A couple of minutes after the fight, Ibuki and I found ourselves sat at a huge table on one of the higher floors of Maverick Hunter HQ. I was groaning in pain, rubbing away at a huge bruise on my side. I don't know how hard Ms. Fair kicked me during the fight, but it had to have been pretty hard for me to feel it through my armor. Ibuki, on the other hand, just kinda sat in her chair, hands folded in her lap and with an embarrassed look. I couldn't blame her for that. I'm pretty sure that if I weren't in discomfort, I probably would've been sitting like that too.
As it was, though, I was trying to figure out how to breathe without letting my lungs stretch out and push against the bruise. I was learning the hard way that we humans can't force our bodies to work out in a way that doesn't naturally come to them.
The room we were in was pretty plain looking. Cold, metal walls, uncovered floor. It was big enough that I wished it was my room back home, with plenty of freedom to have my furniture in it and still have room to move around pretty openly. The table in the middle was huge. I took up a huge portion of the room, with enough space for 5 seats on the longer sides. Ibuki and I sat at one end, both of us facing each other. She thought it would look awkward if one of us sat in the end seat. That one's usually reserved for the head person in the room. It made sense to me. Dad usually sat on the end at our house.
So, we picked our spots, and we waited. And ached. And pained. And tried to breathe as normally as possible.
Ow ow ow… Sometimes, being ninety-four percent human really hurt.
"Are you okay?" Ibuki asked, "Looked like she got you pretty good."
I rubbed at my bruise, wincing a bit. "Yeah, it hurts to breathe. She must've hit me harder than I thought."
"Well," she shrugged, "it's armor, not invincibility. It's supposed to absorb most of the impact from a hit. It won't stop an attack completely. I thought you knew that from sparring practice."
My turn to shrug. "We do light contact. We're not exactly trying to knock each other out during a match."
"Fair enough."
We sat there for what felt like forever after that, with me putting my head on the table and closing my eyes. I could hear Ibuki let a soft sigh go. I guess she thought I was gonna take a nap or something while we waited for whoever. The rush of the fight, short as it wash, made sure I wouldn't fall asleep any time soon.
I don't know about her, but I tried to think about what happened during the fight. Where did things go wrong for us? I thought we were off to a pretty good start. I had thought of a short plan that I thought would help us figure things out. I just wasn't ready for her to see what we were doing and go after Ibuki. That felt like where things went pretty wrong for us. Looking back at it then, it seemed pretty weird to me that she didn't try to fight back when she saw Leviathan charge her. I'd ask her about it later.
I looked up and gave her a quick glance-over, checking to see if she was hurt. I thought that maybe she was just hiding whatever pain she was in from me for whatever reason. Sure enough, I saw her rubbing at her jaw a little bit. I couldn't see that she was missing any teeth or anything like that, but she was rubbing at it like there was some soreness to it.
"You okay?" I asked.
"Yeah, but she got me pretty good," She stopped rubbing and put her hand back in her lap. "Could be worse, though. Nothing feels out of place."
That was good. At least neither of us had anything long term to worry about. If anything, I'd probably be purple in the ribs for a couple of days.
It was at this point that the door to the room opened. Fairy Leviathan walked into the room. She took a seat at the opposite end of the table we were at, which wasn't hard considering we'd done what we thought was the sensible thing and sat at the clear other end of the room, away from the door. Once she was settled in, she made a simple motion with her hand.
Come closer, you two.
I didn't want to at first. The thorough dismantling she'd performed on us still weighed in the back of my mind, so I wasn't sure I wanted to be too close to her. After a minute's hesitation, though, I managed to bring myself to take the seat next to her. By the time I'd gotten there, Ibuki was already settled in.
Leviathan smiled at me while I sat down. "Don't worry, Iris. I won't bite."
Good, I thought she did enough damage to me as it is.
"So," she said, starting to tap a finger on the table. "where do you two think things went wrong?"
I still wasn't sure about it. I thought we had a pretty solid plan to start out. I looked at Ibuki, expecting her to not know either. Instead, I caught a glare so fierce I was worried she might lose her mind and jump over the table at me.
"Well, I'd like to think it was when Iris decided to hatch an extremely basic plan, and then proceed to act on it without making sure I was ready or even okay with it."
Wow. Care to back that bus back over me and finish the job?
"Really? Because I can think of one huge mistake."
This time, she was confused with me, instead of angry. I genuinely scratched my head this time.
"Come on, you two. I'm sure that if you really think about it, it'll come to you."
I don't know how dumb I looked, but no matter how many times I ran through the fight in my head, I still wasn't sure about anything. Ibuki must've thought the same way, because she never said a word during this either. Leviathan, seeing that we weren't catching on to whatever it was she was talking about, let out a heavy sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose.
"What has he been teaching you?" She said softly. So softly, in fact, that I had no idea who she was talking to. She might not have been meant for either of us to hear it. Once she was done rubbing away her frustration, she did something that looked odd in the moment.
She tapped the side of her helmet.
"I may be older than you, but these still work."
Then it hit me.
"I said my plan out loud."
Leviathan nodded. "Yes, you did. You made it very easy for me to pick out the flaw in your plan and exploit it. But, there was one huge mistake that you two made. One that you probably won't think of, even with my help."
"What's that?" Ibuki asked.
Leviathan stopped tapping her finger, instead opting to point it at me.
"You two didn't work together."
Wait, what?
"You heard me. You weren't cooperating with each other, and it cost you."
"But wait," I said, "we were working together. I came up with a plan, told Ibuki, and followed through on it."
"No, you didn't. You never even made sure I was okay or even ready to go along with your plan. You just rattled it off real quick, then charged in."
"By doing that," Leviathan added, "you left your supporting teammate completely vulnerable to attack. Were you even aware that Marino needed to keep still in order to complete a target scan?"
Wait, really?
"Uh," Ibuki started, "no I don't. Not moving just makes it easier for me to keep my eyes on my target while I'm scanning."
Oh.
Leviathan smiled at that. "Which is something Iris would've known if she'd bothered to ask you about it at any time before charging at me. Instead," this time, she turned to me. "you decided that you had the right idea in mind nothing was going to change that. You weren't prepared to listen to your teammate and alter your plan of attack, and as such, you weren't on the same page at any point in the fight.
"And you," she turned back to Ibuki, "you should know better than to let yourself get rushed and not even try to fight back a little bit. All you did was cover yourself and let me pretty much do anything I wanted to you. You're luck I held back on my kick, or you'd both have some pretty serious injuries you'd be tending to instead of the bumps that you've got.
"So, with all of that in mind, I've made the decision to recommend that you two undergo Hunter training."
I could feel myself sit up straighter on that. I probably should've been more ashamed at Leviathan picking the two of us apart the way she did, but the idea of learning what it's like to be a real Maverick Hunter intrigued me.
"You two made mental mistakes that any seasoned Maverick Hunter avoids. Neither of you are at fault for that, of course. The Neo Arcadian branch of the MHC is still in its infancy, so you two are technically emergency Hunters.
"That being said, you do still need to be trained to be able to think and act properly and safely during a mission. And who knows, maybe the next time the three of us spar, you two might actually come up with a way to hit me."
Her smile grew when she said that last line, and I could feel mine shrink. She just had to rub that in and make us feel bad about it.
"Well, maybe if you feel bad, you'll understand your mistakes more easily."
Ouch. I think that one hurt more than the bruised ribs.
"And so," Leviathan continued, "I think we're done for today. I'll put in my recommendation after this debriefing. You should get messages about when your training sessions begin, so keep your phones on you."
We both nodded, getting up and making our way out of the room. A thought flashed in my head and, without hesitating, I acted on it.
"Thanks for the talk. See you at school."
"Wait, 'school'?"
I smiled at her, then looked back into the room. Fairy Leviathan had decided she wasn't needed anymore, and in her place sat our smiling homeroom teacher, Ms. Fair.
Once we'd left the meeting room, I'd pulled Ibuki off to the side and apologized to her. It took Leviathan pointing out everything I'd done wrong for me to see exactly how I'd completely messed everything up for us. I didn't want to make those kinds of mistakes again, especially not on a real mission where I could get us seriously injured.
To her credit, Ibuki forgave me almost immediately. She also apologized for being as upset with as she was. While we'd fought each other plenty of times over the years, we'd only ever fought together once, and even then it was super short. We've never had a chance to see how we mesh together as a team, and she felt like she blamed me too much when she'd had her own problems.
After that, we went our separate ways. Ibuki decided to go home for the day. I kinda wanted to do that, but at the same time, I felt like I was too exhausted and in a little too much pain to go too far. I'd gotten directions from someone I'd passed by in a hallway and made my way to the dorm room the twins had shown me on my first day here.
I gave Mom a call as soon as I got there, letting her know I'd be staying there for the night. Mom, being a mom of course, had a change of clothes sent over for me that Techno was nice enough to bring. Tired and still a little sore, I'd decided that I'd take a shower and get changed out of the sweaty workout clothes I'd been wearing since the training session started.
Once I was clean, I'd decided to lay down in the middle of the room. Sure, there were beds I could've used, but after looking through one of the bunks, I'd found that each one had a small light right at the top. There was enough room in each bunk for whoever was laying in it to sit up comfortably, but the light being so close to the bed put me off in the moment.
So, there I was, laying on my back, hands behind my head and staring up into the ceiling. I let the fight play over and over in my head, thinking about different ways it could have gone had I not been as selfish as I was. Maybe if I'd listened to Ibuki, we could've thought of a way to attack Leviathan. Maybe the scanning could've worked if, instead of rushing in, I'd have stayed close to Marino and acted like a guard instead. Or maybe…
No, stop it. There was no point in mulling over it now. I mean, sure, learning from mistakes and all that, but there wasn't anything else to learn that hadn't already been brought up. No, what I need to do was find a way to get my mind off of it. I needed to try and figure out what it was that Berkana was working on that required her getting some kind of army going. Whatever it was, there was no way it was anything good. Not if the way she'd acted with me was any indication.
I also owed her for beating me as badly as she did in our surprise fight. I still wasn't happy about her trying to damage my prosthetic leg. I got up off the floor and made my way to one of the bunks. Whatever her plans were, I'd work on figuring them out tomorrow. Tonight, I needed to get some rest, both for my brain and my chest.
Tomorrow, things would start working out for the better.
I hoped.
