Once all of the initiates were on solid ground again the guy that helped me earlier and a woman stood in front of the group.
"My name is Aron and I will be your instructor. Dauntless born go with Susan and transfers stay with me." Once the group had split Aron lead us away from the net and started walking down one of the passageways. At the end we stood at a overhang of a pit that had everything in it people fighting , shops everything, I allowed myself to smile.
"This is the pit and the center of life hear at dauntless." Aron said then lead us over a little to a metal bridge.
"This is the chasm, and a reminder of the fine line between bravery and idiocy. A daredevil jump of here will get you killed, you have been warned." Once everyone had gotten a good look Aron lead us away and down some stairs.
"These are the dormitories and where you will be sleeping for the next few weeks. Everyone change and get over to the cafeteria." I took a bed over in the corner and started changing into the dauntless clothes that had been left out for me. I kept my hair in a bun however and did not throw out my old clothes like I saw some of the other initiates doing. As I put on the dauntless clothes I realized that they were tighter than erudite clothes and stronger, like they went though a lot. The jackets were a sort of leathery fabric with shoulder pads, everything seemed to have pads of some sort. When I was done changing a candor transfer girl came up to me.
"Hey I saw you do that backflip of the building today, that was awesome! My name's Eve." Eve looked nice and James did say I could make friends, not that I would have listened to him if he said I shouldn't. So I took out of my pocket the cards and wrote "Hi, My name's May"
"Can you speak?" I smiled and took out another card that said "I can speak. For now I choose not to."
"Okay! Want to walk down to the cafeteria with me?" I nodded and we set off. Eve it's turned out loved to talk and told me all about hey parents and her dog Sadie. When we arrived at the cafeteria most of dauntless was already there eating, drinking and laughing. Eve and I took a seat at a table in the corner with some other initiates.
"You were the one that did the flip right?" one asked, I think his name was Mark.
"Yeah she's the one" answered Eve
"That was awesome. By the way my name's Chris, what's yours." another boy said. I took out two cards that read "Hi, my names May." and "It was really fun jumping off the ledge, I felt like I could fly." When I looked up Mark and Chris were staring at me like I had two heads.
"Can you talk?" asked Mark. I took out a card that read "I can speak. For now I choose not to." and hoped that they wouldn't ask too many questions. Mark and Chris were staring at each other and it looked like they wondering if they should move when Eve spoke up.
"Calm down you guys, she's fine" I knew Eve was going to be a good friend after that because dinner went smoothly after she spoke up for me. Mark and Chris were nice and didn't seem to mind that I communicated through writing so I singled them out as friends. Eve of course was by my side and spoke for me when people asked about me, I was very thankful for it.
When we finally got back to the dorms I was ready to go to sleep, today had been a stressful day and sleep was necessary. I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow but sadly we were all woken up very early the next morning by Max screaming at us to wake up. I didn't like Max but I don't want to not like someone without knowing them for very long so I decided to not hate Max until further inspection. Once we were all up and in the pit Aron started talking to us.
"Initiation is separated into three stages," of course I already knew that, but I don't think wasn't supposed to so I kept a straight face and acted like this was new news.
"All of the stages with test your mental or physical strength and we will push you to the breaking point in all three. At the end of each stage some of you will be cut." Okay this was news to me, at the end people would get cut! "I'm going to do fine" I told myself.
"You will train seaparetly for the dauntless born but you will be ranked this clear." Aron finished talking and then took all the the transfers down to the training room. It was a big room with tall ceilings and orange punching bags everywhere. First Aron showed us some basic punches and defensive stances then we split up and practiced. The punches I didn't like at all because they hurt you as well as your opponent and all together if you weren't strong didn't have much effect. I ended up practicing the defensive stances for a while until Max came in and told us to circle round.
"Let's do some real fighting now. Now what I'm about to do may not seem fair or right in anyway but this is to teach you a lesson, Life isn't fair and the odds will not be in your favor." I didn't like the sound of this but I did crack a smile when he said "the odds will not be in your favor" because it was a subtle unintended reference from "The Hunger Games" a book that I'd read.
" Oh you think this is funny" Max shouted at me. "Well lets see how funny you find this." "We have all of your heights and weights in file so let's have the shortest and lightests go against the tallest and heaviest. Look who that is May and Arnold. Fight!"
I stepped into the ring and saw who my opponent was, I recognized him as a six foot tall candor transfer and looked like he ate small children for breakfast.
"Hey shrimp, you ready to lose." he said. I wanted to badly to just scream at him, but instead I took out the a card for my pocket and wrote "No I don't think so" I knew I was being cocky but it just felt so good.
"Hey shrimp can you talk." He asked then proceeded to try and catch me off guard and flung his fist at my stomach. I saw him coming and calmly side stepped to avoid him.
"Stop dancing and fight" yelled Max. I still did not strike even though I could have ended this fight a long time ago, the one thing I learned was to wait for the right moment.
"Shrimp are you deaf also, I asked you If you could talk!" Arnold yelled. I looked up into his face and saw that he had a cocky grin on his face and I so dearly wanted to slap him. Suddenly he put a foot forward and spat on the ground in front of me. It was the moment I'd been waiting for, I stepped backwards the ran forward grabbing his shoulders and flinging myself up. Meanwhile my thumbs and pointer fingers found the point I was looking for and I performed the vulcan death grip. A strangled yell told me I had found my mark as Arnold came crashing to the floor and I nibley flipped off and landed behind him. As I walked out of the ring I saw all of the initiates jaws drop, but what made me smile was Max's face. He looked like someone had just smacked him. Once I was out of the ring I looked back to see how Arnold was coping, I saw him sprawled out on the floor not moving I felt a little bad but not enough to go and help him. Eve ran up to me wide eyed and I looked behind her and saw Chris and Mark close behind all wearing the same expression.
"How in hell did you do that?" asked Eve, I smiled and wrote on a card "pressure points and using his own weight and mine against him."
"I thought you were done for when he called you into the ring" said Mark
"Yeah, when Max made Arnold fight you we all thought you were going to die" added Chris.
"You're going to be unbeatable" said Eve. The next few fights were pretty evenly matched and Eve won her fight by punching Marisa in the elbow which I thought was pretty clever. Mark lost his but Chris won his fight so we were mostly in good spirits when Aron came and told us that we were going to learn how to shoot a gun. The shooting range was on the roof and from there you could see the whole city all the way to the fence.
"I will pass out guns and you will all find a target and wait for my call to shoot." Aron spoke over the rush of the wind. He wasn't like Max or Arnold so I suppose he was nice enough but still commanding. As I got handed a gun I didn't curl my finger around the trigger, in fact I wanted the gun as far away from me as possible but I knew that I had to do this. We stepped up to our targets and as I looked at them they weren't the bulls eye type targets that are usually used, instead they were orange forms of a human torso. They wanted us to practice shooting at a person, even if it was fake I was horrified. I had an idea to make it seem less gruesome or cruel and started shooting. My aim was near perfect with a knife of pencil so my aim with a gun was pretty good. As I started on my plan, I looked over and only one or two of the other people had hit their target, I ignored this and looked back at my target. Slowly but surely I put an outline of bullet hole in the target to make a frame of sorts. For the middle I put one hole dead center and then curved lines on the outside so they made a spiral. As I put down my gun and inspected my handywork, it was silent too silent. Nobody was shooting anymore they had all looked over at me and what was my target. Aron approached me and took a glance at my target
"What's your name" he asked, I pulled out the card with my name on it.
"Can you speak?" he asked and I nodded and showed him the card that read "I can speak. For now I choose not to."
"May, Why in the world does you target look like that, in fact how did you get your target to look like that." He looked exasperated and awed at the same time. I took out a blank card and wrote "I hate guns, the ability to hold something that in one click could end someone's life. It could in one click end the life of a evil person or someone that maybe deserves to die, but in one click you could kill your mom or you brother, in one click you could kill a friend and become a murderer."
"Okay..but how did you shoot so well."
I wrote on another card that said "I aimed and fired and it went were I wanted it to go." that wasn't the entire truth but it was enough of the truth, I did just aim and fire. By now everyone had stopped what they were doing to follow our conversation.
"Everyone continue shooting, May I guess you can do whatever you were doing earlier." Aron looked tired and confused as he went back to helping other initiates. By lunchtime all of dauntless was talking about me, the small, silent transfer that could take down people three times her size and whose aim was near perfect. At lunch a bunch of people stared at me but Eve was by my side the entire time and Chris and Mark helped fight of anyone that wanted to mess with me, even though they knew all too well that I didn't need protection. The rest of training went smoothly and soon enough it was 6:00 and we could do whatever we wanted. Me and Eve ran down to the pit and soon enough landed in the tattoo parlor. Eve wanted to get a tattoo so she eventually convinced me to as well. There were so many tattoo's,
"Which one should I get" asked Eve
"More like where should you get a tattoo" I wrote.
"Yeah like I'm going to get one on my butt, geez May!" Eve said and then we both smiled of the thought of getting a butt tattoo. Eve found a tattoo of a moon on the back of her neck because it reminded her of her name. I just couldn't find something that I wanted to put on my body permanently, none of the drawings looked like me or fit were something I wanted. Eve showed me many suggestions, may flowers, the dauntless symbol, a star, this one that looked like your arm was sliced open. None of them looked appealing. None of them meant something to me.
"Maybe we should come back another day" I wrote
"No, you are getting a tattoo today!" She exclaimed and stomped her foot down as she said in a childish fashion. We looked and looked for about another half hour until I remembered something. In my books there were symbols, some simple, more complicated but symbols none the less. I could get something from one of my books. "Do you think they do custom tattoo's" I wrote.
"I don't know, one sec let me find out" and she ran off. A minute later she came back.
"Yup just as long as you know what you want." So I was going to get something from one of my books, but what. Then It hit me, my favorite series Harry Potter had something I could use, the deathly hallows. After I told Eve my choice I went up to one of the tattoo artists.
"Could you do a custom tattoo for me please." I wrote
"I can, what do you want?" she asked. I showed her the drawing I had made earlier on a napkin. It was a triangle with a line down the middle and a circle on the bottom.
"Where do you want it" she asked and I tapped a spot in the middle of my chest below my collar bones. After I had got my tattoo me and Eve went next door to get some clothes. We both ended up getting clothes that showed off our tattoos, I got a black shirt that had a low neckline and Eve got a backless dress.