Emiya raised his gun, keeping his finger off the trigger and flicking the safety off as he walked around. A recruit walked in front of him, almost cutting his theoretical line of fire with his own pistol raised.
Flick on safety, lower pistol, keep walking.
The man walked past Emiya and he raised his pistol again, flicking off the safety. It was pretty monotonous and boring, but Emiya couldn't deny the purpose and effectiveness of this drill. Still, being forced to duck-walk around in an enclosed circle with sixty other recruits while training weapon's safety for over an hour was beginning to seem a little overkill.
'Every time someone fails to lower their gun and toggle the safety when your buddy walks past you, they just died! That means you still haven't learned and we add another five minutes to the drill!'
Was what she had said and she had definitely stuck to her word. At first, the majority of recruits had scoffed at that, but as their sadistic female instructor continued to penalize them without fail, and as the duration of the exercise kept extending, they began to finally catch on.
Fuck ups weren't tolerated.
At this point, anyone who fucked up would be remembered by the rest. Team spirit at its finest; 'you get with the program or we beat your ass until you stop making them punish us for your mistakes'.
Anyone who didn't know what they were doing and walked by, seeing them all waddling around with their guns would have probably scratched their heads in complete confusion. Well, civilians anyhow. Everyone on base had done the same and knew the drill.
It had been hammered into the spine of every Navy soldier the Systems Alliance had churned out since its founding, apparently.
'Imagine that down your barrel there is a burning hot red laser. It stops for nothing and goes on until it hits something. That thing is dead. That's how your gun works; at more than a kilometer a second, that chip of metal doesn't stop until it hits something. Which means that if you don't pay attention to where you're pointing that thing at all times, someone will die when you do not want it! And this, is frankly unacceptable! Five more minutes!'
Emiya noticed another recruit—holding his pistol up and duck-walking around just like he was—in his peripheral vision. There was nowhere for the other to go but through Emiya's firing line. Through the imaginary laser that ran down his sight into the barracks in the distance.
Toggle safety on, lower pistol, keep finger off the trigger.
He passed by in front of Emiya, visibly relieved that he had been noticed and that Emiya had not screwed up. Not relieved over the imaginary laser, so much as relieved that he hadn't added to the duration of the exercise with a mistake of his own.
Toggle safety off, raise pistol, keep finger off the trigger.
After ten minutes of walking like this, everyone's thighs had begun to tremble. That apparently meant that they would have to train more often in the future, according to the chief. The term 'duck-walk' wasn't the official name, but that word had gone past Emiya's notice when he hadn't been paying attention. They used an acronym for it anyway, which made knowing the actual proper name sort of redundant.
Come to think of it, the Alliance Navy seemed to have acronyms for everything to the point where listening in to a conversation between older soldiers tended to sound like an entirely different language.
'Yeah, we were doing an SSD with the CMSO down at the DGRE, but then the SSDO came running, shouting about an FFM which of course got the LT all sparking, so we all had to sign a DDCT in case of an ICIFF.'
He was pretty sure they did it just to confuse the civilians and the recruits, too.
Toggle safety on, lower pistol, keep finger off the trigger.
Emiya had learned something similar to what they were doing right now, back when he had been first learning about guns in his first life. Though this was somewhat different the principle remained the same. For handguns, the Isosceles Stance seemed the closest equivalent to what they were doing.
Toggle safety off, raise pistol, keep finger off the trigger.
The basics were simple enough; torso straight forward into the direction they were walking towards,
'Your armor is thickest in the front; the ribs aren't guaranteed to stop a bullet. Face them head-on!'
—with their knees bent so that when they walked their head did not bob up and down at all to ensure they could absorb and ground impacts, rather than be pushed over,
'You bounce around when you're a civvy. With a gun, that is not fucking acceptable. You point your gun only at what you want dead. Nothing else! Your head rises up above where your ear would normally be or if you start bouncing around, it's another five minutes for you monkeys! Now keep walking, you don't get to slow down and rest when someone's shooting back at you, so you sure as hell don't get to rest here either!'
—and with their torso leaning a slight bit forward, so that the straight arm pushed against the pistol. He could have put the muzzle against a wall and leaned against it, with how solid his form was.
'When you pull that trigger, you gotta lean into it. If you're standing with your back straight and upright, your muzzle will climb like your dicks do whenever you sorry sacks see my perfect ass walking by! And just like you, that makes your gun worthless! You can waste your own shots all you like, but here in the military, we're actually shooting something worth a fuck! Lean into the shot to absorb the recoil from your fire, so your sights will stay on target!'
All in all, it sounded quite simple.
But that was why they drilled it so hard. It couldn't simply sound like it, it had to be simple. It had to be so instinctual that they never ever forgot it. Which was why the instructor had drawn a large circle into the sand. Large enough for all of them to stand in with only a little bit of space to move around.
If they failed to keep proper posture: five more minutes. If they accidentally "shot" someone, failing to lower their gun as a friendly walked in front of them: five more minutes. If they stopped moving: five more minutes.
"Thirty more seconds, you sorry sacks of shit! Amateurs train till they get it right! Professionals train until they can't get it wrong!" the instructor shouted, still grinning widely as she stared at the group of duck-walking morose soldiers.
It was hardly a bad exercise. Simply a bit monotonous, Emiya thought as he continued to walk around. He had always preferred long rifles or other large-caliber weapons to rapid-fire mid-range guns like the submachine guns, which needed this kind of recoil control, but this was hardly a new skill.
Still, it would be good to be done with this and get a shower—
"Serviceman Li, you fuck up! I told you about keeping your knees bent already! No bobbing! Five more minutes!"
The collective groan gave voice to Emiya's own thoughts.
;
He walked out of the showers, toweling his hair dry as he stretched his neck. A cold shower had felt great, though he was certain that soon they would begin introducing water-saving measures in preparation for life aboard a spaceship.
Better to enjoy the little pleasures while he still could.
Emiya put on the regulated regulation shorts and slippers, folding his still wet towel over his arm as he walked out of the communal showers. The distance between his bunk and the showers wasn't that far, but the Navy still had a fairly strict dress code for walking in the corridors.
When going for a shower you had to wear acceptable gear, just like with your uniform.
It might seem pedantic and ridiculous, but it instilled a sense of order, he supposed. Just like how you made your bed neatly and tidily after waking up, you always put your appearance in order. If nothing else, it served as a second line of defense against intrusion, in that anyone not wearing a very specific uniform or apparel in a specific context would stand out immediately. Even with the uniform suits being a single piece of clothing, there were a lot of details the NCOs would home in on and criticize them over. Pockets had to be shut, the collar a certain way, the seals in their shoes just right...
If was a lot to get right, if one wasn't already intimately familiar with it.
Perhaps he was simply overthinking the matter, Emiya noted as he put his towel to dry. The nanofiber would be dry in two minutes, which was handy. He stripped off his shorts and reached for a clean uniform one-piece suit.
Putting in his legs one at a time and pulling it up, Emiya frowned. He had grown again, which meant that he would have to go and requisition another one in a larger size. Though he felt some comfort in growing to a more dignified height, closer to his usual, it was still an annoyance that it came so rapidly when he had to wear these strange military clothes.
A trousers and long-sleeved shirt combination wouldn't need to be replaced every few weeks, he groused.
His original growth had continued well into his twenties, a side-effect of harnessing his odic force for magecraft and not all too unusual among other practitioners. Magi lived longer lives, so their growth period extending wasn't that peculiar. But here it seemed that his body was trying to catch up within a year to his original height, which along with his increasing weight from all the exercise left him perpetually hungry.
He would have to go and get another set of suits before one of the NCOs complained. They were pedantic like that.
It could wait. Besides, the requisitions office had already closed for the day. Emiya sighed, pulling the suit on forcefully. It was likely that the sizes available would not fit him right now anyhow, forcing him to wait until the next size up was fine. Such was life in the service, he thought again with a sigh, not for the first time that week. Since everything was made on a larger scale, a lot of the time the intermediates just weren't there. When you made half a million uniforms, you had to choose between having all sizes possible and wasting half of your stock, or limiting the variation to the most common ones and having most of your stock in use.
If they at least made the pants and top separate, there would be some room for customization, but no. One-piece suit it was, for whatever reason.
He sat down on his bunk, pulling up the omnitool he had been handed a week back, and began to navigate through the menus. It was a basic model, apparently only handed to those who had not already bought one before arriving. An orange holographic sleeve appeared on his left arm that he could touch with his suit's gloves; the haptic interface, which allowed him to interact with the otherwise massless construct of light, giving him a way to use the supercomputer on his wrist.
It allowed him to do anything and everything, really. From scanning and manufacturing items to watching and listening to vids and music, to various forms of communication and information sharing.
Usually, in his time, private cell phones and the like had been banned while on duty in various services, due to various reasons, ranging from operational security to matters of discipline. He knew more than one operation that had nearly failed due to other parties having access to the cell phone metadata or even the conversations themselves of the opposition.
But, with technology marching on, this rule too had been overturned. Omnitools were simply too useful to ban and instead they had been mandated to be updated with Systems Alliance firmware and added to their network. This way, the "dumb grunts" who wanted to watch vids or listen to music in their downtime got their way, while the higher-ups could acquire much more accurate and reliable data on their personnel, and cybersecurity could be handled centrally.
Emiya was fairly certain that the omnitool was recording and monitoring his heart rate and blood pressure at every moment, which had ground any and all use of magic to a halt after he received it. He still meditated, but mostly just kept it up for maintaining what he had already achieved, which kept his heart rate and blood pressure in the more normal ranges.
Still, while it was an annoyance and a millstone hanging around his neck, it did have its uses.
He pulled up the extranet and began to read quietly.
Reading with the projected screen over his forearm was a bother, but with some tinkering, he had found the settings to freely adjust the location of the screen, which soon allowed him to read freely in any position he could think of. Which left him with access to almost every book ever published in any shape or form, all there and freely available. Old books he had heard about before, but never had the chance to read, classics which he only half-remembered, new masterpieces written decades after his death...
The choice of literature available to him was just incredible.
And that was just the public extranet; he had also acquired copies of the user and manufacturer's manuals to all of his gear, which he spent more than an eyeful on.
"Hey, whatcha doing?" someone asked and Emiya looked up. It was one of the recruits, but the name eluded Emiya at the moment. "Wanna come and play some basketball? We've got the court in fifteen."
Emiya considered for a moment before shaking his head.
"No, I'm in the middle of some reading here. But thanks for asking." Didn't hurt to be polite, Emiya figured.
"Oh? What about? I'm Chad, by the way," he asked again and introduced himself with a grin, not at all faltering at the previous rejection just now.
Emiya blinked, having almost returned to his reading. He almost frowned, but refrained as he maintained his usual disinterested expression. "Emiya. General information about different places in the galaxy. About the cities, populations, and climate."
"Huh? Why?" He seemed genuinely curious, which was the only reason Emiya didn't ignore him already.
Besides, he was after something.
"...I've never been off Earth. It seemed like something interesting." That was technically true, as he had lived and died on Earth, and this body had never left either. And it could help him somewhere down the line.
"Oh, yeah. That makes sense. Oh man, I remember watching extranet vids about the Citadel when I was a kid all day after school. That place is awesome, even better in person."
Emiya nodded.
He hadn't actually read about anything outside of the solar system. It hadn't seemed proper. Or rather, he wasn't sure if he should read more. There was a niggling feeling of hesitation when his finger sometimes hovered over the tab for more information on the relays and other systems and races.
There was a curiosity, a hunger for knowledge of what the future had brought. But he was only here to deliver a codecast to the Mars' ruins. Nothing more, nothing less. He had long since died - there was no place for him among the living, be it on Earth or out in the stars.
Thus he refrained.
"Lemme see, man..." Chad walked up to Emiya and tilted his head to read the text. He didn't bother trying to hide his screen since it wasn't like there was anything particularly incriminating or unreasonable there.
Besides, he was growing curious about what this 'Chad' wanted. There seemed to be some agenda behind all this seeming casual talk.
"Mars...? Why'd you want to read about that hickville? There's literally nothing there." Chad asked, frowning as he took a step back away.
Emiya shrugged at that, "Never been to Mars, but I've seen it in the night sky before. Seemed interesting."
"...Well...Uh, I guess..." He hesitated, crossing his arms, as if not entirely sure about the reasoning.
Chad turned to look at Shepard, who was quietly paying attention to their conversation by the side.
"What about you, Sheppie?"
She blinked at having been drawn into the conversation, before realizing she had been asked a question.
"I've never been off Earth. But Mars does seem pretty interesting - once saw it through a telescope," she answered with a shrug.
Chad blinked.
"Uh no, I meant like, you wanna come and play some hoop with us?"
Emiya almost chuckled. So that was it. I was just a prop to get her attention. Shepard, in turn, frowned realizing that had been the start of the discussion even if it hadn't been of any interest to her.
"How about it, Sheppie? Wanna come?"
"...What did you just call me?" She looked at him, not quite glaring but still seeming more than a little annoyed.
"Uh..." He hesitated.
You blew it. You should have kept going; make her laugh and get her off-guard and off-balance, after that she would have actually considered it. Now she's just annoyed at her interest in Mars being dismissed. Emiya smirked a little, amused at being sidelined as he went back to his reading.
"Well, uh, we'll be by the court, if either of you wants to come, yeah?" Chad said, with a slightly put-out expression as he turned and walked away.
Emiya continued his reading, steadfastly ignoring the stare he felt from his side.
After a minute, she stopped. He felt somewhat dissatisfied that she had not attempted to continue a conversation, he realized. Simply because now he was left with only his reading and the taunting hyperlink titled 'Learn more about The Citadel', again.
;
This much hasn't changed...
Downrange, at a marked distance, a target popped up out of the ground.
Raise the pistol, line up the sight picture, press the trigger, maintain focus and form.
The gun's recoil was so slight that it almost bothered Emiya. It felt like an airgun, almost.
Still, the tell-tale shiver on the target which he could see without even straining his eyes confirmed his hit, before it popped back down. He had half-expected it to be some kind of holographic thing of light, but apparently, the use of cheap cutouts was still preferable. Perhaps it was the necessity of keeping the act of pulling the trigger on something that was real behind that preference.
They were all standing in a row outside again, weapons at low ready and waiting for their respective targets to pop up, all in a row too. One might question the necessity of marksmanship training in an era of automated weapons where all one needed to do was point it in the general direction and push a button to send a missile or a drone flying that way...
He had heard many of the other recruits complain as much, and about how much time they spent at the range, plinking away at cheap cutouts and looking over their hits and being judged and scored. Those who did well didn't complain usually, however. Receiving a golden marksmanship badge had visibly caused some of them to straighten and stand up taller; the feeling of one's efforts being acknowledged and rewarded a most heady prize. But most who only managed to hit well enough soon lost interest in the activity and would begin to complain.
Still, they would continue shooting, Emiya knew.
It was necessary conditioning for human beings to be able to kill. Most human beings, anyhow. To have the almost-instinctual mastery of a simple set of actions, so that the moment it was necessary to shoot and kill, it would simply happen, as if it had been preordained from somewhere high on above. He had seen it often enough during his life; someone un-prepared standing on that precipice and looking down into the darkness, only to realize they didn't have what it took to kill someone, gun shaking in their slack hands.
Only about three people in a hundred could kill without hesitation, when you came right down to it. But these people tended to have rather extreme anti-social problems and thus took great umbrage with being forced into highly hierarchal structures where they had to obey orders and fit in.
An obvious problem for any military.
But what use was an army that wouldn't kill? What use were soldiers that wouldn't obey?
So most soldiers had to be tricked and coerced into killing. Pressed and forced, absolved and commemorated. Conditioning and developing the skill to shoot when ordered to, being a very large part of that. Training people to leap before they looked, as it were. To not think about what they had done until it was over and done with. To pull the trigger the moment a target popped up when primed to engage. To shoot to kill, before the weight of such an act managed to enter their minds.
And if that wasn't enough in the heat of battle, then the bonds they had forged with their comrades would fuel them on, whipping them forward. Failure to kill meant not only endangering your friends, it also meant being the one who couldn't go through with it when everyone else could. Being different. If you knew which buttons to press, human beings were surprisingly simple. A highly social animal is wont to do as the rest of the pack does.
As for those without any compunctions about murder?
The highly anti-social individuals...
They were usually harnessed in other ways. Funneled into special ops and wetworks. Roles where the rules were laxer and the laws were more akin to that of the jungle. A place where they could do the most harm to others in a beneficial way. A role outside of society, in the shadows, as monsters on the leash for the most convenient causes.
A twilight zone between humanity and something else, lower. Something he had become intimately familiar with despite everyone trying to keep him away from it his whole life.
Several spots to his left, he caught a glimpse of red hair despite his focus being on the foreground. That air of familiarity with violence, despite her sorely lacking technical skills in weapon handling. Unable to help himself, his eyes wandered to her again. She raised her pistol and fired without hesitation, the low, simmering violence bubbling just beneath the surface.
Shepard wasn't shooting just at a target.
She's not quite there... But she's been 'conditioned' before, he thought with an exhale and returned his attention forward.
The target had popped up again, this time at another distance. The mental correction for the change in range was near-instantaneous. He still had plenty of time despite his wayward attention.
Raise the pistol, line up the sight picture, press the trigger, maintain focus and form.
The target shivered—a surprised expression, not quite pained. Legs losing strength and the spreading red at the point of impact through clothes—confirming another hit.
Emiya exhaled and lowered the pistol again.
;
Emiya blinked, pressing the button that should have brought out the glowing haptic interface.
Nothing happened.
His brows furrowed and he looked at the physical omnitool, strapped to his wrist with intent. It hadn't taken any physical hits and it seemed to still work fine, as the small power and connection lights were on. He physically rebooted it and the lights blinked, but the haptic interface remained missing. He tried removing the power source and replacing it as he rebooted it again. Nothing.
Everything seemed to be working, at least hardware-wise. Which meant software.
This wasn't due to anything he had done.
He looked up, having felt someone's gaze at him for a while now. He would have dismissed it as meaningless, but those two had been surreptitiously staring at him for well over an hour now. Ever since their off-duty hours began.
The last time I used the omnitool was... Three hours ago.
It was merely a correlation, but given that those two had been glaring at him occasionally ever since they had tried to talk to Shepard, it did seem relevant. In fact, he had seen them tinkering and whispering over their omnitools for days now, often glancing his way with a smirk of expectant joy.
Those two must have sabotaged my omnitool somehow. Emiya sighed. He had simply thought to read some more of the codex and the technical manuals they had been provided with, in lieu of exercise or other things to do.
He hardly could practice his magecraft or tinker with some broken things here, after all.
Well now, how to handle this...
He could confront them, but that was unlikely to bring about any results and would probably merely increase their future misapprehensions towards him unless he made it clear that he would not tolerate it. Which would require escalation; a show of force and aggression. Not something he particularly felt like doing. For one, it would make him unduly stand out. For another, it wasn't even really an annoyance since the omnitool was simply another tool he had been handed by the Navy.
He had no real attachment to it, nor any real need for the things it could let him read or watch.
Emiya knew there were some definite extranet junkies and gaming addicts among the recruits, Franco and his unnamed buddy among them. Then again, assuming they hadn't been doing anything worthwhile with their omnitools, perhaps they had been planning and plotting to mess with him all this time.
How ridiculous.
Eh, might as well escalate it all the way, then, he thought with a shrug as he took off the omnitool and removed the power source as he got up. Better ham it up a bit to rile them up.
"Anybody else have a problem with their omnitool?" Emiya asked loudly enough that everyone present could hear him.
Several dozen heads turned his way, looking at him quizzically, but they all shook their heads and murmured denials, some even trying theirs out just in case. Emiya began to walk for the door, nearing the two bunks where the two most likely suspects slept and at this moment were sitting as they quietly observed him.
They seemed to be enjoying this, still. Time to turn up the heat.
"Well, it's probably some virus I got online. But I turned it off and I'm gonna go hand it in to the chiefs for inspection. They can probably trace it back and get it working again," he said, almost casually just as he walked past the two, stressing the mention of their superior officers in just the right way for it to sound promising.
From his peripheral vision, he could see the two freeze up at that.
Escalating accidentally to the point where he incriminated them for hacking—or sabotaging or whatever it was that they had done—of Navy property was far beyond any reaction they could have expected.
And with the omnitool turned off, they wouldn't be able to un-do their dirty work. Sure, it was unlikely that it would actually result in anything substantial, but it wasn't the facts of the matter that were important. It was the threat of escalating to strategic nukes when it came to drama, by taking it to the officers, that was important.
"H-hey! Uh, are you sure that's a good idea?" One jumped up before Emiya could walk out.
He didn't turn around but slowed down a bit.
"I mean, it could be nothing. Right?" The one who had introduced himself as Franco joined in, glancing hesitantly at the other.
"Right." The first agreed. "Uh, I, uh, I could take a look at it for you, see if it's really bad. I'm pretty good with tech, you know?" Franco offered, licking his lips as he glanced at his partner-in-crime.
Emiya turned around, smiling with faux relief, though neither could tell.
"Really? That'd be a huge relief." He smiled, staring right into Franco's eyes. "Not having my omnitool not working, I mean."
I know it was you, you little shit. Emiya thought, putting all his focus into that look. He didn't change his body language at all, didn't bother with killing intent or to even put any hostility to his thoughts, or anything else so overt.
He simply focused on Franco, as if he were a hawk staring down a mouse.
The last time the three of them had been within speaking distance of each other, Emiya had still been rail-thin and quite short for his supposed age. But now? Perhaps it had been the gene therapy. Perhaps it had been the copious amounts of exercise and food he partook in to keep up with everyone else. Perhaps it was simply his soul modifying the body to match his true appearance quicker.
Whatever it was, he had changed since that time they had last been near each other.
At a distance, it would not have been obvious unless you were paying attention. But up close?
Franco seemed to realize that Emiya had grown nearly half a head taller and that each of his four limbs had nearly doubled in circumference, as he had been putting on muscle at an astonishing rate. Franco swallowed, his mind blanking as the whites of his eyes began to show.
Somehow that scrawny little thing he remembered had turned into something absolutely terrifying in an instant. Emiya clapped him on the shoulder, breaking the trance as he smiled.
"Thanks, I appreciate the help."
The spell had been broken, both of them looking as if they had just awoken from a dream, or what they had thought had been reality but had suddenly revealed itself to be a delusion. They blinked, confused as their thoughts and fears from the previous moment seemed entirely unfounded.
Yet, that feeling would linger in the back of their minds.
"Y-yeah. No problem."
Emiya didn't have any problems with his omnitool since.
;
Emiya let out a breath as he hit the bed.
His eyes felt heavy, which was somewhat surprising. He hadn't really felt sleepy since he had come to inhabit this body. Physical exhaustion was one thing and matching up with the rhythm of the world around him was another. But feeling an actual physical need to sleep? That was a first in a long while. Then again, four hours of running in full gear through the rain did that to you. Just about everyone else seemed completely done for the day as well.
Still, he felt some satisfaction as his body was growing at a stupendous rate to match the environmental pressures. It even exceeded the projected rate of the gene therapy, though that was just an average estimate he had read. Probably something to do with his true self being what it was.
He did his best to hold back most of the flow between the soul and the corpus, to remain unnoticed by the instructors, but even so, his advances were being noted. Already, he was having a lot less trouble with keeping up, vindicating his decision to not use magecraft during his time in the Navy.
A rare pleasure, satisfaction at seeing a more difficult thing through.
"...Damn."
Emiya opened his eyes at the soft cursing voice.
He was sure he was the only one who heard the whisper. Turning his head, he stared at Shepard with one eye closed to remain unnoticed. She was sitting on her bunk, one leg crossed up over her knee as she was holding her ankle. The redhead was frowning as she wiggled her toes, apparently testing out the range of motion of her foot.
He considered it for a moment, before closing his eyes. It has nothing to do with me.
"Fuck..." she cursed again, like it was the end of the world.
Emiya opened his eyes, sitting up with a sigh. He didn't bother looking at Shepard, simply getting down and getting his clothes in order. Outside of the sleeping hall, a relatively strict dress code was enforced after all.
He left without a word, walking quietly down the empty halls.
Given the size of this place, it would usually be full of recruits and the personnel needed to train those recruits. But it was offseason, so the personnel was downsized proportionately. Perhaps they worked part-time or they were assigned elsewhere for the time being.
Regardless, the result was what it was. The empty and dark corridors stretched on everywhere around him. Every seven steps one of the ceiling sensors would recognize movement and toggle on the sterile lights that were almost blue in hue, lighting another set seven steps for him to walk. His footsteps echoed lightly until he found what he needed.
He knocked on the door. No one answered.
That was fine - he already knew no one was inside. He couldn't hear anyone's breathing or heartbeat inside. But still, there were cameras and he had to at least act somewhat the part. Technically he wasn't supposed to enter here, as listed in the 'fucking manual', but he was sure that he could handle whatever came if someone decided to chew him out for it.
The infirmary was empty and dark; the lights being manually switched unlike in the halls. He opened the small refrigerator beneath the empty table and reached inside. Having found what he was looking for he grabbed a meter of toilet paper from the bathroom as well before leaving.
Walking back briskly, he wrapped the ice-pack in the toilet paper with care.
He made it back, kicking his boots off without slowing down his stride past his bunk as he came to a halt before Shepard. She was lying down with her arms up, fingers crossed behind her head as she lay with her eyes closed.
But she must have noticed him looming over her as she opened an eye.
She blinked up at him before her eyes narrowed.
"What?"
Emiya considered his words, before throwing them to the wind. He wasn't particularly interested in making friends with her, but he did... What did he want?
Why had he walked all the way over to the clinic for the ice-pack? Because he wanted to help her? A stubborn voice inside of him denied that vehemently as if shouting to shoot down the very idea. He was done with cleaning up other people's messes. He was done helping people at his own expense. He had sold his soul for others already. Enough was enough. Therefore... Therefore what? Why was he here now, holding an ice-pack in his hand as he stared down at Shepard? Was he here to help her?
But what for?
Emiya shook his head; there was no sacrifice on his part here. He could help her as much as he wanted, as long as he simply acknowledged that he was doing it simply because he did want to help her.
She furrowed her brows, glaring at him.
"What?" she snapped at him again as he said nothing, growing more and more annoyed.
Some were sitting up from their beds around them, noticing something was going on.
He looked up, meeting her eyes. This was for himself. Surely. That was why he could justify it to himself. This wasn't about her. It was about smoothing things out for himself.
Right, that made sense. He nodded to himself, satisfied with the rationalization.
"You wrenched your foot." It wasn't a question. She flinched, almost denying it reflexively. He could see it in her eyes; the set of her shoulders. Weakness was bad. Letting others know you had a weakness was worse still. He could see it, the thoughts and plans whirring in her eyes. How to deny it; how to draw attention away from it; how to turn this on him.
"You—" She began, her course of action set. She would make this be about him; I'm trying to talk her up, like the others, she would say.
He didn't let her.
"Shut up," he said and somehow a little anger seeped through. Not at her, no. It was directed... At this situation? No, himself. At himself. For being this easily affected. Nothing about this place had gotten to him, except this one person who reminded him of others from a long time ago. So he wasn't angry at her.
But he could use it against her. She had flinched at the tone of his voice. Everyone had gone dead quiet at his words.
There was weight to it. She wasn't the only one who had been affected; another recruit sleeping opposite to Shepard had gotten up to tell Emiya off, but had been shot down just as effectively as she had been by those two words.
"Where do you think we are?" he asked, finally looking at her.
She blinked, taken aback at the accusation in his voice.
"What do you—"
"You're not on the streets anymore. You're in the Navy now. You're a soldier. You didn't listen to a word they said, did you? You're in a team, now. You're not just responsible for yourself. You get injured and you end up affecting everyone else." He spoke, voice low. Yet the dead silence around them let most everyone present hear him clearly. They leaned in, trying to catch every word he said.
Direct confrontation. Questioning her. That would rile her up; a dumb way of doing things, but he was here already so he might as well play this act through.
She glared at him then. "What makes you think you know anything about me?"
She ground her teeth, eyes boring into him with rising hostility as she moved to sit up. Her legs swung over the edge of the bed as she moved to stand up. But he moved his own foot just a little bit to the left, causing her to step on his foot.
"Don't you—Fuck! Oww!" She grunted as she rose up, placing her weight on the leg which was over his own. His toes sticking right into the arch of her foot as she stepped down on them, where he could guess it would hurt the most.
"See?" he asked tilting his head slightly as he pushed her shoulder lightly. He didn't need any force to tip her back onto the bed she had just gotten up from.
"Oomph!" She made a strange sound as she hit the bed.
"If you weren't so busy glaring at everybody and looking out for someone trying to shiv you for your shoes, maybe you might have thought to ask for help. But no, you're too stubborn for your own damn good."
He sat down, grabbing her foot with one hand as he set aside the ice pack. She tried to wrest free her foot from his hand, but his grip was like an iron vise. He pressed in with a thumb, inhaling slowly. He let his magical energy extend outwards, into his hands as he controlled his breathing. Raising his body temperature with simple breathing techniques was possible, but using his magic circuits was faster. His hands grew slightly red and he extended his magical energy through the touch into her foot, peering into the bones and muscles of the foot.
Another skill he had picked up along the way, during a life otherwise wasted.
As he figured.
She had wrenched the arch of her foot during running, yet kept going like nothing had been wrong. It was a stress injury really, piled up from training too hard until it gave way. He sighed, pressing a thumb in and beginning to feel out the extent of the injury.
"Or what, do you think everyone here is looking out for their next fix? That they're gonna gang up on you in the showers to get their rocks off?" Emiya continued, glaring at Shepard who was trying to glare at him with equal fire. But every time he pressed a thumb into her foot, she tensed and was forced to hold back a cry of pain. "Seriously? How do you think you were going to heal from this? It's been like this for weeks already, you idiot. You've just made it worse by trying to walk it off."
"You—" noticed?
She stared at him, eyes wide as her mouth hung wide open. He merely rolled his eyes at her.
"Yet you kept going, not even thinking about slowing down and only making it that much worse." He glared at her, pressing in particularly hard, almost making her whimper as she closed her eyes, with her back arching with the pain.
Somehow, he wasn't sure who he was talking about anymore. No, he was definitely talking about her. But none of the anger was really meant for her. She really did remind him of someone.
A man he did not want to examine.
He continued to slowly massage the inflamed tendon, easing them and using his magical energy to analyze how he was doing. He could not heal her, nor would he have wasted his magical energy on something like that anyhow, but Structural Analysis was another story entirely.
It lasted only for five minutes, but he kept increasing the pressure as he worked deeper and deeper. Every time Shepard seemed to be getting a handle of the pain, he doubled the pressure and kept her from moving.
Finally, he let go and turned to grab the ice-pack. He opened the topmost layers of the wrapped paper and used it to fasten the ice-pack loosely to her foot. Enough to keep it there while a layer kept it from directly touching her skin, but not so tightly as to prevent blood flow.
Emiya got up, not bothering to look at Shepard as he did.
"Hold the ice-pack on for half an hour and don't get out of bed. Don't put any weight on the leg, either. Just let it recover and then check yourself to the infirmary tomorrow morning."
Shepard licked her lips, blinking. "But, what about training—"
He turned around, shooting a glare at her.
"Fuck the training, you can barely walk."
His words echoed through the room, everyone quietly observing the byplay. Three dozen eyes stared at him quietly, before they began muttering to each other. Emiya exhaled, hot air rushing out through his clenched teeth.
"Or don't. Why should I care if you won't?" he grumbled, leaving to go wash his hands.
Emiya wasn't sure what he was getting so worked up about, but he needed to be alone for fifteen minutes and get his head back under wraps.
He closed the door to the toilets behind him. There weren't any proper stalls or anything, simply a common area for everyone's use with a few cubicles set up. Another measure by the Navy to get everyone used to each other by denying privacy. But he was alone for the moment - no one would follow him in for a while, surely feeling too awkward. He opened that tap, letting the water run for a moment before washing his hands and splashing his face.
The cool liquid felt strange against his hot skin. Was it the use of his magic circuits or his own hot temper that felt like burning iron in his veins? He thought he had long since left behind that hot-headed youth, back when he had left the Clock Tower to travel the world.
"This place is getting to me." He sighed, whispering the complaint under his breath as he stretched his neck. He took another deep breath as he exhaled it out, working to calm himself. It didn't work, even as he controlled his body perfectly. His pulse was below 40 beats a minute, yet still, the hot blood seemed to be coursing through his veins without rest. He could feel it rushing in his arms, his legs, in his chest. Pulsing, expanding, and burning like molten fire.
He closed his eyes, focusing on his heartbeat—drowning out the rest of the world until nothing else existed.
Finally, after an eternity in a fraction of a second, he opened his eyes again. The distant look in them was back; he was just an outsider. This place had nothing to do with him.
None of it had anything to do with him. He repeated the mantra, again and again. He was dead and gone; a Heroic Spirit, even if in name only. His part to play in the world was long done. He had no right to intrude upon the world of the living anymore.
Even if his regrets piled high enough to touch the vaults of the sky.
"Just get to Mars and that's it. You're done. No more than that," he said, half-convincing himself that it was merely that simple as he closed the water tap.
He ignored the hypocrisy of his anger at Shepard, telling himself it was nothing again. And in the mirror, the untainted and unbroken reflection of a man he had thought he had left behind stared back at him, denying all of his rationalizations.
;
"Serviceman Emiya. Do you know why you've been called here?"
Emiya stared at the wall blankly, saying nothing as he stood at attention. He was staring straight ahead, looking nowhere near where the woman who had called him in was, despite her speaking to him. That was probably why she had not told him to assume parade rest; it was to show who had the power in this situation by forcing him to look ahead.
Meaningless.
The instructor, the somewhat sadistic woman who had run the pistol safety drill, stared at him. She frowned, putting away her omnitool. He could see that she had been going through some report, which seemed to be a record of himself.
She sighed.
"It figures. While your concern for your fellow soldier is commendable, the way you went about it was completely wrong. Not only did you enter facilities for which you have no clearance, but I have also received several reports of people worried about your behavior towards Servicewoman Shepard. All you have managed to do with your stunt is earn the enmity of many of your peers, perhaps even hers," she spoke, eyeing him carefully.
He had noticed as much, himself.
Returning to his bunk the previous night, he had said nothing at all for the rest of the evening. But the tense air had been inescapable and impossible to ignore. He had guessed something like that would happen, but he had gone through with it regardless.
"Serviceman Emiya, did it ever occur to you that we had taken into consideration your and Servicewoman Shepard's physical aptitudes? That the Navy actually takes training its soldiers very seriously? That we were very much aware of how she had been handling herself until now?"
"It did, ma'am," Emiya answered curtly.
"Oh, did it now? Then for whatever reason did you see fit then to intervene as you did? Did it not occur to you to inform one of your superiors or to advise her to check herself for a physical herself before you lay hands on her?" Her tone of voice sharpened as she stood up, walking up to stare at him.
Emiya inhaled calmly, saying nothing.
He could have said that he had noticed their continued inaction at her growing isolation, or how she seemed to be pushing herself over her limits. Fitting her into a specific mold, reinforcing certain tendencies. He had some thoughts about what they were planning, but none of it was concrete enough to form into accusations. Not that he had any voice to air them with here, anyway.
Are they molding her into a wetworks operative - a high-functioning sociopath with an atrophied sense of empathy and no long-term goals of her own? He had seen those types. They were a dime a dozen in many of the hells he had waded in. In fact, he thought she might still fit right in with those death seekers as she was right now.
But he also thought she could be something more. The way she looked at other people, the glances she'd caught stealing more than once. She wanted something more, too. Because she wasn't a sociopath, regardless of how she acted. Those were born, not made.
He didn't think that she would find fulfillment along such a path.
Then again, he had no proof beyond some vague suspicions from the way some of the instructors looked at her. Maybe it was simply a method they used for her types; letting them break themselves and only then coming to their aid. It would certainly ensure absolute loyalty from her if it worked. But he had the premonition that Shepard would have toughed it through, even as her body broke with every step. Almost like someone else had.
He almost scowled then again, before mastering himself. It didn't really matter, even if it was true. They wouldn't care for a word he said in any case.
"Or was there something more, some sort of other motivation behind your actions? Hmm?" She eyed him with suspicious eyes. "Are you perhaps thinking that you might relieve yourself with her? We have had your types here before, those who think that anything and everything is allowed as long as no one finds out," she accused, raising an eyebrow as she stared at him.
The silence stretched.
At this point they were just going through the motions, trying to see if they could startle him into admitting anything.
"Well, do you have anything to say?"
He kept silent for a full minute until she turned around to sit back down.
"One-week deduction of pay and extranet access, then. Dismissed."
He saluted her lazily and left. What a bother, he thought as he left her office and walked back.
Arriving back at their sleeping quarters, the entire room seemed to fall silent as he entered. It seemed as if his actions had been given a negative slant by the rest of the recruits. He ignored it as he walked to his bunk, to prepare for the day. Coming to a stop, he noticed Shepard. Just as he did, she noticed him.
Their eyes met.
He looked down, looking at her foot. She seemed to be somewhat better, for what it was worth. He looked up and regarded her.
"Thanks," she said after a moment, tossing the melted ice-pack at him with a casual underhand throw.
"...Hmm," Emiya grunted, grabbing the ice-pack before it hit him.
"Help me to the infirmary? I don't think I know where it is," she asked, seeming less hesitant and more sheepish.
He snorted in surprise. Recovering, he inclined his head.
"Sure."
;
"What you are receiving now is your personal Aldrin Labs Onyx light armor." The chief spoke as they all took a closer look at the bundles they had been handed. "Like your Kessler pistols, these will remain with you. Even if you change ship or base, you will not be expected to hand in your guns or armor to the armorer, except for routine check-ups. As they have been specially constructed with your proportions and body type in mind, these are your hardsuits."
Emiya felt a little uncertain about that, as he still hadn't exactly finished with his growth spurt. But it seemed like the arms and legs could be detached and adjusted and the torso had some stretch to it, so perhaps that had been taken into account already. Everyone seemed excited, as these were the real deal. Every recruitment poster and vid had these on their models, every action movie and game had these out on display, front and center.
And now they had their very own hardsuits.
"Of course, as there is a wide variety of products available, you are often allowed to purchase your own to replace the standard Onyx armor. As long as it has been cleared by your Armorer and superior officer, it should be fine. As you can see, I prefer the Devlon Industries Explorer Suit myself," he said, motioning at the hardsuit he was wearing.
Unlike the slim and simple black things they had received, it was white and black with much bulkier armor pieces.
Emiya looked down, running a hand down the matte black surface of the armor in his hands. It was fresh from the factory, without any wear and tear one would expect from armor usually, but also void of any lingering sentiments or thoughts.
The industrial revolution had brought on a massive shift in how things were created. Handicraft required a lot more work, not only for creating the individual item but for creating the craftsman as well. When Emiya beheld an object created by a master craftsman, he not only beheld the item itself but also the traces and paths the creator had walked in order to arrive at that item's creation. The years of hard work and practice it took to build up to those skills.
But with the factory line, as production increased and became much more impersonal, those traces became far more muted and distant. He could still look into it; could see how the factory worked and how the item had been created. But all those personal thoughts, emotions, and sentiments from weeks of work and decades of dedication were no longer there.
"As it is your personal hardsuit, you will be expected to understand it inside and out. It is not only armor but also your uniform and field dress. One of its main functions is to protect you from the cold of space, so I am sure you all understand how important it will be to make sure it is always intact and functional, especially aboard starships."
He let his curiosity get the better of him; inhaling sharply he let his magical energy reach out from his fingers. Simply by seeing an item, he could read a great deal of information regarding it, but when it came to items that were not swords or weapons, a more intimate touch would be necessary.
The hardsuit appeared in his mind's eye as he imagined it.
Every detail, feature, and part was perfectly reproduced in his head without fail. There were some interesting materials and production methods used, but all in all, it was not anything spectacular. Then again, it was a mass-produced baseline piece of protective equipment so he couldn't expect anything more out of it. Well, that was assuming the circuitry and the empty channels and tubes were there just for show. He had only read the material properties and protective value of the suit, after all.
"Now, to get into the theory before we get into the brass tacks of maintenance and how to put them on. Later tonight after dinner, you will be taught by Chief Rogers how to put them away into your regulation lockers," the instructor continued, nodding at his silent partner who nodded at the recruits at the mention of his name.
He then tapped his own chest to show his own hardsuit; the sound his armored glove made against the chest piece was markedly dissimilar from their suits. "As you can see, my hardsuit is quite different from the ones you have been given. This is mainly due to the rating, but there is more as well. To put it simply, the Systems Alliance has adopted the Council Standard of body armor in the past decade, as it has been proven to be a reliable and easily translatable standard, even for us.
"One of the most important functions of the suit are of course the various sensors. There are a variety of sensor setup designs. But for your suits, it is the basic set only. When you wear your helmet, it will in the Heads Up Display portray a blue circle in the lower right corner of your vision. This is your Combined Sensor Read Out. Consider it a radar, allowing you to see a variety of things around you, within a set distance. One of the main functions is to allow you to spot unknown actors before they become a threat, giving you an edge as ambushes can be foiled and hiding attackers can be handled before they spring their attack. Once it is connected to your omnitool, you can adjust those settings and perform more specialized tasks with it as well," saying that the instructor used his omnitool and suddenly a monitor began to show a view from the instructor's perspective.
On the screen, they could see themselves as they looked at the man and in the right corner of the screen was a small pulsing blue sphere that showed a large group of red dots in the top sector. "As you can see, my suit has detected your life signs and due to not yet being logged in as allied forces, you are shown on my radar as hostiles. The agenda for this lesson will be to fix just that."
He grinned as he said that. The recruits whispered at that, pointing at each other and trading thoughts. The instructor let them digest that for a moment, standing silently for a few seconds.
"Hardsuits have three layers of protection to keep you safe from harm, be it mass accelerator fire or environmental hazards. The outermost, of course, is the kinetic barrier. Inside your hardsuits are small microcomputers and eezo cores, which work to create a shield around your body.
"Of course, if it was on at all times it would be a huge drain on the batteries, as well as get in your way when you tried to sit down or use your gun." The instructor continued explaining, walking over to a far wall where no one was near him. The other instructor—Gunnery Chief Rogers—walked up, pulling out his pistol and fiddling with the settings he continued to talk.
"Therefore, it has been hooked up to the suit's built-in sensors to activate only when it detects something in your surroundings. A variety of patented designs exist, such as detecting mass effect field fluctuations or detecting quickly moving small objects coming at you. But to put it simply; if a bullet is moving fast enough to hurt you, this will happen." The instructor turned to Chief Rogers, nodding at him. "Go ahead."
"Weapon hot; firing," Rogers spoke quietly, raising his pistol and pulling the trigger once. A muffled report, lower than the usual gunpowder-powered firearms Emiya was more used to, rang out as a blue flash erupted before the instructor's body.
"As you can see, it works quite effectively. But as I mentioned before, the power remains a limiting factor which means that under continuous fire or if struck by a very powerful round, the kinetic barrier will definitely fail. Also, note that these basic barriers will not protect you from direct manipulation by mass effect fields or from all environmental hazards. Biotics, for example, will ruin your day just as easily as a big gun will."
Emiya blinked, making a note of that.
It seemed like the kind of thing one would forget until the worst moment. Overall, he felt a strange urge to ask whether they were called Holtzmann fields as well, but he quashed that thought.
He had wondered what some of the electronics and wiring running through the suit were for, but that began to make some sense of it. He had merely evaluated the suit based on its material properties before, but realizing that there had been more to it was quite interesting, the lack of a creator's intent keeping it obscured from until now.
"So, since there are things which will come through our handy dandy barriers, let's move onto the second level of protection. Material construction. This is where the Council-space classification comes in. Currently, there exist three levels of protection; light, medium, and heavy armor. These are simply put based on a relative-to-wearer's-weight classification, which reflects how well it can protect you. For light armor, the amount of material used is often minimal; only enough to get the job done and to let you survive in class 1 hazardous environments. Constructed often simply of layered fabrics without ceramic or metallic plates or reinforcements, they usually offer complete freedom of movement and comfort." The instructor said, walking up to a recruit and grabbing his Onyx hardsuit and lifting it with one hand. "As you can see, they aren't the toughest of things, but they are better than nothing. If you'll end up on a spaceship, you will probably be fine with them as is, but if you apply for the ground-pounders who see some real action, I recommend something tougher."
He put the suit down, thanking the recruit for letting him borrow it for a second with a nod before he moved on again.
"Medium and Heavy are similar but tend to have simply more material. For the parts of the body that do not need to move, such as the shins or torso, the use of harder materials is normal," the instructor said, tapping at his limbs to show off such plates. "During prolonged combat, it becomes crucial to know how to repair and maintain heavier armors in the field, thus using them requires special training as well, along with physical conditioning to get used to the weight."
Emiya felt that that was simple enough; physical armor had not changed much even as the materials improved. Layered fabrics had been used throughout the ages, from ancient Greek linothorax armor to the kevlar vests of his day.
The modern synthetic fabrics used in the suit he had been given were fairly impressive, but he could definitely see an advantage in adding some additional hard pieces. Just like adding metal pieces to a vest could turn it into a brigandine or how against larger caliber rifle ammunition steel and ceramic plates had been used during his lifetime.
Of course, his personal protective gear was still better. Not that he should need it.
"Finally, but not least importantly, we have the most recent addition to the Council Standards," the instructor said with a proud grin. "Humanity's very own Sirta Foundation has ushered forth a new era of technological advancement. That last layer of defense is the in-built medical systems, which monitor you and administer first aid as necessary along with medigel in case of catastrophic damage. That isn't all, either. In case you suffer a bone break or lose a limb, modern military hardsuits are also designed to harden around the injury, making it possible for medigel to be administered without the worry of having your leg on the wrong way or bleeding out.
"According to the desk jockeys I talk to, since the introduction of medigel systems, mortality rates in firefights dropped by 14% percent in a year. Talk is, the Council had wanted to ban the stuff, especially the Turians after how tough our boys proved to be on Shanxi, but in the end they couldn't go through with it given just how useful the stuff is." The instructor grinned as he crossed his arms.
"But that's enough theory. Time to get you boys strapped in and show you how to wear these things. First, pop the seal on the back of the neck and..."
;
"Now that all of you are familiar with all of your gear, it is time to learn how to use it all together. I trust all of you have already managed to link your omnitools and hardsuits up. Today you'll be learning how to navigate in an urban environment through hostile spotters. You'll not be given any weapons, but you will be expected to follow certain rules that will... shall we say enhance the experience, heh."
The chief laughed, grinning widely at the formation of recruits standing before them. They were finally E4; something more than mere wastes of space in the eyes of the Alliance. They were more than people who existed only to be a bother to everyone else, as now they at least knew how to generally stay out of the way.
For the most part.
Which meant it was time to teach them how to act out in the field.
"You will be working in the smallest unit that the Alliance Navy uses; a three-man team. As you will remember from your theory, that way you can have all of your active sensors scanning a third of the surroundings at maximum efficiency. This will give you a 40-meter range to work with. Each of you will be required to handle a hundred and twenty degrees. Fail that, and not only do you flunk but so will your buddies. Divide the tasks appropriately, now."
Emiya looked around without moving his eyes, wondering who he would be paired up with using his peripheral vision. It wouldn't matter; he was quite experienced in urban navigation and the material they had gone through hadn't contradicted or refuted any of his old skills and knowledge.
"—and as such, as previously outlined yesterday, you shall not be outfitted with the usual navigation suite. I'm sure you're all familiar with the nav-systems from your everyday life. Need to find a nice restaurant? Just pop the question and you get real-time, real-position instructions. But in the Navy, we don't always get that luxury. Sometimes, you will be laboring under information control inferiority, which means every connection is to be cut off lest the enemy hacks you! Of course, today you will also be tasked with physically avoiding them using the methods and tools you have been taught to use in the past week. To that end, the fine gents upstairs have decided to be so kind as to bestow upon you the chance to learn how to get about in exciting new territory.
"In fact, we've made sure none of you have ever been here before. Whoever said the Navy never takes you anywhere nice, eh? Hehe. Your job is to use your short-range scanners, one satellite scan of the area that has been marked with the checkpoints you will need to go through, and your own skills to make your way today. No nav-systems, no real-time mapping, no directions. We'll be watching all of you, so do know that if you try to cheat or use the extranet or some other nonsense. Well... Privy cleaning duty will be the least of your worries." The chief laughed darkly, then crossed his arms.
"So, all clear? No questions? Splendid!"
Emiya was an old hand at this kind of stuff. He had fought in almost every kind of environment, short of actual zero-G. He was actually kind of looking forward to that since it was something entirely new. So finding his way through a city wasn't going to be all that difficult.
And without hostiles to worry about, he could have done this in his sleep.
"So, when you hear your name, step up and group up as instructed. Abrams!"
Emiya blinked, noticing that Shepard was smirking as she looked around.
It seemed like for the first time in a long time she seemed excited about something. Overall, she had retained her dour mood and kept to herself even as everyone else grew more and more familiar with each other. Well, at least now she talked to other people. It was something.
Well, it wouldn't have anything to do with him right now. He'd already roughly figured out how they would be divided into teams, so he guessed they wouldn't be grouping up.
"Emiya!"
"Sir!" he answered, jogging to where the chief was pointing. He glanced at the two familiar faces waiting for him. They inclined their heads at him in greeting but kept quiet.
They had never really talked, outside of that one incident, he could sense a slight tension.
Emiya sighed, slightly annoyed that he was still suffering the repercussions of Shepard's stand-offish attitude from before. These two had tried to approach her and been rebuffed quite brusquely and then she had gone and directed them to him, early on in their shared time.
"I'm Emiya," he introduced himself, even though they all knew each other by name already, but they relaxed a little at the of his tone of voice.
They looked at each other and then shrugged minutely.
"Heh, nice to meetcha. I'm Rodriguez and this is Franco," the taller of the two said, grinning at him as the third member of their trio nodded as well.
"Well then, let's rock this boat, yeah?" Franco said, grinning as he pointed at the starting line for the urban exercise. They would be leaving with 15 minutes spacing out between each team, given a route and a destination, with several checkpoints along the way.
Just simple orienteering, really. Just with a few hotspots, that they would need to find a way around.
Emiya smirked back. "Shouldn't be too hard."
;
All in all, it wasn't anything difficult.
Certainly, making good time in unknown territory while avoiding spotters and keeping an eye out for traps and ambushers was somewhat challenging. But given that they had been handed a clear picture taken from orbit for a map and had their omnitools and suits with all the sensors that came with them, it was somewhat amusing how easy it actually was.
They could literally receive pings from any nearby spotters, thanks to the sensor suites they used, when they approached one.
Perhaps the lack of a reference or guidance in the map was a setback for some of them, as the instructor had stressed turning off of the omnitools' automatic mapping and guidance features so much, but it seemed a bit lacking as a challenge for someone used to living without any of that until now. Perhaps if they only had a paper map or a vague drawing of the general topography to work with, it would be somewhat more difficult.
But even his two teammates who couldn't orienteer their way out of a paper bag, thought it an easy task, given that as long as they could use their omnitools in offline mode, well... In their words: when you had a detailed and precise to-scale map of the area and tools that could record their acceleration and changes in movement with its built-in sensors, it was hardly a bigger bother than simply linking the picture and placing a simulated marker based on the sensor data on that picture for an ad-hoc navigation suite.
Making a program for that was apparently easy, even with their more rudimentary omnitools and suits - it would not even take a half-hour to whip up something like that. Less if they didn't need to double-check their scripts for errors after the first compile, as the duo assured him.
Apparently.
Emiya didn't know enough about any of it to do anything other than shrug.
He wasn't exactly sure what they were being taught here. Were they expected to know how to find their way around without the automatic map marker and navigation guide by regular pathfinding skills? Or were they expected to use the orbital scan provided as a regular map? Or were they supposed to write a program, using all the tools and data available? Or was there some other way, such as asking one of the locals? It seemed counter-intuitive given the stated goal of this exercise was to remain undetected.
Perhaps they would be penalized for making contact with a civilian. Perhaps everyone they ran into would be someone undercover, even if they did not show up on the radar as a hostile.
He couldn't quite tell.
Perhaps it was a different kind of test for the recruits, to see what they did and how they handled it all. It made sense, given that they all wore omnitools anyhow as their instructors had said that they kept some oversight over those to insure no one used the extranet and whatnot.
It was marking a definite shift in their training.
But in the end, he dismissed Franco's and Rodriguez's suggestion of writing a program for a simulated map, despite their many and cheerful suggestions surrounding it. After all, regular orienteering was simply a matter of abstraction, memorization, and referencing. And he was an expert at that, even without his prior city trekking experiences.
It took some convincing though, since apparently, the two were burgeoning 'hackers', as they claimed. They boasted about having gotten the haptic finger implants for hologram controls at the age of 12 and having been coding their entire lives, saying that it wouldn't be even difficult to write something like that.
But it would still have taken a half-hour, which they could simply spend running.
Given how practiced he was at keeping an image in his mind and manipulating it inside his head, something like keeping track of his own position on a two-dimensional plane while plotting out the shortest route to an objective was child's play. The only real challenge came in spotting the traps and ambushes they had been warned of, but he left it to the two point dexters.
Nominally, at least, since he tended to notice something before his two teammates with their omnitools did.
At regular intervals, Emiya would spot someone waiting around at a strange location or something out of place along the route and they would choose to take a detour to avoid being penalized. Being penalized here just meant being 'pretend-shot to death for ten minutes of physical punishment', but really it was just a slap on the wrist for not paying attention, given how far their physiques had come.
Occasionally, he would spot what would be an obvious ambush at a bottleneck, so he would be forced to be creative. Going through a private yard or abandoned house; jumping into the river and diving past the site; climbing up a tree to use the rooftops. At one point, they had a perfect chance to counter-ambush a group of ambushers, but they had to move on since they had no means of accomplishing it.
Every once in a while he made sure to pop open his omnitool for the picture as if to make sure that they were still on course and that they hadn't made a wrong turn. Really, it was to check if the map changed without notifying them or if any of their checkpoints changed while they were still moving. It wouldn't be funny if they came to the end, only to find that they had missed three checkpoints which had been added in a minute before they finished.
Or well, it would be to a certain extent. But it would reflect poorly on their performance.
"Just this down this road and we're done," Emiya announced, dismissing the map as he nodded forward.
"Rea—ha, hah—really? Shit, this was a lot easier than I thought. And shit, you can run. Now I get where you put away all that food." Franco grinned, panting between words.
Supposedly they had been allotted the whole day for the exercise, but Emiya had managed to keep a good pace and they had cleared it in less than two hours. Well, mostly cleared it. Just the homestretch left.
Behind him, the two physically older recruits panted still as they leaned against the wall.
By a good pace, Emiya meant 'as fast as we can go while avoiding the patrols and without dropping from exhaustion halfway through'. Which, even with all of their training and gene therapy meant a considerable push. He smirked at the two, standing tall and unwearied in comparison.
Stamina was just all about proper breathing, really.
"Let's go. I'll treat you to some grub afterward and you can die in your beds where it will have no bearing on my performance report."
"F... Fuck you, man," Rodriguez replied, laughing weakly as he forcibly straightened himself to not seem inferior to Franco.
"Right, right. You guys can carry me, right?"
"Nah, your fat ass can drag itself." Rodriguez snorted, turning to jog after Emiya who had already begun to move.
"Ey, man. I thought we were friends." Franco whined, before shaking his head and beginning to jog after them.
But halfway to the finish line, Emiya blinked as he spotted another team running parallel to them a few blocks away. Coming in from another angle, they were a team consisting of his fellow recruits. A moment later, his teammates spotted the other trio.
"Whoa! They're fast!" Rodriguez noted with some awe. "Is that Lola?"
Franco peered at that until he spotted the female redhead himself. "Fuck! It is! Go time! Double-time! Let's go! Let's go! I ain't losing to that chica this time!"
With that, the man formerly at the tail-end of their group began to pull ahead, passing the casually running Emiya as he pumped his limbs for all they were worth, panting loudly with his mouth wide open and tongue lolling almost like a dog's. It was a ridiculous sight.
"Yeah, fuck that! Let's go, let's go!" Rodriguez shouted, increasing his own pace to match Franco in front of him.
Emiya looked to the side, noticing that the other group—including Shepard, as the other two had noticed—had spotted them, too. And noticing the increased pace, a competitive spirit was ignited inside them as well. He had to sigh; had they just kept up their normal pace and not roused the others' attention, they would have still come in first. It was unlikely that the other group would have bothered trying to increase their pace because of them that way.
But no, they had to start sprinting and spur on the other group.
They had started fifteen minutes apart from each other anyhow; who actually crossed the line meant little since Emiya's group had started after them. What did it matter if they won the other's time by one second or two when they had already caught up an entire quarter-hour?
Still, he might as well indulge them since they were finally putting in the effort. He intensified his breathing; increasing both volume and frequency, his heart kicking into higher gear to match the rising performance of his body. He might not have the same level of physical ability due to his lagging enhancements when it came to speed or strength, but his stamina was second to none.
Legs pumping, arms swinging, lungs alternatively expanding and expunging, all in perfect timing as he began to pull up to Rodriguez and Franco.
On the other street, the other team increased their speed in a desperate dash. But it was obvious that it wouldn't last, their faltering last spurt burning out as nothing more than the empty fumes of a gas tank. Emiya grinned as he pushed past both of his teammates and placed himself in front of them with long, unfaltering strides.
The two clowns wouldn't last it to the finish line on their own.
But in Emiya's slipstream, with less air resistance? That, they could do. He looked behind himself, half-smirking at them as they desperately tried to keep up with him. Dismissing them and looking forward, he continued running. His back taunting, as if asking 'can you keep up with me?' as he continued pulling slowly ahead of everyone. At the last fifty meters, it became obvious to the other team that they had pulled too far ahead to be caught. They could not cross this gap in time anymore, as Emiya kept increasing his pace until he crossed the 'finish line' with a satisfied smirk and final bounding leap.
His legs burned, his throat was dry and he had to breathe deeply and hard to keep his heart from exploding out of his chest. But nonetheless, the feeling of surging satisfaction was undeniable. Behind him, several seconds later, Franco and Rodriguez came at a slightly slower pace but just as exhausted as he was. A second later, they practically collapse to the ground as they could focus on nothing but their hammering hearts and their burning lungs, limbs turning to jello beneath them.
Another scant few seconds later, Shepard came bounding in on gazelle steps. She bounced on her feet for another few steps past the imaginary finish line that ran in front of the unimpressed instructor, who stood there with his omnitool on.
She breathed heavily, just as they all did, but looking none at all pleased with herself where they did, hands striking up at the sky in jubilation.
Behind her, in the distance, her team came jogging at a far more sedate pace as they had realized that they could no longer catch up to any of them before the finish line.
"Well now. If you kids have this much energy, I'll have to up your physicals to match that. Would be a shame to think I've been going easy on you all this time," the chief spoke, exuding a sadistic joy at the expressions the four panting recruits made at that suggestion. The two from Shepard's team turned to glare at them, while Franco and Rodriguez turned to glare at Shepard.
Emiya merely chuckled, shrugging under the chief's stare, while Shepard did not seem to notice the quip at all.
"But for now, good job, boys 'n Shepard. Get yourselves to the shuttles and you have the rest of the day off. Never say I don't reward good work." The chief grinned, waving them off with one hand as he manipulated his omnitool deftly for a few seconds to note who had arrived and when.
Franco raised an arm, fist-pumping at the heavens again as he couldn't still get up from where he lay. "Take that, Lola... Take... that..."
Shepard merely looked at the panting recruit with a nonplussed expression, before shaking it off and walking away while staring at her map. Or rather, glaring at it. Emiya finished getting his breathing under control and glanced her way, sneaking a peek at the map as he did. He moved to walk after her, towards the shuttles.
She did well.
He blinked, then made a whistling sound of appreciation, causing Shepard to turn and stare at him with half-furrowed brows.
"Nice," Emiya commented simply, but when that only made her glare turn annoyed, he paused for a moment. Ah, she realizes we started at different times. That we didn't really arrive in the same run time. But she hasn't realized the other difference yet.
She glared at him, probably thinking that he was patronizing her. Or that he honestly hadn't figured it out and finding his congratulations hollow. Well, that wouldn't do at all.
"We might have caught up by fifteen minutes since you started first, but you had at least four more checkpoints. Your route was longer. I don't know if we would have made it with just a fifteen-minute deficit." Emiya waved his hand to show that he was only roughly guessing at numbers here. "I'm impressed, to be honest."
He shrugged while still half-smirking as he laid it on thick, pretending as if he thought what-can-you-do about it. She blinked, then looked down at her map again. She looked up, glaring at him.
"Show me yours."
"So direct. Well, I don't hate that in a girl, I suppose." Emiya smirked at her as she blinked. A second later, just as she was about to retort he opened up the map from his omnitool for her to see.
She opened her mouth, blinking at the map and then deciding to let his comment slide as she stared at it, brows furrowing. He had already compared their routes and made some guesses as to what paths she had taken. All things considered, Emiya really was impressed. She knew how to navigate the densely built and confusing urban environment far better than he did. Only his superior pace at the end had made the difference.
She had grown up on streets like these for real, after all.
As she seemed to arrive at the same conclusion as he had, he closed the map and turned to walk away. As his body began to cool down, he realized he had been acting out strangely again. The endorphins from the runner's high and the impulse to set her record straight had made him act in a more natural manner. Less restrained.
He realized with a frown that he had just had fun.
...It's too amusing to mess with her. Calm down and focus.
"Hey, Emiya!" she shouted after him, and he merely turned around as he continued walking backward, not bothering to stop. She looked at him quietly for a second and then shot back a smirk of her own. "Nice running. But next time you'll be the one eating the dust."
"We'll see." Emiya huffed again before he could stop himself.
She was opening up, just as he was opening up to her. Somehow that felt like a good thing, despite him knowing that it wasn't.
;
Emiya inhaled, opening his eyes as he looked out the window to see how far they had come. Everyone else in the shuttle still seemed to be asleep. At the exhale, he closed his eyes again as he fell back into meditation and reflection.
Another month had passed and their training with their equipment continued as scheduled.
They learned to use their omnitools and their hardsuits, how to field strip and service all of their gear and how to find faults through diagnostics and physical checks, and how to perform simple repairs themselves. They went shooting several times a week and mastered the basics of weapons handling and maintenance, still focusing entirely on the pistol.
In Emiya's time, it had been customary to train recruits first with rifles, as longer arms were simpler to produce, service, and train with, while also making it easier to keep track of all the guns, as sneaking away a rifle was a lot harder than doing the same with a pistol. He kept expecting it to be introduced, knowing that they must have still existed, along with shotguns and battle rifles and other such variations.
But they never were.
In the Systems Alliance Navy, it appeared that the side-arm reigned as the mainstay workhorse. For a variety of reasons too, as he would find out once he read enough of the materials made available to him.
Usually, onboard spaceships space was at a premium—somewhat ironically, he thought—not merely in terms of storage, but also in their handling during a firefight, as a rifle had to be held with two arms to manage the recoil, while a pistol could be handled with just the one, leaving the other hand free for example to stabilize your movements in zero gravity. On top of that, there was the matter of weight as the lighter the gun, the less the engine would struggle when taking off from a planet.
And in a strange inversion of the 21st century where it was cheaper to build larger, rougher guns on an industrial scale, in the 22nd century it was cheaper to cut down on the high-quality frame material than to simplify the design. Especially given the longer rails and overall higher output of the rifles making the material costs a much more substantial part of the costs.
It wasn't merely a matter of scaling up, as the weakest link in the design could not simply be over-engineered cheaply.
For example, for the cheaper end pistols, a direct current pulse in the range of 10,000 Amperes was sufficient, which was feasible with the cheaper types of batteries and a few mid-range capacitors available to the Systems Alliance. While that was already a ridiculous number in Emiya's mind, it was far more reasonable than the 50,000 Amperes that the rifles apparently used, often with much higher rates of fire which further complicated matters. For that kind of output, it was necessary to have top-of-the-line capacitors and batteries, which again required other, more expensive components to work properly.
On top of that, the cooling systems required to handle the heat produced by the longer and more potent railgun were also that much more costly, while with a relatively anemic and slowly firing sidearm, the amount and type of material were much more forgiving.
Even the firing block shaver had to be changed out when rapid-fire was necessary.
And while in his era accuracy and stopping power were most pistols' weakness, in this modern-day and age such worries had been overcome. The miniature railguns were very capable of firing powerful rounds, and once hooked up to their hardsuit's inbuilt computer, the aiming assistance algorithms allowed for even more accurate shooting within controlled environments, such as a spaceship's interiors and designated defensive choke points.
Scanning their iris and lining it up with the sights of the gun itself, it could correct the targeting within a 10-degree radius of where it would normally fire if it recognized a hardsuit and had a record of structural weak spots. It might not seem like much at a glance, but at 45 meters where few of the recruits could reliably hit the target with every shot, turning on the aim assist and getting ten perfect bullseyes in rapid succession had made them feel like they were on top of the world.
Emiya had tried it and found it fairly effective if a bit slow and cumbersome. He could just aim himself if he wanted to hit, regardless of distance so long as the bullet still flew. Not that he had, as it would no doubt raise suspicion.
But due to the limitations of the technology making it vulnerable to a number of spoofing methods, and the ethical dilemmas of who pulled the trigger, they had been primarily trained on the "eyeballing" technique of shooting with the pistols, though.
That is to say, aiming as it was done in his day and age, with a proper sight picture and focus.
Which they practiced often.
Don't look at the rear sights - align the front sight on target and the rest will work itself out. Lean slightly into it to absorb the recoil. The off-hand should push against the trigger guard to further minimize the shaking. Don't pull the trigger, press it without shaking the gun. Find the rhythm to firing, so that your sights line up automatically as the recoil ends and your body leans back forward and your sight picture is on target again...
Shooting—like most if not all fighting-related skills—was a perishable skill, but for him, it had been so ingrained as mantras that re-learning it was merely a matter of calibrating his actions. But as one, they were made accustomed to their gear, their Onyx hardsuits becoming akin to a second skin, and their Kessler pistols like an extension of their hand and mind.
It seemed like it would go on in this way forever.
But at the tail end of the month, the focus began to change, just as he had sensed it earlier on. The number of practical lessons and field exercises they had rapidly declined to a level where it only served to maintain their abilities, as the focus turned to tests and questionnaires. Every day less time was spent outside and on the move, and more inside and sitting by a desk.
They were already E6's after all. Once they graduated to E7, they would be shipped out and elsewhere for specialized training in the other lines. Now it was crucial to find a suitable place for each new cog in the great system that was the Navy.
Slowly, day by day it dawned on the recruits - the realization that they were now almost done with basic training and on the cusp of getting into something more exciting. There was talk among several of them for trying out for the non-commissioned officer and cadet lines, or even the special forces; the N-line of training being a hot topic among the toughest and most ambitious among them.
The N7 were the toughest of the toughest, the best of the best - humanity's greatest soldiers.
Everyone knew that.
Emiya already had his eyes on where he wanted to go and he was fairly certain no one else would be sharing his destination.
General Engineering; the G-line.
They were not even combat engineers or field technicians. Rather they were simply the people who kept everything running. The fixers and shiners, who were passed around from spaceship to spaceship as things broke down and needed fixing. Rather than a grenade and a rifle, they carried their omnitool and an oil canister most of the time.
A lot of things needed lubrication on a spaceship on a regular basis, after all.
A rather boring line as the general consensus went, whenever the topic came up, rarely though that was.
Little to no combat training, no guarantees of a rise in ranks with continued service, just a bunch of general electronics and eezo theory along with months and months of practical, hands-on experience with fixing everything and anything, before you were shipped off to wherever there was need of a handyman. Though the pay was decent enough, and once you got out of the military you had the papers to get in pretty much anywhere anyone needed stuff fixed.
Which was always everywhere.
Not that he cared about any of that, as he would never even reach retirement.
Emiya would be using this body for a week at most once he got shipped out, then most likely abandoning it entirely to return to the Moon on his own. There was only one reason for his choice of training line.
The training base was on Mars, as he had found out early on. It seemed like such a long time ago already, that he had arrived on Earth. Once he was there and had accomplished his mission, he could just get back to the Moon and be done with it all.
Simple and clear.
All in all, only one more hurdle presented itself before him, before he could apply for the G-line. Their final field exercise, held in Brazil in South America. They would be divided into teams of three and would be dropped off at a random location, given only the basic equipment and weapons, and then handed a set of objectives to accomplish.
Rather similar to the orienteering and field exercises from a month back, but simply more. For starters, they were handed their guns while outside of target practice or maintenance for once.
They hadn't been told much, simply that there would be further instructions once they landed in Rio de Janeiro, from where they would then be sent out into various locations around the country. Brazil had during the era of commercial spaceflight been one of the strange countries which had at the same time experienced a massive drop in population as well as a massive shift in its national industries.
With off-world colonies looking for anyone and everyone willing to work, the poorest and most numerous populations of Earth had been preyed upon by various companies willing to ship them off with a promise of a brighter future and a pat on the back. 'Sign a five-year working contract and we'll take you to a new world, full of new possibilities!' some of the old slogans, still existing in archives had proudly proclaimed.
As usual, new frontiers had drawn in everyone who lacked the means to move up in the world around them. So the favelas and slums had seemingly been emptied out over the course of a few decades, back when humanity's expansion was at its most aggressive.
Leaving vast swaths of previously populated territory completely empty and unused.
Which in turn had up-ended and entirely transformed the economic reality of various countries, forcing them to invest in entirely different and new industries to stay afloat. Today, tourism was Brazil's largest source of income, as the long and warm beaches remained still a cultural icon of what humanity considered paradise and they had nothing if not real estate on offer.
For the Systems Alliance, this had meant that relatively out-of-the-way locations to field massive live-fire training exercises were eminently affordable and practical in Brazil. The local government was more than happy to lease out three or four ghost towns for the Alliance to train in every year, finding no better use for them themselves.
So here they were, being shipped off in shuttles to Brazil for their last test.
For a lot of recruits, this was a monumental event that would shape their careers for years to come. The instructors had assured them that a good overall rating everywhere else would not be negated by a terrible performance in this field exercise and that a terrible overall rating would not be overturned by an excellent performance. But still, it was human nature to look at the last and most dramatic moment as the most important part.
Everyone had been excited for this the night before, discussing the possibilities and probabilities of the exercise and its results deep into the night, a part of the reason so many had fallen asleep immediately upon the shuttle's take off.
Emiya mostly felt hopeful for the prospect of finally getting off Earth.
They were being monitored constantly, surrounded by others constantly, scheduled, and jostled around at all hours of the day. He was a naturally industrious and conscientious individual, who made most of every hour of the day so that wasn't very much different. But that was not the same as military life.
He chafed, as he had known he would.
At least as a Guardian when he had sold his soul, the Moon Cell left him alone for decades at a time when it didn't need him. It would be good to be out of here he decided, somewhat regretting not simply stealing a shuttle on that first day again.
Then again...
"Why the long face? You scared?"
Emiya opened his eyes, looking up at the grinning redhead next to him. Shepard winked, punching his shoulder lightly once to know for certain she had his attention.
"Don't worry, I'll keep you from getting shot up too bad." She grinned at him.
"Is that so?" Emiya grunted, turning thoughtful. "Last I remember, I had to carry you back."
She huffed, crossing her arms. "That was a just drill for medical evacs. Besides, I did cover your back when you had me in a fireman's carry, yeah?"
She mimed a pistol, pulling a trigger several times as she shot at an imaginary target.
"Mm, I guess you did." Emiya allowed.
They stayed quiet for a minute, the hum of the shuttle and the snores and shuffling of limbs the only sounds between them. For whatever reason, Shepard seemed to have taken a shine to him during the last few weeks.
Perhaps it was the similarities she found between them or something else he couldn't quite recognize himself. But whenever possible, she would team up with him and try to beat him. And before he had realized it, he had begun to expect and enjoy their little competitions.
Still, this would be their last.
After this, he was certain that she would not be one for the technical duties of where he was going. Whenever something related to eezo or biotics came up, her eyes would glaze over and it would appear as her soul had left her vacant body behind. She tended to scrape by her written exams, barely passing if not on her first then on her second try.
In contrast, while on her feet and with a gun in her hand, her eyes seemed to glow with excitement and dance around like wild sparks.
Then again, it was probably for the better this way. He was going back to the Moon soon enough, anyhow. No reason to prolong this. Whatever this was. For better or for worse, this would be his last time working with the strange redheaded girl.
"Let's make it a good one," Emiya said and Shepard grinned at him, throwing him a thumbs up, oblivious to his thoughts.
;
Thanks to Tisaku, tsaurn, Rakkis157 for proofreading.
Also, next few chapters will be rather action-oriented. Thank goodness.
16.10.2021 edit: Holy fuck that was painful to edit. Ideas introduced sporadically and unclearly, sentences that make no sense, dialogue that didn't sound right. Didn't want to change things too much, though. I hope this means I've improved as a writer lol