Heaven, Hell, and Everything in Between

Chapter 9: The School of Hard Knocks and Training Clocks

Ch.9 The School of Hard Knocks and Training Clocks

It turns out that 'worse' is something I couldn't bear to see, and it starts with the word 'glue' and ends with 'bomb'. It was about a week into the training I now shared with Grace and Ricky. I was on one side of the field with Rocko, and the others were on the far side of the field with their own trainers. Grace had a very patient mentor in the form of Master Karcka, who was one of the greatest archers in Heaven. She was twice as old as Shikia, but was about twice as kind in return. Ricky had a happy-go-lucky mentor that reminded me a lot of Rollo, and he should have, considering he was Rollo's father. His name was Master Soroka, and had so many ways to make booby-traps with household items, that you couldn't get within a hundred yards of his house without setting something off. His son picked up on many of his tricks, and my friends fell right into one such trap during training that day.

Grace and Ricky were doing some sparing with their masters, Grace and Karcka were doing an extreme form of dodge-ball, except with padded arrows and Ricky was trying to bash Soroka's head in with his padded club. Both of them were about twenty feet from me when Grace stepped on the trigger plate for the bomb. I had half of a second to get clear of the blast, and thanks to my training, I was well away as the glue exploded. Grace and Ricky weren't so lucky, they ended up stuck to the nearest thing to them, and had the bottom half of their bodies immobilized by hardening glue. Grace got glued to the pad she was shooting from behind, and Ricky got attached to a nearby armor stand. Their masters had flown to a safe altitude, and now came down to assess the situation. "I dare say that was my son's handiwork," Master Soroka said, "and I can see that he went all-out in his attempt to immobilize you."

"Yeah, yeah, he did a real god job on the trigger and so on," Grace droned, "now could someone get us out of here!"

"Happy to help," I said, "just let me get the glue remover." Now I knew why they had a tub of the stuff against one wall. In case Rollo or his dad decided to have some fun during training. I emptied the tub on my friends, and in two minutes they were trying to clobber Rollo, who had been unlucky enough to walk in just as they got unstuck. He never knew what hit him, one minute he was walking in to talk to us, the next he's being tackled by my friends. As the three of them tumbled around, they kicked up so much dust that the rest of us couldn't see a thing. We would have stumbled into one another if the masters hadn't blown away the dust with their wing beats. "That is enough children," Rocko said, "I think Rollo has learned his lesson for the day." In a voice that only I could hear he said, "Let's see if it stays in his head for more than an hour this time."

Rollo seemed not too worse for wear, and soon had my friends laughing at themselves for how silly they had looked. Leave it to Rollo to turn anger into humor in two seconds flat. I still couldn't believe he had gotten something that big past the Masters' keen eyes. Then again, being a master prankster means you have to cover your tracks well. He must have learned that from his dad too in How to Prank 101. We could have sat there all night laughing if the ever-one -to-hate- wasted-time Rocko hadn't broken up the party. "Are we going to giggle the night away," he said none too gently, "or are we going to get something done tonight?"

"Oh, let them have some fun you old sourpuss," Soroka said, "Even you know the importance of having fun every once and a while."

"That doesn't mean I have to like it." He replied.

This time Karcka spoke up, "You have never liked it," she said, "but you still live with it, or Mr. Rollo here would be long gone."

"Humph." was the answer she got.

"I would say we are done for today." Rocko said, "You three won't be able to concentrate anyway, might as well hit the hay."

Grace, Ricky and I looked at each other and made the same decision at the same time. We needed to get as much sleep as we could, because we had a test the following day. "Bedtime." we said in unison.

I got up the next day feeling like I had been steamrollered, pressed, stretched, and shredded all in one night. I could only imagine what my friends felt like, but we had a test today, and staying in bed was not an option. "Might as well try to pass the test," I thought, "got nothing to lose by trying."

I got to school still half asleep, and could barely keep my eyes open the whole day. I knew that if I fell asleep I would not wake up until school got out, so I forced my brain to run on at least half power the rest of the day, but when I got home, I passed out on the couch, and didn't wake up until my stomach said 'feed me!' in a not too comfortable way. I had a miserable day and I didn't even go to training that night my sleep was so deep.

I woke up the next morning still on the couch, and needless to say, I was still bushed. I was relieved to find out it was Saturday, because I hadn't thought I could have stayed awake for another day of school. My mom tried all day to get me to do something, with no avail. I went to sleep thinking, "Training is going to be murder. How will I stay awake feeling like this?"

I needn't have worried, I wasn't summoned to Heaven that night, or the next three for that matter. I thought that they were just giving us a break, but when I went back to Heaven on Tuesday, I found the training building in shambles. "What in Heaven's name happened here!?" I asked Rocko, "It looks like a hurricane passed over!"

"Nothing to worry about, unless you're made of wood, then you need to worry about it because we have an infestation of termites." was his calm answer.

"I thought Heaven didn't have problems like that." I said, "How did they get here?"

"You can thank your goofball friend over there for them," he said, "Rollo thought it would be funny to drop the roof on our heads three days ago, so he let those little monsters into the woodwork. We've been trying to get rid of them ever since."

"How do plan to do that?" I asked, "They must be in every inch of wood by now."

"Simple," he said, "We burn the building, empty of course, then rebuild it with metal. The Forge has literally tons of metal not being worked right now, so we can use that."

"And how long will that take?" I asked, "We still have to train."

"It will only take three days by your time," he said, "so just think of it as a short vacation. I'm sure you need the R&R."

"You don't know the half of it," I said, "but thanks for the info, my friends will love the news."

"Don't get lazy though," he warned, "I may be giving you a break, but expect to be making up for it upon your return. We need to train you, not baby you."

I went home feeling better than I had in days, and for good reason. I couldn't believe our luck. Three days of rest, it was unheard of coming from Rocko, but he had said it just the same. I thought it was going to be a great time to kick back and relax. As usual my ideas of what was to come were hopelessly wrong. It was going to be a very long three days.