPRECIATE YOU!

Thank you for waiting and I hope you enjoy!

Hubert had the distinct feeling of being underwhelmingly incompetent as soon as he stepped into the Dojo. In fact, the only interaction Hubert had ever had with a Dojo was while he was playing his Spyro game, and he was assigned the task of capturing the escaped dragon flies because an evil force had frolicked within the dragon dojo and set all the said dragon flies free. If this were a dragon dojo, and he was supposed to be capturing dragon flies with his bubble breath, then maybe he would survive this ordeal.

However, he severely doubted this would be the case.

"I think this is what walking to the gallows must feel like," he said to Hoyden as he stepped onto the rubbery and firm mats. "In the probable event of my death, I leave the other half of our shared room to you. Treat it kindly."

Hoyden gave him a tired look and stretched out one arm across his chest, and then the other. "Well, thanks I guess. I'll do my best to not tarnish your half. And you wont die, you'll be near death. Slight difference…although for you I'm afraid they may misjudge your limits."

"My limits are unreachable."

Hoyden scoffed. "I bet they are dude. Anyway you've had some hand to hand training right? I mean, this is beginners. How hard can beginners be? Not very."

"Hoyden, if you are going to ask me a question, you have to give me time to answer it. There was a bit less that a nano second pause between your question and answer. I do have a quick reaction time, but I'm not nano second fast," Hubert looked over the other people in the dojo, which consisted of many of the fellow trainees that he had gone through PT with, including the short manatee man who had attempted to start an altercation. "But if you are still interested, my answer would have been very. Because I am assuming that 'beginners', according to highly trained ninja, is approximately 'death' in my translation."

Hubert spotted Sergeant Scarlett and Sergeant Snake Eyes at the front of the herd of people, engaged in deep conversation that Hubert could not read. He figured that was probably best; if he were to die of premature heart attack from finding out that they were planning to twist his legs into a bow, he would never forgive himself. Even death could not relieve anyone from The Great Grudge Of Hubert, something he normally referred to as TGGOH. This acronym was not helpful in the least, because only he understood its meaning, and acronyms are created to make lengthy phrases manageable for all people.

However, the next person was someone he did not recognize. The man was dressed in white, and everything about him appeared smooth. Smooth hair, smooth looks, smooth gaze, and smooth swords on a sheath on his back. Hubert associated smooth with dangerous, because like most things in life, such as paper and hot coffee, look smooth right before they slice your skin or burn your lap. This man looked smooth, and Hubert had a feeling he was going to very shortly be pounding him into the ground like a whack-a-mole. Speaking of which, Hubert rarely won those games. There were far too many moles to make sense. How could that many moles live in that small of a tunnel system? It would be overcrowding, and Hubert did not accept games that did not make sense, especially due to overcrowding.

"You are all here…" Sergeant Scarlett started, immediately hushing the entire room. Hubert suddenly felt awkwardly tall, like ha always did in a silent crowd. Something about people paying attention made him nervous. "You are all here because someone has decided that you are the best of the best. My name is Scarlett and this is Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow," she said, pointing to each other the very smooth and lethal looking men on her sides. "We will be taking care of your hand to hand training for as long as you manage to stay in this program."

Hubert looked around him and realized that there was a significantly smaller amount of people in here than there had been earlier in the morning. It was possible that that they had been placed in a higher hand to hand class, but it was also possible that they had washed out. Hubert would not blame them, if the latter turned to be true. The only reason he himself had not quit was because his body hurt too much to be able to get up and walk down to the office to file the forms.

That, and the fact that he was determined to last a minimum of two days and three hours.

Sergeant Scarlett began going down the roll call, calling codenames if they had been previously assigned. Apparently Hubert had been one of the few people who had already received their codenames, and he wasn't sure if that was positive or negative. At any rate, it meant he had left an impression, and he gave Hoyden a very smug look. Unfortunately, Hoyden was no longer paying attention to him. He had his eyes trained on the three Sergeants in front of him and Hubert realized that he should probably be doing the same, lest he become a less than stellar student.

"Non Sequitur?"

"Yes Ma'am." Hubert saluted in the correct fashion, and settled into an appropriate at attention stance. "Did you know that Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants?"

"I did not know that, thank you for sharing that completely irrelevant piece of information. I see you were not kidding when you said you would answer your codename with a useless factoid." Sergeant Scarlett studied him for a moment before moving on to the next person. However, the white-wearing smooth man was staring at him, with one raised eyebrow and a very skeptical look. Hubert was half excepting him to yell at him in a loud obtrusive volume like the Sergeant Major, but Sergeant Storm Shadow simply shook his head.

"Do they expect all ducks to wear pants in Finland? I do believe that could be qualified as discrimination. Donald Duck is one duck in the span of billions of ducks." Sergeant Storm Shadow continued to stare at Hubert, and Hubert felt himself taken aback, a feeling that is not normally experienced in his life. Hubert lives his life expecting strange things to happen, but this time, he was expecting something more in the range of death.

"Uh…well, sir, I can't speak for the entire country of Finland because I'm not Finnish, nor do I know any Finnish people. But I think it is because the duck in question wears a shirt, yet no pants. Whereas normal ducks wear neither shirt nor pants."

Sergeant Storm Shadow smiled and nodded, and Hubert relaxed a little. He had found that normally, if he was able to make a person smile or laugh, he would be safe from any emotional or physical pain that person was capable of inducing.

"I think you'll be up first," Sergeant Storm Shadow said with a terrifying smirk.

Well, it wasn't the first time Hubert had been wrong.

Hubert was not sure if he would be able to make it out of the dojo.

He had a few options. He could collapse right here, and possible receive medical attention. He could collapse in the hallway, but that would receive much unwanted attention. Truthfully, all he wanted to do was to collapse on a bed in private where no one would be able to die in peace.

"You all have a lot of work to do," Sergeant Scarlett said, translating for the fluid motion of hand signs from Sergeant Snake Eyes. "But you all have a few basics down and it was a good start. Report to the main hall for further assignments. You are dismissed."

Hubert resisted saying that just because he was dismissed, did not mean he would be able to move or leave. He stayed where he was, standing as still as he possibly could to avoid jarring the surely detached organs within his body.

"We should leave before they think were offering to stay behind for extra practice…" Hoyden rubbed the back of his head gingerly, pulling his fingers away as if he were checking for blood. Hubert smiled lightly. He had figured out one thing while he was being beaten into the floor. Sergeant Storm Shadow was holding back significantly. He knew exactly how hard he needed to throw Hubert into the mats to avoid breaking anything important. Even so, Hubert still felt as though he had been run over by a frantic herd of elephants escaping a pack of vicious lions.

Somehow, Hubert willed his aching body to move, leaving behind the dojo and the three top martial artists to discuss the abundant failures of the group. Hubert could only expect to be notified of his certain discharge by the end of the day. He did not pretend to have physical prowess, although he did make an honest attempt at learning. Ever since he had been a child, his parents had expressed the importance of learning. Life will not grade you, his father had always told him, you need to do your best to learn knowledge on your own and do your best at your work, because no one will come find you and rate your work on an A to F scale.

Hubert had proved this wrong on two occasions. His first job involved working as a janitor at a local fast-food joint, and his manager had repeatedly told him he needed to step up his janitorial duties to an A grade, because his C work was unsatisfactory. The second occasion was a grade bestowed upon him by an old girlfriend for reasons he would rather not mention. Apparently, C was his constant.

The main point being that Hubert liked to learn. So he did. He learned things on his own or in groups. It didn't really matter what it was, he just had to grab the knowledge as long as it was out there. By the time he was in middle school he had acquired an extremely large bank of totally unimportant and insignificant facts. For a long time, he had been under the impression that others liked to learn as much as he did. He soon figured out that he was the only one, and that he was likely to be beaten up if he mentions exactly how many ketchup bottles were produced a year to anyone. Regardless, he pursued his quest. He would learn as much as he could, no matter what the cost. He had learned three new moves today already, and though he was far from executing any of them, he was close to understanding them.

"Wow, I think it's been like five minutes since I've heard you annoying voice," Hoyden said as he closed the door to the barrack, looking around the plain room before falling down onto his bed. "Oh my god this feels so…so good."

Hubert sighed and sat on his own bed, electing to move down slowly instead of shocking his body with sudden motion. "Well I think even my vocal chords have been shocked into paralysis. You are graced with silence until they regain the ability to vibrate, at which point I will literally make your ears bleed with my stunning repartee and endless flow of amusing facts."

"As exciting as that sounds, I think all pass. I'm going to sleep until I have to get up again…which will be in about," Hoyden lifted his head up to look at the digital clock on the night table. "…about ten minutes. That's ten minutes of good, hard earned sleep."

And for those ten minutes, Hubert had the deepest sleep he had ever had. Well, as deep as he could get with only ten minutes. After all, he had to remind himself that although it could feel like you had slept for a long time, he had only slept for a short amount of time and that he had not actually passed the initial stage of sleep.

Nevertheless, it was a nice sleep.

More Ninja in the next chapter, as well as FINALLY some Cover Girl kicking action on the short stoacky manatee greenie ;) I know this chapter was a bit short, but I'll make it up in the next one. I'm just trying to get past Hubert's first day. It seems logical that for him it would pass by in a painful and stressful blur ;) Thanks for reading!