Blue

Making Waves

Adam didn't know how it had happened, but suddenly, he was beating Rose in their sparring. In fact, he was beating everyone. There was just something about the sword swinging loose in his hands, like a liquid extension of his own arm. That feeling of right-ness, that satisfactory feeling of being capable with a sword, had only increased as he had learned and practiced. It was ironic, he thought, that he had gone through his entire, admittedly short, life with this sword wielding talent lying in wait deep in the red blood cells of his bloodstream like a virus. He would likely have never learned he was good at this. There would have been no reason for him to ever have to pick up a sword, especially a cutlass.

He thrust his sword forward, blocking one of Yael's swipes towards him. He pressed forwards, attacking Yael mercilessly, until Yael's sword was spinning across the floor and Adam's sword was landing a solid blow across Yael's body with a thwack that sounded incredibly painful.

"Oh, shit, dude. Sorry. I didn't mean to go quite that hard at you," Adam said. Yael gripped her arm in pain, cursing unintelligibly under her breath. Yael waved Adam away from her body with a flapping hand.

"Don't apologize. We train to kill, not to injure and not to leave the siren perfectly fine," Yael muttered. Her words were encouraging, but her eyebrows were pulled together in a way that made her look more hawkishly angry than usual. Yael preferred to be the best, and their sparr had just proven that she no longer had that status.

"You're not a siren, Yael."

"Ah, but if I was... Then you would have done the perfect thing," Yael said. She looked at Adam's sword and shifted her weight. She swallowed. Her shoulders dropped slightly in defeat.

"Come, show me how you did that last move. How did you get the sword out of my hands like that?" Yael sighed. Adam grinned.

"Come on, Master Swordsman, you're telling me you don't know how I did that?"

"Boy, I will personally deliver you to the final afterlife right here and now," Yael growled. Adam lifted his hands into the air, prancing out of Yael's reach on light feet. When he was confident Yael wasn't going to snap and kill him, he walked her slowly through the move a couple times until Yael could do the move herself. Yael nodded, satisfied.

"Alright, dude, I'm off. I promised I would meet Curtis in the library to study some of the older fighting styles. I know I say this every time, but thanks again, Yael, by the way. It's more... fulfilling to spar with you than with Curtis. Oh. Don't tell him I said that," Adam laughed.

"Curtis is a poor swordsman," Yael agreed thoughtfully, "Some people wonder why he has been considered ready for the Culling. I have no doubt that he would die almost immediately in a Hunt." Adam almost choked. It wasn't necessarily untrue, but it was quite a bit more blunt than most trainees put it, though Adam had no doubt that some of the trainees were downright nasty about Curtis' candidacy for the Culling when they talked among themselves. The desire to become an Ensign was a flame that burned fiercely inside almost every person in the bunker, and Curtis had been eligible to become one for years without ever actually going through the ceremony.

Yael shrugged, "He has been here for so long that they must have forgotten that he is not good enough."

"Yael, don't make me kick your ass again."

The two of them walked slowly to the line of shoes at the door of the training. Adam shoved his foot into his boot. He was so curious... but Yael, like many of the other trainees, was extremely protective of what she was doing here and who she had been before. It was an unspoken part of life at the bunker: don't ask about people's former lives, just focus on the one they were currently living. Adam swallowed down the question brewing in his throat. Yael laced up her boots methodically, tucking in the bottom of her pants, tightening the laces with deft fingers, tugging the tongues three times. The question on Adam's lips tumbled out uncontrollably.