A/N: Okay, so I was asked if I was going to include Tris at some point, and I'm not sure yet. I mean do you want me to? And, hmm, you have to take in consideration that this is happening a year before Tris becomes a Dauntless, so it would take a long time until she shows in my story, if I decided to do it. So, I guess half of my decision is up to you, do you want her?
Chapter Six – Things are changing
The good girl from Erudite –Liz – had to wake me and Emmett at seven-fifty so that we wouldn't be late for the training. We basically had to get dressed as fast as we could – I felt really bad changing clothes with Emmett right next to me, but he didn't even look at my face when we woke up, so I just changed - and then run to the training room. My stomach hurts when I push the door and the clock strikes eight o'clock. If I had only eaten something…
"I was wondering if you two had quit before we even start to train." Four says as we look around to catch up with the rest of the transfers. Everyone is waiting for him to give them something.
"No, we didn't." I say, as Emmett doesn't say a thing. I hope he's not trying to hide behind me as he used to do with Kate, because I'm not going to let him do that. I'm the mute here.
"Then don't be late again." I have to pinch my lips to force myself to stay quiet. We weren't late; he's not playing fair. "As I was about to say…" He turns around and opens a box. "…the first thing you're going to learn is how to use fire weapons. The second is how to win a battle, but we'll get there." He starts to give us the guns and I make a disgusted face when he lends me mine. I never used one, and I had no intention to do it, ever, but I guess whatever I have ever planned before is now to be forgotten, as we can't predict the Dauntless.
"As I said yesterday, there are three phases in the initiation. This one prepares you physically, the second one, emotionally, and the third one, mentally. So be ready, if you think the first one is hard, the others will be worse, and consequently, will have a bigger value on your classification." No one speaks, and I'm starting to think that Ethan is getting afraid of Four. Personally Four doesn't scare me, but I know I have to be careful around him from now on. He told me to wait for today, so if I cross the risk, he'll answer ten times worse. "Pay attention now. This phase might be the one that counts less, but without this one, you won't survive in here." Four turns to the targets and shoots. He did it so fast my ears hurt with the sound. Everyone looks at the target and I'm surprised to see that his shot passed right through the center of the smallest circle – the hardest to achieve.
Four smiles, happy with his shot. "Your turn now." He says. Typical, we watch, we do. No preparation. Everyone turns to their targets but me; instead, I turn to Emmett, so I can watch someone shooting before I do it. He's still not looking at me, what happened? His muscles are contracted as he wields his weapon – he doesn't like the idea of caring a gun, I can see that. He points to the target, but I never get to watch him shooting.
"Never thought you were so sadistic. This is how you end every relationship?" Again, I jump with the sound of Four's voice – I really should start to get used to it. His words cause me to chill – if there's something I could never deal with is to see Emmett's body, pale and lying down on the ground, to never stand up again. He laughs and then places his hands on my shoulders to make me turn to my own target. That's when Emmett shoots, and I can't avoid looking at his target. He missed the red circles, but his bulled hit the plywood squared in its edge. It was a good first shot.
"It's a friend-ship." I say, still feeling the chills, before I turn to my target and wield my gun. I open my legs at shoulder width apart and point to the target. I know Four is still behind me, even if his hands let me go some time ago, I can still feel them on my shoulders. It's hard for me to stop my hands from trembling due to the gun's weight, and even harder to keep it away from my body. I hesitate on pressing the trigger softly, but when I do it, nothing happens. I'm prepared to do it strongly when the door opens. I let my arms go down and turn to the, as everyone else.
A guy with long black hair and covered in tattoos comes in. I look at Four. He's tense, as I've never seen him before.
"You're not supposed to be here." Four says.
"I'm guessing this is Eric." I feel a warmth breath in my ear and I know Emmett is standing right behind me. I nod, agreeing with him.
Eric doesn't come in the room. He lifts his arms over his head. "I didn't come to shoot anyone. I'm just checking if everything is okay." Four doesn't trust him, and neither do I. Coming from Candor made it easy for me to see when someone is lying. "Well, it is. You can go now." Four says, defeating him. Eric turns around, which seems very strange to me, it's not what I expected him to do. Actually I could swear he was about to jump over Four.
"You better be careful, Four. Things are changing." Eric hits with the door before he leaves us.
"Well, Four is in a real bad mood. What did you do?" Owen is sitting by my side as Maeve sits in from of me. Emmett that was listening to Lucas – the boy from Amity that I saw nearly crying on the train – and Liz talking about their factions, turns to me when Owen and Maeve join us. I look at Four sitting alone in a table, and with no food in front of him.
Before we came to the dining room, I said that I needed to go to the bathroom, so I took Liz with me and she told me that the girl who didn't jump was Lucas girlfriend. I feel sorry for him when she tells me that, but I feel more sorry for me when I look at myself in the mirror. I barely recognize my body when I first look at it. It's covered in dark blue, purple and different tones of red. I only know it's me because even though Liz is brunette, my eyes are brown and hers are green. Now I know why Emmett didn't want to look at me, I could pass by a zombie. I catch my hair in the back of my head, leaving the curls to hit me in the back.
"Eric." I say. Owen opens his eyes more than usual and Maeve looks at the floor, as if she was guilty of something. I shake my head saying that I'm wrong about this last thought before I explain everything to Owen.
"So you're saying that he just went there for five minutes and then left?" I nod. "He's up to something. And we have to find out what!"
"We're not going to do anything, Owen." Maeve interferes. "We can't get in trouble during initiation." Owen sighs. "C'mon, we can't just leave it like this. Do you want Four to leave? You know that deep down, Eric is still an Erudite."
"Wait, what?!" I feel my mouth moving, but the sound didn't come from me, it was Emmett who asked.
"Eric came last year. He was a transfer from the Erudite faction. Everybody knows he's jealous of Four because he stayed right behind him in the classifications."
"What- What was Four's place?" I ask, while I take another look at Four's table. He hasn't move.
"First." Maeve answers. I didn't notice we were all whisper until the four of us shut up and the only voices we hear next to us is Liz and Lucas still discussing about their factions.
After lunch Four takes us to another training room, where I guess the Dauntless-initiates spent their morning. It's a big room, with wooden floor and with a big circle painted on the center of it. In the back of the room are hung black punching bags, behind which Four positions us – one for each, leaving three without being used. Right next to punching bags, there's a black board with two sides. I can't see what was written in the first side because Four is turning it around. Now I can see our names organized by alphabetical order, which is the same way Four organized us, leaving me between Lara and Ethan. The name of the boy that join Ethan and Lara, forming the fantastic trio, is Andrew. I try not to look at any of them, but I know Ethan is looking at me, probably with pleasure as my body looks like it's been hit by two buses, one right after the other.
Again, Four shows us how to do, exemplifying some punches, and I thank god he can't do it as fast as he shot this time. It took me about three shots to at least hit the biggest red circle, and I don't even know in which direction I shot my first bullet, as far as I know it could've killed any of us. Emmett, on his turn hit the second circle on his second shot, and after the third bullet he never missed the center of the target. I think that being tall and strong might be an advantage in here.
After Four makes his demonstration I turn to my punching bag and stare at it. If you had hands, you would've have put me KO already, I think to my punching bag.I close my eyes and visualize Four all over again. I try to copy his posture, which takes me a couple minutes and then give my first punch. My hand burns with pain and I feel like I might have broke some bone. The damn bag didn't even move.
"What's up, Is? Is the bag to height for you?" I turn to Ethan and he's laughing. Is it possible that he knows? He knows I'm afraid of heights? "Maybe you should ask to low it." Lara laughs at her own joke. Those two are good for each other. They should both be death. I go back to Isabelle, and pinch my lips, but it takes me more than that effort to turn around to my punching bag again and to ignore them. I keep on trying to make the bag move but I can't even reach the center of the punching bag, and I think that might be the reason. Everyone else has at least moved their bags, and they keep on improving their skills.
"You're doing it wrong." Four explains as he holds my bag. He's been passing through all of us to give some posture advices but he only stops when he gets to me. Apparently he decided that I should be the last one. "I'm trying." I say. "No you're not. You're to focus on putting strength on your punch, instead of focusing in your target. Try to use your elbows." "My elbows, how do you expect me to punch with my elbows?" He lets go of the punching bag, and stands in front of me. "Try to punch me." He says. I shake my head. "I'm not going to punch you with no reason." By this time, everybody stopped punching their bags and is staring at us. "Fine, I'll punch you." By the corner of my eye I see movement in my left, but it's too late, Four is already driving is head to my face, so I act by instinct, I low myself down, and raise my elbow, ending up by hitting Four in his stomach.
I hurt him; I know it because he places his hand on his shoulder before he stands up again. But he doesn't say anything, just like yesterday, but this time, I didn't do it on purpose, and to compensate, I feel guilty now. "That's how you use your elbow." He says. "Now everyone go back to work unless you want to stay here after six." He keeps with his round but I don't move a muscle. I still can't believe what I just did. I've never gotten into a fight before. People usually pretend I don't exist.
Emmett disobeys Four's orders too by coming to me. "How does he dare to-?" "Emmett! He is our instructor, it's his job. I'm fine, nothing happened to me." "But it could've!" I go back to my punching bag, leaving Emmett there, so he does the same thing. I keep on trying to use my elbows, but it's harder when your target it's not coming in you direction, so Four tells me to try to use my knees too, but I can't reach the punching bag with them.
In my head, I keep on seeing Four coming to punch me, and me acting without thinking, and I'm still thinking about it when I catch up with Owen and Maeve at the Pit. Owen tells us that he has to go clean the tattoo's store and invites us to come with him. Liz and Lucas say that they are exhausted and that they meet us at dinner, but I have the feeling that Owen didn't want them to come anyway. Actually, I'm not even sure if he wants Emmett to come, but I'm not going anywhere without him.
Owen ends up by taking his shirt off to show us his tattoos. There's not a place in his arms or his back that isn't covered on ink, but he left is chest intact. "I want to save it for something special." He says as we get to the tattoo store and he puts his shirt back on. "See you in an hour."
"C'mon let's see if Tori is here, maybe you guys could get a tattoo." Maeve pushes us into the store. I immediately fall in love with this place when I get inside it. It's so different from the rest of the headquarters. It's full of light and paintings on the wall.
"Hey, you're here to help Owen?" A woman asks. I figure it must be Tori. "No. We're here because I want a tattoo." I say, as I smile. Emmett lifts his eyebrows with my change of mood, but I just had an idea. Since the faction ceremony I've been proving that I'm Dauntless. I cut my hand, I jumped from a height of seven floors, and today I used a gun and hit my instructor that is two times bigger than me.
"And what would you like to have tattooed?" She asks, already taking her material out.
I've proved that I belong to the Dauntless faction, there are still more three factions that I still to prove that I belong to, but for now, I'm Is, the Dauntless mute that is at least trying to face her fears. "I want the Dauntless symbol on my right wrist." I say, as I promise myself I'll have the other symbols in my wrists by the end of the initiation, and by doing so, I'm also saying that I'll make it to the top ten, no matter how it costs.
A/N: Okay, I'm so sorry if this looks like a bad copy of the original text from V. Roth. There wasn't much I could do about this chapter. Feel free to tell me it sucks because maybe I need to hear it. Thanks, reviews or answers for the question on the top would be great. Thanks for reading!