Thus far this year has not yielded anything of interest. All the classes seemed the same as always. Jasper was more fluent in Spanish then the Spanish teacher was. Not a surprise considering he was from Texas. Science, English, and Math all proved to be as boring as ever as well. Jasper drug his feet the whole way to his next class, ROTC. He didn't have this class with Alice. Jasper entered the small out building. It was a plain empty room with concrete flooring and two doors off to the side. One leading to a standard classroom, the other to an office. There was a small handful of students just meandering about.
"Attention!" Boomed a voice from behind Jasper.
He snapped to the position of attention, with his feet together at the heels and separated at a forty-five degree angle, hands down by his sides with his fingertips curled in, and his thumbs along the seem of his black jeans, head and eyes staring straight forward.
"Parade rest!" The voice commanded.
Following suit with the rest of the group, Jasper moved to parade rest, with his feet shoulder width apart, and hands locked together behind his back. He kept eyes still straight forward. The owner of the voice came around to stand in front of them. He was a muscular man with peppered hair, and an army standard buzz cut. He was almost as tall as jasper. He wore a navy green tee-shirt, camo pants, and brown army issued boots.
"Seems we have a new student, and one that knows what he is doing too. Name son?"
"Jasper Whi-uh Hale SIR!"
"Have you taken ROTC before?"
"No Sir."
"Well on the command of Fall Out, everyone change into your PT attire. Then out to the track. Masterson!"
"Yes Sir?" a lanky boy with brown hair and glasses responded.
"See to it that Hale gets clothes."
"Sir yes sir."
"FALL OUT!"
Once everyone had changed, Jasper included, they headed outside to a track that was placed right next to the out building. It was a cold, cloudy day but everyone was in grey tee-shirts with the schools name printed on the front and dark blue shorts. The other students began doing stretches and Jasper followed suit. Vampires didn't need to stretch but he didn't want to stand out. On the teacher's command, the students were off to begin their run. Jasper did just enough to keep up with the end of the pack. As they were coming into the last stretch, most of the students were running out of steam.
"Come on! Move it! Lets go! This is the saddest group i've ever seen! Pick up the pace!" He bellowed.
Jasper felt an overwhelming urge not to disappoint his superior and shot forward, still at a humanly possible speed mind you, and finished first. Then they all fell in for some "cool down" stretches though, again, this was something jasper didn't need to do.
"Hale!"
"Sir?"
"You did well, I thought maybe you were struggling at first, but that last leg proved me wrong. I think you'll do well here."
Jasper swelled with pride. He couldn't quite figure out why this humans opinion mattered so much to him. He could only guess that it was his solider mentality he had carried with him ever since the civil war. Could it be that jasper had just found something about school he liked?