Chapter 5: Progress

After discovering where she was, Arden went into a depression. She knew that she would die, that there would be nothing she could do. Every once in awhile, she would get passing sparks of hope. She'd think that maybe, just maybe, she might survive. Maybe, just maybe, she could change something. Then the sparks would fade, and she'd be thrown back into a pit of swirling existentialism. Pondering the meaning of human life, searching for answers in her own mind as to why she was there. Wondering what her purpose was. Thinking about what would happen after death. Would she be thrown into another world? Would she reborn into this one, forced to repeat life- a never ending cycle?

She couldn't recall how long she'd spent in that state. One day, she just opened her eyes.

One day, everything came into sharp focus, and she made a choice.

She chose to fight.

She chose to get up, and to go out, and to do something. To change something. She still knew she couldn't save the world. She knew that she couldn't save every last human life. She knew she couldn't eradicate the titans, and bring everyone within the walls to freedom. She wasn't interested in saving the world. She wasn't a hero, and she didn't want to be. But what she could do... she could try. She could fight.

So she trained. She went out into the woods, just beyond the fields of her farm, and she trained. Her body was young, slow, and clumsy. She tired easily. She lacked strength, endurance, agility, speed. She didn't have anything going for her. Nothing but her determination. Her determination though, was strong. It was persistent, forever burning, an ember in her very soul.

Maybe she couldn't be a hero. Maybe she couldn't save anyone. But she was damn well going to try.

Her so-called training was slow going. It wasn't easy. Every night, when she snuck back in the house, she was covered in bruises and scabs. Her body ached all over. She'd trudge up the stairs, and pass out as her head hit the pillow.

When her parents had her start school, it was hell. She was surrounded by snot-nosed kids; she had to suffer through learning her ABC's, her 123's, and her DoReMi's... again.

Sure, the language was different, the numbers altered, but it was still the same basic idea. The same damn tedium. She caught up on sleep during classes. In the old world (new world, because it was in the future?- her original world) she had learned meditative practices that allowed her to rest with her eyes open. It wasn't actual sleep, it provided no source of true rest, and it couldn't replace her need for nightly slumber, but it helped with regaining energy.

School did not contribute a single thing to her training. It made it more difficult. With more of her daily energy being subtracted from the equation, she came in with more bruises, more scabs, and far more exhaustion. Naptime was a blessing.

She did make progress though. As time went on, as the years passed, it became less difficult. She came home with less bruises, less scabs. School never got harder. She recalled a particular time in class.

"Today, we'll be learning multiplication!" the teacher had exclaimed in that grating, nasally voice. Arden had been 'sleeping' at the time.

"Arden!"

She snapped out of her meditative slumber. "Yes?"

"Did you hear me?"

"Uh. Could you repeat the question?"

The teacher gave a deep, long-suffering sigh. "Solve the problem on the board."

She looked up. "264." she stated simply, barely glancing.

The teacher looked at her in shock. "I didn't say to guess." she snapped, angry again. "Show how you did it." She motioned towards the chalkboard in the front of the room.

Arden scrambled for an excuse. She'd only done it in her head, and they hadn't yet been taught how to multiply 'larger' numbers. Briefly, she considered how they'd react if she simply said that she worked out the problem mentally.

She, unable to predict any outcome that ended well for herself, drew a lattice, a tool she'd not used since the third grade. Heavily inflecting her voice in a adenoidal manner similar to that of her teacher, she said "Lattice multiplication, also known as gelosia multiplication, is an algorithm suitable for hand calculation. It is mathematically identical to the long multiplication algorithm, but it breaks to process into smaller steps, which some practitioners find better to use with young children. A grid is drawn up, and each cell is split diagonally. The two multiplicands of the product to be calculated are written along the top and right side of the lattice, respectively, with one digit per column-"

"Go to the corner!" the instructor shouted.

"Yes, ma'am." Arden replied in a relative monotone.

She apparently took the tone for sarcasm. "Don't sass me, little miss! The corner!" The teacher's face was bright red, her brow furrowed in fury.

Arden came to a realization then. In this classroom- in any classroom, they didn't care about actually learning, furtherance of knowledge, complex thinking, real-life problem solving. They cared about rote memorization, you had to do things how they taught you, because anything else was wrong, wrong, wrong.

That didn't stop her, though. While she trained her physical self, she trained her mind, as well. She no longer held her once firm grasp of English, but she practiced, meanwhile practicing French, the language course she'd taken for high school credits. She did her simple division, but behind the scenes, she formed stratagems and created formulas to replace the ones she'd forgotten. She worked with her memory, fighting to recall what she'd learned in the psych classes she took for college credit. That memories are never lost, or forgotten, simply buried in one's subconscious, waiting to be dug up and revealed.

I think this chapter was probably way different before. And a lot longer. You get used to that. Well, it is what it is.