: Thanks for joining in! Damn, ~150,000 words must be a lot to read.
I am glad you find my story unique. As I've stated in previous author notes, (and some of the other readers are probably tired of hearing now), I am not well-versed in fanfic so I have different tendencies than your average fanfic writer. Also, if you don't mind me asking, why do you consider a lot of fanfics pointless?
I hope you stick along for the ride! There are a few other people in the comment section that will keep you company!
An Eldian's Journal
The Soul of War
Chapter 41: Sharks
The day after Kaslow announced the physical assessments we would have to partake in the following weeks, I found myself returning to the wall-keeper's despicable office after dinner.
Colt had mentioned something to me the day before when I asked him how I could remove the vision of the oh-so-popular warrior whenever lifting a gun. He told me to look for someone that would have the same issue as me. The wall-keeper came to my mind since I assumed he was used to shooting people, but he must have had problems with it initially.
The door to his office was unrestricted as always. I prepared myself to witness the man drunk again and passed out on the floor, and knocked on the entrance. After a few knocks, the voice boomed, "come in!"
I walked in to find an ashtray breathing a faint trail of smoke with a measly cigarette lying on top. The wall-keeper was in his uniform, and unsurprisingly, a fuller cigarette sat in the corners of his lips. He always used some drug; that probably made his duties all the more digestible.
His metal eyes gazed at me, "What do you want, Heinrich?"
"..." I blanked out for a second while recalling his drunken events from the night before.
"Stop wasting my time, and go work on your rifle skills."
"Actually, sir, that's what I wanted to ask about."
He tapped his cigarette over the ashtray, and some of the rolling paper's dusty skin fell. "Hmph. I'm surprised you're asking for my help. Didn't I take your prized book away from you? The one you supposedly never read?"
I gulped. I still didn't forgive the wall-keeper for taking the book, but there were more significant issues to attend to. "Yes, sir. I think my stature is fine for the most part, but there's something else wrong that I can't really solve-"
"You see the same person in front of you every time you shoot?" He interrupted.
"Yes, sir."
He got up from his chair and turned away from me as if trying to increase some dramatic effect. "You're definitely not the only one, but at least the one you shot is still alive." He turned back around again and got a glass from a drawer, and pulled out yet another bottle of whiskey. He poured a shot of the cursed, golden liquid in and handed it to me. His hands looked permanently strained by something. "What does this taste like to you?"
I accepted it from him while not trying to appear hesitant and took a sip. "It tastes…a little sweet." It felt like I was giving a faintly sugary antiseptic to my esophagus and stomach. Despite the ample amount of sips I've gotten from my parents' bar, I never got used to that taste.
"It tastes more like poison to me. But I keep drinking it nonetheless. It's the same with using a gun. You shoot someone once, and it hurts like hell, but after multiple times you get numb to it … then you begin to wonder if you deserve to be in hell." He had used such an extravagant metaphor to communicate that singular lesson.
He took the glass back, and the flare of warmth from the alcohol began to cool down. He continued. "Maybe you can go to the camp psychologist and ask them how to dissociate the gun from the image…or you can be like me…if you shoot a different person each time, the image that gets leftover keeps changing. I can thank my wall-soldier job for that." He swirled the leftover liquid in the glass and sat on the table. "What do you think about that, Heinrich?"
"I'll have to choose one. Probably the first one."
"What do you really think?"
I naturally hesitated, "You're cruel."
"That's the correct answer. There are always two answers that a cadet has for a superior officer. One as a presentation, and the other what they truly think." He took a deep breath. "And I know I'm cruel. I can't sometimes tell if that's just me or the job making me do all those things."
Another question laid on my lips that I hoped to lick away, but the wall-keeper noticed. "Spit it out. What else do you want to ask?"
"Why do you talk so," I searched for the word somewhere in the rancid scent of old files and low strength drugs in the room, "comfortably to me, sir?"
"There are always two sides to an officer. One as a presentation and one who they truly are. I can't do the second one as much as I would like."
As usual, I had nothing to respond with.
"You're very good at being speechless, aren't you?" He asked. Someone finally called me out on that one. "I guess it's useful when you're talking to an officer. I'd like it if you were less speechless, though."
After a few more exchanges, I left the wall-keeper's office and walked back into naturally ventilated air. Every interaction with that man was more bizarre than the previous one. I wondered what the next one would be like while embracing the breeze that brushed over me like a cloak.
XXX
The following weeks before the final assessment consisted of a few different things. I was forced to decide between the choices of advice that the wall-keeper provided. Going to a psychologist felt like overkill for this issue and the second option of continuously killing people to change the image was simply despicable.
Finally, I chose neither. I just tried to live despite that issue.
Another issue was the little story I was writing then. Colt told me that it needed to be pro-Marleyan propaganda; if not, it could get Falco and me into extreme trouble, which was the last thing I wanted to do. It's pretty humorous, though. I had to write propaganda about the opposite of what I believed in. I had to include the "amazing" virtues of being a soldier and how unbelievably amazing Marleyans are, or else risk my parents getting injected with titan serum...
It's hilarious, in a sick, demented way, but still…
My characters were problems as well. What names should I give them? What would be their goals? I needed to address the gap between the main character's youth and the soldier phase. There were so many complications with writing the story that I didn't expect.
So, I sat on my bed frame one night following my visit to the wall-keeper's office and stared at that one piece of dialogue I had first written on a piece of paper. "You're a bully." Other dialogue pieces followed it, but I couldn't conjure the colors of the backgrounds these words were meant to represent. I couldn't taste the air of the environment in which the story was meant to take place.
A phase of annoyance boiled over me, and I crumbled up the piece of paper. I then unraveled it and tore it into a myriad of shreds. Nothing died on that page, for there was no life to it in the first place.
In my perturbed state, Colt's comments buzzed in the front of my mind. Just one statement: "write what you know."
I whispered it to myself. Write what you know. Write what you know. Sure, I didn't know what it was like to admire Marleyans or enjoy being a soldier, but I did know what it meant to have companionship from an unconventional group of people.
I took a deep breath, pulled out another piece of paper, and picked up my pen again. I closed my eyes, and the little film camera started recording again.
The film backdrop was Section E. Cars were bustling about like grazing cows, and dust rode alongside them in their bicycles assembled from the wind. The small camera shifted away from these and focused on a group of young adults who were all missing proper uniforms but full of initiative. They were approaching something.
One of them was lean enough to be a fist-fighter, while the second kept pawing at his ears, and the third was a scrawny boy wearing a newsboy hat…
There was something off about them; there was a spring in their steps, and they had a value that I lacked: vitality, spirit. No Eldian has this.
The set-piece they arrived at was a recruiting center, and the papers underneath the boys' arms were for identification purposes. The people inside the building were in queues, and all embodied distinct degrees of impatience.
The boys turned towards the camera, and I saw the unique noses, mouths, and eyes on their faces. They all had short hair that mimicked a field of mowed grass. I couldn't pin names on them yet, though.
Moments were skipped through, and we arrived at the medical examinations. The nurse's room was chock-full of instruments, and the boys all were examined. But an issue came up with the last prospective cadet.
"You are at a good age, 21, but you barely passed the weight check." The doctor looked at a clipboard, "Erich."
I finally learned my main character's name.
The other group members talked to him outside, "Are you sure you still want to do this, Erich?"
"Yes," The bony cheeks and expression betrayed his boldness and assurance, "I want to. My family can become honorary Marleyans if I'm good enough."
But the similarities between him and my past ended, for he had to symbolize something that I didn't represent. He needed to have complete confidence in the system he was birthed into.
His boldness stayed with him even during his basic training. On a day of weapons training, everyone was confronted with this fact.
All the cadets were in a circle doing drills, and our main character was struggling to do push-ups. His body was a wire with separate, individual wires as limbs; yet, his eyes carried an audacious, daring blue. Not even his pals brought that zeal.
His triceps and chest muscles struggled to carry his already thin frame, but he gritted, "Just one more." After every push-up, he would say that-he kept going no matter how much he scorched in the heat and pain.
A bully cried out, "Hey, toothpick. You having fun there?"
"I can do this all day." He replied as if his lungs were being punched with each effort.
His drill sergeant apparently wanted to test the cadets' reflexes, so he pulled out a stick grenade from a box of weapons. He yelled, "Grenade!" and threw it into the group of cadets.
Every cadet scurried away like mice and squealed, except Erich, of course. This man rushed in and hugged the grenade. "Get away! Get away, everyone!" After a few seconds, he stood up and lifted the grenade with his bony fingers. The weapon wasn't even ignited.
The little film camera panned to black, and the makeshift stage play ceased its performance. I opened my eyes to the delicate moonlight massaging the dismal beds and walls of the barracks.
I looked back down at my paper and wrote in some quotes. "I can do this all day," among some others. I then set "my script" behind me to pick a fresh piece of paper.
It was time to write the story. Not just the quotes, but the descriptions themselves.
Setting the pen down on the paper, I pondered the first sentence. What should the first word be? How should it all start? The pen ink bled faintly on the page since I kept it there for so long. That was bound to happen since I was at the beginning stages of painting people and settings with the abstract water paints that are words.
Each word has a defined meaning, but they don't make sense when you put them together without following their rules. In some other ways, they make sense to certain people but not others. It's all a game, where the winner and the loser is the author each time.
What a peculiar type set of paints, aren't they?
Anyway, I didn't know that then so I wrote various words but continuously crossed them off. The top part of the page became stitchwork, and my frustration mimicked it. There were many lines in my head that I scrutinized mentally.
For the following nighttime hours, I wrote ample sentences in hopes that I could construct at least one coherent paragraph, which I succeeded in, but needed to be checked by another set of eyes.
The following day, I met with Falco for one of our nighttime gatherings. We gathered outside the mail tent, and Colt joined in as well. I showed Falco the first portion of the story.
I followed his eyes while he read over the page. His focus moved left to right like a typewriter, and much like a typewriter, he had little comprehension of the writing.
He put the paper down, and his eyes sank as if he was too ashamed to say what he wanted to. After Colt prompted him, Falco replied truthfully, "I can't really understand it. I think the words are too big for me…Sorry," He gave it to Colt to read. "I guess it's your story now, Heinrich. I think you could write it better than I can now."
Colt sifted through the page with his eyebrows furrowed in, and unlike his little brother, he could actually understand the words. "That's… that's some decent propaganda." While I was slightly disappointed that Falco couldn't understand the story, Colt's approval raised my spirits. That was a step in the right direction.
As I walked away, my spirits returned to the ground level. A carpet was pulled from under me, and my mind slipped. I remembered something- the issues that plagued me during my time on the camp. The cloud I had been sitting on while writing was too puffy and fantastical. I was flying far above, and stepping off pulled me back down to the shark-infested ocean of reality.
XXX
A few weeks flew by, and the final physical assessment day arrived. In the bathroom that day, I took a long look in the mirror and thought back to my physique on the first day I arrived at camp. Initially, I was skinny and had some definition but lacked strength. I saw the ripple of abdominal muscles and chest definition on the assessment day. I was far from muscular; instead, I was lean and had functional muscle.
'Huh, looks like bread gives you abs,' I thought.
Other cadets joined in, and of course, they had more definition than me, thanks to the three to seven more years they lived on the planet. I was satisfied with my progress, nonetheless.
Kaslow forced us out of the bathroom and commanded us to get into uniform. It was time for the first assessment.
The first assessment was more of a call-back to an examination we all did, and I haven't mentioned it in this journal before now. This was a final check-up to see how we developed over the months.
***ASSESSMENT #1***
"Shark Attack"
No. Not actual sharks. It was something worse. Imagine Kaslow but ten more people like him shouting and berating us.
For this test, cadets from my barracks and other barracks were forced outside and sorted into columns. We were then given freight bags that must have contained stones, for these could probably kill a man if you threw them. We were tasked with holding the bags above our heads while the group of sergeants essentially terrorized us.
The clouds cried, and their tears littered our training uniforms. What's better than a regular freight bag? A wet freight bag.
So, at the beginning of the assessment, we all lifted our green duffel bags and our backs and shoulders prepared for dire pain. The drill sergeants dispersed from the corner of our formation to make this as difficult as possible.
For the first minute, my back held the weight above my head with stability. I even had the nerve to think, 'This is going to be fine. It looks like I'm doing better than even the people older than me.' That thought sat in my head until a drill sergeant approached a cadet two spaces ahead of me.
Despite the air in that formation being contaminated with a multitude of poisonous words, I could make out their one-sided interaction.
The moment the sergeant opened his mouth, one could see his verbal mastery. He excelled in expelling venomous words and sorting them into lethal sentences with a bitter edge. It rivaled a machine gun.
I could only imagine the agony on that poor cadet's face since I could only see the back of his head. I didn't need to see it though, the poor bastard's arms were trembling, and the duffel bag lowered slightly with every second. It was a sign the guy was losing strength, and the sergeant was getting to him mentally.
The sergeant's words sizzled. "I know you can't hold this bag up any longer, shit face! You're too weak!"
The cadet didn't say a word, for his actions said all they needed to. He dropped the bag. The sergeant yelled, "You failed!" He sniffed the cadet directly in front of me like a dog choosing its food wisely, then approached me. My arms continued their trembling.
I tried to think of what Erich would do in a situation like this. What would the scrawny man do?
The sergeant screeched at me. The pitiful, scarred teeth barred by his lips exuded the worse scent that morning. "You're the weakest cadet I've ever seen!"
"This is nothing." It was definitely more than nothing, but I remembered a line from before that helped lighten the load just a little bit. "I can do this all day."
"Are you talking back to me, cadet?!"
"Yes, sir."
The five minutes ran out, and the sergeant lowered his scowls to a more human tone and said, "Not bad, cadet," before walking off.
Who knew? A fictional character of my own construction motivated me more than an actual person could.
***ASSESSMENT #2***
Gas Tolerance
We were split into groups of twenty outside a gas chamber created for training purposes. Some people's legs wobbled while a few threw up from the muted scent of toxic fumes escaping from the chamber's door.
The sergeants provided masks for us after being placed into groups.
An issue to note is that because the masks needed to block out all the noxious fumes, they filtered out a considerable amount of oxygen. This test required extreme mental toughness to push through, something this journal can attest to using previous events.
My group was the third to go. The chamber doors opened as if we were shown the gates to the underworld, and I secured the mask on my head. My fellow cadets and I headed into the corrupted room to challenge our minds and instinct to cower.
It's easier written than done, I might add.
The sergeants ordered us to spend a few seconds turning our heads back and forth in the gas chamber. They then made us do exercises such as running in place to make sure our masks were sealed correctly. I'm sure we looked stupid from the outside, but the real show is what was going on with our unnerving thoughts and perturbed lungs.
Kurt is an excellent example of this.
Due to his mild asthma condition, he had the most difficulty with the mask. His eyes shot around in his visors, and his hands trembled near his face. He panicked severely.
I tried to direct a drill sergeant to him by pointing, but they simply ignored me.
I watched in uselessness as my friend broke down, but I held hope that he would pull out safely since he managed to exercise without accidents.
The sergeants instructed us four minutes in to remove our masks. That's when the real freak show began. Upon removal of the visors, my eyes felt like they were being seared in a pot of bubbling oil. There was no aim to this pain, nor did it feel like slowing down.
My other senses were not spared, unfortunately. My face convulsed on instinct, and the phlegm from the depths of my lungs and sinuses increased exponentially. I was being suffocated from the inside out, and I had to bear this for an entire minute.
In the middle of this sensory overload, I heard Viktor's old words screaming in their usual, ominous manner for a brief second. They sounded just as twisted as the first time he said them, "This world gives us enough pain, but if we make our own pain and learn how to take control of it, this world can't screw with us anymore." How could this apply to my situation?
It's not like my physiological reactions could be stopped from sheer will. Anxiety can be lessened through deep breaths, but how could I have achieved peace of mind by accepting the sensations when I wanted to claw my own eyes out?
Thankfully, the ones to save me from this inner turmoil were the very ones that made us do the test. The sergeants ordered us to put our hands on the shoulders of the people in front of us and form a chain so that we could leave the chamber safely.
The fresh oxygen slapped me in the face when we arrived outside. I opened my eyes, and the burn waned; my relief was overshadowed by the sight of Kurt on his knees, expelling oozes of phlegm. Others followed, including me.
Kaslow muttered mockingly with hands on his hips, "Now that wasn't so hard, was it?"
We were given a lunch break, but our appetite got left behind on the chamber floor after the dastardly sensory attack. Our walks to the dining room were even more miserable than usual, to say the least. Everyone's heads resembled tomatoes-some cherry, some rotten, some ripe.
One uninformed cadet asked Kaslow after collecting a pile of nutritional slop, "Are we done with the assessments, sarge?"
"Of course not!" He pushed the cadet's face into the food and lifted it up again. "We have map skills to test, teamwork, agility." He walked away and then remembered, "I almost forgot. We have a special one as well." The corners of his mouth raised, and the clown face made its regular showing.
The Real Author's Note
Did anyone get the Captain America references?...
Fun fact: I got inspired by the Captain America character for Heinrich's story within the story ordeal since the superhero used to be propaganda for the US during WWII times (not anymore though). Soldiers and civilians alike were inspired by him during that time period.