Chapters after this one may or may not take a while to be uploaded as Bree's outtake is in the works, another one of Eric's will come after it, and the outtake after that has been prewritten for about a month that directly entwines with upcoming scenes in GF… There's a lot that will be happening soon enough and I'm excited to see what you all will think!
As murmurs fluttered across the soldiers, Issy wasn't overly surprised by the changes. She felt bad for those out in the front lines pulling close to six hour back to back shifts with under twenty squadrons to cover nearly a quarter of the city. "These changes have been made with great thought from myself, Max and Eric. If anybody has any inquiries about these changes, please come talk to me and I will try to answer your questions as best as I can. Dismissed."
The rest of Saturday passed quickly enough. Issy joined her twin and some of those from her initiation class to a run-down office block where the lounge was somehow decently intact and just spent the day catching up and talking without the pressures of work or the clouding threats of the Factionless.
Issy and Hector learnt of Kayden's promotion to a Report Checker, getting him off the fence. While Lilah joked that he was nearly on track for a Leadership position, Kayden blushed at Lilah's comment, but scoffed at the idea of becoming a Leader. Not right for him, Kayden had said about the position. Instead of carrying on the conversation about his job, he directed it to Flare, Alec and Lilah about their moving plans. Apparently, Lilah was swapping Flare for Alec and Flare would move in with Kayden instead.
It hadn't been long before Bree and Noah's wedding came up and the couple blushed as Alec and Cody, and Flare and Issy argued about who would be in charge of the stag night and hen party, respectively. Instead Bree and Noah made plans for a girls day and a lads day to get certain parts of the planning out of the way with.
When they had gotten back to the compound, Issy half expected Eric to be waiting for them but Issy was pleasantly surprised that he was nowhere in sight. After another night alone invaded by nightmares and insomnia, Issy left her apartment early to meet her squaddies in the common room to discuss the final rankings. At six thirty a.m. Issy was thankful of coffee as she walked to the garage as she wanted nothing more to go back to bed and curl up deep within her covers. Red was already in the common room when she entered and the simply grunted at each other. One by one her colleagues entered the room, each on various stages of looking like pure death.
"The quicker we get this done, the quicker the rankings are out of the way and we can sleep." Issy said to the room as she pulled out her tablet and opened a document Harrison had sent them to fill out. For those that didn't make the third stage, it would help the Leader place them into new jobs or make the decision to send them back to the jobs they had before.
She got several grunts in response and Hector pulled the whiteboard closer to the table. On the board was all of their current trainees' names in no particular order.
Vera
Soren
Kale
Robyn
Elliot
Lani
Milo
Hector uncapped a pen and drew a line from Vera's name. He started to write down a few notes as he talked. "While training her, I noticed that Vera sometimes refused to believe that she had any faults with her stance and sometimes she would say that I'm sexualizing her and pulling her down because she's a woman and because of her gender, she's weak." Hec frown when he looked back to the table. "Which is stupid, because both Rainbow and Beta could hand me my ass without even blinking if they wanted to –" Red and BD started laughing as Hec shrugged. "– I wouldn't deny it. But with Vera it also meant that she wouldn't follow my orders because she thought I was being sexist."
"So she has difficulty following a man's orders?" Issy asked, not having seen any of this behaviour from Vera in person.
"If she's surrounded by other people, no. If its just myself and Vera, yes."
As Issy typed the notes down onto the squadron's shared document, Billy snorted. "That would lead to conflict seeing as there's five of us that she'd receive orders from…"
"Very true." Issy sighed, watching Billy's own notes join hers on the document. "What about Soren Geek?"
"He took orders very well, even asked if there was anything I spotted to improve each time we did an exercise."
"That's good." Issy mumbled as she noted it down while Hec wrote it down on the board. Issy didn't lift her eyes from her tablet as she called out the next name. "Kale?"
Billy sighed. "I like the kid but every time there was something he didn't want to do; he'd try to cause a distraction by making a joke and pull me into conversation. He'd grumble about it for and while before making a half assed attempt at it. It's a shame because when he puts his mind to something, he's great at it."
The rest of their morning followed on the same lines. The squaddie that personally trained the trainee would call out the best and worst qualities from this past week until all the boxes on the report for Harrison were filled in. Hector drew a line down the middle of the board and wrote the numbers one to seven down the side in black ink before swapping it for a red pen instead. They spent an hour or so debating the final rank and at eight o'clock each name sat next to their rank.
They all stared at the board until Geek spoke up. "So can we call them down and reveal the ranks now?"
"What time is it?" Issy asked and Geek checked his watch.
"About ten to eight."
Issy sighed. "I think I said twelve…"
"But I want to go back to bed!" Geek whined and Hector agreed with him.
"Goddamn." Issy pulled out her buzzer and set the trainees' alarms off. "Fine."
Geek grinned, turning his alarm off before it had chance to start yelling. Though Issy was grumbling about it, she wouldn't be complaining. It meant that they didn't have to wait out until lunch and, most likely by nine, Issy would be back in bed. It took a little longer for the trainees to get to the garage, which was completely understandable given the time. Billy stood outside the garage to let them all inside. Despite the early time and the lack of coffee, Issy found it hilarious that Elliot hadn't even bothered to get changed, instead he stood in front of the squad in a tank and PJ bottoms with little cactus patterns on, with his combat boots pulled on.
"Blame Geek for this early morning." Issy called when everyone had arrived. Several glares were shot in his direction, but he simply laughed. "Normally, if I had more caffeine and hadn't had like, four hours sleep, I would say congrats on making this far and what an honour its been. I'm too tired for that shit, so you'll just get your ranks and we'll all go back to bed." Issy was met with cheers and snickers before she revealed the rankings. People just want to go back to bed, Issy included.
1 – Soren
2 – Elliot
3 – Milo
4 – Lani
–
5 – Vera
6 – Robyn
7 – Kale
"WOOO!" Elliot yelled, pointing to his ranking. "BED TIME!"
"WOOO!" Kale echoed. "LIE INS!" They started to laugh and after a while BD rolled the board back into the common room.
"Soren, Elliot, Milo and Lani." Issy called their attention. "Nine a.m. start tomorrow, and Billy will be waiting outside the garage again to let you in. For now get gone, I wanna go to bed."