Get Up

Rean panted hard as his knees hit the dirt. He only just managed to thrust a hand out to catch himself before he face planted the floor. His sword gripped tight in sweaty fingers. The hot sun overhead threatened to burn him away.

A shadow loomed up and over him. Though momentarily spared from the sun, Rean could somehow feel an even greater heat radiating at him.

"Come on. Get up." Sara Valestein commanded, the fire in her voice so much fiercer than that which hung high in the sky.

"Instructor, don't you think he's exhausted?" Emma spoke up from the side-lines.

Rean chanced a look up from the dirt and over to the side of the playing field. The rest of Class VII were there, stood alongside the witch on the periphery of the playing field. They were all there to witness Rean's pummelling at the hands of their beloved Instructor.

"He can take it." Sara murmured, with an edge to her voice that demanded no further questions.

Even if he wanted to, Rean wouldn't have been able to ask a single one anyway. He didn't have any breath left to spare. He was just about getting control of his breathing again when the sheer force above him crouched low, increasing its intensity by proximity.

"Rean." Sara purred in a low growl.

He could only gulp.

"Get up." It most certainly wasn't a request. "You're better than this."

"I …" Rean gasped but just couldn't do anymore.

"Get up, Rean." Sara's tone was fast growing impatient. "I've never wasted my time training a quitter before," she spat the word like it was poison, "and I'm not about to start now."

Something unpleasant stirred within him. It might have been shame or anger, he wasn't sure. He tried to cling onto it, to use it as fuel. Rean pushed with all his might against the ground, fighting gravity as much as his fatigue.

He fell face down in the dirt once more.

A disappointed sigh from above him.

"If you can't handle this, then you can forget about protecting yourself out in the real world." Sara promised him. "And your friends, your family? Tch, you can forget about protecting them as well. You'd just be a liability."

"I … I can …"

"You can what, Rean?" Sara demanded. "You can lie down and die? Because that's what'll happen if you can't stand up and fight back!"

Rean groaned as he strained to move himself up.

"Instructor, don't you think he's had enough?" Jusis put in.

Sara ignored him. She moved around from Rean's side to hover over his head. A ringing thud and a shudder in the ground told Rean that she'd embedded the tip of her sword in the ground mere inches from his head.

"You think the bad guys out there will take it easy on you?" Sara muttered near Rean's ear. "You think they'll give you a moment to breathe? Think they'll give you a time out for you to have a rest, gather your thoughts and get your shit together?"

"N- No." Rean gasped.

"Exactly. So stop lying down in the dirt and get up." Sara growled.

Rean tried, he really did, but his body just wouldn't comply.

Sara let out a heavy sigh. Disappointment. Rean never wanted to hear that again.

"I thought better of you, Rean." Sara murmured, no more demands in her tone, just resignation. "Thought you had what it takes to be my student."

"I … I can-"

"You can what, Rean?"

"I can-"

"I can't hear you, Schwarzer!" Sara barked, cutting across him.

"Instructor, please!" Alisa cried out.

"Quitters don't get to speak in my class!" Sara threw a hard look at the rest of Class VII, warning them that they faced a similar fate if they dared to back out in any way, shape or form.

She turned back to glower at Rean. Rean couldn't lift his head to see it, but he could just feel it somehow.

"You want to say something Rean, you've got to get up and fight me." Sara muttered darkly. "So come on then, do you have something to say?"

Rean somehow managed to drag his head up from the floor. He gazed up into Sara's eyes. Though hard and merciless, there was something like a pleading there. She was willing him to succeed, begging him to.

"Come on Rean, or are you done yet?"

"I …"

"You're not standing!" Sara barked. "Get up!"

Rean growled something inaudible as he put everything he had into moving his arms and legs again.

"That's it, Rean! Stand up and fight back!" Sara almost laughed.

Rean reached deeper than he'd ever reached before, plumbing depths of his strength and stamina he never knew existed.

"Rrargh!" Rean let out an inhuman scream as he suddenly surged up and forward. His sword was flying for Sara before he even realised.

A shrill scrape of steel on steel reached Rean's ears, the sight of Sara swinging her own blade in to meet and redirect his registered in his mind a moment after.

The realisation of what he'd just done hit Rean like a hammer blow in slow motion. He'd just attacked his Instructor, and not in amidst a practice bout. His attack had been out of the blue, catching her by surprise almost as much as it caught him.

It could have hurt.

It could have killed.

His eyes were still widening in shock at what he'd just done, yet he still didn't see the counter swipe of Sara's own blade coming.

His tachi was torn from his hands. It went flying off somewhere. Rean's fingers barely had time to mourn the loss before they were instinctively grasping for purchase as he was thrown through the air himself. His centre of gravity shifted violently and a thick, fresh pain hit his abdomen. Before he knew it, he was smacked down to the ground once more.

A round of hisses and pained 'ooh's reached Rean's ears from his classmates.

Then, before he could even do anything but register the new pains wracking his body, the air was shot out of lungs as a hard blow landed on his back. Even though he was facing nothing but dirt, it was unmistakeable that Sara was physically pinning him to the ground.

"There, you see?" A teasing, melodic voice drifted into Rean's ear from somewhere perched on top of him. Sara let out the lightest little sigh as though her manoeuvre to upend Rean had been but a trifle. "I knew you had it in you."

Rean could only respond by grunting in pain.

Sara shifted only a little from her position, making sure to keep him pinned to the ground. It was just enough so she could get her lips right up to his ear.

"You're lucky I'm as fast as I am, otherwise that could have gone very differently." Sara murmured in the quietest whisper.

Doing his best to bury his face into the dirt, Rean could only nod, ashamed.

"Lucky, lucky boy." Sara purred, with a hint of what could have been a chuckle in her tone. "Well done, Rean."

Then, she blew a quick breath into his ear.

Rean would have jumped in surprise if he could have moved at all. Instead, he just shuddered a little and languished on the ground as Sara snickered. Then, she finally got up and began to bark commands at the rest of the class, ordering them into fighting pairs.

As the rest of Class VII ran about to follow Sara's decrees to every single letter, Rean was somewhat glad to be left face down in the dirt, forgotten. He wasn't sure what was worse: the humiliation of being handily thrashed by his instructor in front of all his friends, or that some small part of him couldn't wait to fight one on one with Sara again.