A/N: I got to do a lot of fun research about guns for this chapter! The guns I picked for the standard at Dauntless might seem unusual or weird, but I liked them and they all had useful traits I thought would be fitting for the rank and jobs they will be used in. Since I have very limited knowledge of guns (and most of the stuff I do know if either from Call of Duty or the research I just did to complete the chapter), I wouldn't mind some corrections when I make mistakes, or advice on guns and stuff.
I have come to the conclusion that it might not have been very smart to have Liz's good Dauntless-born friend Erica share a very close name to Eric, her (spoilers) soon-to-be love interest, as that could get highly confusing. Alas, it is too late to turn back now, so I must suffer the consequences.
Sorry it took me so long to get this chapter finished; I've been busy. To make up for it, I wrote an extra long chapter.
Constructive criticism welcomed and encouraged, as well as opinions and ideas.
Disclaimer: Veronica Roth owns the Divergent series, as well as Eric; I only own my OC's and plot.
~o0O0o~ Chapter Four. Initiation.
A loud banging noise startled her awake. Liz jumped out of bed and realized too late she had a top bunk. She landed on top of someone, and they both went crashing into the concrete floor. Her still groggy from sleep mind took an awkwardly long amount of time to realize what had happened while the body under her groaned.
She shot to her feet, and reached down to give her unsuspecting victim a hand up. It was Jason, the only other Amity transfer. She remembered seeing him around occasionally at social events, but he must have lived on the other side of Amity. From his already built, muscular form, he probably worked at the lumber district of the faction.
He took her hand and she pulled him off the ground, thankful he hadn't received any injuries, and murmured an apology. Eric's voice brought her attention to the doorway, where he was standing with a pot and a metal bar.
"I want you all down in the training room in ten minutes. If you're late - well, let's just hope none of you are late." Eric said with an evil smirk. His voice was deep and threatening, and combined with the echo of the room it carried without him needing to raise the volume for everyone to hear him clearly. The leader left the room as the remaining occupants rushed to throw on some decent clothing for the day's activities. Elizabeth tossed on her only outfit, which happened to be black and black, before jumping into her (black) shoes and leaving the room. She wanted to get to the training room early to hopefully make a good impression on the two leaders, and get some mercy on her first day.
When she arrived at the training room slightly out of breath from her jog down, she was met with the smell of sweaty gym socks blended with something that reminded her of sanitary cleaning spray, probably used to mask the odor but only seemed to make it worse. Her gut churned and she felt slightly nauseous, but she held back the urge to be sick so she didn't look weak in front of the leaders.
Eric stood stiffly with his arms crossed in the middle of the room, wearing a jacket so sharp she was sure she could cut herself on it, while Amar was relaxing against a pillar behind him, examining his nails. The right half of the room was filled with mats and punching bags, the left held targets and tables and a few more mats. One large thick mat covered in something resembling baby powder lay in the middle of the large room. A two-lane running track lined the walls, with a sign posted on the wall near the double doors that stated "FIVE LAPS EQUALS ONE MILE." A large clock rested on the wall opposite the door, confirming to her that she was five minutes early. Amar looked up from examining his nails at the same time Eric said with a cold smile, "Ah, the early bird. Five laps, now."
Liz didn't want to get on his bad side from starting too slowly, so she immediately rushed to the track and began her run. She was only half a lap through when the doors creaked open and three more initiates were commanded to join her. As the rest of the transfers trickled in - thankfully no one was late - and began their morning run, with Eric yelling at them to go faster, Amar was setting up a chalkboard near the fighting mat in the middle of the room.
Liz's legs began to burn, but she ignored it, increasing her speed to help distract from the slightly annoying pain. She finished her fifth lap at a sprint, and when she was panting on the ground at the end, her body seemed to scream in protest at her strenuous run. Her legs were shaking and aching at an unbearable level and she was starting to wish she had slowed down instead of gone faster. After a long minute of catching her breath, she glanced at the clock, and was surprised it had only been roughly six minutes since she entered. She guessed her run must of have been really fast for a transfer, because Amar looked impressed as he glanced her way, like he was surprised she was already finished. Eric noticed she wasn't running and jogged over to her.
"What do you think you're doing?" He seemed annoyed, like she was a pest that wouldn't die, but she was at loss for why. She sat up on her knees and wiped a hand across her forehead to clear the sweat that had gathered above her brows.
"I finished my five laps." She replied, looking up at him from her position on the floor.
"All five?" He accused, voice mocking in a show of disbelief. If that wasn't a sign she had finished unusually fast Liz didn't know what was. She nodded, and he seemed doubtful before settling with a look of disapproval. She was puzzled by his reaction, but before she had a chance to analyze it he gestured for her to follow him across the room to the large mat in the center.
"You transferred from Amity?" He asked, but it sounded as if he already knew. She nodded and he gestured for her to stand up on the mat. She stood in the middle, glancing around the room uncomfortably. Amar had taken Eric's place yelling at the remaining runners, and the only other transfer who wasn't running was on the ground in the middle of the track, seemingly too exhausted to continue. Liz looked back at Eric, hoping for an explanation for her standing in the middle of the room on the mat, but his back was turned, watching the other initiates running, and typing stuff into his tablet every time someone finished. Roughly nine minutes later, if her watching the clock in absence of something to do was anything to go by, everyone had completed the five laps, except Billy, who had to stop on lap four from severe cramps. Not even before everyone caught their breaths Eric was calling them all over to stand in front of the mat, effectively putting all attention on Liz, leaving her beat red and confused.
"Listen up everybody!" Eric silenced the already quiet group, and turned to Liz. "Do you know how long it took you to run five laps?" She shook her head, and his look of disapproval seemed to deepen, like he was genuinely disappointed that she hadn't thought to keep track. He fiddled with something on his tablet for a second and she guessed he had been timing them. From her position on the mat she could see part of his screen and it appeared to be a list of numbers.
"Five minutes and fifty-two seconds." He stated, reading off the list, and her suspicions were confirmed. It look her a moment to understand why this data was important though. The sign had said five laps was a mile, but she wasn't sure how long a mile was in proportion to her time. Did she run too fast? She shifted her weight uncomfortably, waiting for him to continue while her thoughts were running wild. Where was he going with this? Was she suppose to run slow? Was she going to get in trouble for showing off without meaning to?
"Would you like to know the fastest recorded mile for a transfer initiate?" He asked, but didn't give her a chance to answer before continuing. "Six minutes and forty-three seconds." Soft gasps and quiet murmurs lit up through the transfers. Eric turned from her to face the group, a ghost of a smirk pulling at his lips.
So she had beaten the fastest recorded mile for an initiate on her first day by almost an entire minute. Wasn't that good? Why did she feel like she was about to be grounded like a child?
"Since Miss Amity has decided to set the standard so high, I expect everyone to run a six minute mile by the end of stage one. Understood?" He looked downright gleeful as he watched the wide-eyed initiates. Liz stood there, and stared at him in shock and anger. The rest of the transfers were being punished because she was a fast runner? What was the point of that? Was he trying to get her killed? Paul and Britney were glaring at her with murder on their minds, she could see it. She looked to Eric, hoping he might take back what he said, but she had no such luck. He was already walking back to Amar to discuss something, probably the new torture method he just implemented to them. They talked for scarcely a minute, but Amar walked to them with a happy sparkle in his eye, like forcing everyone against one person on the first day was his favorite part of training.
Eric left to go who knows where, while Amar worked them through some "warm-up drills." She wasn't sure if the name was just a misnomer or if it was actually that easy for some people, but it felt like torture on her muscles. She was still a bit tired from her run, and doing lunges, suicide squat-jumps, push ups, pull ups, and dozens of other excruciating drills was really wearing her out. After another half hour Amar let them have a break to hydrate and to catch their breaths. They were barely given a minute before he was pushing them through the door, down three long hallways, and up at least seven flights of stairs. At the top of the building, she was beginning to wonder if they were being brought up to the top of the tallest building in the city just to give them an opportunity to jump off instead of going through another few painful months of this.
Once they pushed through the thick metal door, filing out onto the roof, she saw the real reason they were all the way up there, and it was almost as bad as she thought. A long row of evenly spaced out stations with several different guns at each table were positioned near the edge of the building, and as she looked, the building beside it had targets set directly across from them. It appeared Eric had been busy setting all of it up, because he was leaning against one of the tables near the door looking slightly less cardboard stiff and formal. Because of the blazing heat from the sun positioned above them, he had shed his jacket, which was laying behind him, and was left with a form-fitting black shirt. Even if he was being a jerk about her run, Liz had to admit he had a nice set of muscles stretching the thin fabric of his shirt in all the right places.
Amar exited the roof, leaving Eric in charge of the transfers, and she was slightly unsure if that was the smartest thing to do. They all gathered around the table and Eric introduced the three types of guns on the table: selective fire, semi-automatic, and automatic.
"This is the VP70 selective fire or semi-automatic pistol. This weapon stays in the holster of all members when at work, whether in the office or patrols or anything in between. Depending on the job and rank, you can receive a semi-automatic or selective fire variety. No matter what job you have, the pistol is necessary to know. The FN FNC is a more complicated weapon that is only used on patrols, mainly heavily armed trucks, verses on foot. You have to be able to recognize and know it, but we won't have to do drills or practice on it in basic initiation training. The M4A1 is used by guards on the wall, while the lighter model, M4, is used by foot patrols.
"These are the basic guns that will be used, and any further instruction past initiation will be given when entering a job that requires it." After explaining at length more information about each weapon and the different pieces and parts, Eric taught them how to assemble and disassemble each in under one minute. He apparently teaches by example, and went as far of to show off that he can do the VP70 pistol in under 30 seconds. It all boggled her mind, and when she was standing in front of her own table with the three guns displayed before her, she had no idea how she was gonna survive this.
They were told to start with the pistol, so she picked it up and looked at it closely. The gun was heavier than she expected, but it had a nice look to it. Deciding to start learning the parts of the gun since she would have to use it all the time, she began mimicking Eric's movements from before to take out the ammo cartridge. She sighed in relief as it slid out just as it was suppose to, but now she was stuck. She couldn't remember each step individually; they all seemed to slur together from the quick movements of Eric's hands. She tried fiddling with different things to pull it apart but nothing worked.
Eric stopped in front of her table to watch her and she tried to look like she knew what she was doing, but she probably looked like an idiot. He must have been thinking the same thing because he sighed and took the weapon from her. She watched as he removed each piece, albeit, slower than before but still fast enough for her to see the fluid, practiced motion of his deft fingers working talentedly. He showed her twice more, pointing out each piece as he came to it. After he was sure she understood, he left to help the person next to her. This time she managed to take it apart successfully and put it back together, somewhat choppy and not near as smooth as Eric had. She did it a few more times to get used to the feel of the gun in her hands when Eric told them to move on to the M4A1. He demonstrated how to do it, and instructed them on the names of each piece and the purpose of them. As Eric had promised, he only showed them the basics of disassembling the FN FNC, but they didn't have to practice it themselves. Liz was partially relieved; the gun was pretty intimidating and she wasn't a big fan of these weapons in the first place.
After practicing the two weapons to perfection, her mind was a swirling, swimming mess and she wasn't sure how they were expected to remember all of the information that was being thrown at them.
Paul, who was at the table beside her, kept throwing out taunts and insults about her lack of gun knowledge. Being an Erudite, he no doubt did tons of research on everything guns already, and was quick to catch on, something that frustrated her. Nevertheless she kept her cool and ignored him, and eventually he stopped.
After Eric deemed them ready, he presented how to load, shoot, and reload the pistol. They all were then allowed to actually shoot the gun. Her excitement was short lived when her aim took a turn for the worst. She managed to hit the edges of the target enough to not look like a fool, but one glance to Jared on her other side and her struggle was futile. She did look like an idiot.
He was hitting the two inside rings almost every single time, and Eric seemed sure he was doing perfect enough to not have to correct a thing. Instead he moved on to her and immediately pointed out multiple things she was doing utterly wrong. She tried correcting her mistakes but he just rolled his eyes and fixed them for her himself, which including him putting his hands on her hips and arms to perfect the steadiness of her aim and adjust her feet and shoulders to face the target properly. Afterwards a few more of her shots strayed closer to the middle, but Eric didn't notice, as he had moved on to help Paul, who, even after all his talk about knowing how to use the weapons, couldn't hit the target.
They only recieved an hour to practice with the pistol before they had to put up the guns and go back downstairs for lunch. Elizabeth was relieved they were done with weapons at least for the day. She was starting to hate shooting. Her shoulders and arms were sore from the recoil of the gun, and she was sticky with sweat from the heat of the sun.
The transfers filed into the mess hall, chatting aimlessly and complaining about being hungry. Liz saw Erica sitting at a loud table with some of her Dauntless-born friends and sat down with her, her tray of turkey sandwich and fruit more appealing than the dinner she had eaten the day before.
"Hey, Elizabeth! How's training going?" Erica asked with a mouthful of sandwich. Liz frowned thinking of this morning and Erica immediately caught on. "Oh, no. Did you get on Eric's bad side? I've heard it's not pretty. He is known to throw people off of building and use them as targets."
Liz grimaced at the idea. She thought she had seen Eric at his peak of evil but from what she heard, she hadn't even scraped the surface.
"No, he didn't throw anyone off the roof or shot them, but I'll keep it in mind to stay off his radar. I just completed my morning run faster than usual and he punished everyone else for it." She said, taking a sip of water to sooth her now dry mouth.
"That's such an understatement it could be considered a flat-out lie." Jason said as he slid into the seat across from them. The Dauntless born beside him, the girl with blue hair from the train, gave him a glare but he returned it with a goofy smile before continuing. "Elizabeth beat the mile record for a transfer initiate by an entire minute, so now Eric wants everyone else to step up their game to accommodate." His statement was declared loud enough to get some head turning her direction curiously and she blushed lightly.
"It wasn't an entire minute." She muttered as she took a bite of her sandwich. Erica had shock permanently etched onto her face when Liz glanced over to her.
"No. Way. Seriously? That's awesome! You keep this up throughout training and you will be ranked number one! How fast did you run?"
Liz shrugged, not caring to remember the exact number. "Five minutes and fifty something seconds." She said quietly, but apparently several people around the table heard because there were gasps.
That's faster than I can run a mile! Have you been practicing or something?" Erica said, and Liz suddenly felt guilty. She didn't mean to show off or make anyone to feel bad, she was just trying to impress her supervisors to get on their good side, but it appeared she did the opposite.
"I ran at Amity through the woods and meadows just for fun, and we had neighborhood races and stuff, but I never tried to time myself or practice for Dauntless. I'm just faster than I thought I was." She shrugged and took an awkward bite of her apple. Erica was still gaping at her slightly, but the table moved on to other conversation quickly, becoming easily distracted by any other piece of information they could turn into juicy gossip and rumors.
She had lost most of her appetite, so she only finished her apple and sandwich, letting Jason eat her large cluster of grapes.
"You call that a punch?" Eric's mocking tone echoed in the large room, and Liz immediately felt bad for whoever was on the receiving end of a no doubt embarrassing punishment. A quick glance down the rows of punching bags let her know it was Britney, who looked terrified to have Eric anywhere near her, much less talking to her. "Try again." A weak attempted punch that resembled a cooked spaghetti noodle being whacked against a wall was all she managed and Eric scoffed. "I meant punch, not high-five." He deadpanned, crossing his arms impatiently.
"I didn't say you could stop." The distraction had caused almost everyone to stop their own practicing to watch the exchange, which seemed to irritate Eric if his snappy yell was anything to go by. The seven rushed to hit the bags, carefully avoiding looking back in his direction. Amar, who had been helping correct some issues with Billy"s stance, was now making his way to Eric and Britney, probably to help get her out of the pit she kept digging deeper for herself everytime she threw a punch at her bag.
Liz had a pretty good idea how to at least throw a proper punch; she had grown up with two brothers, even if it was in Amity. Amar had told her a few minutes before to widen her stance, but other than that she was pretty confident about this part of training. Eric and Amar were now discussing in hushed tones, and Eric looked annoyed.
The thudding of fists against the rough leather sounded dully as everyone continued plowing into their bags, almost too tired to continue. They had been at it for over three hours and Liz wasn't sure how much longer they were expected to continue, because she could keep up for much longer, especially since her shoulders were still aching from the guns earlier. After what felt like another two hours (but in reality was only fifteen minutes, when she glanced at the clock for the fifth time in last hour), Amar was dismissing them.
"You all have free time until lights out at 10 o'clock. You are not allowed to leave the compound for any reason without a leader, and you only get ten points every day until the end of initiation, where it will depend on your job, so use them sparingly." Amar concluded, ushering them all out the door except for Britney, who he called back to practice her punch more.
Now that they were free from the leaders' critical eyes, Paul, Amber, and Billy, for lack of better terms, bullied her with their words all the way back to the dorms. They threw angry jabs at her for "showing off" and "flaunting her skills so they looked bad" about her run that morning. Even though she had thought similarly herself, hearing it from them as excuses to unleash their anger in insult form made her feel differently about it. She was better at something than they, they just couldn't handle it, and she wasn't going to put up with it. She was going to keep her mouth shut and ignore them, but when Paul said she had probably just skipped laps and hadn't even completely her run, she snapped. Swiveling around to get in his face, she growled low and calm. "Just because I could beat you in a race without even trying doesn't mean you have to pity party about it. Why don't you try getting better yourself instead of excusing and justifying your lack of leg muscles?" She accused, staring at him another long second before glancing at the other two beside him, giving them each pointed glares. When Billy looked genuinely guilty, she turned back around and walked away, catching back up with Jared.
Dinner was more eventful, sitting with Erica again. Jared and Derik had joined them, and she was introduced to several of Erica's friends. Madelyn, the girl with the electric blue hair, was actually really funny, compared to her slightly snotty attitude on the train. Ashley, the green-haired girl, was very loud and only a bit annoying, but thankfully she was sitting near the other end of the table. Daniel, who was sitting directly across from Liz, was really chill, with messy black curls and deep blue eyes, which she had trouble looking away from. They were downright mesmerizing, and she had always had a thing for eyes.
Being around such a spontaneous and carefree atmosphere was starting to loosen Liz up, and she began to feel more comfortable. She chomped through her steak, feeling bold enough to participate in the joking. She was surprised by how much she was enjoying herself, and decided not to over-analyze it just yet, letting her mind stay in the present.
She was excited and ready for tomorrow, even though her body seemed to protest through the stiffness in her shoulders and legs. After taking a warm shower to relieve some of the tension, she hopped under the thin blanket, trying to maintain some ounce of body heat. Despite the chilly temperatures of the underground room, her tired body fell asleep effortlessly, completely exhausted from the day.