Gail plopped down in her seat in the Meister Studies lecture hall, highest up and furthest away from the door, and watched her lovely classmates file in. It was interesting, really, to observe her classmates behavior. Some people sat alone, like her, just much more awkwardly because they’ve spent all their time making friends with weapons, in an attempt to find a partner. They were visibly uncomfortable with their lone wolf position, which was hilarious because they obviously didn’t plan for this. She figured the most looking ones would either ban together or join the first group that had a half familiar face in it. Some people just can’t handle the pressure.
Others had already formed cliques, banding together against the evils of higher education. She gave all these happy, friendly groupings about twelve hours before the gossiping, bickering, and emotional tormenting of those they collectively viewed as their lesser began.
Predictability of the high school pack mentality aside, Gail also mused on how extraordinary of an experience coming here was. This school was the main branch DWMA, meaning there were people from basically every country, region, and continent. Which was good for her, considering this made learning about weird occurrences, disappearances, and other relevant information was just a matter of eavesdropping…and being multilingual which, admittedly was a bit of a problem. She knew for this to work she’d have to utilize the wide variety of language courses available here…which meant a ton more work for her to do.
She watched in annoyance as one of her friendly neighbors from homeroom entered the hall. He forced a smile and tiredly waved or nodded as several kids called out a greeting and proceeded, then proceeded to climb the stairs and take the seat two spaces away from her. Choosing to be alone and watch the others, just like her. Gail choose to do this out of boredom. Him, this Argos, however…she was still figuring him out. It’d been two days already and this guy exuded the attitude of a stone cold bitch. Maybe a little experiment was in order…
“Howdy, neighbor,” Gail turned in her seat to face him, leaning her back against the wall, careful to make her voice stuffed full of false cheer, “You’ve been sitting next to me a lot, you must really like me!”
He glanced at her briefly then returned his gaze to their classmates milling around the room, “Sure, keep telling yourself that,” he said dismissively. Huh. He spoke like she was like she was a bug crawling on the ground, beneath his notice. The little bitch.
“My, how touchy!” Gail sneered. Looks like she wouldn’t be leeching any insightful tidbits from him. Gail turned her attention back to the front as some nameless professor waltzed in and began writing on the board.
“We’ll be spending the first half of today’s class in the third floor gym for a brief PE assessment.” She announced, leaving a similar message on the board for any stragglers. “Gather your things and follow me.”
Upon arriving in the spacious room with its padded floors, Gail’s immediate reaction to the PE instructor was pretty much, Well shit he’s blue. Which was confusing because she was pretty sure the objective of this school was to exterminate monsters, not employ them. Well whatever works, as long as she got to do something other than book work for once.
The blue man, who introduced himself simply as Sid, went on and on for a while about safety and pairing up to spar and “Showing us what you can do,” and also some shit about using “Half your strength, don’t want to actually hurt anyone now.”
Ha. Sorry teach, I don’t do anything half assed.
Sid finished his speech and started pairing people up, making it clear that this was only a half hour class to see where everyone stood physically. After this, wits back to the books again for the rest of the day.
Fine. Half an hour is more than enough.
Sid paired everyone up. Once every pair had one victor or a stalemate, they’d switch and keep circulating like that until time was up.
Gail’s first victim was this scrawny kid in glasses, who made no motion to take them off. Who the ever-loving fuck spars with their glasses still on? At least get some prescription goggles or something that stays on your face! Sid blew the whistle. Immediately Gail stepped forward and stomped on his foot.
“Ow!” she got lucky, because the little idiot immediately took his foot off the ground, clutched it and hopped around like a dumbass. It was absolutely comical. Gail caught up and shoved him, causing him to topple over and face plant. He groaned and rolled over, revealing an oddly satisfying spider webbed crack on one of his glasses lenses.
Sid called, “SWITCH.” He then jogged over to deal with this random dude who had a bloody nose and was bleeding all over the place.
Gail walked away from the pathetic little scrap and found herself in front of Nami’s prissy blue haired friend. She forgot herself for a moment and smiled wickedly. Perfect. Just what I needed today.
Sai had this amusing look on her face, like she was trying to sneer but only managed to look slightly constipated. “I saw that. Let me guess. You’ve received exactly zero formal training in the fighting arts. I’m right aren’t I? No serious fighter pulls cheap crap like that, so don’t go thinking I’m impressed. Because I’m not. It’s all about training and form and discipline, all of which I already have, just so we’re clear on who’s going to win this match,” blah blah blah. Shut up. Gail took a deep breath, pushing down her annoyance and putting up a carefully blank look on her face.
“Have you actually ever been in a fight?” Gail asked, cutting into Sai’s monologue.
“Of course. God, do you live under a rock? Sparing and staged matches are a necessary part of learning martial arts. I’ve had lessons for over a year now thanks to the DWMA fast track curriculum at my old school, prepping to come and learn here of course-“
“God, would you SHUT UP?” Gail let her self-control slip just a fraction. She just couldn’t take this. Why does this chick keep TALKING?
“READY?” Sid’s voice was a damn god send. Sai sunk down into a perfectly balanced starting form, “SPAR.”
Keeping her feet planted, Gail jerked her body forward slightly, Sai lightly stepped back, reacting to and mirroring her moves like Gail expected she would. With that in mind, Gail began circling Sai, who moved with her. Gail realized Sai was probably never going to make the first move. Fine then. Gail moved in on Sai fast, feigning a kick, her goal was to get beside her or even behind her and hit her from a blind spot.
Sai saw it coming and swiftly kicked Gail behind the legs. “Wuh!” Gail panicked a bit, feeling her knees cave in. She was going down. From there, instinct took over and she did exactly what she would have done in every losing end of a scuffle she’d ever been in: she grabbed the back of Sai’s shirt and tugged her down with her.
Sai screamed in rage, trying to get her feet back under her, but Gail tugged her down again, trying to get her arms around her neck for a head lock, but Sai was putting up one hell of a fight. Gail dully registered Sid’s whistle sounding somewhere out on field…and let go.
“What do you think you’re DOING?” Sai blustered, climbing to her feet.
“Um, fighting?”
“I took you DOWN, you obviously lost this round. You pulled another damn cheap shot!” Sai fumed.
“Yeah, well try telling that to the person you’re fighting for your life against,” Gail said, moving on. She felt heat rising on her checks. Even if the fight had gone on longer, Sai probably would have won. Damn prissy bitch thinks she’s so great…but she was. The whistle had brought the match to a stalemate but…
Damn it, Gail thought, frustrated. She had so much to learn.
Sid’s whistle blew, bringing Gail’s focus back to class and her next opponent, Argos.
Gail barely had time to register this before Argos was moving. “ASAFDAfgh,” Gail raised an arm in a sloppy block, cursing when Argos’s swing hit home. He was not holding back, and SHE was definitely going to have a nasty bruise. She was trying to collect enough composure to counter when she noticed his legs moving. She ducked under the kick, half hoping she’d have enough time to unbalance him somehow before he struck again. No luck.
Argos was too quick, both feet were already back on the ground and he wasted no time in kicking again, this time at her side. Shit, shit. Gail hit the floor and rolled out of the way, making it to her feet, Argos was relentless though and in no time he was right on top of her, aiming a punch at her stomach to wind her. Gail stepped to the side and, in her frazzled state of mind she kind of did this weird ballerina spin kind of shit which seemed kind of stupid, but brought her into a position where her momentum allowed her to bring the side of her fist slamming into his back, causing him to stumble forward a bit.
She wasted no time in trying to follow up with a kick to send him, ideally, sailing into the blue padding but he was too quick. He turned, grabbed her foot, and before she knew it SHE had ended up in the floor somehow.
The whistle blew. “Times up!” Sid called. There were groans and complaints as her class mates helped each other off the floor and commenced chattering again.
“Shit,” Gail moaned, rolling onto her butt and sitting up. She was certainly not on the ball today. Argos was already walking to the doors he stopped and looked back to her as kind of an afterthought.
“You ok?” he asked curtly.
Gail grunted in lieu of a response and hauled herself to her feet.
Argos nodded, apparently convinced that any sort of response from an opponent was indicative of sufficient health after he creamed them.
Gail spent a good part of her classes going back over the fights with Sai and Argos in her head. The students at this school weren’t your garden variety scuz bags, they were soldiers, crime fighters, even assassins in training. She had underestimated every single opponent today and had walked away with a bruised body and ego because of it. She took a deep breath, think of her and Raze’s decision and resolve to be here. There couldn’t be anymore screwing around from her, time to get serious. She mentally filed her spar analyses for later and tuned back into the lecture.
