Burning Grace

A New Member With Old Ties

Note from the author: If there's any actual readers still out there, I'm sorry for disappearing off the face of the planet. I got busy with school and life and honestly just never made the time to give this story the attention it deserves. Thankfully this morning I was pulled back into the world of Aaron and the rest of Blue Team by Arrowmancer, a fantastic writer here on Wattpad who convinced me that it's time to come back for good and finally tell Aaron's story. If any of you do truly enjoy this story, I'd ask that you help keep me accountable in case I somehow begin slipping again. Most importantly, in case it wasn't obvious enough, I want to thank Arrowmancer for not letting Burning Grace stay dead and for inspiring me to continue this story. If you're a fan of sci-fi, or good writing in general, I strongly recommend you check out his story Dawnhammer.

Aaron

Monday morning

"WE HAVE A BREACH! EVERYONE OUT!" My eyes snap open and I'm up in an instant, standing next to the door with my shoulder to the wall. I hear a loud klaxon going and shouting but something seems... wrong. I groan when I realize what it is. Zach had set the alarm last night, and being the movie nerd and tech genius he is, rigged our morning alarm into a scene from some '90s Sci-fi flick favorite of his. Not my way to start a Monday.

"Zach! Turn that off before Jason hears it! and stop sucking your thumb dude, that's not how you get a date to the end of semester ball," I try to yell at him, which was hard seeing how I am laughing at the entire situation, standing ready for a fight in my boxers, and still hugging my pillow. Jason is the supervisor for this section of the dorms, and the hand to hand combat instructor. Regardless of being only a bit over five feet tall, he would not hesitate to throw us into walls with one hand if he found out Zach had tampered with our room's alarm system.

Of course this isn't the first time Zach has tampered with the academy's systems. Over the years Zach has: rigged the water fountains to dispense Kool-Aid, tampered with the faculty's supply of walkie-talkies to make each one transmit a different animal noise whenever they were used, rigged the lighting to act as needed for a student flash mob during an assembly, and countless other harmless things he never got caught for. The kid has a natural gift with technology and I love that he has learned to use it as a master prankster rather than anything unreasonably malicious.

I drag Zach, Bishop, and Drew out of their bunks. Only half of our bunks are filled but rooms are assigned according to squad and the bunks won't be filled until I either bring some more recruits into our squad or administration decides to throw a few more into our group. Administration has assigned us additional members before but gave up after everyone they brought in either kept getting hurt during war exercises because they couldn't work with our style, or Zach and Bishop had pranked them until they demanded a transfer. I'm not against new members by any means, but some missions are easier to accomplish with a smaller team.

We all get up and ready for the day, Zach and Drew drag themselves to the two showers in our bathroom. Knowing they'll be a while, I'm glad I shower at night so I won't be too gross if we're unexpectedly awoken from our sleep by anything other than Zach's pranks. After they get out, I get up and we all don our nearly identical training uniforms which are only different because of the names printed on each of our chests and the squad leader pin secured to mine.

After we finish getting ourselves ready we clean our bunks and stand at attention beside them waiting for the morning inspection. At 0650 exactly, Jason comes marching through the door with a determined glare. I haven't allowed our room to fail inspection since I became squad leader and Jason always does his best to try to catch any little mistake I make to make sure I don't become complacent.