Sharp Shooter

The Simulation

That was how our days went from there on out. Wake up, eat, train, eat, shower and hit the beds. During training, everyone lost weight and put on muscle, Ivan and I especially. By the end of the first month, I was hearing rumors that Ivan might beable to out punch Sterling in a fight, and Ivan didn't have it very nice when Sterling heard the rumor. After that he never left him alone and was teasing and taunting him every chance he got, until Val stepped in and threatened Sterling if he continued. Despite Sterling's clear size and weight advantage over Val, who seemed to be in his late 50's, Sterling seemed more than unwilling to take Val on head to head and laid off. My gain wasn't so much in muscle as it was speed. I was a decent size, I mean as far as a weight to height went, but still awkwardly skinny, by the end of the first month, but I had gotten a lot faster on my feet and so had Sorra. I can recall one incident when Helios stepped onto the track and called out Sorra and I for a quarter mile dash, and just barely won. I remember Sorra telling me that she was going to keep going back until she beat him.

I also learned in the first month that I was pretty much in love with the White and Gold Anthro. Vortex seemed to think I was too, but I was sure she'd say I was setting my sights to high, which I wondered if I was. I wondered if she felt the same way about me, and if she did, then she, also like me, was to nervous and shy to say anything.

During the second month, I personally focused more on my balance than I did anything else. I tried to do things that were expected of me my own way and save as much energy as I could so I could keep going for as long as possible and burst when I needed to. Even though they were really rough with me in training and when they would take me aside to help me with my strength, I was coming to see Vortex and Sterling almost as step parents. Sterling reminded me so much of my Dad in the way he acted during the practice that I could see him in his eyes. Vortex was like my Mother, sweet most of the time, but harsh when it was required of her. Kachira and Helios were becoming bigger parts of my life as the days went by as well. Kachira was highly skilled in Martial arts and taught me how to use the Fireblood knife, which on me was more of a sword, as an extension of my arm. There was one instance when I had so much force behind one of my swings that I cleaved straight through a metal practice dummy, which Kachira did her best to hide form Vortex, and to the best of my knowledge, she never found. Helios was teaching me all kinds of neat tricks when it came to conserving my energy, breathing control, how I placed my paws when I ran and even how the jar of even the slightest impact would effect my energy reserves.

During Month three, it was more navigation. I got to know the obstacle course by heart and Sterling would often time me on the weekends when we were off and give me pointers on where to improve my time. I managed to get my time from high minute thirties, down to a blistering 20 seconds. I remember the first time Sterling showed me the stop watch and it read 00:20.341 exactly. Why? Because it was the first time I'd ever seen the big silver dragon smile a happy smile. I remember him saying that he was going to find a way to make sure I could never run it that quickly again, but he never followed through, for reasons I'm still not sure about.

Then came Hell Month, which was just that. Sterling and Vortex were less rough than usual, but that was because what we were doing was four times as bad as what they had been prior. We got five hours of sleep a day, which, like Vortex said, wasn't all at once. Sometimes we'd get all five hours straight, and sometimes it would be as little as getting called the second the last dragon's head hit their pillow. Half way through Month four, we started learning to shoot guns. We trained on every weapon in the Fireblood arsenal, and where I struggled was with shotguns and heavy support weapons. Shotguns were familiar to me, as far as build and feel went, as it was just like a bolt action with the bolt moved forward, but where I struggled in the course was getting shot to pieces by the training dummies before I could get close enough to engage. Heavy support weapons weren't as bad, as I was allowed to use them at long range where I was comfortable, but full auto was always carrying my aim so far off target that I kept getting shot in the chest by snipers before I could compensate for it. Vortex and Sterling tried their best to fix my problems with those weapons in our private sessions on the weekends, and I ended up getting much better with HSW's once I learned proper trigger control for full auto fire, but Sterling eventually decided that putting a shotgun in my hands would get me killed and marked me as "Close Range In-Proficient" so we could spend our weekends on other things.