It was very cloudy outside, and it looked like it was going to rain at any moment. It wasn't a good time to go outside. Everyone was either on their expensive hoverbikes going out of the town, or holed up at the in-house lunchroom at the Academy, staring at the rain and gloom outside.
"Could we do anything but go over this stupid assignment again?" groaned Greg, bored out of his mind. "I really wish you would stop forcing me to write up this drivel."
"Come on, Greg," Marcus demanded, "there's got to have some kind of evidence that shows Dash Bowman was murdered by the Republic."
"It's all based on suspicions and intuition," Greg replied back annoyingly. "There are good reasons why the Republic wouldn't want the information surrounding his death simply floating around for everyone to see. It's all speculative. But let's start with Bowman's killer. Nobody still knows who killed him. We've had all these years pass by and still they haven't found the killer yet. The whole event is so shrouded in mystery that nobody really knows exactly what happened. The fact that we don't know who the killer was is key to the whole problem. If it's someone working for Corneria, immediately we know it was done by the government at the time as an inside job, trying to limit the power of Venom. If it's from someone inside Venom, then we know that there was someone else in the Bowman administration trying to take him down internally. Either way, it doesn't bode too well."
"Officially," Greg continued, "it was caused by some madman that they still haven't tracked down. They've managed to capture just about everyone who has a molecule of drugs on them but they still can't find the man who put a bullet in Dash Bowman."
"Shows the state of things going on in the Republic right now," Marcus huffed as he sat back on his chair. "Nothing they've done makes any sense whatsoever."
They sat in silence for a bit in the lunchroom of the Academy, a non-descript room lined with stale cement blocks as far as the eye can see. The place was too bland to inspire any kind of conversation, but the place was about as lively as it could have been at this time of day. The place was about half-full, as most of the Academy decided not to go anywhere outside in the rain, left with nothing else to do. Nobody really did much of anything on campus.
"Well, that's totally your opinion, I suppose," Greg sighed, breaking the silence between the two.
Marcus took a drink from his bottle and thumped it down with subtle yet noticeable force. He looked up to Greg, slightly embarrassed. "Sorry, I didn't mean to sound like I was complaining. It's just that there's not much information on the death of Dash Bowman. There was so much promise in his leadership, man. Nobody had the same optimism for Venom as Bowman did. And once he was gone, cynicism set in the planet, and crime took over."
Greg stood up from the table, running out of patience. "Well, there's no sense trying to debate this here, especially with this weather. If you want, we can discuss this in class. I'll fill out my portion of the assignment later when I have a clearer head. All this work has made my mind numb."
Marcus followed Greg standing up, stretching his arms stiff from sitting down for nearly an hour. "I could use a stretch… even if it is raining outside. Looks like the rain is letting up, anyway."
Marcus got his coat on, barely thick enough to bounce off rain off its body as it started to settle down for the first time in the day. "Still can't get used to the rain here," Marcus said to himself, remembering the dusty fields back on Papetoon. As he noticed a homeless man lying down soaking wet on the sidewalk, Marcus shook his head. "That and the homeless all over the place," he sighed.
Marcus tried walking past the man, going so far as to sidestep his way past the man while trying as hard as he could not to look at him, but the man looked up at Marcus immediately, and gave a hopeful glare.
"Got any spare change?" the man said in a raspy, gravelly voice.
Marcus looked at the man and his beaten up clothes, as the rain started to pour back down from the skies again. He went into his pocket and gave the homeless man the spare change he had, about a couple dollars in all. "Just try to get out of the rain," Marcus told the man.
"Thank you, brother," the man replied back, putting the coins in his pocket and bringing his shredded coat over his head. Marcus then walked away from the man, as he fell asleep almost as soon as he covered his own head.
Marcus felt sorry for the homeless man. Since he came to the Academy in Corneria, he often saw homeless people simply lying down on the street begging for any kind of money that they could get their hands on. Other times, usually late at night, he would find them wandering about, usually shouting at the air for no reason or having them walk around cleaning out the tiny specs of dust from the benches of the campus, and usually didn't dress properly for the weather of the planet.
Marcus gave some money to those people sometimes, especially when they came up to him and approached him. At that distance he could sense their feelings and thoughts, and felt compelled to give them some kind of money to get them through the next day. He could sense their desperation, their hopelessness, their constant worry over finding enough money and food to survive the next day. From what he could gather from their feelings, he could wager that most of them didn't plan to become homeless. They probably had plans and dreams for the future, much like he did right now.
All Marcus could do at the moment was to keep focused on finishing the Academy, and hope that all the galaxy's problems would solve themselves, letting natural history take it's due course. Against all the odds, Marcus felt somehow that he had to continue on, whether or not he succeeded or not.
Marcus had physical training planned next, which was one his better subjects. Not that it was one of the easier ones, but it was one of the few things in life where he could actually physically do something to get better at it, unlike the ethics indoctrination and the technical jargon that he had to go through. All of that felt secondary to firsthand experience and training to Marcus. He felt that somehow, those lessons being shoved down his throat would mean nothing when he was out there fighting for his life and freedom.
The activity planned that day was wrestling, which wasn't one of his stronger sports. Marcus was shorter compared to the rest of the Academy, standing at about five foot seven. He was thin, but had a bit of muscle left over from doing yard work back on Papetoon. He had good endurance, but if he learned anything from when he wrestled two weeks before, the key to winning was simply having more muscle than the other guy, and there were some on the Academy that had more than their fair share of muscle.
The gym was slightly stingy, caused by years of misuse and lack of maintenance. It was still cleaned from time to time but it barely met the minimum standards from the Academy, and the lighting was dim but not very dark. It was certainly darker than the rest of the rooms at the Academy, which sometimes shone so bright, it was hard to see the electronic screens in exact detail, especially when jotting down study notes like crazy. The discrepancy drove the students insane… but there was no sense complaining to anyone about it now, not after all the trouble he went through to get here.
His first opponent was a first year student, appearing much thinner than Marcus was. The young kid looked deeply afraid and worried at Marcus, and he knew immediately without reading his thoughts that he should go a little easier on this guy. He started off slow for a few seconds, keeping him in the match for a bit, then at the 30 second mark, Marcus flipped him over and easily pinned him down.
Marcus got up and helped the poor guy up off his feet, still trembling from the defeat.
"Just remember, always train at maximum strength, even on the slower days. You'll get the hang of it. Don't worry too much."
The first year student looked stunned for a minute, surprised that a second year student would even speak to someone lower down, then simply smiled and said, "Thanks."
The bouts continued onwards. Marcus had won some matches and lost some, but was fortunate to have done well overall. There were some cadets in his fitness group he knew he had no chance of winning but at least he kept it competitive. The instructors didn't necessarily judge who won or lost but how well they wrestled, and how much effort they put into each match.
His final match of the day, though, was against someone that was quite similar to him. He didn't know this guy at all, but figured that he was a bit of an even match and wanted to end the day on a high note as well, and seemed focused and determined to win. Marcus slowly prepared himself and set himself ready for the next match.
The opponent charged at him as the match started, and Marcus braced himself properly to be able to stop his force from breaking through. They struggled for a moment, but the opponent was able to break through after a half a minute and get Marcus to stumble a bit. Marcus rolled back onto his feet and paused for a moment before making the next charge himself. He pushed for a moment until the opponent let him go down onto the mat on his stomach and pinned him down.
Marcus used all his might to push himself back up, but couldn't muster enough force. It felt like an anvil was being placed down on him. He then noticed a slight pressure on the back of his neck – the opponent was pinning him down on his neck! He struggled, both physically and mentally, trying to say something to get someone to notice him but he hardly said a word. His neck was being pressed down too hard.
Then the referee whistled and signalled the end of the match – the match was over.
His opponent got back up and relieved Marcus of the tension that had been placed on him, and Marcus only glared back at him as he got up, breathing heavily and had more than a few words in his mind that he bottled up inside of him, gritting his teeth in irritation.
He then glanced back at the referee, almost like he was telling him, what the hell, that was clearly an illegal hold, what happened there? But Marcus didn't say anything, not wanting to get into an argument he knew he couldn't win.
The two opponents left the ring without so much as saying a word to each other.
Marcus was just about exhausted, and after he had gone through the locker room and went outside to get some fresh air to cool himself down, he was slightly disappointed when he discovered that it was much milder than the usual day at that time of year. He put two and two together and figured that the thunderstorms that had passed through brought in humid conditions, causing the warm temperatures and the volatile skies in the air. Marcus didn't seem to mind, though.
Just as Marcus was to make his way across the other side of the Academy, an older squirrelly man came in and grabbed Marcus and dragged him back into an alley.
"I seem to recognize you," the man grovelled. Marcus guessed that he was about 50 years old, and judging from his battered clothes and his unkempt beard he figured that this man was poor and destitute.
"I know you got a bit of money, boy…" the man continued, grabbing at Marcus's collar, "…you got any money?"
"Go away," Marcus frowned, his adrenaline still running.
"I know where you've come from," the vagrant continued, "and you've got to be one of those rich boys who gets to the Academy… I know how much it takes to enter here… you gotta have something on ya, boy..."
"Even if I did, I wouldn't give it to anyone trying to rob me in a dark alley," Marcus grunted.
"Who said this was a robbery?"
"I figured as much, since we wouldn't be here in this alley if you had simply asked me."
"I'm sick of tired of asking for money all day!" the man growled. He pulled out a pocket knife that he had already extended out of his coat pocket, and went to jab Marcus, when Marcus instinctively grabbed the man's wrist and used his other hand to break his collar free and to whack at the guy's arm swiftly, causing him to drop his knife and sulk in pain, before Marcus struck the man's face with his left fist and made him fall down to the ground.
The man was lying on the floor, still conscious but in obvious pain. His face was red and surely would have some kind of bruise at one point or another. There were a few scratches but hardly any blood. The vagrant would live to see another day.
Not that Marcus tried to knock the guy out or anything. He was simply trying to get him out of the way, avoid getting stabbed at by this complete stranger, and then show him a thing or two on not to mess with him any longer. Marcus left him writhing, not even looking back on him or saying a word.
Marcus looked quickly at his hands and saw that he had cuts on his left hand, probably from the knife scraping his hand as he stopped the knife from entering his body. He could care less where it came from. All that he was focused on was going away as far as possible, as he attempted to figure out who exactly this guy was, and if he really did see him before in the past, how he managed to track him down and find him here at the Academy, and where that man would go after he got back up from his pain. Naturally he couldn't bring him into a hospital or something like that, because the crazy man would simply blame Marcus for everything.
But a part of Marcus wished that he could simply help him get healed, both from the punch in the face that he probably shouldn't have done and from whatever kind of problems that he had inside his head. There wasn't any sane person in the world that would go up to a complete stranger and try to rob him at knifepoint, so it was very clear that this guy was messed up.
The other thing Marcus was worried about was somebody, somewhere, was going to find out about this. Marcus was scrambling just how to explain himself out of this situation…