Easter
Laziest lazier
- Location
- Bed
Slum Knight
Her smirk held an edge to it as she ducked under the other girl's jab, her own knee shooting up to take the taller girl in the stomach. Her opponent's block made the young woman's knee ache but didn't slow her down, only taking a second to launch into a series of strikes, overwhelming her opponents already flagging defense before finally getting a swift punch straight to the girl's stomach, folding her immediately.
"Match!" echoed out from the sparring referee, a gray haired and stout man that could be anywhere between thirty and fifty from the young woman's estimate.
For a second she looked like she didn't hear the man, but unlike when she first arrived here she heeded the call without attacking again. The feel she craved, that singular thrill of victory that her time in the slums had drilled into her psych, churned in her gut but wouldn't find satisfaction from such a lack of luster victory. But she had learned her lesson in previous spars. Instead of pushing forward she simply gave the customary bow that those in the Lily Kingdom gave at the end of spars or duels before turning and walking back to her seat.
Stretching as she walked forward she finally let herself fall into the comfortable canvas chair, something apparently bought from the spacers but she couldn't be bothered to find out more, and swept her eyes back towards the sparing circle. A chalk outline sitting on tbe cold stone floor of an immense room, easily the size of a mech hanger or a ball field. Each side is surrounded by chairs, a medical section, and an equipment pile.
The instructor seemed to have waited for the two girls to get back to their seats, one walking and the other limping, before belting out his announcement to everyone. "Alright listen up cadets, as you lot know we're only a week away from the real Knight's training. This means that we're also a week away from the tournament and evaluation!" The man swept over the crowd before he seemed to almost fight the urge to roll his eyes before continuing. "I'll reiterate for those of you that have taken too many hits to the head during training. If you don't impress us during the testing or haven't shown us some talent during the training then you're out of the program!
Luckily for you, since you volunteered for this experimental training you'll get a chance at the jobs you were slated for before joining Knight Training, but I don't think I need to remind even the densest here that would mean losing out on the chance to pilot a mech or earn a knightly title." Here he paused and grinned , after all everyone knew why there were so many volunteers for this program.
Even a Paris slum-born like the girl knew what a knight title meant, it was protection, wealth, power. To have a title meant that you had protection past the rights normal citizens have in the kingdom, the ability to go to a noble judge and have your complaints heard, even ones levied against the truly powerful. While it also meant that you had money making opportunities hand over fist, since any business would be delighted to have a noble's title to throw around, and of course being a noble meant connections with the rich and powerful in general. Finally, in the end it also boiled down to power, knights piloted mechs and with that came a true physical power that no normal individual could match. Not without a small army at their back.
All this and more was why the girl was here in the first place, in this basement under some old palace where all the training was occuring. Why a basement she had no clue, she only knew that it was a massive room and about a third of it was closed off and heavily guarded. Heavy tarps and temporary walls closing off a section from both prying eyes and shifty hands. Temporary it might be but it was guarded enough that she had heard about a boy being shot for refusing to heed the guard's warnings about not approaching. She snorted when she heard, the boy must have been a merchant in her opinion. Noble's would of known not to mess with an imperial order backed guard while commoners would of known a guard would happily shoot them if they did something stupid, only merchants had that dangerous mixture of self-importance and naïveté.
Nonetheless, be it killer guards or rigorous training she volunteered for this to get that title and pilot one of the legendary mechs that make up the cream-de-le-cream of the Kingdom's forces. To be an elite rather than yet another slum-born ground-pounder, sent out to take and hold some border fort against an enemy while hoping an enemy mech doesn't pop up.
No, she wanted to have her fate in the palm of her hands, even if that meant she had to beat the snot out of other trainees, had to be a better pilot than them, or even had to act like she was a good little soldier when called on. No matter what the girl named Olympias would come out of this ahead, she swore it to herself before she left this massive room everyday.
